Truth, Goodness, and Beauty

            I believe I’ve heard them referred to as the secondary trinity. Solzhenitsyn called them the “three transcendentals”.

Here I’ll quote generously from what Robert Royal recently wrote in the Catholic Thing Beauty Will Save the World: “[P]erhaps that ancient trinity of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty is not simply an empty, faded formula as we thought in the days of our self-confident, materialistic youth? If the tops of these three trees converge, as the scholars maintained, but the too blatant, too direct stems of Truth and Goodness are crushed, cut down, not allowed through – then perhaps the fantastic, unpredictable, unexpected stems of Beauty will push through and soar TO THAT VERY SAME PLACE, and in so doing will fulfil the work of all three?

That’s a very hopeful way to look at things today. We know that Truth and Goodness are as confused now as they have ever been. And that while the slow process of reason recovers them both, some way around the impasse has to be found in the meantime. And yet, beauty (small “b”) is also often deceptive and seems more likely to wreck the world, absent faith and reason.

Can Beauty of another sort, a transcendent Beauty among the other transcendentals, actually save for us at least a bit of what made and continues to hold us and our entire civilization together?

St. Augustine famously wrote in Book X of Confessions, ‘Late have I loved Thee, Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved thee.’ (Sero te amavi, pulchritudo tam antiqua et tam nova, sero te amavi! ) He meant, of course, the divine beauty and in the same passage even decries his attachment to ordinary kinds of beauty in the world: ‘these beauties kept me far enough from thee: even those, which unless they were in thee, should not be at all.’”

            Thankfully, these three transcendentals find their source in our gracious God. We have hope for today and for the days to come in this God Who has redeemed us to Himself through the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus. It is around this that we worship daily in our homes and weekly on the Lord’s Day.

With that in mind, St. Paul’s encouragement is needed now as much as ever: 8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. 9 What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you. (Philippians 4:8-9)