That Which Is Good And Beautiful: Beauty and Hope in a Difficult World

By Lester Bundy

It seems that the world is continually being bombarded with bad news. Terrorism, riots, civil unrest, war, one despairs: is there no good news? This book proclaims that there is good news: that there is great hope, joy, and beauty in God's creation. The author takes the reader on a tour of places and people where the beauty of creation, and the beauty of the works and lives of people reflect the presence of God. The Reverend Doctor Bundy finds beauty in places one might not expect: the natural world of science, heroic men and women, and the work of secular artists and authors, as well as religious art, and worship both ancient and modern. The tour ends with a discussion of beauty as a signifier of God's Ultimate Truth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781640038400

Book preview

Acknowledgements

I am most grateful for the support and encouragement of many in putting this book together, but I am especially grateful for Suzanne, without whom this book would never have been finished.

And special thanks to Judy Roughton and Dan Siemasko for invaluable support and suggestions, and to Mark Sparn for his considerable science knowledge and contacts.

Foreword

This book could have been titled A Brief History of the World: God Uses Every Kind of Art to Encounter Mankind. This is nothing short of life-time’s worth of wisdom and understanding, explaining the world. Professor Father Lester Bundy explains how God works in this world using every form of art including canvas, architecture, philosophy, history, theology, literature, science and modern experience. He weaves in and out of the intellectual disciplines with the eloquence of an intellectual and practicality of a parent. His illustrations come alive with this artist’s talent and professional precision.

God encounters us through art, both his own and ours. He heals us through our meaningful encounters and gives us freedom to accept or reject his love. Professor Bundy proves through art, history, science, psychology, experience and awe that God’s grace is sufficient for us and saves. It is a modern telling of salvation history and a gem of a book.

The Right Rev. Bishop John Abdalah

Diocese of Worcester and New England

Introduction

The subjective nature of beauty is problematic in that it is often difficult, if not impossible, to find agreement among groups of people regarding what constitutes beauty. This is also true about art in general. One commonly hears, I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like. Perhaps even more ambiguous is the term good. Still, it must be possible to find some common ground for the concept of beauty, Hope springs eternal. ²

Beauty in a World of War, Hatred, and Violence?

How can one talk of beauty when the world is engulfed in war, crime, poverty, and greed? Or at least that is what the modern news media reports. But one wonders, are stories chosen for their content or for their entertainment value? Is the seamier side of the goings on in the world chosen for focus because it catches attention? One could argue that the modern news media functions more as entertainment than as serious news reporting. The level of trust in the integrity of the news media has dropped significantly since the mid-twentieth century. This book is about one of the things the news media does not report.

Modern technology has made possible rapid communications on a worldwide basis. Marshal McLuhan’s prediction of a global village has proven correct. Instantaneous communication from any point on the globe to any other point on the globe is common. But what we see on modern media is filtered through the lens of those who determine what is newsworthy and what is not. Most unsettling is the fact that these new levels of technology seem to be easily converted to evil use. The use of social media by terrorists is well documented. We seem to live in a time of unprecedented fear and vulnerability, with international warfare, terrorism, domestic violence, and the possibility of annihilation by nuclear war—not to mention the prospect of poisoning ourselves to death with industrial pollution. In a world that seems increasingly divided by hatred and intolerance, it becomes important to find things differing people can have in common. Perhaps beauty is one thing that the world can celebrate together.

The Virtue of Hope

One wonders if the Christian virtue of hope has been forgotten. Despair is common. Joy and awe are rarely seen. But are things really so dreary? Must we settle for the bleak picture, or can we find a better view of life? Faced with these realities, one has a choice: one can surrender to despair, or one can celebrate the positive aspects of life and, when necessary, deal with those aspects of life that are negative. A fulfilled and happy life is one that seeks to see the positive aspects of life, to find and appreciate those things in life that are good and beautiful. Beauty abounds in life if one is willing to see it. Beauty crosses boundary lines. It is a unifying phenomenon that brings strangely diverse entities together. Beauty as a manifestation of the omnipresence of God sings of joy and hope.

Beauty is most commonly associated with the visual arts, but beauty goes beyond the visual. Beauty is found in works of literature and all forms of creative endeavor. Beauty exists in natural phenomenon, from the micro in subatomic particles to the macro in the vastness of outer space. Beauty exists in the lives and actions of people.

For many, God is seen in the beauty of his creation, but hope is not exclusive to Christianity and can be found in many traditions and in many forms. An underlying purpose of this book is to show similarities between a Christian view of beauty, and beauty as seen in other traditions. In other words, this is a book about the universality of beauty.

There is a spiritual dimension to beauty, for beauty rises above the intellectual realm to embrace intuitive aspects of the essence of life. Beauty reaches into the metaphysical world to find the deeper meanings of human existence. The spiritual dimension of beauty includes religion in many forms but encompasses even more than what is commonly thought of as religion. Beauty is at the heart of the origins of the Universe. Beauty is found in the most primal forms of existence and integral to mankind’s first intuitive impulses to reach out to a greater universal force: to probe the mythic and awesome vastness of creation.

