The Portal of Beauty

"Beauty is an event: it happens when the Whole, the All, offers itself to us in the fragment, when the Infinite makes itself little." In this way, Bruno Forte describes the long-held Christian tradition that traces beauty back to God and sees God as the source of all beauty. But, he questions, is this really possible? How can the limitless inhabit what is little? In The Portal of Beauty, Forte examines the deep, though not always obvious, contribution of theological thought to the understanding and experience of beauty.

In the first six chapters, Forte calls as witnesses some of the greatest luminaries of the Church in the East and West: Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Søren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Pavel Evdokimov. Forte then moves to a consideration of music as a sacred language and a contemplation of how film can transmit faith through story and icon. Finally, he closes with a moving meditation on the fragility and finitude of the mortal fragments through which divine beauty manifests itself.

The Portal of Beauty is an erudite, moving, and deeply felt study by the most famous Italian theologian in Italy on the nature of beauty and how it can lead us to a greater understanding of and communion with the divine.

Bruno Forte is Archbishop of Chieti-Vasto in Italy.