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Here are some more excerpts from David Bentley Hart's remarkable Beauty of the Infinite.
"The Bible ... depicts creation at once as a kind of deliberative invention ('Let us make...') and, consequently, as a kind of play, a kind of artistry for the sake of artistry. This is expressed with exquisite delicacy by the figure of Wisdom in the book of Proverbs, at play like a small child before the eyes of God, as his delight in all his works; and expressed equally gracefully by the image of the stars singing and the angels rejoicing at creation in the book of Job."
The "beauty of the Trinity, this orderliness of God's perichoresis, is the very movement of delight, of the divine persons within one another, and so the analogy that lies between worldly and divine beauty is a kind of analogia delectationis."
God's pronouncement of creation as "good" was an aesthetic judgment, and "it is only with sin that the goodness of creation must be conceptually separated into solitary transcedental categories, and only with sin that creation is seen to posses a distinct ethical axis. One might almost say that the separate category of the moral is an intrusion upon the aesthetic joy that is the upwelling source of creaturely existence, as is a separate category of truth once the paradisal experience of divine love in the blameless beauty of creation is lost."
Hamann, he says, "to a degree perhaps unparalleled in Christian thought" saw "the true knowledge of God in creation - the true analogy Elay in a childlike rapture before the concrete and poetic creativity of God, in the task of translating the language of that creativity, and in the rearticulation of that language in poetic invention."
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Thursday, June 17, 2004 at 10:09 AM
Permission is given to use material on this site, provided the source is cited, blog entries are republished in full, and the author is notified in advance.
1 & 2 Kings
Brazos Theological Commentary
The Promise Of His Appearing: An Exposition Of Second Peter
A Great Mystery: Fourteen Wedding Sermons
Deep Comedy: Trinity, Tragedy, And Hope In Western Literature
Miniatures & Morals: The Christian Novels of Jane Austen
The Priesthood of the Plebs: A Theology of Baptism
A Son To Me: An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel
From Silence to Song: The Davidic Liturgical Revolution
Ascent to Love: A Guide to Dante's Divine Comedy
Blessed Are the Hungry: Meditations on the Lord's Supper
A House For My Name: A Survey of the Old Testament
Heroes of the City of Man: A Christian Guide to Select Ancient Literature
Brightest Heaven of Invention: A Christian Guide To Six Shakespeare Plays
Wise Words: Family Stories That Bring the Proverbs to Life
The Kingdom and the Power: Rediscovering the Centrality of the Church
