On Beauty

Over the course of the last four weeks we have been pursuing the concept of beauty during our Sunday AM worship service.  I will not attempt to go into any detail here, but I will present some skeletal thoughts for your consideration and further reflection.  Please take the time to look at the attached jpeg.  It is an attempt to put some of these ideas into a model to aid discussion.  These are just seminal thoughts...meant to be corrected, built upon, etc.

Suggested references:   Ps. 27:4; 90:17; 96:6,9; John 1:14, 18; 14:6; 17:17; Rm. 12:1-2; I Cor. 2:6-16; 2 Cor. 3-4; Phil. 1:3-11; 4:8; Col. 2:16-3:4; 1 Jn. 2:15-16

1.   Truth, beauty and goodness exist supremely in the Triune God

"Too late came I to love thee, O thou Beauty both so ancient and so fresh" (Augustine).

"Nothing so beautiful except the true; the true is worth loving; it should reign everywhere, even in fables" (Boileau).

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever, its loveliness increases, it will never pass into nothingness" (Hyperion). 

2.  Truth, beauty, and goodness are revealed perfectly in the person of Jesus Christ.

"Whether you know it or not, all the longings of your life for beauty are longings for this:  the light of the gospel of the beauty of Christ who is the image of God" (John Piper). 

3.  Elements (remnants) of truth, beauty, and goodness are to be found in natural revelation (creation) and culture (human creativity).

4.  Truth, beauty, and goodness may be known to some degree and pursued by both regenerate (illuminated) and unregenerate (common grace) persons.

5.  Regenerate man must seek to discern truth, beauty and goodness in every aspect of life under the sun and embrace them; they reflect the glory of the Creator.

6.  Regenerate man may discern what is not truth, goodness and beauty and guards against a world system seeking to re-create the believer in its own image.

7.  A process of discernment:

1.  The reproduction (music, art, literature, film, etc) is considered judgmentally (objective standard) and sentimentally.  Taste is perceiving, enjoying, judging (Burch).

2.   Does it embody the qualities of aesthetic excellence?

3.   We have different capacities for discerning these qualities (knowledge/experience); we can improve these skills in any given field.

4.   Experts (people who know most about a given field) are excellent reference points for making informed choices.

Summary:  Truth, beauty, and goodness exist ideally in God alone.  God may be known in creation, and natural law, but especially in the revelation of Jesus Christ--the embodiment of all of God's attributes incarnate; the supreme portrait of God.  Since beauty is especially apparent in the relationship of God's attributes to one another (the landscape of His character), Jesus Christ is the exegesis of God's beauty (John 1:18).  We see the beauty of God in the person and work of Christ.

The believer is to set his affection on things above; he is to pursue those things that are excellent as his knowledge increases with wisdom and all discernment; he is to be changed into the glory of Christ as he meditates on the mind of Christ as given him in the Word.  This fleshes out in a pursuit of the qualities listed in Phil. 4:8:  true, honorable, right, pure, lovely, good repute, excellence, and praiseworthy. 

True           Thought           Theory              Mind              Orthodoxy 

Good         Action               Praxis               Will              Orthopraxy

Beautiful    Passion           Creativity          Emotion          Orthopathy

This should serve as a good launching point to pick up our discussion of taste again.  How is taste molded, shaped, formed, refined by this process?  Thoughts?

Comments

[Scott Aniol]

Jon,

Good points. I'm wondering about one thing. You mentioned regernerate people being "illuminated." I'm wondering if you could elaborate on how you believe that affects this issue of beauty. It wasn't clear in your summary. Thanks.

[Joel]

Will this set you up to answer what is truth, what is beauty, what is good?

