"Kapag 'Ganda' ang Pinag-usapan: Isang Mungkahing Dulog sa Pagteteolohiya"
Rebecca G. Cacho and Estela P. Padilla
PDF Version Download
Abstract

“Beauty” can serve as an organizing-structure for the dialogue between art and theology. Interviews and focused group discussions reveal that Tagalog-speaking Filipinos use the word to describe their experiences of things, people,situations, and life. The multi-layered meanings of the word “beauty” arise from a sensitivity to what is good, just, whole, orderly, among many other meanings. This sensitivity to beauty can be applied in the theological discourse about human beings, God, and in particular, Jesus the Christ. The core reality of the human being is beauty. God, after whose image and likeness the human being is created, is Beauty. One with God in beauty, the human beings seeks what is beautiful - relationships, experiences, situations, life. Jesus is the incarnation of the good-heartedness of God, and at the same time, the epitome of a human being whose core is beauty and who sought to establish what is beautiful. Whatever is of beauty is felt and experienced because it has an impact in human life and human interiority. If employed as an approach for doing theology, a sensitivity to beauty gives rise to a theology which has power because it is rooted in people’s lives and sheds meaning on their experiences.Instead of orthodoxy, and even orthopraxis, let the basis for doing Filipino theology be orthopathos – not mere feeling, but a sensitivity to beauty. The invitation to theologians is to let our experience of the good-heartedness of God, who is Beauty, be the fount of our reflection on our faith-life or our study of it.

Year Published
2012
Page: