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Suffering And The Search For Wholeness: Beauty And The Cross In Hans Urs Von Balthasar And Contemporary Feminist Theologies, Elisabeth T. Vasko

Dissertations

The tension between the beauty of the cross and the violence of the crucifixion creates a dissonance within Christian theology. In terms of atonement theologies, this dissonance has been interpreted through the development of a converted sense of beauty in which the cross, as perceived and interpreted by the believer in the context of faith, expands Christian aesthetics. One of the more prominent examples of this construction can be found in the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, wherein divine beauty culminates in Christ's kenotic self-surrender at the cross. In a feminist hermeneutic, the identification of divine beauty with crucified …