Theological Perspectives on God and Beauty (PDF)

This newest Rockwell Lecture Series volume features three of the most prominent theologians on the scene today. Milbank and Ward are the leaders of a new theological movement called "Radical Orthodoxy," while Wyschogrod is one of our premier postmodernist theologians.

Here Milbank argues that a defense of beauty involves a defense of reciprocity, for beauty involves a mediation between the visible and the invisible. In addition, he uses this understanding of beauty to explore the relationship between beauty and the soul, which he defends against the postmodern view of the fragmented self. Ward examines the relationship between beauty and God by exploring the theology of eighth-century theologian John Damascene. Wyschogrod contends that the relationship of aesthetic and theology moves between naivete and nihilism. She argues that theology can gain from its study of aesthetics if we understand artwork as a system of traces, each nested inside the other; the trace is the mark that the sacred has disrupted or passed through the beautiful.

John Milbank is the Frances Myers Ball Professor of Philosophical Theology at the University of Virginia. Graham Ward is Professor of Contextual Theology at the University of Manchester. Edith Wyschogrod is J. Newton Rayzor Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought Emerita at Rice University.