Of the more striking features of Otto Mauer's thought is the innovative relationship of his theology and aesthetics. Mauer began writing on the topic of theology and art in 1934 in a piece titled "The Pastor and Christian Art." He published again the next year, "Artistic Creation in a Catholic Perspective," and "An Epigram to Art" in a 1941 volume. The influence of Romano Guardini is evident in these early writings, as is a residual impact from Mauer's personal contact with Hans Urs von Balthasar, Erich Przywara, and other notable Catholic thinkers of his context. He strove to rebuild religion "for the contemporary people who stand before the rubble of the spiritual world of the last century," doing so with the brunt force of beauty. Mauer continued writing on the topic over the next decades, including "Towards a Metaphysic of Visual Art" (1946), "Freedom in the Visual Arts" (1967), and "Art and Reality. Against the Lie of an 'Ideal World'" (1972). During the time of Art and Christianity (1946), Mauer's theology drew from two contrasting dimensions. From his formal theological training under Theodor Innitzer, he became influenced by the neo-Scholastic ideas of John Henry Newman. Most explicit of these is the grounding of reality in the transcendentals of truth, goodness, and beauty. These categories come to structure the core of his aesthetics. Against this was the understanding of a fundamentally hermeneutical nature of being which had been developing in German thought at least since the Idealists. The first sees the world to have a stable and certain foundation in its relationship to God, as the source of all being; the second, as a great symbol, the understanding of which shifts in light of various modes of human existence. Much of the excitement in Mauer's aesthetics happen in the interaction between these dimensions. This paper tracks the interaction of these two ways of seeing the world in Mauer's theology and aesthetics.