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It would seem that non-Trinitarian ontologies cannot secure a notion of beauty, and this seems to be the case because of the tragic ontologies that dominate non-Christian thought.
1) Beauty is fittingness, a matter of harmonics. Thus, beauty requires that there be plurality. Need at least two for things to "fit" and "be fitting."
2) Non-Christian ontologies either see difference as a contamination of an original unity (Derrida's Plato), and hence ugly; or see difference as violent and irresolvable, in which case too beauty is lost. Whereas Trinitarian theology affirms that difference is primal, but that it is harmonized difference.
3) In Platonizing systems of thought, the One is beauty. But this is still problematic, and not just because one cannot harmonize with itself. It is problematic also because either a) the viewer of the beauty is absorbed into the One, leaving no one to experience the beauty or b) the viewer/experiencer of beauty is NOT absorbed, which means he remains a contaminating supplement. We are left with a beauty that no one can appreciate, or a beauty tarnished by the presence of the "other" alongside the one.
4) The best such Platonizing systems can offer is a longing for beauty that is never realized. Whereas in Christianity, the believer is caught up in the harmonics of Trinitarian beauty.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Tuesday, May 25, 2004 at 11:19 AM
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