Dean, William D.  Coming To: A Theology of Beauty. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972.

Abstract

An unorthodox and revolutionary approach to theology, written with gaity and wit. Coming To keys God to the contemporary vision of reality as a river "in which you cannot step twice" - and posits the subjective experience as the only possible carrier of meaning in our day. Much has been said in the last few years about the sacredness of play, celebration, wonder, and games. Coming To goes much further. It proposes that the substance of religion is the aesthetic response - that surge of the imagination which is the opposite of apathy and fatigue and which alone can civilize the heart or vitalize the mind of modern man. Coming To assesses the rival claims of the good, the true, the holy, and the beautiful as ultimate values and asserts that only the experience of beauty has value in itself in our Whiteheadian world of process. In reverencing the subjective and aesthetic responses, this engaging author maps a new terrain for theology and provides the Western religious tradition with that appeal young people are finding in the religions of the East.