Tomáš Špidlík

A Theological Life

Karel Sládek, Pavlina Morgan, Tim Morgan, Pavlina Morgan, Tim Morgan

• Publisher: Karolinum Press, Charles University
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9788024643793
• eBook ISBN: 9788024647371
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Literatura y artes en el cristianismo

Tomáš Špidlík: A Theological Life offers one of the first comprehensive reflections on the life and work of the enigmatic Czech theologian. In part one, Karel Sládek explores Špidlík's thoughts on family, the formation of Jesuit priests, the ecumenical mission of the monastery at Velehrad in Moravia (where Špidlík himself studied), and the wisdom he acquired during stays in Rome. The latter part of the book focuses on Špidlík's spiritual theology, which was grounded in a synthesis of Eastern and Western Christianity. Here, the book explores subjects such as the Holy Spirit, the Eucharist as a source of spiritual life, and the influence of the Philokalia on Eastern spirituality. 
 
By the conclusion, we see Špidlík's most mature ideas and his forming of a theology of beauty; Špidlík spent his final years in Rome, living and working at the Centro Aletti's renowned art studio, where he put his mind to observing the theology of art for an understanding of music, film, literature, and iconography.

Špidlík on Art: A Theological Last Will and Testament

Špidlík’s theology mapped out the intricate path described by the dialogue between the mystical schools of the Christian East and West. The culmination of this lifelong labour of love was a series of reflections on theological aesthetics in which he explored a possible synthesis of existing knowledge into a new kind of “integral knowledge.” For Špidlík, integral knowledge is religious, mystical; it intuitively reveals in the visible world the symbols which transcend that world and point towards the invisible mystery of life. The central place in this new synthesis is taken by beauty.

Mysticism and the Theology of Beauty

The mystical view of beauty as a symbol of the truth was one of the final themes Špidlík addressed. His preferred summary of the subject was offered by the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky: “For beauty is a symbol of something else. Of what exactly? Beauty is a symbol of the truth.”182

Špidlík first encountered the theology of beauty as a seminarian in Maastricht, where he would often visit the studio of a newly founded school of fine art.

We used to go and look with great curiosity to see how it was all done. On one occasion, a teacher was marking the students’ drawings. He showed me some and asked me what I thought. One was of a girl holding a bouquet. I thought it was beautiful and said so. The teacher told me it was the only one that was going to fail. I was very surprised by this, so he explained. He covered part of the drawing, showing me just a leg, and asked me how old I thought the person in the drawing was. Perhaps about fifteen or sixteen. And how old is her hand? Maybe three. And the face? The shoulders are masculine. Yes, he said, the different parts are all very nice but together they’re a hotchpotch. The picture can’t express anything; there’s no idea there which can convey anything. They’re just nice colours and nice little forms. In other words, just typical kitsch. He can draw well, excellently even, but he has to fail because I can’t turn out artists like this!183

Just as modern-day encyclopaedism lacks a central idea, the individual parts of the person in the drawing were all very good but together they failed to convey the idea of the whole, and it is this whole which true beauty should reveal. Špidlík found his solution to the problem in the thinking of Vladimir Solovyev, and his peers and successors, who saw beauty as the unifying idea that drew together the separate discoveries of science, philosophy and religion.

Špidlík made further progress in his exploration of beauty as a student in Florence, where little by little his eyes were opened to the beauty of the world—to visible beauty.184 When asked who had taught him the meaning of beauty, he admitted to being something of an autodidact: “In this field I am a self-learner, and my privileging of the spiritual sense over the aesthetic is not easily understood by aesthetic critics.”185 For Špidlík, spiritual sense consisted in being able to behold beauty intuitively, and through that beauty to see life in all its fullness: “The higher the reality I am able to see in something, the more beautiful is that which I am looking at… That is the true criterion of beauty. And for a Christian, the most beautiful is Christ.”186

Špidlík continued to reflect on these and related themes and returned to them in many of his writings, always presenting them in a new context and from a new perspective. His insights have been applied at the art studio at the Centro Aletti in Rome, where the relationship between theology and art is a constant subject of reflection.187 The new design for the Redemptoris Mater Chapel in the Vatican was based on a theological “blueprint” provided by Špidlík. Here, we will focus on three themes in particular: beauty as the path to integral knowledge; the manifestation of beauty in a mystical ascent; and the supreme expression of beauty in the light of a transformed human face.

