#005: FOUNDATIONS - 3
#005: FOUNDATIONS - 3
Pursuing the Good, the True, & the Beautiful
This is the third post in our first series here on the foundations that make up Crushing Serpents. Each foundation comes from our tagline:
“Crushing Serpents is a Substack on Following the Way of Jesus, Resisting the Enemy, & Pursuing the Good, the True, & the Beautiful.”
Our second foundation is Pursuing the Good, the True, & The Beautiful.
Once again, this is not an exhaustive exploration of what is known in Church History, Theology, and Philosophy as the Transcendentals (more on that below). Almost more than any of the other posts in the FOUNDATIONS series, this is a basic introduction to the topic. This post is an attempt to lay out an overview of Pursuing the Good, the True, & the Beautiful as it pertains to the vision and future conversations of this Substack.
What are the Transcendentals?
Without getting into too deep of a history lesson in theology and philosophy, the Transcendentals are the three attributes of God that are essential to who God is: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. God is the source of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. He does not possess or own these things, he is them. They flow out of him because they are essential to his Person and Character. According to the Bible and Judeo-Christian history, God is himself Transcendent; an uncreated Person who created the cosmos and exists outside and above creation. Yet, God is not entirely separate from his creation - his character and personality are written into the fabric of his creation, as the heart of a painter is laid bare in his art. All of creation points to and reflects the heart and nature of the Creator (Genesis 1:26-27, Romans 1:13-23, etc.). Thus, these Transcendental realities of who God is are present and reflected in everything created to some extent. Truth, Goodness, and Beauty are foundational realities that permeate the cosmos.
Another core conviction of Christian theology is that as God’s Image Bearers, we humans are made to interact with and experience God and His Transcendence. Humans are made with a purpose and function: to be God’s Imagers in the world - reflecting his character and nature into creation (Goodness). We are made for intimate communion with God, an experiential and intellectual knowing of our Creator, to know and be known (Truth). And we are made to love and be loved (Beauty). To be an image of God is to experience, participate in, and reflect God’s essence, nature, and character - which is True, Good, and Beautiful. Thus, these transcendental realities are not only apart of Reality but of what it means to be human and to follow Jesus. Because we are made for God, we don’t just think about and analyze these realities, we ultimately long to experience them in a real, lasting way. As St. Augustine said, “You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You” (Confessions).
To be human is to seek to know and live in truth, in accordance with reality, and flourish. To be human is to desire to know and live out our purpose; to be good. To be human is to desire to be captivated and enchanted by beauty, to have our emotions and desires fulfilled with that which is most meaningful, satisfying, and beautiful. The follower of Jesus, wishing to take hold of life and life to the full that Jesus has made available to him/her, will ultimately pursue Goodness, Truth, and Beauty in every area of his/her life. Jesus has taken the Transcendent reality of God’s Person and made it clear, palpable, and intimately present in a way that it was not before. The promise of the Resurrection at Easter (and in the coming New Creation) and the pouring out of God’s Spirit on Pentecost is that we are restored to union with God to experience who He is.
A quick note before we continue. If you are a low-church, 21st century American Protestant like me, this may all feel like new language and ideas. That probably has largely to do with the non-denominational, charismatic, evangelicals movement of the last 100 years and its lack of emphasis on church history, philosophy, and historical theology. That is not a judgement, just an observation. Classical philosophy and movements in church history are just not emphasized. If you want to learn more about this idea of Transcendentals and Christian Philosophy (and more importantly what their bearings on our lives in this cultural moment are) the best place to start in my opinion, is the works of Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft (who is brilliant) and C.S. Lewis (who you probably know, also brilliant). Both are beautiful writers who synthesize complex ideas to draw out clarity and practicality for us laymen.
Now that we have laid a basic groundwork, we will take each Transcendental briefly in turn and consider how they relate to the life of a follower of Jesus, and ultimately the role this angle will take in the conversations on Crushing Serpents.
Truth is a Person
John’s Gospel records Jesus as saying, “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6 NIV), and “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32 ESV).
Truth is not just some distant, cold reality that one can analyze. There’s some truth in that; it’s not less than that, but according to Jesus it is much, much more. Truth is a person - it’s Him. If all we’ve written above is to be trusted, then Jesus is right here. Truth is a reality contained in, sustained by, and flowing out of the Person of God - who Jesus is the embodiment and incarnation of. This should change how we view Truth and the role it plays in our discipleship to Jesus.
