Sensus Divinitatis Publishing » Aesthetics

Christian Aesthetics vs. Nihilism – The Urge to Create and the Urge to Destroy

Eric — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:00:12 +0000

This past Sunday night, as I was pulling into my driveway after a fantastic post-worship fellowship time with some friends, I had a sudden urge. An urge to build something. Something real and beautiful. Something with bricks and mortar. Something that would be hard to build, that would involve a certain degree of physical suffering, with dirty hands, and scraped knees. Something that, in the end, would teach me something about life and about myself, and about my place in God’s world. My own piece of culture to His glory.

As this urge passed, my mind immediately jumped to a line from the movie Fight Club:

I felt like destroying something beautiful.
- The Narrator

Those who have seen the movie will understand both the motivation and manifestation of the Narrator’s desire.

The next day I tried to understand where my urge to “build something beautiful” came from. I am good at putting furniture together, but I am not what you’d call “good with my hands” in any sense. My crafts are more of the digital variety. But as I read more about the Covenanters, about Christian aesthetics and culture building in general, I have lately been overcome with a desire to produce something real. I am not really sure what yet, maybe it’s as simple as piece of pottery, or as complex as a treehouse, or any number of things in between.

Whatever my piece of culture turns out to be, it’s clear to me that the Narrator’s urge to destroy beauty is the natural consequence of his nihilistic outlook on life. To the nihilist, the idea of beauty, of value, is a false one, invented and perpetuated by man over the centuries. Therefore, the destruction of beauty (or anything with value) is actually an act of liberation from the prison of human constructs. Conversely, a person who understands that we live in God’s world, and that beauty is not a human idea, but proceeds from God’s very essence, will try as much as possible to reflect that beauty in the world around him, either through art, music, child rearing, planting a garden, building a website, or whatever, as a way to point to true liberation: new creation life in Jesus Christ.

In the battle between creating and destroying, what side are you working for? I would humbly suggest that you build something beautiful, to the glory of God.

Herman Bavinck – Beauty As A Gift From God

Eric — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 13:00:08 +0000

I am still plowing through Herman Bavinck’s Essays on Religion, Science, and Society, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. If you enjoy theology and philosophy, this book is for you. While learning about the Covenanters and the more general foundations for their thinking on a Christian’s role in the world around him, I somehow took a left turn and wound up reading about Christian aesthetics. Providentially for me, the aforementioned Bavinck book has a short essay entitled “Of Beauty and Aesthetics”, in which Bavinck tries to briefly put forth a framework for thinking about aesthetics, from a Christian perspective. Of course, we realize that God IS true beauty, and the only beauty in the world is the reflected beauty of the Lord. It’s a simple but powerful thought.

Bavinck wraps up his essay tying the experience of beauty to the grace of God, in a beautiful and moving section:

And the beauty always awakens in us images, moods, and affections that otherwise would have remained dormant and not even known to us. Beauty thus discloses us to ourselves and also grants us another, new glimpse into nature and humanity. It deepens, broadens, enriches our inner life, and it lifts us for a moment above the dreary, sinful, sad reality; beauty also brings cleansing, liberation, revival to our burdened and dejected hearts.

We cannot express in words the valuable gift the Creator of all things has granted to His children. He is the Lord of glory and spreads his beauty lavishly before our eyes in all His works. His name is precious in the whole earth, and while He did not leave us without a witness, He also fills our hearts with happiness when we observe that glory. Beauty and the sense of beauty respond to each other, as the knowable object and the knowing subject, the religio objectiva [responding] to the religio subjectiva. Truly, awareness of beauty cannot be fully explained as “empathy”; when observing and enjoying true beauty, it is not man who bestows his affections and moods on the observed object, but it is God’s glory that meets and enlightens us in our perceptive spirits through nature and art. Humanity and the world are related because they are both related to God. The same reason, the same spirit, the same order lives in both. Beauty is the harmony that still shines through the chaos in the world; by God’s grace, beauty is observed, felt, translated by artists; it is prophecy and guarantee that this world is not destined for ruin but for glory – a glory for which there is a longing deep in every human heart.

The next time you are enjoying a beautiful sunset, or strolling through a museum looking at classic art, thank God for the capacity to truly experience beauty.

Christian Aesthetics Resources

Eric — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 16:00:26 +0000

A few friends contributed to this list of good resources on Christian aesthetics.

Any other good links I missed?

Reformed Culture Building And Beauty

Eric — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 15:09:23 +0000

This week I began reading Douglas Jones and Douglas Wilson’s Angels In The Architecture for a small group study. Previously we had read Plowing In Hope: Towards a Christian Theology of Culture by Bruce Hegeman, which, while I did not agree with everything the author postulated, I found to be very helpful and thought provoking. There seems to be a focus, at least in the worship circles (as opposed to social circles) myself and the other members of Sensus Divinitatis Publishing are in, on what it means to live a fully-orbed Reformed, Christian life. How does my faith affect the way I work? The way I raise my family? The way I watch a movie? The way I exercise? The way I enjoy a stroll on the boardwalk at sunset? If I call Jesus Christ my Lord, then He is Lord over every aspect of my life, not just what happens on Sundays.

What we have been trying to work out in particular are the implications of that concept for culture building. What would a Christian culture look like? Mr. Jones and Mr. Wilson tell us to follow the beautiful, that where we find beauty, we will find God, because beauty in this life is and can only be the reflected beauty of the One who IS beauty itself.

Given the choice between modernism and Medieval Protestantism, how shall we decide? Many strategies have gone before us. But why not judge the respective visions by their beauty? Which vision tells the better story? Which has poetic grace and rich color? Most us realize the legitimate place of syllogisms and rational grounds. But the rational rarely satisfies even modernists. Pascal explained that “every man is almost always led to believe not through proof, but through that which is attractive. This way is low, unworthy and alien, and so everyone refuses to acknowledge it.” All of us are led on by beauty. Pascal thinks that this is base, but it seems to be the way God designed us. We can never know enough arguments to be omniscient, but we can judge fruit. And beauty is fruit.

It seems that, for the authors, beauty is a key to truth. This idea is one I am interested to explore more. David Bentley Hart, in The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth, makes a similar claim, that to a postmodern culture, the beauty (and peace) of the Christian story can be used as a convincing proof of it’s truth. Food for thought indeed.