Christendom is not simply a collection Christians living together in society. Rather, Christendom is the institutions, literature, manners, works of arts, values – in short, the entire fabric of the culture emanating out of Christian civilization.
As Christian belief has worked its way through Western culture, conquering the forces of barbarism and paganism, one very noticeable consequence has been in the type of art that Christendom has produced. The rise of oil painting, the Sonata, the sonnet, the symphony, the opera and dozens of other creative enterprises have all been products of Christian culture.
This is no coincidence, for many of the aesthetic norms and genres associated with Western art came as a direct result of the Christian worldview being deeply saturated in the fabric of our cultural ethos.
Although the doctrine of the image of God as well as the doctrine of God’s common grace mean that unbelievers are capable of producing artifacts which truly reflect Divine beauty, over long periods of time non-Christian cultures generally tend towards ugliness. They tend towards the ugliness that comes as a corollary of the relativism necessitated by the rejection of any final standard of truth.
This is no coincidence, for many of the aesthetic norms and genres associated with Western art came as a direct result of the Christian worldview being deeply saturated in the fabric of our cultural ethos.
Although the doctrine of the image of God as well as the doctrine of God’s common grace mean that unbelievers are capable of producing artifacts which truly reflect Divine beauty, over long periods of time non-Christian cultures generally tend towards ugliness. They tend towards the ugliness that comes as a corollary of the relativism necessitated by the rejection of any final standard of truth.
Unfortunately many Christians today have been influenced by the pagan notion that aesthetic categories are subjective. Hence, a generation of young people are growing up who are unequipped to defend the great works of Western art as having any objective primacy over and against the ugliness of contemporary paganism. While rejecting relativism in ethics (“there are no absolutes when it comes to right and wrong”) and relativism in truth (“you have your truth and I have my truth”), many Christians have unwittingly embraced aesthetic relativism, unthinkingly repeating maxims like, “what is beautiful to you may not be beautiful to me,” and “beauty exists in the eye of the beholder.”
The following resources aim to debunk this relativistic myth by establishing, first, that beauty is an objective quality and, second, that when it comes to matters of aesthetics, a the worldview of a culture has a direct bearing on artistic production and notions of beauty.
The following resources aim to debunk this relativistic myth by establishing, first, that beauty is an objective quality and, second, that when it comes to matters of aesthetics, a the worldview of a culture has a direct bearing on artistic production and notions of beauty.
- The Objectivity of Beauty (part 1)
- The Objectivity of Beauty (part 2)
- The Objectivity of Beauty Part 3 (Beauty in Scripture)
- The Objectivity of Beauty Part 4
- The Objectivity of Beauty Part 5
- The Objectivity of Beauty Part 6 (From Modernism to Romanticism)
- The Objectivity of Beauty Part 7 (from Romanticism to Existentialism)
- The Objectivity of Beauty Part 8 (Postmodernism)
- The Objectivity of Beauty Part 9 (Postmodernism & Art)
- The Objectivity of Beauty Part 10 (Postmodernism and the Pursuit of Ugliness)
- The Objectivity of Beauty Part 11 (Beauty and the Biblical Worldview)
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1 comment:
Good post Robin. Culture is at root based in religion (cult). The interaction of religion and culture has to do with value and worth - hence "Worth-ship" we ascribe a certain "worth" to God and His word by the time, talent, and treasure enlist in advancing His reputation. The intersection of God and all cultures involve defining the good, the true, and the beautiful. This is the trinity of all cultures. What we need to understand that certain things are not "conceivable" except under a Christian worldview. One glaring example is "Universe" - Christians produced the concept of a Universe and also a "University" because we believe in One God. Pagans must believe in a "multi-verse" just as they must believe in multi-culturalism and the relativity of all truth, goodness, and beauty.
Fr. Phil+
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