#2 Comments on Beauty

Here are some of my thoughts on the second of my Four Questions, "What is beauty?"

Beauty is something that is in our minds. It is an interpretation of reality. It is a kind of goodness, in that what we consider to be beautiful, we also consider to be good. Since human beings are created in the image of God, our concept of beauty is probably a reflection of what God considers to beautiful or good.

I have been trying to analyze what I consider to be beautiful, and trying to figure out what elements are part of what I consider to be beautiful. A primary element seems to be balance, but balance of what? Following is a list of things that come to mind.

Beauty is a balance between:

• order and variety
• cooperation and freedom
• unity and diversity
• independence and dependence
• expected and unexpected
• novel and familiar
• contrast and similarity

Four Questions

I have four highly philosophical questions:

1. Why did God choose pain? He has chosen to feel pain Himself, as well as to let His creation feel pain. Why?
2. What is beauty? Is it a fundamental property or is it merely an arbitrary interpretation of the beholder? Is it merely a pattern recognition system in the brain that triggers pleasure when an arbitrary pattern is matched? [What is a pattern? Am I skewing the question by assuming that patterns exist?]
3. Why did God give us the Bible in the state it is in?
1. It is written in human languages with their imprecision and ambiguities.
2. It is written in many differenct historical, cultural and linguistic contexts. If the reader doesn't know the context--and many historical contexts cannot be known--the reader's understanding is compromised.
3. There is evidence of redaction. How much of the text that has been handed down to us is the result of editing after it was originally written?
4. How can we tell what text really is the word of God and what text is merely the reflection of the attitudes and culture of the people written about?
4. Why did God create rebellion? Why did God create enemies?