Alternative Paradigms for Bible Translation

Alternative Paradigms for Bible

Translation Hospitality as Hosting the Holy Spirit

Tom McCormick (6 / 2023 – 1 / 2024)

I was a stranger and you did not invite me in – Matthew 25:43

Do not neglect to show hospitality* to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares –Hebrews 13:2

*φιλοξενία philoxenia: hospitality, love of strangers

Therefore welcome* {receive, accept) one another as Christ has welcomed* you, for the glory of God –Romans 15:7

*

προσλαμβάνω proslambanó: to take in; receive into one's home, with the collateral idea of kindness; grant one access to one's heart; to take into friendship and contact

“Linguistic hospitality, then, where the pleasure of dwelling in the other’s language is balanced by the pleasure of receiving the foreign word at home, in one’s own welcoming house” – Paul Ricoeur

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be complete, fully equipped for every good work1 – 2 Timothy 3:16

“Beauty awakens the soul to act” Dante Alighieri

PART 1 - AN ALTERNATIVE PARADIGM

I. INTRODUCTION

Increasingly the metaphor (or paradigm) of hospitality is being proposed as an alternative to equivalence as the guiding (and ruling) goal of translation, as well as informing how to proceed with a translation project. The equivalence paradigm has been increasingly challenged. Fundamentally, there is a problem with the notion of equivalence as applied to translations: for a Source or Start Text (ST) and a Host Text (HT) to be equivalent there must be an agreed upon standard of comparison, some “neutral” or third.

The dilemma is the following: in a good translation, the two texts, source and target, must be matched with one another through a third non-existent text. Indeed, the problem is saying the same thing or claiming to say the same thing in two different ways. But this same thing, this identical meaning is not given anywhere in the manner of a third text, …. In the absence of this third text, where the actual meaning would lie, the semantic original, there is only one recourse, i.e. the critical reading of a few, if not polyglot then at least bilingual, specialists, critical reading equivalent to a private retranslation, where our capable reader redoes the work of translation, for his own purposes, taking on, in turn, the test of translation and meeting with the same paradox of an equivalence without adequacy (OT 6f; ST 23).

In short, the claim of equivalence is only the claim that the translator’s understanding or interpretation of the meaning of the ST is the best or right one, or at least better than any others for the explicit or implicit purposes of the translation. In the absence of an independent standard of comparison, the meaning of equivalence is radically undefined. It would be like, within relativity theory, to say two rods are of equal

1 I would assume that “every good work” includes the translation of the Bible.

length while ignoring their motion relative to each other or the measuring rods used to determine length. The common frame of reference is simply lacking. Further, it’s not at all clear what the warrant for equivalence as the guiding (and ruling) goal might be for the translation of the Bible, especially if the Bible is taken as the norm for all such fundamental notions. Does the Bible warrant “equivalence” as the standard for its translation, and if so, how so and in what sense? And what exactly is meant by “equivalence”?2

Alternatively, as Kearney put it, “The work of translation might … be said to carry a double duty: to expropriate oneself as one appropriates the other. We are called to make our language put on the stranger’s clothes at the same time as we invite the stranger to step into the fabric of our own speech” (OT xvi); or Ricoeur, “in translation it is always possible to translate otherwise, without ever hoping to bridge the gap between equivalence and perfect adhesion. Linguistic hospitality, therefore, is the act of inhabiting the word of the Other paralleled by the act of receiving the word of the Other into one’s own home, one’s own dwelling” (OT xvi).3 Whether we translate Ricoeur’s “inhabiting the word of the Other” (Kearney’s translation) or with Brennan, “the pleasure of dwelling in the other’s language,” translation is understood as “the act of receiving the word of the Other into one’s own home, one’s own dwelling,” the pleasure of receiving the foreign word at home, in one’s own welcoming house [the ‘host language’]” – that is, as hospitality. And within Bible Translation (BT) circles, James Maxey says, “The metaphor of hospitality asks us to consider the other” and “Ricoeur (2006) is the one who suggested ‘linguistic hospitality’ as a way to talk about how the other is received in translation” (nd 1). 4

In this essay I will explore whether, and if so how, this metaphor of hospitality is biblical, and biblically appropriate for guiding (and ruling?) the goal and the process of Bible Translation (BT). There are, then, at least these two figures already intimated above to understand translation as hospitality, (i) putting on the stranger’s clothes at the same time as we invite the stranger to step into the fabric of our own language (Kearney), and (ii) dwelling in the other’s language as well as receiving the foreign word, in one’s own welcoming house (Ricoeur): putting off and on of clothing, and ‘dwelling’ or ‘being at home.’ Both of these are also biblical figures. In addition, Foran adds another figure, “Translation as a Path to the Other, ”5 resonating with the biblical figure of ‘the Way’ as well as hinting at other relevant dimensions: certainly a BT involves a path (with a bridge?) to another language, culture and people group, but since BT deals with God’s Word, the Other (capital “O”) is also a character in the drama. How is BT, the process and the product, to be hospitable to this Other? The value of this approach can only be validated by the result, and in the process we may discover other figures to enrich, correct, and guide further inquiry.6

