Aesthetics - Hart or Aquinas?

I came across an interesting article - The Analogy of Beauty and the Limits of Theological Aesthetics by Daniel B. Gallagher - in Theandros, while looking up stuff on Hans Urs von Balthasar ... David Bentley Hart's theories are examined and critiqued in the article along with a study of Thomas Aquinas' idea of beauty. It's quite long and involved, so I've just posted most of the introduction below, and then the conclusion, leaving out the middle :-) - best read the whole article (link above) ...

*******************************

"Aesthetic" approaches to theology are becoming ever-more popular. A glance at a list of published dissertations from any theological school or seminary indicates that the burgeoning interest in theological aesthetics has yet to wane. In many cases, the staggeringly large corpus of the late Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988) forms the basis for much of this doctoral work ....

Aesthetic approaches to theology, however, are not new. In fact, a heightened sensibility to theological aesthetics is in large part due to the resourcement movement of the mid-twentieth century .... That is to say that because beauty had played such a critical role in the thought of Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Origen, Augustine, the Pseudo-Dionysius, and others, it had already earned a rightful place in speculative theology before bursting onto the scene in the twentieth century.

More recently, David Bentley Hart, writing from of the Eastern Orthodox perspective, has offered a systematic account of theological aesthetics encompassing an impressive range of philosophical and theological sources. He provides a particularly incisive critique of post-Kantian and post-modern aesthetic theory. Hart is firmly convinced that theology "must inevitably make an appeal to beauty ... rather than simply 'truth'". Hart's conviction has struck a sympathetic chord in both the Eastern and Western theological traditions. Indeed, aesthetic theology might provide an impetus for greater progress in the ecumenical dialogue in the years to come.

Yet, in the midst of all this enthusiasm, I believe a note of caution is in order. Theologians must be careful not to rush too precipitously into theological aesthetics without due regard for its limits. Theological aesthetics needs to be delineated, or at least kept in check, by counter-realities such as evil, ugliness, and sin. Moreover, theology must not lose sight of the relationship between beauty and the other traditional transcendental properties of being, unity, goodness, and truth. In short, as potent as it may be, aesthetics is yet but a theological approach rather than the theological approach. A study of beauty's role throughout the history of theology shows that these limits were at least implicitly acknowledged from the very beginning. If there was any subordination of the respective transcendental properties of being in respect to their role in theology, beauty was subordinate to the good, the one, and the true rather than the other way around. As I hope to demonstrate, Hart seems to argue for the primacy of beauty over goodness, unity, and truth.

In what follows, I examine some of the more salient points of the aesthetic tradition in theology to draw attention to its limits. I have chosen to pay particular attention to the aesthetic theory of Thomas Aquinas, as he seems to synthesize the Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysical traditions in regard to beauty and its mode of existence in both God and created things. Especially poignant is the underlying doctrine of analogy informing Aquinas' theory of beauty. I then offer a critical analysis of David Bentley Hart's development of an analogia delectationis for aesthetic theology. I argue that setting up beauty as the primary transcendental in theology may risk undermining the distinctive aspects of the good and the true and fail to acknowledge adequately the infinite distance separating sensible and supersensible beauty ....

* Major snip *

..... Hart makes a strong case for the power of theological aesthetics to respond to the post-Kantian philosophical legacy that has recognized the sublime as the only means of bridging the pure and practical intellects. He has an extraordinary breadth of knowledge of twentieth-century philosophy. He also plumbs the depths of ancient and patristic Christian sources to uncover the building blocks for a new theological aesthetics. However, he also exemplifies a type of unbridled optimism in the power of aesthetic theology to confront the challenges of post-modernism. Establishing beauty as the primary transcendental category for theology runs the risk of eschewing the ambivalent way in which we experience the beautiful in the sensible world. The effects of original sin have debilitated man's capacity to apprehend beauty as an analogous concept connecting the sensible to the supersensible. The experience of delight, even when it is genuinely aesthetic, too easily leads to aestheticism. The transcendentals of goodness and truth do not run the same risk. Consequently, Aquinas deliberately ties beauty (pulchrum) to goodness (bonum) so that the elaboration of the good as an object of the will may serve as the theoretical framework for understanding beauty as an object of the intellect. Aquinas would have been reluctant to join Hart in relegating goodness and truth to a secondary status among the transcendentals based on their necessary derivation from beauty in the wake of sin. If theological aesthetics is to break new ground while remaining faithful to the long legacy of carefully distinguishing between aesthetic and transcendental beauty, it will be important for its practitioners to take stock of its inherent limits.

**************************

As usual, this stuff makes my head hurt, but my money is (conditionally) on Aquinas :-)