Why else were individuals created, but that God, loving all infinitely, should love each differently? . . . For doubtless the continually successful, yet never completed, attempt by each soul to communicate its unique vision of God to all others (and that by means whereof earthly art and philosophy are but clumsy imitations) is also among the ends for which the individual was created.” (p. 36)

The Christian defence of transcendence:

If you find yourself crawling through a cave and come upon some old drawings on the wall, you can be sure of one thing: humans may have drawn pictures of animals, but no animals drew pictures of humans. That is just one major way in which human beings differ from animals.

Indeed, there are at least three markers of transcendence that separate us from animals: truth, goodness, and beauty. As such, Christians should be greatly interested in all three. However, we tend to champion the first two, but not so much the last one.

Given that I have been writing about art in some recent articles, let me take this a bit further. I do so by appealing to four different authors. In Russ Ramsey’s, Rembrandt Is In the Wind (Zondervan, 2022) he speaks to this early on:

From Socrates and Plato on down through Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart, and Immanuel Kant, philosophers and theologians have long wrestled with the question, What makes humanity so distinct from all other forms of life? Three properties of being that transcend the capacities of all other creatures, known as transcendentals, have risen to the surface: the human desire for goodness, for truth, and for beauty.

Scripture regards these three transcendentals as basic human desires that are essential for knowing God. Why? Because these are three properties that define God’s nature. Good and evil point to the reality of undefiled holiness. Honesty and falsehood point to the existence of absolute truth. Beauty and the grotesque whisper to our souls that there is such a thing as glory. Goodness, truth, and beauty were established for us by the God who is defined by all three. (pp. 5-6)

He goes on to quote the Catholic philosopher and apologist Peter Kreeft. Since I have the volume where that quote comes from, let me offer more of it here. He has a chapter titled “Lewis’ Philosophy of Truth, Goodness and Beauty” in a book edited by David Baggett, Gary R. Habermas and Jerry L. Walls: C. S. Lewis as Philosopher: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty (IVP, 2008). He starts it this way:

There are three things that will never die: truth, goodness, and beauty. These are the three things we all need, and need absolutely, and know we need, and know we need absolutely. Our minds want not only some truth and some falsehood, but all truth, without limit. Our wills want not only some good and some evil, but all good, without limit. Our desires, imaginations, feelings or hearts want not just some beauty and some ugliness, but all beauty, without limit.

For these are the only three things that we never got bored with, and never will, for all eternity, because they are three attributes of God, and therefore all God’s creation: three transcendental or absolutely universal properties of all reality. All that exists is true, the proper object of the mind. All that exists is good, the proper object of the will. All that exists is beautiful, the proper object of the heart, or feelings, or desires, or sensibilities, or imagination. (This third area is more difficult to define than the first two.) …

Every culture seeks these three things too, for man makes culture before culture makes man. Some cultures, however, like some individuals, specialize in one of the three transcendentals… (p. 23)

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