2 “The term "equivalent" in math refers to two meanings, numbers, or quantities that are the same. The equivalence of two such quantities shall be denoted by a bar over an equivalent symbol or Equivalent Sign. It also means a logical equivalence between two values or a set of quantities”; “If A ⇒ B and B ⇒ A (i.e., A ⇒ B & B ⇒ A, where ⇒ denotes implies), then A and B are said to be equal”; for sets, “A ⊂ B and B ⊂ A ⇔ A = B”; “In mathematics, an equivalence relation is a binary relation that is reflexive, symmetric and transitive” {“∼” means “equivalent”}: For all x, y, z in set A: x ∼ x (Reflexivity); x ∼ y if and only if y ∼ x (Symmetry); If x∼y and y∼z, then x∼z (Transitivity).

3 Kearney’s translation. Brennan’s translation: “we can translate differently, without hope of filling the gap between equivalence and total adequacy. Linguistic hospitality, then, where the pleasure of dwelling in the other’s language is balanced by the pleasure of receiving the foreign word at home, in one’s own welcoming house” (OT 10).

4 An earlier presentation of parts of this chapter was given at the fifth IATIS conference in Belo Horizonte Brazil on 7 July 2015.

5 https://www.academia.edu/35478515/Translation_as_a_Path_to_the_Other_Derrida_and_Ricoeur (accessed 22-6-2023); Translation as a Path to the Other: Derrida and Ricoeur.

6 “This is the way the world is, and because this is the way the world is, we should adopt a way of life that conforms to its pattern. Others indwell our lives; therefore we ought to open our lives hospitably to them. We indwell the lives of others; therefore, we ought to see others not as obstacles to our plots and projects but as potential homes in which we can dwell together. A world of

II. HOSTING THE HOLY SPIRIT

A. Introduction: The Importance of Hosting the Holy Spirit

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? 1 Corinthians 6:19

For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling* among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 2 Corinthians 6:16 * ἐνοικέω enoikeó: to dwell in

As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house**, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. – 1 Peter 2:4f ** οἶκος oikos: a house, a dwelling

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place* for God by the Spirit – Ephesians 2:19ff

* κατοικητήριον katoikétérion: an abode, a habitation

we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another Romans 12:5 we are members one of another Ephesians 4:25 from Him the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love Ephesians 4:16 …that they may all be one, just as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that… John 17:21ff

Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home** with him. John 14:23

** μονή moné: an abiding, an abode

Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me. Revelation 3:20

mutual interpenetration implies an ethic of hospitality, welcome, invitation, companionship, centered on a common table” (Leithart, Peter J. 2015. Traces of the Trinity: Signs of God in Creation and Human Experience. p. 132). “I have argued, brashly, that the world only makes sense if we recognize this recurrent pattern. I don’t exist in relation to the world unless the world penetrates me. I don’t have any identity or character as a unique individual unless others dwell in me. Time is meaningless unless it houses past, present, and future simultaneously. Language exists only when sense penetrates sign and sign dwells in sense. Sounds are what they are because other sounds reverberate through them. I love only when I open myself to invasion and when I willingly invade others” (ibid.). “The Spirit who indwells inspires singing, an expression of God’s dwelling in us, of us dwelling in God, and of believers indwelling one another. In the eternal praise of the new creation, we will become one mighty sound, like the mighty waters, like the voice of God himself. The Spirit breaks us open so we can host others within us; the Spirit expands us so that we can house multitudes; the Spirit drives us ahead so that we gladly, redemptively, take up residence where the Son dwelled, in the slums of human hearts” (ibid. 144f).

Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in harmony! … For there the LORD has bestowed the blessing of life forevermore Psalm 133

“Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. The one who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and the one who receives a righteous person because he is a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. ”

–Matthew 10:40f

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ Matthew 25:35ff

We individually are each a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19), and we together are the temple of God (2 Corinthians 6:16). We are each living stones though built together as a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:4f). We are individually members of His one body (1 Corinthians 12), and we are members one of another (Ephesians 4:25; Romans 12:5). He dwells in us individually (Revelation 3:20) and He dwells in us corporately (2 Corinthians 6:16). This mutual indwelling is likened to that of Intra-Trinitarian perichoresis (John 17).

