BEAUTY AS A MODE OF BEING: CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN THEO-AESTHETICS AND THE CULTURAL SENSIBILITY OF METAMODERNISM
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31392/cult.alm.2026.3.5Keywords:
beauty, theoaesthetics, metamodernism, David Bentley Hart, Trinity, desire, freedom, Christian anthropologyAbstract
The article examines the return of beauty as a theoaesthetic category to contemporary Christian thought within metamodern cultural sensibility. The research problem arises from reducing beauty to private aesthetic experience or a secondary theme of art and spirituality, leaving its ontological, anthropological, and ethical significance insufficiently explored. The article asks how contemporary Christian theoaesthetics, especially in dialogue with David Bentley Hart, responds to the metamodern search for meaning, sincerity, depth, and transcendence after postmodern irony and deconstruction. Its methodology combines historical-theological and comparative analysis, philosophical reconstruction of beauty, desire, freedom, and personhood, and cultural interpretation of metamodern sensibility. Beauty is understood as a form of being, a harmony of differences, an excess of gift, and a dynamic of participation. Its relation to desire shows how personhood takes shape through an orientation toward fullness of life and how freedom gains substance by ordering desire toward the good. Trinitarian ontology makes it possible to conceive of unity without absorption and difference without violence, opening a perspective on nonviolent coexistence. The study’s originality lies in interpreting Christian theoaesthetics as a cultural-philosophical language for understanding metamodern transformations of sensibility. This approach reveals the potential of theoaesthetic categories for analyzing new forms of solidarity, reconsidering freedom and community, and restoring trust in meaning-making narratives. Theoaesthetics thus becomes an interdisciplinary resource for cultural studies, anthropology, public ethics, and theology amid war, digital fragmentation of attention, crisis of trust, and fatigue with cynicism. It connects critical awareness with the pursuit of wholeness, hope, and responsible coexistence.
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