So I wandered into a chat room on Sunday (I am practically never in chat rooms) where someone was asking a Catholic about why its better than so-called "plain" Christianity. As a tangent, there was a discussion about how to know something was true. This led me to talk about different approaches to knowledge and how these might expand a limited notion of truth, with an example of beauty revealing truth.
Tuesday I stopped by the library. I was looking for a book by an author whose work I recently read, but I didn't find one. While in that section I saw a book by the current Pope. I've never read anything by Benedict XVI, but I've heard he is quite intelligent, so I figured I'd just skim through to see how he writes and what ideas he find important. I figured he leads over a billion Christians so it might be worth looking at. It was a short book called On the Way to Jesus Christ. It contained a series of short essays developed from talks, including this one, which was titled "Wounded by the Arrow of Beauty" in the book.
Now, I have never really thought seriously about truth providing a window into beauty. The idea is at least as old as Greek philosophy and has inspired movements like Romanticism, but I've never really pondered it. Not until that night in the chat. So let's look at some key parts of Benedict's speech.
So what example of beauty do you think shines with the truth of your faith?
Tuesday I stopped by the library. I was looking for a book by an author whose work I recently read, but I didn't find one. While in that section I saw a book by the current Pope. I've never read anything by Benedict XVI, but I've heard he is quite intelligent, so I figured I'd just skim through to see how he writes and what ideas he find important. I figured he leads over a billion Christians so it might be worth looking at. It was a short book called On the Way to Jesus Christ. It contained a series of short essays developed from talks, including this one, which was titled "Wounded by the Arrow of Beauty" in the book.
Now, I have never really thought seriously about truth providing a window into beauty. The idea is at least as old as Greek philosophy and has inspired movements like Romanticism, but I've never really pondered it. Not until that night in the chat. So let's look at some key parts of Benedict's speech.
What Plato said, and, more than 1,500 years later, Cabasilas, has nothing to do with superficial aestheticism and irrationalism or with the flight from clarity and the importance of reason. The beautiful is knowledge certainly, but, in a superior form, since it arouses man to the real greatness of the truth. Here Cabasilas has remained entirely Greek, since he puts knowledge first when he says, "In fact it is knowing that causes love and gives birth to it. ... Since this knowledge is sometimes very ample and complete and at other times imperfect, it follows that the love potion has the same effect" (cf. ibid.).
He is not content to leave this assertion in general terms. In his characteristically rigorous thought, he distinguishes between two kinds of knowledge: knowledge through instruction which remains, so to speak, "second hand" and does not imply any direct contact with reality itself. The second type of knowledge, on the other hand, is knowledge through personal experience, through a direct relationship with the reality. "Therefore we do not love it to the extent that it is a worthy object of love, and since we have not perceived the very form itself we do not experience its proper effect."True knowledge is being struck by the arrow of Beauty that wounds man, moved by reality, "how it is Christ himself who is present and in an ineffable way disposes and forms the souls of men" (cf. ibid.).
Being struck and overcome by the beauty of Christ is a more real, more profound knowledge than mere rational deduction. Of course we must not underrate the importance of theological reflection, of exact and precise theological thought; it remains absolutely necessary. But to move from here to disdain or to reject the impact produced by the response of the heart in the encounter with beauty as a true form of knowledge would impoverish us and dry up our faith and our theology. We must rediscover this form of knowledge; it is a pressing need of our time.
The encounter with the beautiful can become the wound of the arrow that strikes the heart and in this way opens our eyes...
...it reveals the beautiful to us, or at least a ray of it. In this way we are brought into contact with the power of the truth.
I know some will say this is a coincidence and some will say it is wink of God, but I also think either way this is an important and under-valued element of Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. Ratzinger then went on to talk about the beauty of the lives of Catholics such as the saints. I've said here before that my own interest in Catholicism has largely been stoked by devotional aspects like the rosary as well as the life and writings of people like Fr. Thomas Merton, Fr. Thomas Keating, Br. Wayne Teasdale, Br. David Steindl-Rast, etc (who appear to be continuing the tradition of people like the desert fathers, John of the Cross, etc). He is not content to leave this assertion in general terms. In his characteristically rigorous thought, he distinguishes between two kinds of knowledge: knowledge through instruction which remains, so to speak, "second hand" and does not imply any direct contact with reality itself. The second type of knowledge, on the other hand, is knowledge through personal experience, through a direct relationship with the reality. "Therefore we do not love it to the extent that it is a worthy object of love, and since we have not perceived the very form itself we do not experience its proper effect."True knowledge is being struck by the arrow of Beauty that wounds man, moved by reality, "how it is Christ himself who is present and in an ineffable way disposes and forms the souls of men" (cf. ibid.).
Being struck and overcome by the beauty of Christ is a more real, more profound knowledge than mere rational deduction. Of course we must not underrate the importance of theological reflection, of exact and precise theological thought; it remains absolutely necessary. But to move from here to disdain or to reject the impact produced by the response of the heart in the encounter with beauty as a true form of knowledge would impoverish us and dry up our faith and our theology. We must rediscover this form of knowledge; it is a pressing need of our time.
The encounter with the beautiful can become the wound of the arrow that strikes the heart and in this way opens our eyes...
...it reveals the beautiful to us, or at least a ray of it. In this way we are brought into contact with the power of the truth.
So what example of beauty do you think shines with the truth of your faith?
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