Quotes for Beauty

 We have so many PDF  readings moving forward I want to keep significant quotes here:

****I will be using Take me Back to Eden for my Beauty Essay.

Bednarowski - Theological Creativity and Religious Symbols

• I am convinced that the symbols of our various religious traditions are more powerful in their ongoing meanings than we realize - and that we ourselves do a disservice in underestimating that power. Their meanings are subject to change of course, in form and emphasis - how could it be otherwise? - but not, in my opinion, to destruction or irrelevance. (32)
• And hope, I am convinced, is a communal project; we elicit it in each other, we share it with each other, and we find it in many places in the culture. (32)
• It is one of the gifts of theological creativity, by which I mean the capacity, the commitment, the desire to respond and commit to religious symbols - to take responsibility for them in ways that are both innovative and conserving - to see what we can make of them that is new, but not so totally new that they no longer speak to the communities of people to whom they have been entrusted. We are obligated to cultivate the courage to let those symbols make their way into the world and learn how to recognize their evocative power when we encounter them in startingly new ways (32)
• And the obvious finally dawned on me - that to take something very, very, seriously, no matter how much change one advocates, to "save" it, to continue its healing - certainly to demonstrate its power and persistence. (34)
• Since my early days as an English Major, I have seen poetry and fiction as among the great preservers of religious language and symbols and among the most compelling  sources of theological creativity. (36)
• We worry that pluralism will lead to relativism - an inability or an unwillingness to value any one tradition over another - but I think we underestimate the formidable foundational powers of the symbols that have shaped us - the history and depth of response we bring to them. (40)

Tillich - Art and Ultimate Reality

 First, it is obvious that is something expresses something else—as, for instance, language expresses thought —they are not the same. There is a gap between that which expresses and that which is expressed. But there is also a  point of identity between them. It is the riddle and the depth of all expression that it both reveals and hides at the same time. And if we say that the universe is an expression of ultimate reality, we say that the universe and everything in it both reveals and hides ultimate reality. (2)

There are three ways in which man is able to experience and express ultimate reality in, through and above the reality he encounters. Two of these ways are indirect; one of them is direct. The two indirect ways of expressing ultimate reality are philosophy—more specifically, metaphysics—and art. They are indirect because it is their immediate intention to express the encountered reality in cognitive concepts or in esthetic images. (2)

But there is the third and direct way in which man discerns and receives ultimate reality. We call it religion—in the traditional sense of the word. Here ultimate reality becomes manifest through ecstatic experiences of a concrete-revelatory character and is expressed in symbols and myths (3)

Styles and Experiences:

The First type of religious experience, and also the most universal and fundamental one, is the sacramental. Here ultimate reality appears as the holy which is present in all kinds of objects, in things, persons, events. (4)

 This enables us to discover the first stylistic element which is effective in the experience of ultimate reality. It appears predominantly in what often has been called magic realism.  

 The religious danger of all sacramental religion is idolatry, the attempt to make a sacramentally consecrated reality into the divine itself 

 Related to the sacramental type of religion and at the same time radically going beyond it is the mystical type. Religious experience tries to reach ultimate reality without the mediation  of particular things in this religious type. (6) 

 It can undergo a transformation into a monistic mysticism of nature under the famous formula of the God of Nature. In it God is equated with nature—with the creative ground of nature which transcends every particular object. 

Correlate to this religious type is that stylistic element in which the particularity of things is dissolved into a visual continuum. This continuum is not a grey in grey; it has all the potentialities of particular beings within itself...It is a decisive element in the impressionist dissolution of particulars into a continuum of light and colors. Most radically it has been carried through in what is called today, non-objective painting. 

 Like mysticism  the prophetic-protesting type of religion goes beyond the sacramental basis of all religious life. Its pattern is the criticism of a demonically distorted sacramental system in the name of personal righteousness and social justice.  (7)

Holiness without justice is rejected....It is manifest as personal will, demanding, judging, punishing, promising. 

If we now ask what stylistic element in the visual arts corresponds to such an experience of ultimate reality, we must answer that it is "realism" both in its scientific-descriptive and in its ethical-critical form. After nature has been deprived of its numinous power, it is possible for it to become a matter of scientific analysis and technical management.  