The premise of this book is that, in spite of Freud, Nietzsche, and twentieth century skepticism, in the twenty first century, God is neither dead nor somnolent. God the Holy Spirit, is still active in the world and his presence can be seen in creations of beauty found in all aspects of human experience and endeavor. This is not a book on formal theories of aesthetics, nor is it intended to be a scholarly treatise on the philosophic dimensions of art or religion. It is instead one man’s attempt to see and share the beauty found in God’s creation, and the manifestation of his Spiritual presence.

So this book is written from the perspective of a Christian who believes that God can and does work in all things. God’s love abounds and is visually apparent in myriad places and things. And because these visual clues are generated from God’s love, they are things of beauty. But the world is complex, and God’s love is inscrutable. So one may be surprised to find the manifestation of God’s love in unexpected places and situations.

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² Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, 1733.

Chapter 1

A Search for Beauty

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder This familiar proverb is generally thought to have originated in the 3rd cent BC. Some would see the origin in Plato, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind he will be enabled to bring forth not images of beauty but realities—The Symposium. But others argue the concept of beauty in the eye of the beholder is a subjective view contrary to Plato’s teaching. When all is said and done it appears no one knows exactly when or where the concept of a subjective view of beauty developed. Shakespeare gives an early English usage of the concept in Love’s Labors Lost, 1588: Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye. However, it appears that the nineteenth century is the first time the phrase, as such, appears in print.

A Concept of Beauty

Whatever the origin, it is clear that there is a subjective element to beauty. What may be beautiful to one person may be plain or even downright ugly to someone else. Given the subjective nature of beauty, I probably would be smart to give up on this subject before I go any further. And yet, despite the subjective nature, I believe there is something definable, a concept that can be accepted by many as beautiful, and further, that one can find a certain spiritual quality in that beauty—a presence of God. Furthermore, as we experience God’s presence in beauty we find ultimate truth.

Of course, one is confronted with a variation of the classic objective-subjective problem. Is art to be declared beautiful based on personal taste alone or should there be clear observable criteria by which art is to be judges? Perhaps it is a bit of both. Art appreciation is dependent at least in part on one’s experience and training. Much of the art that hangs in modern museums seems unintelligible to someone who has had little exposure to the theories and practices that have evolved in the world of fine arts since the beginning of the twentieth century. Perhaps finding a hundred percent agreement on what is good or beautiful art is an impossible task. Certainly, taste or common preference enters into the discussion. I don’t know anything about art, but I know what I like. We could bog down at this point over issues of taste, and the fine points of art appreciation. Perhaps it is best to agree that there will always be a subjective element to any discussion of beauty and a concomitant variance of opinion. For this study, we will only deal with art and artists that have proven memorable—work that has gained public note for one reason or another.

But human beings do seem to have an inherent drive or impulse to find and experience beauty. This search for beauty is at the heart of the creative urge that motivates imaginative people: artists, writers, and artisans. Be it the most primitive people, or the most sophisticated people, there is an inborn urge to decorate and embellish. If there is anything that human beings have in common it is the drive to find and express beauty through artistic endeavors. Rollo May in My Quest For Beauty makes the point that art crosses boundaries and communicates in a way understood by all. May says that our common language is neither modern media nor anything produced by human speech. It is, rather, our sense of proportion, our balance, harmony and other aspects of simple and fundamental form. Our universal language, in other words, is beauty.³

As I look out over the city of Boulder, Colorado, at the mountains that suddenly rise up out of the plains, I see a great deal of beauty. Like primitive man, I stand in awe of the beauty of God’s creation. In spring, the snow caps on the back range stand out in sharp contrast to the dark blue of the peaks and the light blue of the sky. I look at this beautiful sight, and I see the beauty of God’s creation and, in seeing that beauty, find a sense of awe and joy.

I see the beauty of God’s creation in everything from the tiniest plant forms, lichen, and moss, to the array of stars and planets in outer space. The most perfect example of God’s beauty in pristine color is the rainbow, with its iridescent shimmering pure hues. Infinite variations of single colors can be found in the wake of a ship at sea as the water foams and creates multiple shapes around the hull. In a fireplace, the ever-changing flickering shapes of red and orange flames, tinged with yellow and occasional hints of blue can be mesmerizing. God’s beauty can be seen in the amorphous shapes of clouds; spectacular in the reddish hues of a sunset. For the Christian believer, the glory of nature, which is profoundly beautiful, is overlaid with the even greater beauty of God’s love. We become involved in a mystical experience that is so overwhelming and terrific that we are struck dumb.

One finds, in nature or art, the God whom one knows, and the work done in the soul is not the work of nature or of art, but of God himself through grace. For those who have ears for it there is no artistic means of grace so profound as some of the works of Bach: the sublime glory of, say, the E major Fugue for Clavier, may, by the action of grace, so inflame the soul that it may be ravished with the beauty of God, but when that happens, the beauty of the fugue is lost in the transcendent beauty of God and he then deals directly with the soul.⁴

Finding Beauty in Unexpected Places

Beauty also can be found in the created works of mankind, even if that was not the artist’s intent. In my subjective view, I see beauty in many of the abstract paintings of twentieth century modern art. Even in paintings by artists who were not interested in spiritual things, I see an inherent beauty. A beauty that transcends the proclivities of individuals, because the very act of creating a painting is to make use of