- Strobel, “The Beauty of Christ,” 105.
- Robert Jenson (“Christ as Culture 2: Christ as Art,” International Journal
of Systematic Theology 6.1 [January 2004], 69–76 [74]) describes the entire
mission of God from creation through redemption to consummation as
the archetypal work of art: “the Son is the Father’s labor on a real world
which obtains just in that this experiment is conducted; and that the Father
is indeed an artist, the artist from whom all artists take their name, in that
he knows the real world precisely and only by the experiment the Son is.” - Hart, The Beauty of the Infi nite , 331.
- As Frank Macchia ( Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology
[Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006], 124–125) articulates it, “The righ-
teousing of the kingdom of God consists of the Son’s return devotion to
the Father as the man of the Spirit and the incarnate Son of the Father,
especially as this devotion climaxes in Jesus’ obedient going to the cross.
This historical drama of love between the Father and the Son in the Spirit
is Christ’s life ‘baptism’ from mortality to immortality. Since this bond of
love in the Spirit between the Father and the Son is not a closed circle but
an open and redemptive one, Jesus’ life baptism is opened to history and
to creation through Jesus’ role as Baptizer in the Spirit.” - And the salvation he effects for us shares in this same paradoxical character.
The Pauline theology of grace, as John Barclay ( Paul and the Gift [Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015]) has shown, is altogether out of keeping with
other “second Temple” theologies of grace precisely because it under-
stands grace as unfi tting , and so anything but beautiful according to the
aesthetic canons and sensibilities of Paul’s time. - I am not advocating an “incarnational analogy” for understanding the
nature of scripture. I agree with Daniel Castelo and Rob Wall (“Scripture
and the Church: A Précis for an Alternative Analogy,” Journal of Theological
Interpretation 5.2 [2011], 197–210 [205]): “The Bible’s authority at its
ecclesial address is not predicated on the identity and intentions of its
inspired authors, on the divine nature of its inerrant propositions, or on
the artfulness of the biblical text understood in its original historical set-
ting. Rather, the Bible’s authority as God’s word for the church is predi-
cated on God’s persistent use of the Bible to bring to realization God’s
purposes for the world.” - We cannot begin with a general aesthetics and fi t Christ to it. Instead, we
must let Jesus’ story, in all of its detail, redefi ne for us what beauty must be.
As Fr. Raymond Gawronski (“The Beauty of the Cross: The Theological
Aesthetics of Hans Urs von Balthasar,” Logos 5.3 [2002], 185–206
[201–202] articulates it, “the aesthetics of the cross is not one of symme-
try, but rather, one that breaks symmetry.” Indeed, the death of Jesus
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