“Beauty will Save the World”

Abstract

In the period from the sixth to the eighth century, Byzantine spirituality came to assume its characteristic form. The one who called himself Dionysios the Areopagite, St Maximos the Confessor, and St John of Damascus all played a crucial role in articulating this spirituality, at the center of which is the divine beauty calling all of creation back to itself: A beauty, expressed in creation and the human fashioning of created, material reality, that is the radiance of God's love, which can be perceived only through our purified senses.