The realistic element in the artistic styles seems far removed from expressing ultimate reality. It seems to hide it more than express it. But there is a way in which descriptive realism can mediate the experience of ultimate reality.  

The prophetic-critical type of religion has in itself the element of hope. This is the basis of its power. If the element of hope is separated from the realistic view of reality, a religious type appears which sees in the present the anticipation of future perfection.(8)

 The artistic style expressing it is usually called idealism, a word which is in such disrepute today that it is al most impossible to use.  

But more than in the other stylistic elements, the danger which threatens artistic idealism must be emphasized: confusing idealism with a superficially and sentimentally beautifying realism. This has happened on a large scale, especially in the realm of religious art, and is the reason for the disrepute into which idealism, both word and concept, has fallen. Genuine idealism shows the potentialities in the depths of a being or event, and brings them into existence as artistic images. Beautifying realism shows the actual existence of its object, but with dishonest, idealizing additions. 

 Now I come to my fifth and last stylistic element. The great reaction against both realism and idealism (except numinous realism) was the expressionistic movement. To which religious type is it correlated? Let me call it the ecstatic-spiritual type.  (9)

 It is marked by its dynamic character both in disruption and creation. It accepts the individual thing and person but goes beyond it. It is realistic and at the same time mystical. It criticizes and at the same time anticipates. It is restless, yet points to eternal rest. 

I believe the expressionist element is the artistic correlative to the ecstatic-spiritual type of religious experience. Ultimate reality appears "breaking the prison of our form," as a hymn about the Divine Spirit says. It breaks to pieces the surface of our own being and that of our world. This is the spiritual character of expressionism... 

If art expresses reality in images and religion expresses ultimate reality in symbols then religious art expresses religious symbols in artistic images (as philosophical concepts). The religious content, namely a particular and direct relation of man to ultimate reality, is first expressed in a religious symbol, and secondly, in the expression of this symbol in artistic images. (10)

Lecture:

• "What is theopoetics? Well, according to the society for arts, religion, and contemporary culture: theopoetics explores the intersection of religious reflection and spirituality with the imagination, embodiment, aesthetics, and the arts. (18:30)
• Theopoetics is not an alternative to theology - but a distinctive style of theologizing that views art, feeling, and the body as sources of theological construction. (18:36-18:50)
• Theopoetics literally means "God-Making". 
• Theopoetics is not simply a poetic expression of theological ideas. John Caputo makes this exact point in What to believe! I will quote him:'theopoetics does not mean a poetry that supplies the ornamentation of an already conceived theology. It is not a poetic flourish that decorates an already constituted system of theology, or something that adorns a finished theology. Theopoetics is instead an exercise of creative imagination. One that is constantly imagining the unconditional, envisioning things otherwise, attempting to forge ahead down unbeaten paths; to produce something new. To think what has never been and what may never be. The first, last, and only recourse when thinking has run up against the unprethinkable.'"  
• At the heart of theopoetics is the recognition that theology is human made and playfully constructed. Again, theopoetics literally means "God-making". But that begs the question, right? Is the theopoet simply making God up? Or is God also involved in the act of poesies? Thatamanil argues that it is a 'both and'. To view constructive theology as theopoetics is to imagine that the divine somehow participates in the very human activity of imagining God.  Theopoetics unsettles the duality between human imagination and divine creativity. Yes theopoetics implies that we make god up - but god participates in our work of making God up. 
• Like Art, theology is both a creative endeavor and a responsive one. Our images of god are precisely that - ours. But, they are imagined in response to a divine creativity, something that constructs and molds us before we construct and mold it. the assumption here is that theology can be a mode of discourse in which the divine and the human are permeable to eachother.