Modernists overemphasized a cold, rational, scientific version of Truth - in modernism and scientism truth is only what can be manipulated, tested, and ratified. It must be proven. That is one aspect of truth. But in making this the center, they expelled and denied other ways in which humans interact with truth - not just through logic and reasoning, but also emotion and beauty, through action, ritual, and experience. In this way, people have thought they could own and employ truth. Deconstructionism and post-modernism critiqued this idea of truth, and in my estimation (I’m painting with broad strokes here), swung the pendulum too far in the other direction. But that is not within the scope of this podcast. The Church has critiques of both while acknowledging the goodness and truth in each.
This modernist mindset seeped into the church as well - rather than chewing the meat and spitting out the bones, the Church seemed to wholesale sign on to modernity. But if the Bible and Church History and Theology got it right - then this reduction of Truth is wrong. Truth is not an object to control and wield, but a reality to be submitted to and lived in accordance with (a description I got from
in his talk on this - go check out ! His content is amazing, but he’s an even better guy, which is rare. His conversations and art are gateways into a richer, deeper faith.)For example, gravity is a scientific reality - it is True. I cannot manipulate and control gravity, but rather I must submit to it. If I were to believe that I could fly, and then jumped off my roof trying to be Superman, reality and truth are what I would hit five seconds later. Likewise, people are also not commodities and objects to be used, manipulated, and controlled for personal comfort and gain. In the healthiest relationships, we submit to the reality of who the person is and love them as they are, regardless of what they can do for us.
Jesus is the same way - He is Truth. He is a reality and a person we must reckon with. The life of the Christian seeks to do what Jesus said in John 8:31-32: “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (ESV). To know Truth is not just some cold, rational knowing - knowing the Truth is grounded in communion and abiding in Jesus. And, according to Jesus, knowing Him as Truth sets us free. We are made to know Truth in the unchanging character and presence of God from whom Truth and knowledge flows. At Crushing Serpents, I hope to have conversations that lead us into Truth and the Presence of Him who sets us free. Not Truth for its own sake, but Truth in the relational, transformative reality of Jesus, God with us.
Goodness
Goodness is about purpose and design, morality and ethics. The question of goodness is about evaluating if something accomplishes the purpose it was made for. What does a good car do? Drive. What does a hammer do? Hammer.
What does a good human, a good follower of Jesus, do? Love God and others well and image God on earth.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, though, but Christians (and especially Christian leaders) seem to have lost sight of what it means to be good - just take a look at social media and the news. Scandal, abuse, oppression, dysfunction, disordered desires, vices hailed as virtue, the degradation of community, the deconstruction (I’m using this in the philosophical sense) of orthodoxy, the list goes on and on. Confusion, aimlessness, shame, doubt, sin, abuse, loneliness, corruption - you get it.
I think at least one aspect of the problem as it has arisen in our culture is that we have largely separated out the areas of truth, beauty, and goodness off into their own sectors - public and private life, personal and political, objective and subjective. Belief, beauty, and religion are private and personal and separated off from the real, grounded areas of science, politics, work, etc. But does this work? I don’t think so. C.S. Lewis describes what I think many of us feel:
“The two hemispheres of my mind were in the sharpest conflict. On the one side a many-islanded sea of poetry and myth; on the other a glib and shallow ‘rationalism.’ Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I thought to be grim and meaningless.”1
If this does not describe the reality of most Christians in America, I don’t know what does. We face this immense chasm between our hearts, the seat and deep source of our desires, and our brain, that supposedly rational and logical part of us. We have divorced our hearts from our minds. We have tricked ourselves into believing that the only things that are real are scientific and mathematical. And, though we feel and inexplicable pull towards these things and wish they were real, we’ve accepted that the arts, desire, emotions, beauty, love, morality those are all not real, only subjective emotional experiences that help us make sense of a hard life. We have elevated truth and denigrated beauty. It is because of this, I think, that, though we might have an intellectual vision of the good, and may even desperately desire to be good, we are not good. We don’t know how to be good, because we’ve divorced truth and beauty. Goodness does not come only from information about what is good, but from transformation through beautiful encounter with goodness itself - in God and in others.