Hosting the Holy Spirit is who we are, individually and corporately, already (as above) and in the process of being built (Ephesians 2:19ff; 1 Peter 2:4f). The body grows as each part works properly, held together in Christ by love (Ephesians 4:16) as each is fittingly related to the others, and as each individually and together walk in agreement with the Holy Spirit, attuned and in peaceful unity and harmony with the Holy Spirit and others (Psalm 133; Galatians 5:25; etc.). Key verses here include

Christ Jesus Himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together* is increasing into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a habitation of God in the Spirit (Ephesians 2:20-22);

*συναρμολογουμένη; to join closely together; to frame together; from ἁρμός, a joint;

From Him the whole body, fitted* and held together** by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love through the work of each individual part (Ephesians 4:16);

**

*συναρμολογούμενον; as above;

συμβιβαζόμενον; to cause to coalesce, to join together, put together

the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished* and knit together** through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God (Colossians 2:19, ESV);

*ἐπιχορηγούμενον; xorēgeō, "richly supply everything needed for an ancient chorus to be a grand production" – properly, lavishly supply, as it is suitable (apt) to outfit all that is needed to accomplish a grand objective; *συμβιβαζόμενον, as above

As His temple(s), we are to be filled with the Spirit, and in such a way that ‘musical attunement’ is integral to, if not defining of, the peaceful unity of being who we are, individually and together, as He builds His Kingdom (Eph. 5:18, 19). Such being filled with the Spirit overlaps with the word of Christ dwelling in His people richly. In both cases musicality is explicit—“addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody [ψάλλω to pull, twitch, twang, play, sing; properly, pluck a musical instrument (like a harp); to cause to vibrate by touching, to twang] to the Lord with your heart” (Eph 5:19) and “teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs” (Col 3:16)—as is

worship: “always giving thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph 5:20) and “with gratitude in your hearts to God . giving thanks to God the Father through Him” (Col 3:16, 17).

Given these characterizations of God’s people, hosting the Spirit and that Word is essentially a part of being who we are, individually and corporately, always, and whether or not we are engaged in Bible Translation. And, given that the Word to be translated is “God-breathed” (θεόπνευστος, theopneustos: God-breathed, i.e. inspired by God), with theopneustos being directly related to God's Spirit (Gk pneuma), the character of that Word is also directly related to His Spirit, whom we are to “host.”

What more can now be said about how we are to host the Holy Spirit? First, though, Who is the Holy Spirit to be hosted?

B. Who is the Holy Spirit?

Preliminarily, we remind ourselves that the Holy Spirit is a Person, not simply an impersonal force or power. Further, to begin (and not to launch a Systematic Theology Chapter or Book on the Holy Spirit), I searched for all occurrences of <Spirit of _____>, eliminating all but those referring to the Holy Spirit. The references cluster around (i) Holiness, (ii) Truth, and (iii) Glory, each with subpoints. These three will provide foci for beginning to consider how we might best host the Holy Spirit, an injunction likely at least as important for translators as for teachers, for whom a stricter judgment is enjoined (James 3:1).7

1. Holiness

The “Holy Spirit” - Πνεῦμα Ἅγιον - is designated as such often, and perhaps also as the “Spirit of Holiness” (Romans 1:4). Holiness is often taken, rightly in my opinion, as indicating set apart, separate, distinct, as with “Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?” (Exodus 15:1) and “And on that day there shall be inscribed on the bells of the horses, “Holy to the LORD.” And the pots in the house of the LORD shall be as the bowls before the altar” (Zechariah 14:20). Holiness also indicates that for which one is set apart (for the Lord). For the redeemed “holy” is often associated with the character and the resultant behaviour of those who have been set apart; for instance, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience…” (Colossians 3:12), “humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, and with diligence to preserve the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:2), “increase and overflow with love for one another and for everyone else, just as our love for you overflows, so that He may establish your hearts blameless in holiness” (1 Thessalonians 3:13), ”holy and blameless before Him, in love” (Ephesians 1:4 ).

Further, consider our “Lord’s Prayer,” especially “Hallowed be your Name.” “Hallow” is in the same word family as “Holy (Spirit)”: ἁγιάζω hagiazó: to make holy, consecrate, sanctify. What does this mean? A few comments:

To hallow God’s name means to put it in a class by itself and to cherish and honor it above every claim to our allegiance or affection. Jesus’ primary concern—the very first petition of the prayer he teaches is that more and more people, and more and more peoples, come to hallow God’s name. This is the reason the universe exists. Missions exists because this hallowing does not.8

7 There is a correlation amongst these 3 characteristics of the Holy Spirit and the 3 traditional “transcendentals”, Goodness, Truth, and Beauty. Many treatments of aesthetics and beauty operate within the latter 3. We will see how the more biblical former 3 offer a retrieval or redemption of the latter tradition.

