Reforming Beauty: The Theological Aesthetics of Karl Barth and the Neo-Calvinists
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Oxford
Department Name: Theology and Religion Faculty
Abstract
Summary: This project will examine how Barth and the Neo-Calvinists understand the relationship between the human experience of beauty and the God they describe as beautiful, leading to my proposal of a Reformed 'analogy of beauty.'
The conviction that beauty can be a disclosure of the divine has a rich pedigree in the Christian tradition. And yet a common assumption is that the Reformed tradition shows little understanding and appreciation of beauty. Karl Barth (1886-1968) himself claimed that 'the Reformation and Protestant orthodoxy have wholly ignored' the topic. This assumption finds support in the iconoclasm and aesthetic simplicity of Reformation cultures. This has theological roots, the deepest being the Reformed emphasis on the distinction between Creator and creature, seen in the prohibition of visual representations of God. This repudiation of anything that might bring God within the gaze or control of the human generates a hesitancy to connect the human experience of beauty with God himself.
However, a recent body of scholarship has documented a distinctively Protestant aesthetics. My project will contribute to this counter-narrative by addressing two neglected areas of study. First, it will recover the theological aesthetics of Karl Barth (1886-1968) and the Dutch Neo-Calvinists. Barth seeks to redress the Protestant neglect of aesthetics by describing God as 'beautiful.' Von Balthasar believed Barth's work to be a first in Protestantism. Yet the Neo-Calvinists Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) and Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) had earlier already acknowledged the beauty of God and the importance of worldly beauty. Together, they spawned a rich neo-Calvinist aesthetic tradition, including Hans Rookmaaker (1922-1977), Calvin Seerveld (b. 1930) and Nicholas Wolterstorff (b. 1932). Barth has received recent attention in the work of Andrew Dunstan, but while there are a number of article and chapter length treatments of aspects of Neo-Calvinist aesthetics, I will offer the first monograph-length engagement with Neo-Calvinist aesthetics. This is also the first substantial engagement since Jeremy Begbie's 1991 PhD thesis, which omits a discussion of Wolterstorff and is dated in its theological analysis. Further, this project will bring Barth and the Neo-Calvinists into dialogue on this subject for the first time. This is an important comparative analysis given the competing visions of a modern Calvinism that they offer. This project will be accomplished through close analysis of the relevant texts, situated within the recent flowering of anglophone Neo-Calvinist studies.
Second, my governing interest will be in how the protagonists construe the relationship between God and beauty. I will seek to situate the understandings of beauty put forward by my interlocutors in their broader theological and philosophical settings, uncovering how what is said about beauty flows from, sits within and reveals wider theological commitments. This will reveal differing accounts of the relation of Creator and creature in the doctrines of God, covenant, creation and humanity. These differences are not only between Barth and the Neo-Calvinists, but within the Neo-Calvinist tradition itself, who sometimes will sit closer to Barth than to one another. This relationship between God and beauty is a vital, difficult and neglected question for Protestant aesthetics, which has sought to avoid the analogia entis and a Platonic doctrine of participation. As such, this project will seek to evaluate these findings in the wider context of theological aesthetics, leading to a constructive proposal for a Reformed theological aesthetics. I will propose a Reformed 'analogy of beauty,' strengthened with insights from the Catholic von Balthasar, the Orthodox Hart, and the broadly Anglo-Catholic sensibilities of Radical Orthodoxy, as well as drawing on the resurgence of Protestant aesthetics over the last thirty years, led by Begbie.
The conviction that beauty can be a disclosure of the divine has a rich pedigree in the Christian tradition. And yet a common assumption is that the Reformed tradition shows little understanding and appreciation of beauty. Karl Barth (1886-1968) himself claimed that 'the Reformation and Protestant orthodoxy have wholly ignored' the topic. This assumption finds support in the iconoclasm and aesthetic simplicity of Reformation cultures. This has theological roots, the deepest being the Reformed emphasis on the distinction between Creator and creature, seen in the prohibition of visual representations of God. This repudiation of anything that might bring God within the gaze or control of the human generates a hesitancy to connect the human experience of beauty with God himself.
However, a recent body of scholarship has documented a distinctively Protestant aesthetics. My project will contribute to this counter-narrative by addressing two neglected areas of study. First, it will recover the theological aesthetics of Karl Barth (1886-1968) and the Dutch Neo-Calvinists. Barth seeks to redress the Protestant neglect of aesthetics by describing God as 'beautiful.' Von Balthasar believed Barth's work to be a first in Protestantism. Yet the Neo-Calvinists Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) and Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) had earlier already acknowledged the beauty of God and the importance of worldly beauty. Together, they spawned a rich neo-Calvinist aesthetic tradition, including Hans Rookmaaker (1922-1977), Calvin Seerveld (b. 1930) and Nicholas Wolterstorff (b. 1932). Barth has received recent attention in the work of Andrew Dunstan, but while there are a number of article and chapter length treatments of aspects of Neo-Calvinist aesthetics, I will offer the first monograph-length engagement with Neo-Calvinist aesthetics. This is also the first substantial engagement since Jeremy Begbie's 1991 PhD thesis, which omits a discussion of Wolterstorff and is dated in its theological analysis. Further, this project will bring Barth and the Neo-Calvinists into dialogue on this subject for the first time. This is an important comparative analysis given the competing visions of a modern Calvinism that they offer. This project will be accomplished through close analysis of the relevant texts, situated within the recent flowering of anglophone Neo-Calvinist studies.
Second, my governing interest will be in how the protagonists construe the relationship between God and beauty. I will seek to situate the understandings of beauty put forward by my interlocutors in their broader theological and philosophical settings, uncovering how what is said about beauty flows from, sits within and reveals wider theological commitments. This will reveal differing accounts of the relation of Creator and creature in the doctrines of God, covenant, creation and humanity. These differences are not only between Barth and the Neo-Calvinists, but within the Neo-Calvinist tradition itself, who sometimes will sit closer to Barth than to one another. This relationship between God and beauty is a vital, difficult and neglected question for Protestant aesthetics, which has sought to avoid the analogia entis and a Platonic doctrine of participation. As such, this project will seek to evaluate these findings in the wider context of theological aesthetics, leading to a constructive proposal for a Reformed theological aesthetics. I will propose a Reformed 'analogy of beauty,' strengthened with insights from the Catholic von Balthasar, the Orthodox Hart, and the broadly Anglo-Catholic sensibilities of Radical Orthodoxy, as well as drawing on the resurgence of Protestant aesthetics over the last thirty years, led by Begbie.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Alistair Reid (Student) |