Beauty: A Theological Engagement with Gregory of Nyssa

Beauty engages fourth-century bishop Gregory of Nyssa to address beautys place in theology and the broader world. With the recent resurgence of attention to beauty among theologians questions still remain about what exactly beauty is how it is perceived and whether we should celebrate its return. If beauty fell out of favor because it was seen to distract from the weightier concerns of poverty and suffering--because it can even be a tool of oppression--why should we laud it now? Gregorys writings offer surprisingly rich and relevant reflections that can move contemporary conversations beyond current impasses and critiques of beauty. Drawing Gregory into conversation with such disparate voices as novelist J. M. Coetzee and art theorist Kaja Silverman Beauty displays the importance of beauty to theology and theology to beauty in a discussion that bridges ancient and modern practical and theoretical secular and religious. A compelling exploration of Gregory of Nyssa as theologian of the divine beauty. Drawing on her extensive knowledge of Gregorys writings Natalie Carnes shows how the themes of fittingness and gratuity take us deep into the heart of his Trinitarian vision. To know Gods beauty is to be wounded--and transformed. A remarkable achievement. --Joseph L. Mangina Wycliffe College Toronto Ontario Canada Natalie Carnes has written a remarkable book--in its range its learning and its imaginative sweep. All good history and theology thrive on imaginative engagement--while beauty is most enticing when it is veiled and presented as a mystery. Gregory of Nyssa emerges from these pages as a writer and theologian for our time at once ancient and postmodern. --David Jasper University of Glasgow Glasgow UK Attentive as many recent theological writers are not to the dangers of beauty and of the ideologizing of beauty in bourgeois discourse [Carnes] takes us from the modern alternatives of functionality or distinterestedness to the complementarity of gratuity and fittingness. Through Gregorys writings this is shown to illuminate both the sufferings of Christ and poignantly the human sufferings exemplified by his sisters breast cancer. The book reminds those of us who have read less of Gregory than we should have how much we are missing. --George Pattison University of Glasgow Glasgow UK Beauty is a singular achievement. It retrieves from Gregory key Trinitarian insights and constructively recasts them in the service of delineating a vision of beauty that speaks to our time. . . . Fittingness and gratuity are key to Carness theological investigation categories that she refracts in three primary ways: first theologically according to Gregorys doctrine of God . . . second christologically according to the way that we confront in the person of Jesus of Nazareth an unsettling juxtaposition of beauty and poverty; and third pneumatologically according to the workings of the Holy Spirit who schools us to recognize beauty anew through a wounding of the self achieved by means of suffering and love of neighbor. --Jim Fodor St. Bonaventure University St. Bonaventure NY Natalie Carnes is Assistant Professor of Theology at Baylor University Waco Texas.