[jon]

Scott,

Here is a very lengthy article on the illumniation of the HS in relation to church tradition, and here is an excerpt from that article:

The “illumination of the Spirit” is directly related to the role of the Holy Spirit in and through the exegete. The Holy Spirit is not trying to confuse the reader of the inerrant and infallible Word of God, but this Spirit-inspired word (2 Tim. 3:16) is not necessarily easy to understand in all its parts with fallen minds. The illumination of the Spirit, and other exegetical knowledge, is needful if the text and its propositions are going to be understood properly, and as God intended them. Christians should not think, however, that divine illumination is not a special intellectual paradigm for specially gifted teachers or pastors. Illumination may be defined as the ongoing ministry of the Holy Spirit’s supernatural help in clearly delineating the message of the inspired Scriptures to the reader. This does not mean that ever reader is able to clearly interpret the Scriptures knowing that illumination is not osmosis and is given in degrees. Illumination is a counterpart to reading, studying and exegeting the Scriptures using tried hermeneutical principles upon the text to reach its proper meaning. Illumination presses the reader to bridge the cultural gap on the meaning of a given passage to their life-situation and translates the biblical message into the language of today. It does not mean that the Holy Spirit changes or improves upon the truth in the Bible, but rather, He aids the student of the Word to properly understand the already orthodox position of the faith once delivered to the saints. In this sense there cannot be a dichotomy between orthodox history and orthodox theology. The history of divine illumination for the church is wed to historical orthodoxy because it is the same Spirit illuminating the Word. This is a confrontational illumination between the Word and reader. The illuminated text not only says something to the reader, but does something to him in conjunction with the text, and presses him to act. Psalm 119:105 says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”

I would argue that illumination deals mainly with interpreting and understanding scripture, but that it also extends to application in the life. In the case of Phil. 4:8, enabling the believer to discern those elements as they are expressed in culture. Of course, just as in hermeneutics, this is not a guarantee of infallibility. The work is done within the context of a community of faith...a community in which even Roosters exist.

[Scott Aniol]

I wondered if this might be where you were going with this, and I'm going to have to part with you on this point. I like everything else you have to say on this issue of beauty, but I don't think illumination factors in. Here's why:

I don't believe illumination, biblically defined, is what you have quoted it to be. Illumination does not help us understand the text of Scripture. Neither does it "translates the biblical message into the language of today." To say so seems to slide into some sort of mystical new revelation of sorts. Instead, I believe that the function of the Holy Spirit in illumination is to convince the believer of the significance of Scripture. It removes the walls of resistance that are built in the minds of unbelievers and convinces the believer that the Bible is true. I agree with Dr. McCune:

"Illumination conveys the certainty of Scripture's truthfulness and a capacity to grasp the significance of the written revelation."

McCune emphasizes that there is a vast difference between "meaning" and "significance." The latter is accomplished with illumination, but the former is not, as you seem to imply with this issue of discerning what is beautiful.

When you start talking about understanding and application, you're moving into interpretation which is different from illumination and not, I believe, some kind of mystical "translation" of sorts.

To summarize, I don't believe that illumination has any bearing on our discernment of what is beautiful or what is true and good, except in as much as through illumination believers are convinced as to the validity of biblical statements of truth, goodness, and beauty. Certainly God-given wisdom is a need, but to imply that illumination moves into the realm of meaning and understanding is to slip into too much mysticism for my taste.

[jon]

What!? We get to point 12, paragraph 4, sentence 42, and you part with me? Just kidding, Scott.

I understand the nuance and would defer to an objective reading of the text versus subjective experience every time; however, do we draw too hard a line when we eliminate the work of the HS in applying Scripture to life?

How do you interpret the passages where Paul prays for early believers "to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man; so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend..." (Eph. 3:14-19)?

Erickson: "Thus the HS's ministry involves elucidating the truth, bringing belief and persuasion and conviction, but not new revelation."

Grudem: "We should pray that the HS would give us his illumination and thereby help us to understand rightly when we study Scripture or when we ponder situations in our lives."

Can we distinguish between new revelation and the ability to grasp biblical wisdom, the revelation already given?

[Scott Aniol]

I may be nit-picking, I'll admit. Eph 3: "comprehend" what? The Love of Christ. Is this passage really talking about understanding Scripture?