We have equated knowledge with progress, information exchange with transformation. We think because we know and believe the right things that we are good. But the sad reality is that just because I know that I need to work out multiple times a week, and even the best practices and rhythms to be successful at it, doesn’t mean I automatically do it. Just because I know I should love my neighbor, that it’s true, doesn’t mean that I am living it out.
I see Christians live and think this way all the time. But following Jesus is not just a set of doctrines to believe; it is also a way of life. It is not just Truth, or knowledge, but goodness. How many Christians do you know that profess to hold to the orthodox confessions of Christian faith and yet remain angry, anxious, bigoted, close-minded, impatient, un-loving, un-compassionate, enslaved to sinful passions, and downright mean after years of attending church and following Jesus? It’s sadly all too common. And this is not judgement - I am not perfect, I do not always live out the good life that Jesus has called me to. I don’t always live a life that is submitted to Jesus, the Truth and the Way.
Yet we are to be conformed to the image of Christ. The good news is that because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, His Spirit is in us to transform and renew us into His image. It means we are now enabled and empowered by the very power and Person who raised Jesus from the dead to be what we were made to be: good humans who love well and image God. In the conversation on Crushing Serpents, I hope to recast a vision of the good as the Bible and the Church down through history have shown us. I hope to reconnect truth and beauty in such a way that you encounter goodness and begin to see a path forward.
Beauty Will Save the World
Dostoevsky, one of the most brilliant novelists of all time, and a Christian, once wrote that Beauty will save the world. At first glance this sounds naive at best and blind and ignorant at worst. Beauty will save the world? Get real.
But what is left in a world that has become cynical at the lack of goodness and the presence of evil, a world where for some truth is a weapon for control and oppression, and where others have abandoned it all together and embraced harmful ideologies and biases?
When we have become cynical about goodness and virtue, and doubtful and closed off to truth and reality, nothing can bring us back from the brink except beauty. When we are surrounded by evil, seeing only abuse and corruption, when we are inundated with lies, bought into to systems and views that shroud the truth, beauty comes as an apocalyptic, prophetic witness to shake up our views of reality and show us what is possible again. Beauty reveals, enchants, and arouses our hearts, enabling them to see and hope again for goodness and truth.
In this cultural moment that is rightly struggling with truth and goodness, beauty is the salve and the apologetic that can pierce to the depths of our doubting, cynical, wounded hearts. Beauty alone can capture our souls and release wonder, spark hope, and re-enchant the world around us. To be good we must first be caught up in a beautiful vision of what is good.
Jesus is that Beauty that will save (and is saving) the world - his life, his death, his resurrection, who he was (is) and what he did (is doing). A life that looks lies and evil in the eyes and dares to live for goodness and truth is beautiful. It captures our hearts, reignites possibility and hope, and lets the scaled fall from our eyes that we might see truth. At Crushing Serpents, I hope to constantly call us to see, taste, wonder at, and experience the beauty of Jesus and His Way.
Let’s review:
There are three transcendentals which are foundational to Reality, to who God is. When we engage in and pursue these realities in our lives, we are ultimately driving at the life we were made for: intimate communion with God, ultimate joy and purpose in His design for us, and love and life in His kingdom. The Transcendentals are:
Truth - which has to do with Reason & Knowing
Goodness - which has to do with Purpose, Morality, Ethics
Beauty - which has to do with Desire, Emotions, Aesthetics
Each are foundational to who God is, and thus permeate His creation. As we pursue Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, we can encounter and know God and be transformed into who we were made to be in Christ. As human beings, we are made for and all desire to pursue and live in the Truth. We are made to and desire to be Good and see Goodness done in our lives and the lives of those around us. And we all desire to be moved deeply by that which satisfies, for our broken hearts to be revived and set aflame again by that which is Beautiful. The conversations on Crushing Serpents are geared towards that: engaging in and plumbing the depths of Goodness, Truth, and Beauty wherever we find it - because it all ultimately flows from and points us back to Him. He himself is Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, and we are made for intimate communion with Him. As we follow the Way of Jesus, we resist the enemy and crush the snake’s head as we move from slavery, lies, and shame into goodness, truth, and beauty where freedom and love are found in Him.
May you know Jesus in His Truth.
May you be empowered by His Holy Spirit to live well according to His purpose and design for you.
May your heart be captivate and conquered in the experience of the Beauty of His Love.
And in Him and His Goodness, Truth, and Beauty, may you experience life and life to the full.
Hic sunt dracones.
C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life” (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), 170.