The Aesthetics of Discipleship

Everyday Aesthetic Existence and the Christian Life

Adrian Coates

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781725272385
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Théologie chrétienne

Discipleship is embodied. Formation in the Christian life is not an otherworldly exercise but one that plays out in this world, interwoven with everyday sensory experience in ordinary life. The Aesthetics of Discipleship explores this dynamic through Kierkegaard's framing of "aesthetic existence"--the sensory experience of being "in the moment"--further developed by Bonhoeffer, as operating within a realm of freedom, encompassing not only art but play, friendship, and cultural formation. In addition to Kierkegaard and Bonhoeffer, the work of Iain McGilchrist, Graham Ward, and Nicholas Wolterstorff is employed to offer a fresh perspective on discipleship, "from below": Everyday sensory experiences are integral not only to being human but to the practice of discipleship, such that discipleship integrates aesthetic, ethical, and religious existence. Aesthetic existence unhinged from a life of faith or fueled by distorted Christendom creates and sustains aestheticized pseudorealities centered on the self. Mature aesthetic existence, however, anchored in love for God, plays a fundamental role in the Christian life, both as the incarnational celebration of being fully human, and also through the preconscious formation of imaginaries by which we live.

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Introduction

Discipleship is embodied. This obvious truth is easily lost amid an emphasis on discipleship as a “spiritual” process, along with the other-worldly focus that so often accompanies it. Yet, as a consequence of the incarnation, a life of discipleship, a life of following after Christ, is a life that is necessarily bound up with being fully human, as an embodied being in the world. This has implications for both sensory engagement with the world (aesthetics) and action in it (ethics). Failing to take the embodied nature of discipleship seriously dilutes its impact on both the aesthetic and ethical realms, but more than that, it is a failure to understand the interconnected and symbiotic relationships between aesthetics, ethics, and faith as they feed off and into one another. To put it differently, beliefs are continuously shaped and formed, both consciously and unconsciously, through our sensory and affective everyday life in the world. A practice of discipleship that ignores this embodied dynamic is certainly woefully lacking, but the void will be filled: sensory and affective, often preconscious person-formation will happen, whether it is through practice of the Christian life or via other means and contexts. The stakes are high. Recovering an understanding of discipleship through the lens of aesthetics is not merely an interesting conceptual exercise, but it has significant implications for a life of faith in the world.

We will attend to definitions shortly, but it should be immediately apparent that we are seeking to recover a broader and more integrated classical understanding of “aesthetics,” relating to sense perception as apprehension, rather than a contemporary understanding that conflates aesthetics with beauty and the arts. Today, asking what aesthetics has to do with faith may seem a little like asking what Athens has to do with Jerusalem, as Tertullian famously did. Aesthetics, surely, belongs to the realm of culture, a Christian response to the aesthetic then being contingent on whichever approach one endorses regarding the relationship between Christianity and culture. At best, from this perspective, the aesthetic is validated as an aspect of life that is to be cherished and nurtured, in fulfillment of the cultural mandate to steward earthly life, perhaps even at its pinnacle functioning as a gateway to transcendence. At worst, it is to be rejected as a worldly distraction from that which carries eternal weight, the salvation of our souls. More often than not, in the everyday life of many Christians, their stance on the aesthetic lies somewhere in between these two poles: the aesthetic is there to be enjoyed (with moderation, according to the ethical bounds of the faith) but plays only a peripheral role in the serious business of life in Christ.

The aim of this book, however, is to approach the relationship between faith and aesthetics from a completely different paradigm. Rather than considering the aesthetic within the framework of cultural production, as a category named the arts, apparently distinct from much of our day-to-day life, we will be looking at the aesthetic as embedded in the everyday, as lived sensory existence, being absorbed in moments of aesthetic experience amid the ordinary. In other words, rather than exploring a Christian perspective on the arts, or a Christian attitude toward aesthetic production and engagement, we are asking the question from the inside: what role does experience of the aesthetic in the everyday play in living a life of faith? Is the Christian life solely one of religious existence, or does the aesthetic as lived (aesthetic existence) also have a role to play in discipleship? And how do both of these modes of existence relate to ethical life and action in the world? These are some of the questions before us. Underlying these questions, in turn, is another that lies at the heart of this inquiry: Is aesthetic existence fundamental to being human and becoming Christian?

The central claim of this book is that aesthetic existence does indeed play a fundamental role in human flourishing and a life of discipleship. We ignore this truth at our peril, both because this mode of existence ubiquitously pervades all human life (whether we acknowledge it or not), and also because it preconsciously contributes to paradigms whereby we apprehend the world and our place in it. Whatever our stance might be on Christianity and the arts, or aesthetic production and engagement as cultural stewardship, our everyday aesthetic experiences are quietly forming and shaping us, whether we acknowledge this or not. Perhaps now more than ever, being Christian demands responding well to this aspect of our beings. Whether we consider the influence of alluring advertising as it shifts our desires, the titillation of social and entertainment media, our burgeoning obsession with the sensory delights of food, the masses captivated by gaming, or even the visceral popularization of politics, we are the inhabitants of a world saturated with aesthetic stimuli impacting us most moments of our days. Virtual reality is not merely a name for a technological invention, but an increasingly viable mode of escaping from Reality into an aesthetic mode of existence that is the cultivation of a pseudoreality centered on the self. What should the Christian response be to this aestheticization of everyday life? Is it to be shunned or embraced? And what guides the practical application of this decision? What does it mean to follow Christ as embodied, sensory beings located in this time and place in the world?

The aesthetics of discipleship starts with an affirmation that embodied, sensory existence is a good gift to be celebrated and enjoyed as an expression of being fully human in Christian life. In an important sense, however, it is not aesthetic existence per se that is to be embraced, but a specific mode of enjoying the aesthetic in a life of discipleship. Aesthetic existence itself is not a choice. In this sense, everyone “embraces” it, intentionally or not, since it is a fundamental aspect of being human in the world. At points of time in our days, all of us are “in the moment,” present to the all-consuming sensory immediacy of gazing at the stars, savoring a delicious meal, watching a film, laughing with friends, playing a game, listening to music, enjoying a kiss, chuckling at a meme, literally or figuratively smelling the roses. Such moments are not insignificant or neutral. They contribute to our apprehension of the world, to our formation, either for good or ill. The aesthetics of discipleship offers an account of two distinctive ways of engaging aesthetic existence. In contrast to an immature, self-seeking indulgence of the aesthetic, maturity in the Christian life requires that sensory existence be embedded in, and harmonious with, a broader life-narrative of worship. It is a mode of worship that is not limited to liturgy as practiced on a Sunday morning, but a liturgical embrace of all of life in the everyday.

Delineating an aesthetics of discipleship is important because a self-seeking, immature mode of aesthetic existence is pervasive not only in society as a whole, but in the church itself. Modes of being Christian all too often endorse the human desire for comfort, whether simply in the guise of a prosperity gospel or in the development of sophisticated models of Christendom that ally the church with affluence and power. The conflation of Christianity with empire is not a new phenomenon, but it remains as problematic as ever, as recent political events in the United States have once again highlighted. Amid the aestheti...