2007 ITIA Conference: The Offence of Beauty
3–5 September 2007
What can a theological perspective on beauty offer to the arts today?
In recent decades, among those who practise, think and write about the arts, the notion of beauty has often come under deep suspicion. For many who have not dismissed it as irrelevant, it has even become a matter of offence. For some, beauty is an offence against truth, a lie in the midst of a world that is so obviously not beautiful. The quest for beauty in the arts is the quest for an illusory consolation, signalling a primal human urge for order in a world we cannot bear to admit is destined for futility.
The pursuit of beauty has also been seen as an offence against goodness. In the hands of the comfortable and powerful, the love of beauty – in the arts as much as anywhere else – is a luxury that can easily muffle the howl of those who know little or no beauty, distracting us from our obligations to those in need. Or, from the other side, beauty dulls the oppressed to the injustice of their predicament.
Beauty is also distrusted insofar as it is assumed to ‘harmonise away’ the evilness of evil. In particular, there has been a distrust of theories of beauty in which the notions of balance, symmetry and equivalence predominate, where evil’s irrational, intrusive quality is suppressed, where it is subsumed into a harmonious metaphysics of necessity and seen as part of the necessary balance of things. Art, it is said, must never collude with such schemes.
Undoubtedly, the Church and Christian theologians have been as responsible as any others for generating and encouraging these suspicions. The question arises, however: can there be a theological perspective on beauty that takes these suspicions seriously, while at the same time refusing to set aside the notion of beauty altogether? More particularly: in what ways can attending to the triune God of Jesus Christ, and this God’s gracious, reconciling, self-revealing activity in and for the world, inform and transform our conceptions of beauty? In this light, are there ways in which it might be quite legitimate to speak of the ‘offence’ of beauty – especially in relation to the ‘scandal’ at the heart of the Christian faith, the vindication of the crucified Jesus? And – the focused concern of this colloquium – what might such theological construals of beauty imply about the way we practise, interpret and enjoy the arts in the twenty-first century?
Speakers
Bernard Beartty (Liverpool)
'Beauty and the Opening of Distance: Defending the Two-Dimensional'
Bernard Beatty is Senior Fellow in the School of English at Liverpool University. From 1988-2005 he was Editor of the Byron Journal. He is the author of Byron's 'Don Juan', Byron and the Limits of Fiction (with Vincent Newey), Liberty and Poetic Licence: New Essays on Byron (with Charles Robinson), and The Plays of Lord Byron, (with Robert Gleckner). His other published essays are on the Bible, Dryden, Rochester, Dickens, and most of the Romantics. He plays the organ and lives in Chester, England.
Carol Harrison (Durham)
'Kind of Blue: Beauty and Broken Images'
Carol Harrison is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Theology and Religion and a Member of the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Durham University. Her research has focused on Augustine of Hippo and she is author of Beauty and Revelation in the thought of Saint Augustine (Oxford 1992), Augustine: Christian Truth and Fractured Humanity (Oxford 2000), and Rethinking Augustine's Early Theology: an argument for continuity (Oxford 2006).
Trevor Hart (St Andrews)
'Ugly as Sin? Beauty, Holiness and the Crucified'
Trevor Hart is Professor of Divinity and Director of the Institute for Theology, Imagination and the Arts in the University of St Andrews. Professor Hart's research interests lie chiefly in modern theology, and he is the author of a number of books including Faith Thinking: the Dynamics of Christian Theology (SPCK/IVP 1995), Hope Against Hope: Christian Eschatology in Contemporary Context (with Richard Bauckham, Eerdmans/DLT 1999) and Regarding Karl Barth: Toward a Reading of His Theology (Paternoster 1999/IVP 2000). Since moving to St Andrews his work has concentrated incresingly on the nature and roles of human imagination (including creative and artistic imagination). He is currently working on a major project relating aspects o human artistry to the Christian doctrines of creation and the Incarnation, and exploring the claim that imagination may be a primary locus of God's redemptive activity in the world.
Robert Jenson (Princeton)
'Deus Est Ipsa Pulchritudo'
Robert Jenson is senior scholar for research at the Center of Theological Inquiry at Princeton. He is associate director of the Center for Catholic and Evangelical Theology (CCET) and co-editor of its journal Pro Ecclesia. He is the author of numerous essays and books, including Systematic Theology, The Triune Identity, and America’s Theologian: A Recommendation of Jonathan Edwards.
Grant Macaskill (St Andrews)
'Presence and Place: Contemporary and Traditional Scottish Songs'
Dr Grant Macaskill is Lecturer in New Testament Studies and has published on Matthew’s Gospel, Revelation and various texts of early and later Judaism. He has a particular interest in fantasy and science fiction and is currently working on the depictions of evil in recent literature and on Union with Christ in the New Testament. Dr Macaskill is also an accomplished musician and provided entertainment with his presentation, 'Presence and Place: Contemporary and Traditional Scottish Songs'.
Patrick Sherry (Lancaster)
'The Holy Spirit and Beauty'
Professor Emeritus at Lancaster University, Patrick Sherry's current research is in theological aesthetics. He is author of Spirit and Beauty: An Introduction to Theological Aesthetics (second edition, SCM Press 2002) and Images of Redemption: Art, Literature and Salvation (T&T Clark, 2003).
Nicholas Wolterstorff (Yale)
'The Troubled Relationship of Art with Beauty'
Nicholas Wolterstorff is the Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale University. A prolific writer, his books include Art in Action: Towards a Christian Aesthetic (reprinted in 1997), he regularly teaches lecture courses in philosophy of religion and aesthetics, and seminars in epistemology, hermeneutics, and philosophy of religion.
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