The Father of Lights: A Theology of Beauty

The Father of Lights
A Theology of Beauty

From the inside flap:

“Every good giving and every perfect gift is from on high, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning” (James 1:17). This verse offers a powerful image of God as the source and referent of all beauty.

In The Father of Lights, Junius Johnson goes beyond theological aesthetics (art) to consider beauty in its broadest form. Richly informed by Johnson’s scholarly expertise on Bonaventure and von Balthasar, this book demonstrates how the experience of beauty is related to our inherent longing for the God who is reflected in such moments.

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“It is rare to find such a lucid, and indeed beautiful, account of the theology of beauty. The terms are well defined, the argument precisely advanced and defended, and the range of reference capacious. It’s as though, amid a modern debate that has generated more heat than light, one of the classic theologians of the Scholastic period has stepped into the room and brought us at last some clarity, definition, and order.”

Malcolm Guite, author of Faith, Hope and Poetry; life fellow of Girton College, Cambridge

“Junius Johnson is easily one of the smartest, most creative, most learned theologians of his generation. Johnson controls all the relevant literature, both theological and theoretical. As an artist in his own right, he has an insider’s feel for the topic. And he brings a rare combination of intelligence, insight, and perceptiveness to this material. Most of my students will be interested in this book and so will many people I go to church with. I strongly and enthusiastically recommend it.”

Kevin Hector, University of Chicago Divinity School

“‘The beauty of holiness’ has long been a familiar phrase with a somewhat elusive meaning. With a combination of scholarly precision and infectious relish for the theological task, Junius Johnson gives a new clarity to this phrase. Beauty is interpreted as the manifestation of a sanctity whose fullness we both remember and anticipate as we encounter a world of creatures densely, dazzlingly, and divinely interconnected.”

Ben Quash, Centre for Arts and the Sacred, King’s College London

“In theological aesthetics the lineaments of Thomistic thought have long been most formative, but now, in this rich, closely argued, and admirably synthetic work of theological aesthetics, Junius Johnson has contributed a powerful adequation of St. Bonaventure’s conception of beauty–both as gift from the Father of Lights and as illumination leading back to him. Beauty rightly perceived–that is, in a necessarily subjective appropriation of objective reality–enables a fuller understanding of God, in Bonaventure’s term a ‘contuition.’ We are simultaneously dazzled by beauty in the world and by beauty’s Giver. Johnson’s thoughtful book, conversing as it does with the likes of von Balthasar, Baudrillard, Barthes, and Ouspensky, is brimming with insight, a remarkably fruitful excursus in philosophical theology in which many will find worthy treasures.”

David Lyle Jeffrey, FRSC, Baylor Institute for Studies in Religion, Baylor University

“Johnson’s work is an illuminating meditation on the experience of beauty and that experience’s implications for the world of theology.”

Anne M. Carpenter, St. Mary’s College of California

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Defining the Question
Three Senses of the Word “Beautiful
Our Concern: Beauty Broadly Speaking

The Challenge of the Ugly
An Ugly World

Structure of the Work

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The Father of Lights A Theology of Beauty

Table of Contents

The Father of Lights
A Theology of Beauty