Beauty Portraying Theology

By Nathaniel

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I hadn't realized before this trip the amount of attention that the art of the churches received before this trip. I had known they were beautiful but I didn't think there was as much teaching as the Eastern brothers and sisters do through their iconography. There really is an attempt to catechize someone through the artwork in these churches. And I think what I mostly learned through this was lack of attention given to catechism through art today in churches that I see. I think it is a lack of recognition that beauty can contain/portray the truth of theology and God. Theology is not all academic rigorous systematic readings, is the understanding of God in all the ways of perceiving that was given to us. Including our sense of beauty, proportion, and awe amongst others that are activated in the sight of something theological being portrayed artfully. A sort of Platonic form that is emphasized in the early churches devotion to art missing in later art (and philosophers).