8 Piper, John. Let the Nations Be Glad! . Baker Publishing Group. Kindle Edition, Location 997.

To pray 'hallowed be Your name' means to ask God to let His name be worshipped, exalted, honored, and adored on earth as it is in heaven. It is to ask God to so move and act in the world, that people will worship and treasure Him above all else.9

This means to live in such a way as to bring God glory.10

[With] Hallowed be thy name, we pray, that God would enable us, and others, to glorify him in all that whereby he makes himself known; and that he would dispose all things to his own glory. (WSC A 101).

What do we pray for in the first petition? In the first petition (which is, Hallowed be thy name) acknowledging the utter inability and indisposition that is in ourselves and all men to honor God aright, we pray, that God would by His grace enable and include us and others to know, to acknowledge, and highly to esteem Him, His titles, attributes, ordinances, Word, works, and whatsoever He is pleased to make Himself known by; and to glorify Him in thought, word, and deed: that He would prevent and remove atheism, ignorance, idolatry, profaneness, and whatsoever is dishonorable to Him; and by His overruling providence, direct and dispose of all things to His own glory (WLC 190).

“Hallowed be your name” means: Help us to truly know you, to honor, glorify, and praise you for all your works and for all that shines forth from them: your almighty power, wisdom, kindness, justice, mercy, and truth And it means, Help us to direct all our living what we think, say, and do so that your name will never be blasphemed because of us but always honored and praised (Heidelberg Catechism (A 122).

Hosting the Holy Spirit, then, involves worship both in the narrow and the broad senses: narrow, as with specific liturgical and/or individual acts such as prayer, meditation, study of the Scriptures, songs of adoration, etc.; and broad, in the senses of Romans 12:1-2, 1 Corinthians 10:31 – “do all to the glory of God,” and 1 Peter 1:15, 16 – “as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”

Later the phrase “the beauty of holiness,” and more generally, the collocation of “beauty” with “holiness,” will occupy us: How is it that God (who is Holy), we who are to be holy, and His word, understood as holy (Romans 7:12) are ‘converge’ around Bible translation?

For now Ephesians 4:24 "put on the new man, that after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth”—offers a link between “holiness” and our next section on “truth”: “holiness of the truth”:

2. Truth

…the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you. John 14:17

…the Spirit of truth … will guide you into all the truth John 16:13

…the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that anyone should teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie 1 John 2:27

9 https://openthebible.org/article/what-does-it-mean-to-pray-hallowed-be-your-name/ (22 April 2023).

10 https://engediresourcecenter.com/2019/06/06/what-does-it-mean-to-hallow-gods-name/ (22 April 2023).

The Holy Spirit is designated “the Spirit of truth” is 6 verses, all in the writings of John. There “the Spirit of truth” goes out from the Father and testifies about Jesus; He guides into all the truth not speaking on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare the things that are to come; He is the Helper [Advocate, Counselor] to be with us forever, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him though we know him, for he dwells with us and will be in us; and He is responsible for love of and listening to the words of the apostles. NB: “you know him” (John 14:17). Is this not a personal relationship, that is, not simply something to be assumed?

Nonetheless, Pilate’s question "What is truth [ἀλήθεια alétheia: truth]?" (John 18:38) is still relevant for us. We affirm that His word is truth and that such truth is sanctifying – “Sanctify them in/by the truth [ἀλήθεια alétheia: truth]; your word is truth [ἀλήθεια alétheia: truth]” (John 17:17). The verb for “sanctify” in John 17 is ἁγιάζω (to make holy, consecrate, sanctify), related to the adjective “Holy” (Ἅγιον) of Holy Spirit. We also affirm what Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth [ἀλήθεια alétheia: truth], and the life” as well as our dependence on “the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation” for our knowledge of him (Ephesians 1:17).

a. Inherited Theories of Truth

A brief look at inherited theories of truth will help us appreciate a bit more the role of the Holy Spirit as “the Spirit of truth”. There are three main inherited theories of truth: the Correspondence Theory, the Coherence Theory, and Pragmatist Theories. There are also more contemporary theories, for instance, the manifestation or alethetical theory (Heidegger) and the mimesis theory (Ricoeur).

The Correspondence Theory of Truth says that what is said or believed taken as a proposition is true if it corresponds to the way things actually are in the world, that is, to the facts. But what does “correspondence” mean – similarity with difference? How similar and how to decide how similar is similar enough, and similar in terms of what as two things could be (and like are) similar in many different ways? Another basic problem is, How can a linguistic predicate or proposition (language) correspond to things or facts or states of affair in the world, which are not per se linguistic? Further, can ‘facts’ be determined without the mediation of language and? – in the context of science, are there any so-called (brute) facts which are not always already theory dependent, while philosophically (hermeneutics) and theologically (C Van Til, e.g.) there are no always already uninterpreted ‘facts’? Another problem: the potential skewing between beliefs and reality; e.g. the Pharisees, for instance, did not believe Jesus to be the Messiah and stated such in clear propositions, though, in truth, He was (and is). Finally, not all that will be truly real is as yet revealed as such: for instance, we see though a glass darkly; the Kingdom of God, though true, is still substantially ‘not yet’ manifest, e.g. we do not now see all things subdued and united in Christ, and so our true belief that such will be has no available corresponding manifest reality in the world, as yet. Truth is, in part, eschatological.

