Theology and aesthetic experience: the place of the image against the notion of Revelation in Martin Luther and John Calvin

This paper intends to argue that the Lutheran and Calvinist conception of Revelation makes it unnecessary to understand the image as a place of the sacred. The Lutheran postulate of justification by faith and the Calvinist postulate of double predestination lie in a very particular way of understanding Revelation, which divides the human being into two radically different dimensions, spiritual and bodily. This division has, in turn, a twin distinction: the separation between the public and the private. In view of this scheme, the image is in a paradoxical position and that can only be solved when the experience of the image starts to be conceived as an aesthetic experience, in other words, autonomous. This experience is reflected in the creation and appreciation or perception of the work.