The proclamation of Christ, the reflection on faith, on the truth of faith has an important aesthetic dimension! Faith is not just a set of assertions, a set of conceptualizations, rational abstractions, no! Faith, the truth of faith, is not that. Truth is not an idea. Truth is not an abstraction of the rational. Ideas, the formulations of reason are capable of saying something of the truth, but is not the whole of it. They are not the truth. Statements, ideas, are not the truth. Truth is a Person. Truth has a face, which has a content and a form.
In fact, the light of faith is capable of illuminating man’s entire existence. Now, for a light to be so powerful, it cannot emanate from man himself, it has to come from a more original source. It must come, in the last analysis, from God. Faith starts at the encounter with the Living God, that is, an encounter with a face! It is God who calls every man and woman and reveals his love. A love that precedes him and on which he can lean in order to solidly build his life.
Transformed by this love, one receives new eyes, experiences a great promise of fullness, and opens a vision of the future. Faith is a vision of hope. A vision of a future. It is a kind of memory of the future, the vision of a glorious face that looks at us.
Often in the discourse on faith in the Church, only what can be demonstrated rationally is emphasized. Only what can be rationally demonstrated as true and just. This is an important point, but it is not all of it. Perhaps this is the reason why few people know how fundamental the so-called via pulchritudinis, that is, the via of beauty, is in the missionary and apostolic life and in the evangelizing action of the Church.
Faith is also an environment of dialogue, of relationship, of knowledge that man has of God’s truth! Faith is the fruit of the revelation of God’s face to man and this is beautiful! Faith is beautiful! Precisely because it reveals much more than a concept, but reveals to us a Person, reveals to us a face. And in the preaching of the Church we do not find only theoretical formulations, that would be too little! It would be just any philosophy. In the preaching of the Church we find the beautiful face of Christ.
The Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us and we saw his glory. This is what appears in the prologue of St. John’s Gospel: “We have seen the glory.” (Jn 1:14) However, one can see that this aesthetic dimension has been somewhat lost in the theology and preaching of some members of the Church. Today there is a lot of talk about the truth to be defended, or the moral good and evil that should be done or not done, but sometimes the discourse on Beauty is missing.
The contemplative discourse that describes the beautiful features of Christ’s face that is revealed! The discourse on beauty is often lacking in our midst. And we run the risk of being content with a kind of “monochromatic theology”, that is, a theology of only one color. A one-note theology, monotonous, that repeats formulations, that memorizes concepts and keeps “shooting off at will” these concepts, which end up becoming merely abstract, disconnected from the living and breathing reality of God, the living and breathing reality of humanity, of the Church, and of the world.
A new experience of being Church is needed, which is not just an academic conceptualism, but a living and rich experience of contemplation, of relationship with God. A thinking penetrated by beauty and divine glory.
For some, a discourse like this, about beauty in theology, may sound like something underrated, something a little suspicious, that makes one think of a certain relativism, hedonism, syncretism, or even lead to error, right? But you have to pay attention because it is the opposite!
Beauty can save from fundamentalist and idealist discourses. Because beauty is a life of direct, personal experience, and when one touches the divine, when one sees the divine, there can be no contestation! Ideas become insufficient before the contemplated mystery, before face-to-face knowledge, from within, an experiential knowledge!
This is what the apostles clearly said: “We cannot keep silent about what we have seen and heard, what we have touched! We have touched with our hands the Word of Life.” (1 Jn 1:2) This personal experience is very important in theology.
In some theological streams beauty has been associated even with sin, with pleasure, with concupiscence, with well-being. But pulchrum, the Beautiful, is part of the same spiritual reality of Truth and Good. It is a metaphysical triad that is inseparable, a tripod, which meets the foundation of reality: Beauty, Goodness and Truth. They are at bottom the same spiritual reality.
Hans Urs von Balthasar, one of the most famous Swiss Catholic theologians of the 20th century, a bit controversial for some, but really a great theological and spiritual genius, was also very fond of this way of beauty. He said that beauty crowns the double star of the true and the good, in an indissoluble relationship with truth and goodness. Beauty always drags these two sisters with it, truth and goodness.
Thus, we can say that whoever does not enter into the language of beauty, both in theological thought and in the spiritual life, little by little becomes someone who is no longer capable of either praying or loving. Yes, because love and prayer are experiences of beauty!
The knowledge of God, the knowledge of his substantial truth in God’s essence is only through love! If she enters into love she can know God. St. John is clear: “Whoever loves knows God, whoever does not love does not know God” (1 John 4:7). So the true knowledge of God does not come through the arrogance of reason, through isolated, independent, self-referential reason, no! But of a reason coupled with contemplation! A reason allied to personal experience. As Pope Benedict XVI said, theology is done on one’s knees! That is, in personal, prayerful contact with the divine mystery.
Cristiano Pinheiro, Master of Dogmatic Theology and missionary in New Yor