The Coherence Theory of Truth states that a proposition is true if there is a systematic coherent relation amongst (all) the propositions in a system of beliefs; often the coherent systematic relations refer to a whole of which the propositions are parts, and thus the parts are coherent not only with other parts but with a whole.

The Pragmatist Theories of Truth believe that truth is the satisfactory end of an inquiry. The focus is less on what makes a statement true as on “what people mean or do in describing a statement as true. … Pragmatic theories of truth have the effect of shifting attention away from what makes a statement true and toward what people mean or do in describing a statement as true. ”11

Peirce links his phenomenology to pragmatism, or pragmaticism, as he calls it. For him, meaning and causality are related. As de Waal (2001, p. 25) puts it, ‘the effect of an object is the conception we have of it.’ The

11 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-pragmatic

meaning of something is the ‘totality of practical consequences we can conceive the object of that conception to have’ (Ibid.). Meaning is thus an effect that leads to action, and action (pragmatics, i.e. doing practically) is the momentary endpoint of meaning, because, in order to act, one assumes that you have established meaning and you act on that assumed established meaning while the process of meaning, in actual fact, continues.12

b. Problems with the Inherited Theories of Truth

First, the Correspondence Theory of Truth. There are two angles I will present; first, “Things change according to the stance we adopt towards them, the type of attention we pay to them, the disposition we hold in relation to them,”13 that is, “our disposition towards the world and one another, as being fundamental in grounding what it is that we come to have a relationship with, rather than the other way round. The kind of attention we pay actually alters the world: we are, literally, partners in creation. This means we have a grave responsibility, a word that captures the reciprocal nature of the dialogue we have with whatever it is that exists apart from ourselves.”14 Second, to review, “the correspondence in question is between knowledge on the one hand, and its object on the other. But just how is this correspondence accomplished? And what is the character of the agreement or correspondence since an object and the knowledge of that object are two quite different kinds of things?” (McCormick. Science, Imagination, and God, Kindle Locations 2600-2601). What is ‘between’ the human subject and the propositional judgment, on the one hand, and that of which ‘truth’ is a concern, on the other? “The missing link between the thing on the one hand and the propositional judgment on the other, is the traditional assumption that the structure of the thing and the structure of the judgment are isomorphic. If there is to be the kind of connection between thing and judgment sought by the correspondence theory of truth, “It is necessary … that the structure of things be reflected in the structure of truth” (WT 6). And this has indeed been the case…[f]rom Plato to Kant…” (ibid. Kindle Locations 2609-2612). The traditional assumption of the structural isomorphism noted still does not in itself bridge the gap, for any two things can be similar in a variety of ways: which ‘way’ is deemed relevant depends on many factors: as with the first point above, the mode of attention, which varies from person to person and from one experience to another; culture; language; historical period; etc.

Second, the Coherence Theory of Truth. There are many difficulties:15 How are propositions related to each other? That is, what do we mean by “coherence”? Which propositions are to be considered (is there a finite set?)? And how do the acceptable propositions (in the set) come to be accepted? How even are the Ss and Ps of propositions related, for example especially with metaphors? And can a whole ever be a complete(d) whole that can be comprehended as such? And is a coherent system adequate to reality; take, for instance Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries: coherent systems, and yet which is true to reality? And finally, a complete and coherent system (even as ‘simple’ as arithmetic) has been proved impossible (Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorems).

More generally, the systematicity of what a systematic coherence is understood differently by the brain hemispheres: for the left-hemisphere internal coherence of the familiar defines the truth; for the right hemisphere truth is not so much an internal, self-referential relation as a ‘correspondence’ with something other which is especially sensitive to what is new or unique or unfamiliar.16 Further, is it possible to establish

12 Kobus Marais. 2019. A (Bio)Semiotic Theory of Translation: The Emergence of Social-Cultural Reality. Taylor & Francis, p. 87.

13 Iain McGilchrist. Master - Emissary (Kindle Locations 601-602). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

14 Iain McGilchrist. Master - Emissary (Kindle Locations 608-611). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

15 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/truth-coherence; https://hume.ucdavis.edu/phi102kl/tkch5.htm; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherence_theory_of_truth

16 Iain McGilchrist. Master - Emissary (Kindle Locations 5472-5475).

any proposition as acceptable without taking into account some sort of correspondence to a reality outside of the proposition?

