Ordinary Beauty: Everyday Blessings
Publication Date
6-28-2005
Publication
The Christian Century
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Calvin says somewhere that each of us is an actor on a stage and God is the audience. That metaphor has always interested me, because it makes us artists of our behavior, and the reaction of God to us might be thought of as aesthetic rather than morally judgmental in the ordinary sense.”
This reflection by Pastor John Ames, found in Marilynne Robinson’s novel Gilead, suggests that Protestants should consider beauty just as essential to Christian life and understanding as those other medieval transcendentals, truth and goodness. Roman Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar has written powerfully on the significance of theological aesthetics, but for Protestants beauty remains a marginal category.
That is our loss, especially as we suffer from enough moral judgmentalism from both the right and the left to last several lifetimes. What might it mean to live as if God’s reactions were aesthetic rather than morally judgmental? How might this shape our own reactions?
Recommended Citation
Jones, Gregory, "Ordinary Beauty: Everyday Blessings" (2005). Public Intellectual Writing. 122.
https://repository.belmont.edu/gregoryjones_public/122