Thatamanil - Constructive theology as theopoetics 

• Constructive theologians own up to the fact that they are “making it up as they go along.” All too right we are! A charge that is, in any case, leveled at theologians, we unabashedly embrace. - 32
• Hence, a fully adequate and divinely inspired wisdom is available in the past, which needs only to be rearticulated for the contemporary moment. On such accounts, the task of theology is akin to refurbishing a functional and inhabitable home. The abode of theology is livable as is even if it might need a new coat of paint and cosmetic flourishes here and there. -33
• Constructive theologians take on the name because we wish to make transparent that what human hands have made, other human hands can and must remake. For some, this might prove to be a destabilizing truth. Not so for the constructive theologian. Constructive theologians forthrightly acknowledge their creative agency because they are suspicious about strategies that seek to minimize the role of human creativity in theological production. When human creativity goes unnamed or is elided altogether, then all-too-human theological formulations are granted unquestionable divine authority; they can no longer be interrogated. - 34
• If my constructions are mine  - however much they aspire to be faithful responses to divine initiative- they remain provisional, historically conditioned, and culturally contextual. We know we are making it up as we go along, and we have the humility, courage, and, I might add, playfulness to say so.- 35
• 3 Types of Constructive Theologian POV's about who is involved - 35

1. “If faith is a gift of God, as it has been traditionally understood, theology is clearly human work, and we must take full responsibility for it. But it is human work that emerges out of faith’s own need for more adequate orientation and symbolization. Such theological activity may reinforce—or it may weaken further—the religious stance.” (Kauffman) 
2. For Farley, the line between faith and human reflection about faith is not nearly as stark or impermeable as it appears to be for Kaufman. Farley manages to find a way to affirm both human fallibility and the contingency of all theological construction but nonetheless leaves human creativity open to divine agency. Theology takes its bearings from God’s “coming forth as God” in redemption.
3. Articulated most vibrantly in the work of Catherine Keller, theopoiesis dances along the edge of a fertile ambivalence in the notion of “poiesis,” namely, “making.” In the bringing together of “ theos” and “poiesis,” this ambivalence is not just doubled but multiplied. God-making—is the theopoet making God up? Or is the agent of poiesis the divine itself? Is God doing the making? Or might it somehow be both? Might it be possible to imagine that the divine participates in the very human activity of imagining God?

• What if God participates in our work of making God up and yet, nonetheless, that work remains also human and thus fallible? - 36
• Any act of theological creativity—a prayer, a sermon, a liturgical act, a classroom lecture, a journal article, or theological book—will of necessity be a modest intervention; but if such activities are understood to be part of divine and worldly unfolding, constructive theology takes on theopoetic import. Theology at its best is/is like prayer. Theologians confess in a Pauline key, “We do not know how to [theologize] as we ought but that very Spirit intercedes in us with sighs too deep for words.” 
• Theopoeisis is not, first, a human activity; rather, God does God-making first. God is engaged in constructive God-making. Where? In human beings or—and here we advert to process theology—in human becomings. The Word is being made flesh not only in Jesus but in human beings generally. - 38
• The term theopoetics finds its ancestor in the ancient Greek theopoiesis. As poiesis means making or creation, so theopoiesis gets rendered as “God-making” or “becoming divine.” - 38
•  Keller points to a “mysticism of participation” at work in these root theologies of God-making and God-becoming. At play is also a peculiar paradox of intimacy and unknowability: the God who absolutely exceeds us is nonetheless also present as that which we ourselves are becoming. The mystery becomes ours as we become the mystery by the grace of mystery itself. -38
• To say and to unsay, to say again and unsay once more is to trace the path of the mind’s ascent into the divine darkness, the cloud of unknowing. Theopoeisis is, therefore, simultaneously the name for a divine process of God-making/God-becoming and the human discursive processes by which that very becoming takes place. - 38
•  First-order theology is God-talk understood as God’s speaking to us and our responsive speaking to God....Such God-talk is also God-making, theopoiesis. Such God-talk/God-making can be simultaneously God speaking to us and through us as well as in us, but not, I would hasten to add, without us. - 39
• Second-order theology follows upon and attends to the entailments of first-order theopoeisis. Here, theology enters into a second speculative moment that seeks to excavate the meanings of first-order theological becoming and bespeaking. - 39
• Consider, fi nally, another reason why theopoetics has to it a primacy that goes unrecognized. The appeal to theopoiesis as theosis expanded and theosis as theopoiesis contracted introduces a register of discourse in which the human and the divine are permeable to each other. Divinity is communicable, a communicable wellness, that creatures can catch by the initiative of divine grace. - 39

the rest is about why contructive theology is needed - not needed for my paper.