10
touchstone and source for truth. Frank Burch Brown disagrees with such a view. He
says that Christians may want to assert that all truth, including aesthetic truth, is
compatible with Christianity but it does not follow that all truth is derived from
revelation. Do scientists use the Bible to discover the truths of logic or quantum
mechanics?
30
Evangelical theologians would probably lean towards Balthasar's position.
This issue is one of authority. We want to know what the Bible says about the nature of
beauty before we hear what Plato has to say.
Second, once we have a set of control beliefs to use then we may walk hand in
hand with Brown and thus we expand the subject matter of beauty.
31
We should not
exclude in toto the insights of the Brown camp, particularly Brown's definition of
aesthetics:
Aesthetics [is] nothing less than basic theoretical reflection regarding all aesthetic
phenomena, including their modes of significant interrelation with, and mediation of,
what is not inherently aesthetic: abstract ides, useful objects, moral convictions, class
conflicts, religious doctrines, and so forth.
Brown defines aesthetic phenomena as "all those things employing a medium in such a
way that its perceptible form and `felt' qualities become essential to what is appreciable
and meaningful."
32
Both definitions open up the possibility that aesthetica are not just
perceptibles, things we can see with our eyes or hear with our ears but also thoughts,
ideas, convictions, doctrines, and acts. Thus in constructing our own theology we should
not exclude art, worship, lay piety, acts of courage, and prayers as sources of beauty. Just
as a systematic theologian reads and interacts with Calvin when he articulates a doctrine
29
Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 1, Seeing the
Form, 117.
30
Brown, Religious Aesthetics: A Theological Study of Making and Meaning, 21.
31
For a defense of control beliefs see Nicholas Wolterstorff, Reason within the Bounds of
Religion, 2
nd
ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984), especially 71-108.
32
Ibid., 22.