I don't deny a mysterious working of the Holy Spirit in the believer's life, especially with regard to progressive sanctification. But when it comes to illumination and understanding the meaning of Scripture, I don't believe that we should confuse the two. Understand the meaning involves work, exegesis, contextual study, etc. Illumination does not help us in this. Illumination simply causes us to accept the meaning that we uncover.

Maybe I should just stop this nit-picking, because I think you're right everywhere else. The reason I'm worried about this is that someone could potentially aruge that their "taste" for what is beautiful should not be questioned because they have this illumination you describe.

[Donald C S Johnson]

Jon, just to jump in here and speak to the last question on your original post... Are you heading for Brown with the question? He seems to be fuzzy on Orthopathy with his idea of an ecumenical taste. In a way, I think this is what Scott is getting at with his concern about arguments such as "you can't argue with my illumination". Anyway, I look forward to more discussion of this topic.

Regards,
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3

[jon]

Scott, Yes, the love of Christ. So you have a process in which the HS illuminates texts that explain the love of Christ, and then helps the believer to further apprehend that love. I am not sure how one can draw a hard line between the interplay that constantly takes place on the hermenuetical spiral between HS, text, and reader, that is also constantly applied to life in real time.

That being said, the objective meaning of the text takes priority over the subjective application to life. Both interpretation and application are open to scrutiny and tests of reasonableness within the Body.

Don, Yes, I am heading for Brown. I almost dread the discussion of an "ecumenical" taste (that word is an unpinned grenade), but I think the idea is worth considering.

[Donald C S Johnson]

"that word is an unpinned grenade"

Well hang on tight, then!

[pgepps]

Re: Scott's distinction between "significance" and "meaning" or "understanding": I think the history of the word "significance" may be confusing, here. We often use it, sloppily, when we really intend nothing more than "importance," and even that is etymologically more than just "making a difference."

The root of this is the ancient conviction, probably most easily seen in Augustine's De Doctrina, that both words and things *signify*, that is, they are designed to disclose to us God and His intentions in relating to us by Creation. Thus my experience of beautiful things signifies, is a sign, of how God is in relation to me: surpassingly desirable, etc.

That's why all our words for this concept are, ultimately, precisely about *meaning*: The "import" of my words is what gives them "importance," and an "unimportant" thing is one which does not have any burden of meaning, any relevance for me; it is trivial, epiphenomenal, nonsense and nonesuch. Similarly, the "insignificant" is precisely that which, in the colloquial phrase, "don't signify," i.e., it has no further meaning beyond that it is, and thus lacking in "significance" it can be disregarded. The reality is so deeply ingrained in our life and thought that I cast about without success for a word for "significant" or "important" that was *not* a statement about meaning; the most I can come up with is varying antonyms, that have their own peculiar historical idiosyncracies: "trivial" from anti-Scholastic rhetoric against the medieval mode of learning, etc.

The best other modality I can think of is "substantial" and "insubstantial," but ultimately no thinker before the advent of modern epistemology would have differentiated between "having substance" and "signifying," as seen by our willingness to label vain words as "insubstantial" but our reluctance to thus label light.

Thus, it is inconceivable to me that Christ's Spirit should somehow convince us of the mere *fact* that Scripture signifies, and fail to aid us in uncovering its signification. They are intrinsically related, as to "grasp the significance" of something requires it to be understood; and to "think it must signify *something*" would be vague and mystical, indeed.

Finally, let me suggest that it is the pursuit of air to speak of "What is Truth, Beauty, Goodness?" as if the abstract nouns could be given concreteness. Instead, the right pursuit (though this is doubtless where you wish to head, anyway) is away from our idealizations and into the question, "What is true, beautiful, and good?"

That's what you're going to do, anyway, so consider that a warding-off of those who might get zapped by the flames of idealism and Romanticism (which are *far* from dead in our cultures) if they are lured in that direction by your abstract nouns.

What a great thing to study! Thanks for the graphic--I'm a spatial thinker, myself, and that sort of thing helps me get what you're driving at, readily.

Cheers!
PGE