A Study on the Christian Formation as the Problem of Christian Education Aesthetics

ABSTRACT

This article aims for exploring the problems of the Christian formation from the viewpoint of beauty and arts. This subject has not been properly recognised in the Protestant theology and Christian education for about five hundred years since the Reformation, because most people have tried to approach this subject only from the intellectual and moralistic points of view.In this articles, the researcher tried to solve these problems of the Christian formation in the context of modem “Aesthetics” and "Theological Aesthetics,” so this subject could be called as a problem of “ Christian education aesthetics”.First of all, this study is going to clarify the meaning of beauty in the relationship with truth and good for developing the Christian formation. There are four different viewpoints to understand this problem. From a modern aesthetical point of view the fourth type can be better acceptable than others, in which truth & good dialectically correlated with beauty. And then, the researcher focuses on the characteristic viewpoints of the Protestant theology and Christian education in the different denominations, and especially inquires into the meaning of the “Lyrical” theology, ministry and education of John & Charles Wesley, the founder of methodist church today, whose historical position is unique in the whole history of Protestant theology and education. In general, the theological and educational aesthetics in the Protestant context has been negatively estimated or underdeveloped, and the formative(plastic) arts have been also strongly criticised.In the conclusion part, the researcher proposes some issues which will be meaningfully developed as Christian education aesthetics in the Protestant context. The themes are as follows: the constitutive principles of Christian education aesthetics, the aims for the aesthetical formation of Christian life, an aesthetical curriculum, the aesthetical principles of teaching-learning process, the theory of expression, the value of formative(plastic) arts etc. It is expected that such issues could be more fruitfully founded through the exploring mind and the intensive dialogue with the modern aesthetics.