Reflections on the Burning Bush. Revelation as an Aesthetic Experience

A Review of a Study Day at the LSRS

How do religious traditions cultivate aesthetic sensibility among their followers? And what new insights can we glean from comparing aesthetic concepts and practices across religious traditions? To explore these questions, researchers gathered at the LSRS on September 29, 2021 for an interreligious and interdisciplinary study day.

Taking the foundational narrative of Moses and the Burning Bush (Exodus 3:1-4:17; Qur’an 20:9-24, 27:7-14, 28:29-33) as the point of departure, the main goal of the study day was to reflect on the event of revelation as an aesthetic experience. In doing so, the aim was to deepen our understanding of the aesthetic, cognitive and performative aspects of revelation that are often not given sufficient attention in academic theological engagements. 

Drawing on a broad range of intellectual frameworks and religious traditions, past and present, the participants explored the role that cognition and language play in shaping an aesthetic sensibility toward revelation, and considered the ethical, social, and political dimensions of these aesthetic experiences. 

The discussions revolved around the following central questions: How can the cultivation of an aesthetic sensibility toward revelation bring about ethical transformations on the level of the individual and society? To what extent can art, literature, fashion, and other forms of human creativity serve as a frame for the cultivation of an aesthetic sensibility toward revelation? What new insights can we gain from comparing aesthetic concepts and practices across religious traditions and disciplinary formations?

Following an introduction by the organiser Professor Islam Dayeh (Freie Universität Berlin), the first speaker, Professor Jean Ehret (LSRS), gave a presentation entitled, Aesthetic Experience as Revelation? Illusion, Delusion, and Faith, in which he began by inviting the participants to reflect on the terms ‘real’, ‘reality’ and ‘illusion’, which are essential for any reflection on the relation between revelation and aesthetics. He then developed an understanding of aesthetics as an encounter with divine presence. He concluded with a discussion about the importance of historical analyses, despite the fact that they often lack aesthetic appreciation. 

In his presentation, entitled Iconoclasm and the Potential of Human Creativity, Professor Mouez Khalfaoui (University of Tübingen) revisited the historical and theological background of iconoclasm in Islam, and spoke about the need to rethink common, but unfounded, assumptions about the complex history of images, imagination and visual representations in Islam. In his contribution, entitled Listening, Seeing and Living the Recited Revelation, Professor [Islam Dayeh (Freie Universität Berlin) highlighted the particular monotheistic principles that shaped aesthetic concepts and practices in Islam. He pointed out that the practical implication of the iconoclastic tendency was that Muslims cultivated non-representational images, particularly in geometrical form, which came to define Islamic aesthetics in calligraphy, architecture and design. He then discussed the aesthetics of Islamic prayer (ṣalāt), an embodied practice, which involves the re-enactment of the foundational moment of divine revelation by engaging the human senses, memory and imagination.

Turning to the materiality of aesthetics, Professor Alberto Fabio Ambrosio (LSRS) gave a presentation entitled Relevation between Textile and Texture: Fashion as a Theology. Drawing on his ongoing research project on thinking on fashion theology, he discussed the various Patristic interpretations of the sandals of Moses in the Burning Bush narrative, and showed how the various interpretations illustrated the symbolic and material conditions for the encounter with divine revelation.

Professor Chris Doude van Troostwijk (LSRS), gave a presentation entitled The Burning Bush: A Divine Play with Singularities, in which he read the narrative of the Burning Bush to in the Book of Shemot (Book of Names), commonly known as Exodus. Revisiting the theology of the covenant (berith), he offered a correlational reading of scripture, which positions God and his people in a mirroring, but asymmetrical relation. This understanding, “makes their relation a living relation, and thus rather a sphere or a modus vivendi than a formal framework. As such, the {berith} only functions when it is lived, reactualized time and again, by each of the participating parties.”

The study day was concluded by a presentation by the imminent philosopher Professor Jean Greisch, author of the acclaimed work Le Buisson ardent et les Lumières de la Raison. L'invention de la philosophie de la religion. Joining the participants via Webex, Jean Greisch gave a presentation entitled “Yet a Different Clarity”: Aesthetic Phenomenality and the Phenomenality of Revelation. He began by posing the questions: What are we speaking about, when we qualify an experience as being “aesthetic” and when we qualify an experience as implying a “revelation” or referring to a “revelation”? To deal with these fundamental questions, Jean Greisch offered an engaging reading of the monumental essay by Jean-Luc Marion D’ailleurs, la Révélation.