The True, the Good, and the Beautiful
The True, the Good, and the Beautiful
By Kenneth Samples
The True, the Good, and the Beautiful: The Three Transcendentals
What is real? What is right? What is lovely? Human beings ask these profound philosophical kinds of questions because we long and hope for at least three things: truth, goodness, and beauty.
Prominent philosophers through the centuries have called these three cosmic values transcendentals. A transcendental refers to something that exists beyond the time-space world. It is a universal reality that extends beyond our everyday sensory experiences and is thus considered nonphysical, immaterial, conceptual, or even spiritual. In philosophy, the transcendental relates to and seeks to describe the nature of reality or being. Therefore, one may think of these values as timeless universals and attributes of ultimate being.
In this introductory article I’ll briefly describe how the three transcendentals of truth, goodness, and beauty were broadly viewed in the classical world. Then I’ll summarize how Christian civilization accommodated them as truths of general and special revelation and grounded them in the person of Jesus Christ and ultimately in the nature of the triune God.
Classical Civilization’s View of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty
The classical world (or classical antiquity) consisted largely of the Greco-Roman society that was centered around the Mediterranean Sea and existed at its peak for roughly a millennium—from about 500 BC to 500 AD. The great cultures of Greece and Rome flourished and deeply influenced Europe, North Africa, and West Asia. The grand cities of this period included Athens, Rome, and even Jerusalem. Some of the dominant philosophies of this era included Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Stoicism.
For the famous Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, the world had genuine meaning and purpose. The cosmic values of truth (that which defines reality), goodness (that which fulfills its purpose), and beauty (that which is lovely) were objective in nature and knowable by the noble seeker. Since human beings had the internal capacities of logos (reason, logic), ethos (character, morals), and pathos (emotion, imagination), these internal capacities corresponded to the cosmic values and brought forth human development and fulfillment:
Logos corresponds to alethia (truth)
Ethos corresponds to agathos (goodness)
Pathos corresponds to kalos (beauty)
Educator Stephen R. Turley describes the classical view that human capacities match with and are fulfilled by these cosmic values:
“Truth, goodness, and beauty are cosmic values that communicate divine meaning to the intellectual, moral, and aesthetic capacities of the human soul, which brings a balance in the soul, which, in turn, harmonizes the human person with divine meaning and purpose of the cosmos, which was considered the prerequisite to human flourishing.”[1]
Thus the pursuit of the good life through philosophizing in the classical world largely involved the human longing to know the truth, to follow the good, and to fill one’s soul with the beautiful.[2]
Christian Civilization’s View of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty
By the fifth century AD, paganism had been largely converted to Christianity. Thus Christian civilization would dominate the Western world and parts of the East for largely a millennium (about 500 to 1500). Christian philosophers and theologians in both East and West appropriated the truth of these cosmic values as truths of general and special revelation but grounded them in the person of Jesus Christ (the Logos) and ultimately in the nature of the triune God.[3] For classical Christians, God doesn’t have truth, goodness, and beauty; rather, God is truth, goodness, and beauty. We can state it this way:
All truth is God’s truth.
All goodness is God’s goodness.
All beauty is God’s beauty.
When God created, he imbued the cosmos with truth, goodness, and beauty. Philosopher Peter Kreeft says: “Everything that exists is in some way true, good, and beautiful.”[4] And humans via the imago Dei (image of God) are able to know the truth, desire the good, and love the beautiful. The fall of humankind into sin disordered man’s natural capacities, but through the redemption found in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ human beings are brought back into a right relationship with God and with these extraordinary, revealed values.
According to historic Christianity, humans (as creatures) have been made to know and worship the triune God. And our present longing for truth, goodness, and beauty exists because these values reflect the ultimate source, which is the maximally perfect God. When we pursue truth, goodness, and beauty in this life and in this world we are tracking the majesty of the Lord.
Again Peter Kreeft explains:
“Goodness, truth, and beauty are the three things we want and need most deeply. At their deepest level, all three are known by the heart: truth by intuition, goodness by conscience, and beauty by an awareness for which there is no similar name. As truth perceived by the mind gives us knowledge and goodness affirmed by the will gives us virtue, beauty felt by the heart gives us joy.”[5]
As Christian thinker Alister McGrath notes: “Christian tradition [affirms] that all that is true, beautiful, and good finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ.”[6] And the ultimate encounter for the Christian believer with truth, goodness, and beauty in its totality awaits the beatific vision when believers will see, know, and enjoy the triune God of glory forever and ever (Matthew 5:8; 1 Corinthians 13:12; Hebrew 12:14; Revelation 22:4).
—Kenneth Richard Samples serves as a senior research scholar with a focus on theological and philosophical apologetics at Reasons to Believe (RTB). He is the author of God among Sages, Christian Endgame, 7 Truths That Changed the World, A World of Difference, and Without a Doubt. He has also contributed to Lights in the Sky and Little Green Men as well as several other books. In addition, his articles have been published in Christianity Today, Christian Research Journal, and Facts for Faith. Kenneth also writes Reflections, a weekly blog dedicated to exploring the Christian worldview.
Notes
[1] I transcribed this quote from Steve Turley’s interview with Janet Mefferd: https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/4001416/Blog%20Photos/steveturley_151020_Sample.mp3; see also Stephen R. Turley, Awakening Wonder: A Classical Guide to Truth, Goodness, and Beauty (Camp Hill, PA: Classical Academic Press, 2014).
[2] See Robert M. Woods, Mortimer Adler: The Paideia Way of Classical Education (Camp Hill, PA: Classical Academic Press, 2019), 13.
[3] See John Mark Reynolds, When Athens Met Jerusalem: An Introduction to Classical and Christian Thought (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2009).
[4] Peter Kreeft on Goodness, Truth, Beauty, and Boredom; see also Peter Kreeft, “Lewis’s Philosophy of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty,” in C. S. Lewis as Philosopher: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty, edited by David J. Baggett, Gary R. Habermas, and Jerry L. Walls (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2008).
[5] Peter Kreeft, Wisdom of the Heart: The Good, the True, and the Beautiful at the Center of Us All (Gastonia, NC: Tan Books, 2020), 275.
[6] Alister E. McGrath, The Open Secret: A New Vision for Natural Theology (Malden MA: Blackwell, 2008), 308.
Image by David Mark from Pixabay
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