Abstract

All Christians deal with aesthetics. Whether one is contemplating a specific art form or involved in the general perception of reality, everyone experiences life aesthetically. Both beauty and art are of vital interest to Christians who consider God as beautiful and the giver of beauty, and who utilize art forms in their practices of worship, such as music, painting, and speech. Therefore, an appropriate understanding of scriptural principles that apply to aesthetic expressions is a relevant concern for Christians. ;This dissertation addresses the specific question of a Christian approach to aesthetics and seeks to make two contributions. First, an aesthetic model based on Johann Georg Hamann's philological presuppositions is investigated. This model is traced from Hamann's public and private writings. Since Hamann developed his aesthetic approach within the milieu of the Enlightenment, chapter one presents a brief overview of his biographical data and how his historical and theological context evoked his written responses. Chapter two identifies Hamann's biblically based philological themes of the condescension of God, history, language, emotions, and reason. From these themes, an incarnational aesthetic approach to interpreting reality is presented in chapter three. Chapter four focuses specifically on the philological and eschatological emphases of Hamann's aesthetic model. These first four chapters attempt a description of Hamann's aesthetic approach from his various writings. ;The second contribution of this thesis is the attempt to apply Hamann's incarnational aesthetic approach to the evaluation and execution of aesthetic expressions. Chapter five addresses the shift, Hamann's approach implies, from a focus on the art form to the creative process that produces the aesthetic statement. The applications of this aesthetic model for interpreting Scripture, appreciating specific artistic statements, and developing an aesthetic ethics are examined. The primary conclusions of this appraisal are that Hamann's incarnational aesthetic approach is biblically, philosophically, and existentially valid for the evaluation of art forms, and that this approach offers an interpretive key to better understanding oneself as well as all reality