the glory of the lord a theological aesthetics

If God’s love through the cross and resurrection of Christ is understood in this manner, is there, perhaps, a profound wisdom expressed by contemplating the themes of glory and suffering together? This paper is an attempt to think theologically about suffering. ’ Three things are evident in Augustine’s remarks: (1) The cross of Christ is not about the suffering, brutality, or cruelty (2) it is about the act of self-giving love revealed through suffering (3) and, Christ’s suffering is for our benefit. He loved us, that we might in turn love Him. How can such themes be brought together in this diptych? Is the artist’s rendering an attempt to glorify suffering, mocking the millions who have and do suffer today? Augustine struggled with these very questions, asking: ‘What is it we love in Christ - his crucified limbs, his pierced side, or his love? When we hear that he suffered for us, what do we love? Love is loved. In this, the whole level of image is once again transcended, because from an earthly point of view the boundlessness of the imaging love in Cross and Hell is absolutely withheld from sight-and in being absolutely withheld from sight, it makes the incomprehensibility of the divine love of the Father ‘visible’.The “Bargello Diptych: The Adoration of the Magi and Crucifixion” (Unknown French Master, 14th century) juxtaposes themes of adoration and glory, on the one hand, with sorrow and suffering, on the other.

But any idea of a concealment of God behind an iconostasis of hypostases is abandoned, because the Son offers no technical copy or physical emanation or static icon of the Father-it is in the boundless obedience of the Son that the boundless self-giving love of the Father ‘appears’. “In this process, the idea that the ‘image’ makes visible the invisible fundamental being is retained-‘Philip, he who sees me, sees the Son’ ( Jn 14:9). “not disincarnated, but made spiritual in the Resurrection” ( ) “ The God of the Bible is neither a tremendum nor a fascinosum, but first of all an adorandum. “The right approach does not consist in asking what Jesus said and did, and what he did not say and do, or which ‘titles of sovereignty’ he applied to himself and which not it consists in asking what was the necessary presupposition of the act whereby his community formed his words, deeds and titles in the way it did.” ( )

“the momentum of a divine word that demands the repentance of the heart and faith.” ( Pages 274–275) Logos Research Subscription for Schools.

The glory of the lord a theological aesthetics