The Heidelberg Disputation and Aesthetics Matthew Rosebrock Introduction The sight of a crucifix may evoke a variety of reactions, but it is hard to imagine that any of them would be neutral. The cross is not beautiful by worldly standards. It is a place of death, an ugly and excruciating one at that. And yet, the cross stands at the center of the Christian faith. Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:2 says, “For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. ״Considering Christian aesthetics, one might righdy ask, “What does beauty have to do with the cross?!” However, the event of Christ’s crucifixion is something with which any theological aesthetic must deal if it is to be called Christian. Yet, oddly, few Christian texts on aes- thetics begin with the cross. Consequently, the cross is often made to look like a final hurdle to be passed rather than the very center of the Christian faith. What will be our result if we start not with beauty as a concept but with the cross? What will be our result if we let the cross stand for what it is without trying to see through it, behind it, or past it? Will it be too negative? Will it only diminish the resurrection? Will it result in anything beautiful at all? Those might be some immediate concerns, but what I hope to show is that by starting with the cross of Jesus, we might be properly situated to extol the true beauty of God in the resurrection. After all, the Christ event does not end in death but in resurrection, but the resurrection only comes by way of the cross. The goal of this paper is to offer some points of contact between theologia cruds (“theology of the cross”) and modern Western culture for the sake of gospel proclama- tion. I will start with a brief look at Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation of 1518 as a way of initiating the discussion. Next, I will make the turn towards aesthetics while bring- ing theologia cruds into dialogue with Hans Urs von Balthasar and Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Finally, I will connect this discussion to modern art and offer some implications for an ecclesial aesthetic. Heidelberg Disputation, 1518 Martin Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation has long been the place in his literary corpus to get the most detailed account of the theologia cruds. However, some elucidation is in order. Theologia cruds is more than just “a theology” to Luther. It was the working Matthew Rosebrock is a 2010 graduate of Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, and is currently studying in the area of theology and the visual arts as a Ph.D. student at Fuller Theological Seminary. Concordia Journal/Fall 2012 9 347