Aesthetic Revelation: Reading Ancient and Medieval Texts after Hans Urs von Balthasar

8. Bonaventure and the Late Medieval Tradition

268 ChAPter 8 Bonaventure and the late Medieval tradition The Place of Bonaventure’s Aesthetics Despite Augustine’s tremendous contribution to theological aesthetics , he remains, with respect to aesthetics, an “ancient” author. Augustine uses aesthetics almost exclusively for apologetic purposes, with the simple aim of revealing the existence of the divine principle to the general observer: the transcendent divine principle, to be sure, but by no means a specifically christian one. Augustine, of course, does develop a specifically christian, trinitarian, systematic theology, but as the contexts show, aesthetics remains in the purview of his fundamental theology.1 it is interesting that aesthetics shares a similar fate in the hands of even later medieval authors, such as Anselm. By the time of the high Middle Ages, however, aesthetic thought takes a different turn. no longer focused on “aesthetic proofs” of the existence of god accessible to any observer, the schoolmen shift their interest to what aesthetic parallels or analogies can reveal to them about the topics of a specifically christian systematic theology , about, for example, the nature of the trinity and christ as the son, or the second person of the trinity. Authentic christian aesthetics must have in view the trinity and christ. For the medieval christian community of interpreters, it makes sense to speak of beauty or other aesthetic topics only when they can be understood in terms of the trinitarian doctrine or christology. The aesthetic here, as the reader will see, does not need to lose its revelatory function, except that in this system of inter1 . ‘Aesthetics’ here is taken in the general sense assumed for the purposes of this study: i.e., not in the sense of a purely analogical aesthetics (e.g., god as τὸ καλόν) but as something that contains references to concrete “earthly” aesthetic experience. The late Medieval tradition - 269 pretation, instead of revealing a vague “beyond,” it is called upon to reveal certain qualities of the trinity of persons, and specifically of the son.2 From this point of view such late Patristic or earlier medieval authors as pseudo-Dionysius or Anselm—included fully by von Balthasar in his discussion —are not yet building this specifically christian aesthetics, being limited either to the discussion of god as abstract “beauty” (τὸ καλόν) or to certain aesthetic arguments explaining the economy of salvation. to be sure, the echoes of the Augustinian and Anselmian “apologetic” aesthetics are still felt strongly in late medieval thought (such as that of Bonaventure ), but they merely lay down the foundation for new developments. in this connection we recall R. viladesau’s observation that aesthetic experience as such does not lead one to the Christian god.3 it is only conversion—which affects all aspects of the human person, including emotional and perceptive—that “directs” one to see the specifically christian beauty. The belief in the trinitarian and christological principles thus comes first, before one can “see” them aesthetically presented . This observation explains the initial disappointment that a purely academic aesthetician experiences reading either Bonaventure himself or von Balthasar’s account of Bonaventure’s aesthetics. trying to read such texts as if one were reading traditional aesthetics, one cannot avoid a feeling of always being “led astray” into matters incomprehensible or irrelevant to a lay aesthetician. The discourse seems to lose its ordinary logical connections, subsequent statements do not seem to follow from what has been stated earlier, and the linkage becomes elusive, as if the text follows some “invisible” pattern that one cannot grasp. yet for one approaching the same texts from inside the community of christian interpreters, all these observations appear as internally necessary, relevant , and following from one another.4 von Balthasar himself is aware of this difference between the specifically christian aesthetics (which is developed during the Patristic and medieval periods) and any other (e.g., ancient) theological aesthetics.5 2. While Augustine has a detailed discussion of the trinity, aesthetic observations either are not present or play no essential role there. 3. in the section “christian ‘conversion’ and the Aesthetic” in R. viladesau, Theological Aesthetics, 204–8. 4. For example, von Balthasar’s foundational idea that christ is the “form of god,” the analogy to which can ultimately be seen in the rest of reality, certainly does not follow from one’s aesthetic experience but is a judgment of faith. 5. see the section The Theological Apriori of the Philosophy of Beauty in GL4. 270 -The Ancient and Medieval...