“The beauty of the world is a reflection of its beautiful source” is a point that University of St. Thomas Theology Professor Mark McInroy makes during his appearance on the "Visually Sacred: Conversations on the Power of Images" podcast on Dec. 21, 2024.
As the Founding Co-Director of the Claritas Initiative on Beauty, Goodness, and Truth at St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota, Dr. McInroy delves into the significance of theological aesthetics, emphasizing materiality as a means of divine disclosure during the podcast. He also discusses the influence of Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar on contemporary ideas related to art and religion and the meaning of beauty as a divine attribute.
In the episode, McInroy says:
“The central idea for theological aesthetics as I see it is that beauty is a divine attribute or property of God and that the beauty of the world bears witness to its beautiful source…
It has this aesthetic dimension to it which is to say that one's encounter with the God, who is beautiful, is going to involve being in rapture, entranced, deeply moved by that beauty. So what this emphasis on God's Beauty does is it is realizing a relationship that might have become dry or stale perhaps overly dominated by a sense of what one should do to the detriment of emphasizing what one wants to do.”