Beauty as the Path to Integral Knowledge

In Ruská idea, Špidlík’s reflections on beauty appear in the chapter on knowledge. Beauty is therefore seen as a subject of gnoseology, the study of the origins and processes of human knowledge. Here, he follows the Russian view that the truth a person comes to know is always alive, spiritual, intuitive, unifying—and beautiful. To know the truth is to enter into an encounter with life, with living reality, which although full of contradictions is intuitively cognised in its spiritual unity. This intuitive approach, which creates a unity between the subject and object of knowledge, is possible only through contemplation and a relationship of love, and love sees beauty in all things: “Through beauty we come to integral and spiritual knowledge.”188

Like Solovyev, Špidlík saw beauty as the unifying principle of empirical, metaphysical and mystical knowledge. In a lecture entitled “Art will unite the world,” Špidlík again drew on Solovyev, for whom the solution to the gnoseological crisis in European culture was to be found in a new unifying principle from the world of aesthetics. Solovyev used the classic example of carbon and diamonds, which have the same chemical composition but only the diamond is considered beautiful, just as the nightingale’s song is deemed enchanting and the mewing of a cat an awful racket.

Only art that truly creates “the beautiful” is able to perform the role of unifying all human knowledge. An artist is active on all levels: on the empirical level, the level of rational thought, but also on the level of spiritual intuition. From the lower level, beauty points to something higher; and starting from the higher, intuition seeks to embody itself in a lower symbol and make it beautiful.189

In this perspective, beauty is not reduced to mere aesthetics but defined in relation to what is good and true. In the Eastern Christian tradition, and according to the Philokalia—“love of the beautiful”—the more one grows in love, the more profoundly one comes to know beauty: “If for scholastic philosophy, ‘being’ is fundamentally unum-verum-bonum, for Florensky and Solovyev this triad is replaced by beauty-truth-goodness.”190

An aesthetic view of the world is by its very nature spiritual and religious. In his entry on “aesthetics” in a dictionary of mysticism, Špidlík examines its relationship to mysticism, and asks whether the two are in contraposition. His definition of aesthetics draws on that of the eighteenth-century German philosopher Alexander Baumgarten, who saw aesthetics as the perfection of sensory knowledge, the object of which is beauty. For Špidlík, then, beauty makes itself visible to the senses by “incarnating itself.”191 Here aesthetics clearly resonates with Christian mysticism in having to do with “coming to know a hidden reality through an intuition enabled by special divine illumination.”192

Špidlík notes that while Greek thought stopped at the dichotomy between the visible and the intellectual, Christianity was trichotomic, that is, sensory, intellectual and divine. Christian ecstasy therefore transcends two boundaries: between the sensory and the intellectual, and the intellectual and the divine. Crossing the second of these thresholds can be achieved only with the help of God. Špidlík writes about the notion of aesthetics in Basil the Great, Augustine, Theophan the Recluse and especially in Solovyev, Frank, Ivanov and Florensky. According to these latter—and later—Russian authors, visible objects reveal an idea about the One who transcends all beauty, and thus reveal the divine in creation. Beauty is a universal characteristic of being which can be known only through the illumination of the symbolic meaning behind what is visible.193 In the context of the conflict between worldly aesthetics and an ascetic rejection of the world, Špidlík suggests that in the spiritual life, the “fasting of the eyes” moderates the use of sensible forms and reveals the invisible mystery within them.194 He also speaks of this fasting in the context of creating a work of art: “The artist who creates a form and multiplies it needlessly, so reducing its ‘transparency,’ is being prodigal.”195 Artistic form requires the same ‘bareness’ and simplicity as that expressed by a symbol.

In a work co-written with Marko Rupnik, Špidlík prepares his readers for a new kind of knowledge which is revealed through a symbol whose beauty connects t...

Table of contents

• A Note from the Translators
• Foreword
• Introduction
• A Theological Interpretation of the Life and Work of Tomáš Špidlík
• A Synthesis of the Spiritual Theology of the Christian East and West
• Špidlík on Art: A Theological Last Will and Testament
• Bibliography
• About the Author