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?
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