Finally, would anyone doubt that we can experience ‘a truth’, something we have no or little doubt is in fact true, and yet it stands alone as ‘a truth,’ it is not coherently integrated in a system, not yet anyway, and if and when it might be, it is quite likely to reorder what previously was taken a the coherence of that system? A creative metaphor revealing a new meaning, even a new truth, would be an example of such: the meanings and structure of conventional truths is inadequate to account for the new meaning of such a creative metaphor, and once the new meaning(s) are encountered, they reorder (sometimes ever so slightly) the inherited system of coherent truths.

Third, The Pragmatist Theories of Truth. If the standard of truth is dependent on the individual’s standard of satisfaction then what ‘satisfaction’ is is relative to the one inquiring. Not doubt such would also include some notion of coherence and correspondence; that is, one would not typically be satisfied if one’s understanding were incoherent and/or did not correspond with one’s overall understanding and experience of self, life, others, the world, God, etc. Usually one only takes as true what is in some sense verifiable, through experience or experiment. Truths guide or carry us forward in ways we deem useful and without undue or unpleasant surprises. But useful for what? What is the standard for ‘unpleasant’ or ‘satisfaction’ or a sufficient coherence or correspondence to at least pause an inquiry?

c. Toward a solution to the Problems with Inherited Theories of Truth

In all three major theories (and in the more contemporary spin off theories) “consent” or “agreement” or at least “a fitting relation” is required: (1) beliefs or propositions must ‘agree with’, i.e. correspond with or fit, some state of affairs in the world for correspondence theories; (2) the systematic coherence of propositions for coherence theories entails connection, relationship and some form of agreement or fittingness if there is to be any meaningful notion of coherence or systematicity; and (3) the acceptance of usefulness, satisfaction, verifiability, and what might be taken as ‘undue’ or ‘unpleasant’ all require judgements (implicit or explicit) of degrees of agreement or consent with some standard of suitability or fittingness or appropriateness or acceptability or the like.

My reason for stating matters like this is that Jonathan Edwards, for one, understood all such consent to be due to and to be an image of the Holy Spirit. According to Edwards, the Holy Spirit is the substantial act of consent of God to Himself and thus all consent is especially an image of the Spirit: “as to holiness, ’tis delight in excellency, ’tis God’s sweet consent to Himself or, in other words, His perfect delight in Himself, which we have shown to be the Holy Spirit” (Misc. 94); “The Holy Spirit is the harmony and excellency and beauty of the deity” (Misc. 293); “Tis peculiar to God that He has beauty within Himself (consisting in being’s consenting with His own being, or the love of Himself in His own Holy Spirit)” (Mind 45, part 12).

It is not just Edwards who puts forward ‘fittingness’ as a key to beauty. Dyrness notes, “For the Hebrew, … the loveliness of an object (or event) was simply its being what it was meant to be. The beautiful was often what we might call merely the "fitting."17

For Heidegger, truth is revealed or uncovered based on transcendent factors, and prior to and as the basis for any correspondences between subjects and objects or application of validity criteria. For Ricoeur, there is

17 1985. Aesthetics In The Old Testament: Beauty In Context. JETS 28/4 (December 1985). 422. “…beauty is only the splendor of a system of relationships; it is an aspect of the totality of meaning of the created order, which for God's people was immediately evident in the whole and in the art” (ibid.). “The characteristic of what is fitting is especially evident in the word group associated with the verb nâ'à, which appears twelve times in all forms” (Dyrness 1985:425)

primarily a fitting production produced by the conjoint action of the “reader” (of texts, and analogically, of actions) and the engagement with the situation, e.g. a text or action, which merges with ethical concerns. It would also be possible to conceive of a “manifestation” which both exceeded and enabled such “a fitting production,” while also still being (in part) dependent upon it. I am inclined to this latter conception.

For Edwards, fittingness is exactly the concern, and is, again, due to and an image of the Holy Spirit. Further, for Edwards fittingness is recognized immediately and directly in the experience of the knower “just as the sweetness of honey, or perceiving the harmony of a tune” (TV 99).18

Further, note, “frequently the beautiful is simply what we would call the fitting or the proper: gray hair on an old man, strength in a youth, virtue in a woman, words well spoken, etc.”19

I explore these matters further in § VII B 2 below in relation to Bible translation.

d. “What is Truth?”

