“Favour Is Deceitful, and Beauty Is Vain (Proverbs 31:30)”: Writing the Sacred and the Lure of Aestheticism

Dear Colleagues,

The relationship between sacredness and beauty has been an enduring tension within the textual traditions of world religions. Across diverse faith traditions, literary, poetic, and rhetorical devices have been employed both as instruments for propagating religious messages and as potential sources of distraction from the spiritual core they seek to convey. This oscillation between embracing aesthetic elaboration and warning against infatuation with the mere beauty of the text reveals profound questions about the nature of sacred writing itself: Can the divine be adequately captured in human language? Does aesthetic refinement enhance or obscure spiritual truth? And what role does literary form play in the communication of theological content?

This Special Issue of Religions aims to explore how various religious traditions have navigated the complex intersection of theology, aesthetics, and literary form. From the elaborate rhetorical constructions of sacred sermons to the deliberate striving for simplicity, aesthetic poverty, or even silence, the literary media enlisted in the service of faith have proposed a wide gamut of attitudes toward beauty and expression. By examining these varied approaches, we seek to deepen our understanding of how religious communities have understood the relationship between the beauty of their texts and the truth those texts proclaim.

We welcome contributions from specialists in comparative religion, scholars of particular religious textual traditions, and researchers in the literature and aesthetics. The Special Issue invites both detailed literary analyses of specific religious corpuses and more theoretical reflections on the place of aesthetics in sacred texts. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The use of poetic and rhetorical devices in sacred texts across religious traditions;
• Tensions between aesthetic elaboration and spiritual authenticity;
• Theological justifications for or against literary ornamentation;
• Comparative studies of attitudes toward beauty in different religious textual traditions;
• The relationship between sacred rhetoric and the striving for simplicity or silence;
• Literary analyses of specific religious corpuses (Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, etc.);
• Historical developments in attitudes toward aesthetics in religious writing;
• The role of translation in shaping the aesthetic dimension of sacred texts.

We particularly encourage contributions that bring together theological reflection and literary analysis, exploring how specific textual practices reflect deeper commitments about the nature of the sacred and its relationship to human creativity. By examining the wide gamut of attitudes toward aesthetics across religious traditions, this Special Issue seeks to illuminate not only historical and textual questions but also enduring questions about how communities of faith understand the power and limits of human language to mediate the divine.

Prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors are encouraged to send a proposed title and abstract (200–300 words) to the Guest Editor or to the Assistant Editor of Religions (Vinicio Altmann, vinicio.altmann@mdpi.com) for an initial assessment of fit. Full manuscripts will undergo rigorous double-blind peer review.

We look forward to your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Cyril Aslanov
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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• sacred languages
• canonical texts of religious literature
• rhetoric and poetics
• comparative religion
• devotional writing