Abstract:
In the introduction to his theological aesthetics, Hans Urs von Balthasar writes that “whoever sneers” at beauty “can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love” (The Glory of the Lord, vol. 1, Seeing the Form, 18). Beauty is entwined with prayer and love because he understands aesthetics and ethics as likewise entwined. Von Balthasar describes the ethical as beauty’s “inner coordinate axis” and, citing Origen, describes the “moral meaning” of revelation as “not to be found alongside its mystical meaning” but rather referring to “the urgency with which such light penetrates the beholder’s very heart” (22, 23)...
The full paper is attached to this post.