Consider:

When Viggo Mortenson, the actor who played Aragorn in the film trilogy by Peter Jackson, was asked why The Lord of the Rings was so popular, he replied, “Because it is a true story.” In other words, it is not merely a fantasy, but communicates something that is true, something that people feel and recognize as important for their own lives. … It is not about historical truth, despite the fact that the author made the history of Middleearth remarkably convincing. It is not even about philological truth, or the truth (which was Tolkien’s professional concern at Oxford) concerning the real origins and meanings of the words in our language. The truth it is really about is more subtle and much deeper than that. It is a truth about the way people behave, about the moral life of courage and integrity and honesty and the constant battles we have to fight to protect that life. It is also, at an even deeper level, about the reality and value of beauty.20

3. Glory

If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you (τὸ

1 Peter 4:14

On the glorious splendor of your majesty, and on your wondrous works, I will meditate. Psalm 145:5

Perhaps it is true that to define the glory of God is impossible; and yet, more can be said. In The Glory of God: An Essay by Christopher Morgan we read

God’s glory is revealed through creation; is identified with humans as created in the image of God, crowned with glory; is linked to the exodus, to fire shining/bright light, to a cloud, and to the Sabbath; is revealed to Moses; fills the tabernacle; fills the earth; fills the temple; is above the heavens; is revealed in visions to Isaiah and Ezekiel; and is identified with God’s people, Israel (multiple references given but not included here).

Further, we are told “Glory is also identified with Christ” and “glory is identified with the Holy Spirit, … identified with the church; and is manifested in the new creation.” Further, “God’s glory is the magnificence,

18 See https://www.academia.edu/100154601/Fitness_In_Jonathan_Edwards_edu_.

19 Dyrness, William A. 1985. Aesthetics In The Old Testament: Beauty In Context. JETS 28/4 (December 1985). 421-432, p. 430.

20 Stratford Caldecott. The Power of the Ring: The Spiritual Vision Behind the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit (Kindle Locations 8290). Crossroad Publishing Company. Kindle Edition.

worth, loveliness, and grandeur of his many perfections. More often, glory communicates God’s special presence.” The NT word for glory is ‘doxa [which] in secular Geek referred to an “opinion,” “conjecture,” “repute,” “praise,” or “fame.” “… doxa translated [OT] kabod and took on the same meaning, referring to God’s manifestation of his person, presence, and/or works, especially his power, judgment, and salvation.”

Morgan gives the following 7 senses of ‘God’s Glory’:

1. a designation for God himself;

2. an internal characteristic, attribute, or a summary of the attributes of God; God is intrinsically glorious in the sense of fullness, sufficiency, majesty, beauty, and splendor;

3. God’s presence;

4. as the display of God’s attributes, perfections, or person;

5. as the ultimate goal of the display of God’s attributes, perfections, or person;

6. sometimes points to heaven, the heavenly, or the eschatological consummation of the full experience of the presence of God;

7. giving glory to God also may refer to an appropriate response to God in the form of worship, exaltation, or exultation.

Piper suggests that “the glory of God is the manifest beauty of his holiness”; and again, “the glory of God is the infinite beauty and greatness of God’s manifold perfections.”21

I will revisit these matters further below, especially the linkage of ‘glory’ to ‘beauty’ and in relation to Bible translation.

C. The “How” of Hosting the Holy Spirit

1. Introduction: The Holy Spirit is a Person …do not grieve* the Holy Spirit of God Ephesians 4:30; * Λυπέω lupeó: to distress, to grieve

Do not quench the Spirit 1 Thessalonians 5:19 *σβέννυμι sbennumi: to quench, to extinguish; to suppress, stifle

As with any person, we want to be respectful and sensitive to their affective side. Λυπέω—to make sorrowful; to affect with sadness, cause grief; to throw into sorrow is an affective word. Further, the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22—love, joy, peace, and patience—are emotions and not only dispositions. And lastly (for now), James 4:5 cites “He jealously desires the Spirit which He has made to dwell in us”? Whether this mention of ‘the Spirit’ is a reference to the Holy Spirit or the human spirit, it’s best to note that “whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit” (1 Corinthians 6:17),22 that “in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body” (1 Corinthians 12:13), and that “There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called” (Ephesians 4:4).

A common expression for such affective sensitivity is attunement: “a kinesthetic and emotional sensing of others, knowing their rhythm, affect and experience by metaphorically being in their skin,23 and going beyond empathy to create a two-person experience of unbroken feeling connectedness by providing a reciprocal

21 https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/what-is-gods-glory 2

22 It’s remarkable, in this context, that Paul mentions “your bodies are members of Christ” (v. 15) and “your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you” (v. 19) and that “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (vv. 19f).

23 Though the Holy Spirit does not have ‘skin,’ we are ‘in the Holy Spirit’ and the Holy Spirit is ‘in us.’

affect and/or resonating response.”24 The kinesthetic response is noted under our next heading as to walk in a worthy manner. The affective resonance of attunement is also noted in the musical references given above, and further, below (§ 2), for example, making melody, singing, etc., as well as other semantic items in §s 2 & 3 to be noted.

