05.19.06
the beauty of truth
Scot McKnight thinks aloud about what he would do differently if he were beginning his academic career again. No, he wouldn’t read more Barth or dip more often into Augustine. Instead, he writes that he would read the best writers, and he refers us to Joseph Epstein, CS Lewis and others. Methinks others would call us to Anne Lamott, Dickens and the like.
Personally, I keep a few poets near my desk: Tennyson, Browning, Hopkins, Eliot. More recently I acquired WH Auden and EE Cummings. I know McLaren would add Wendell Berry to the list of favorites.
Scot rightly points out that anyone can write a theological essay. Not everyone can write it with grace and beauty, in such a way that it is not only true, but a pleasure to read. The obvious question: in what way is truth related to beauty? If something is true, but not beautiful, is it less true or just less appealing? John tells us that the Word of God appeared, full of grace and truth…
When I was in bible college everyone was using the NASB. I had come from KJV and I found NASB lacked beauty. It felt sterile. It was like a black and white photograph that had once been in full color, or a symphony heard over a transistor radio. I foiund I couldn’t make the switch for reading, even though I used NASB for study. After searching around, I settled on RSV because it captured poetically what other versions had lost. The language of the RSV came to me in 5.1 surround, where others were in mono. I came to realize that beauty and truth belong together, and that beauty is a special echo of God’s life. I also came to understand that when truth is divorced from beauty, it loses something essential.
As I writer, whether I am writing a book review, a theological essay, or just thinking in print, I try to remember that beauty and truth belong together. When I manage to facilitate that relationship, the words I write have more power and are more likely to connect on a personal level with my readers. Ultimately I think this relates to the incarnation itself, where Word and Spirit embrace. Word.. the logia, the rational dimension.. and Spirit.. the power, the energy, the life. When these two embrace, we have something qualitiatively different than when they stand alone.
Isn’t it interesting that much of our Scripture is written in poetry, and nearly all the prophets are also poets?
Many years ago Dorothy Sayers wrote an essay explicitly connecting the Trinity to the creative act, as Idea, Energy and Power in her book, “The Mind of the Maker.” To Sayers, there is no truly creative act unless the Father, Son and the Spirit work together, and she argues that art is explicity Trinitarian.
“For most of us, there is only the unattended
Moment, the moment in and out of time,
The distraction fit, lost in a shaft of sunlight,
The wild thyme unseen, or the winter lightening
Or the waterfall, or music heard so deeply
That is it not heard at all, but you are the music
While the music lasts..” T S Eliot
