Tag: gtb

Good True Beautiful: Beatific Vision

As a follow-up to last book club discussion, this post shows the relationship between the beatific vision and the GTB. Quoting from Wikipedia:

“In the philosophy of Plato, the beatific vision is the vision of the Good. In Plato’s Allegory of the cave, which appears in the Republic Book 7 (514a – 520a), he writes (speaking, as he does in many of his works, through the character of Socrates):

‘My opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good (the Good) appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual.’ (517b,c)

“Thus, for Plato, the Good appears to correspond to God in Christian theology.

“St. Augustine expressed views similar to Plato’s on this subject, and was familiar with Plato’s ideas, most likely via Neoplatonist writings.”

Christianity

The entry goes on to include the verse from I Corinithians.

“In the 13th century, the philosopher-theologian Thomas Aquinas described the ultimate end of a human life as consisting in the intellectual Beatific Vision of God’s essence after death. see Summa Theologiae

“According to Aquinas, the Beatific Vision surpasses both faith and reason. Rational knowledge does not fully satisfy humankind’s innate desire to know God, since reason is primarily concerned with sensible objects, and thus can only infer its conclusions about God indirectly. Summa Theologiae

“The theological virtue of faith, too, is incomplete, since Aquinas thinks that it always implies some imperfection in the understanding. The believer does not wish to remain merely on the level of faith, but to understand what is believed. Summa Contra Gentiles

“Thus only the fullness of the Beatific Vision satisfies this fundamental desire of the human soul to know God. Quoting St Paul, Aquinas notes ‘We see now in a glass darkly, but then face to face’ (i Cor. 13:12). The Beatific Vision is the final reward for those saints elect by God to partake in and ‘enjoy the same happiness wherewith God is happy, seeing Him in the way which He sees Himself’ in the next life. Summa Contra Gentiles”

Keats

“To Autumn”

Grammar Stage Discussion:   What does the poem say?  Harvest images: apples, gourds, hazelnuts,  Season change:  song like other seasons sung by gnats, crickets, lambs, robin.  Sensory images:  small, hear, sight, touch, smell.  Form:  11 lines with ABAB CDED FFG, iambic pentameter, define subject the speculation and musing on the subject.

Dialectic:  What does this mean?  Celebration of autumn, Season of abundance and blessings, picturesque.  Defense of autumn – as worthy as other seasons.  Going blindly into death – death imagery, stubble plains, mourn, sinking, bleating, soft dying day, lives or dies, wailful choir, lives or dies.

Rhetoric:  What is your opinion?  Celebrate where you are – don’t worry about death.  Beauty – thinks about life.   Maturity – this isn’t a bad season, a natural season, be where you are,  appreciate where you are, this isn’t forever, fleeting autumn glory, fleeting but beautiful.  Celebrate accomplishment even though it’s not over.

“Ode on a Grecian Urn”

Grammar Stage Discussion:   What does the poem say?  Unheard music is sweeter.  Greek music of the spheres, music played and depicted.  Back and forth – frozen in time, yet timeless, stopped between.  Fascination with unknown…what was going on, what were the sounds, what….?  Beauty is truth, truth is beauty.  Silence of scene is begging questions.  Vase shall outlive us.

Dialectic:  What does this mean?  Keats experience with urn.  Reading into the object of the story it tells as if real people (not gods).   Can Keats answer these questions?  He tries and does, but can’t fully.  Pinnacle of beauty frozen (captured) never to die.  Keats believes that truth is beauty and beauty is truth because he calls the urn “friend to man”.  Many questions are asked of the vase, but the vase only responds once to a question not even asked.

Rhetoric:  What is your opinion?   What is this vase that speaks and answers questions that it is not asked?  Not Jesus – too pointless for him,  a tangent for truth.  Beauty is a component of truth.  (Creation cost him nothing.)  Not pointing to God.  Beauty and truth are not equal.

Define terms:

Good = beneficial in some way, positive, enriches, classical definition is the end to which everything points

Truth = Jesus, accurate, real, it matches with how things really are, uses 5 senses, classical definition is that which corresponds to reality

Beauty = pleasing, classic definition is that which delights the senses, that which pleases when experienced.

Beatific vision occurs when we get to heaven and see God, we will see the whole of God – Good, Truth and Beauty.  Do these three characteristics relate to the trinity?  Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, the life.”  Perhaps the Father is Goodness and the Spirit is Beauty.  Beauty is more mysterious, subjective, intangible.

Challenge:  The chief end of man is to glorify God and we do that through constant worship.  Try worshiping God through the avenue of beauty – something pleasing to the senses, to the soul, something timeless, more focused on the Spirit, spontaneous, less controlled.  We can’t control the wind, but we can put ourselves in a position where we can feel it when it blows.