The Aesthetics of Discipleship
Everyday Aesthetic Existence and the Christian Life
- Christian Living
- Publisher: Pickwick Publications (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2021
FritzSearch.com earns a commission on purchases made through Bookshop.org links.
Publisher's Description
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.
Endorsements (6)
“Coates’s study is engaging and ambitious. Drawing together insights won from Kierkegaard, Bonhoeffer, as well as contemporary theology and neuropsychology, he pursues a theologically informed aesthetics of everyday experience in the hope of winning a new ‘fundamental theological basis for practical theology’ and thereby also a fresh appreciation of discipleship in the midst of ordinary life.”
“Coates draws on several important thinkers to make a case for understanding the role of aesthetics . . . for Christian discipleship. I think his treatment of Kierkegaard is especially valuable, since he shows that Kierkegaard in the end is a kind of Christian humanist, not the ‘anti-humanist’ some of his critics make him out to be.”
“Masterfully written, rigorously argued, and politically aware, this book combines social critique with a constructive vision of affectivity, aesthetics, and liturgy in religious existence. I hope that all Christians read this book and then attempt to live up to it.”
“We have, thankfully, an increasing number of books on embodiment from Christian thinkers. We now also have, finally, a book that recovers the importance of lived sensory experience for Christ’s call to discipleship. Coates brilliantly connects our shared human aesthetic existence to Christ-centered, incarnational living. I highly recommend this book for all readers interested in how to follow Christ, and therefore in the pursuit of true humanity.”
“It is a delight to commend this excellent book, ranging across major thinkers and written in a wonderfully lucid style, as befits its topic. Adrian has done just the sort of work we need in abundance if we are to begin to recapture a fully biblical notion of discipleship. . . . This is a book to study, to savor, and to allow it to transform one’s aesthetic in ordinary, everyday lived experience.”
See something wrong on this page? Report a problem