2. Hosting Holiness

Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy” – 1 Peter 1:13-16

I … urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord. Eph. 5:18, 19

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect – Romans 12:1-2

Yet you are holy, enthroned on [or, dwelling in] the praises of Israel. Psalm 22:3

The attunement noted under the previous heading is expressed here as “conformity” with the “passions / affections” especially in view, with the focus being on holiness in ‘all our conduct’. “Conduct” explicitly includes “action,” “walking,” “speaking,” “singing,” with a robust interpersonal relational and affective application – bearing with, unity, peace. Further, hosting the Holy Spirit is highlighted by worship, both the broad worship of life style conduct (“all your conduct”; Romans 12:1f) and attention to directed praises by means of psalms and hymns and spiritual songs (“to the Lord”).

3. Hosting Truth (Part 1)

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. Colossians 3:16

And … be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ…. – Ephesians 5:18-20

As noted in § II B 2, the understandings of truth has been various, though they all rely on some sort of more fundamental agreement, consent, synthesis, connection, relationship, fittingness, attunement, etc. We also noted in § II A that hosting the Holy Spirit involves the fitting relationships among the various parts of the Body of Christ as well as the intratextual and any other hermeneutic connections. In the Bible translation community, a lot of attention has already been given to the latter, perhaps less so the former, that is, as intrinsic to the translation situation, process and product. The former would include, of course, the members of the translation team, ex-pats and mother tongue translators. It would also include the supervising entities and the designated personnel, the Bible Translation organizations, any local, regional or national churches and their appointed representatives, and other responsible authorities. Such “fitting relationships” are described biblically in terms of ‘the unity of Spirit and the bond of peace,’ ‘loving one another,’ ‘caring for one another,’

24 https://counselling-vancouver.com/attunement/

‘encouraging one another,’ ‘praying for one another,’ etc., though in this context especially ‘Showing hospitality to one another without complaining [or grumbling]’ (1 Peter 4:9). And, as above, being filled with the Spirit and the Word attuned by and with wisdom and prayerful worship would characterize the translation situation, process and product.

4. Hosting Glory (Part 1)

I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also. I Cor. 14:15

Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God (Romans 15:7)

With regard to Morgan’s sense #2 of biblical meanings of God’s glory – “God is intrinsically glorious in the sense of fullness, sufficiency, majesty, beauty, and splendor,” he comments – though the Trinitarian reality is most pertinent, here I’m noting especially the references to the Holy Spirit,

James makes reference to Jesus as the “Lord of glory” or the “glorious Lord,” depending on how one renders the Greek. Either way, the point is the same: like the Father, Jesus is characterized by glory. The Spirit, also, is identified with glory (1 Pet. 4:14; cf. John 16:14; Eph. 1:13–14), especially through the language of presence, indwelling, and temple (John 14–16; Rom. 8:9–11; 1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19–20; 14:24–25; 2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:11–22; 5:18; 1 Thess. 4:8) (emphases added).

Further, though none of the senses would be excluded, Piper is not alone to claim that “the glory of God is the infinite beauty and greatness of his manifold perfections.” Likely, though, he was influenced by Edwards for whom God, the Divine Being Himself, consent is seen as most basic, in fact the basis of the excellence and beauty of God. Edwards elaborates: if God, who is “the general and proper entity of all things … is excellent, there must be plurality in God; otherwise there can be no consent in Him” (Misc. 117) “But in a being that is absolutely without any plurality there cannot be excellency, for there can be no such thing as consent or agreement” (Mind 1). This excellence is equated with beauty in Mind 1, 14, 45, 62, 63, and EC 206; in the latter, “holiness, moral excellence and beauty are conjoined as one,” while in RA 257, holiness is seen as “the beauty of all an intelligent creature’s natural perfections… the beauty of the divine nature,” and synonymous with “glory”; and in RA 274, as “the divinity of Divinity.” This consent or agreement which is the basis of excellence and beauty is fundamental and essential to God Himself in His Being and Divinity. The Trinity is plurality consenting in unity (Mind 45, parts 9 & 12), with this consenting seen as substantial and indeed as the Holy Spirit Himself. (Misc. 94, 293).25

Also of special significance is the identification of the Spirit as glory with the language of presence, indwelling, and temple (John 14–16; Rom. 8:9–11; 1 Cor. 3:16; 6:19–20; 14:24–25; 2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:11–22; 5:18; 1 Thess. 4:8). We have noted several times now that “your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you,” individually and corporately.

“holiness befits/adorns* your house, O LORD, forevermore” Psa 93:5

*הָאָנ naah: to be comely or befitting “A primitive root; properly, to be at home, i.e. (by implication) to be pleasant (or suitable), i.e. Beautiful be beautiful, become, be comely” (Strong's Exhaustive Concordance)

Significantly, this verse brings together “holiness,” “fittingness [befitting],” being at home (dwelling), the temple, and beauty - the beauty of holiness, glory. Taking this a bit further, applied individually, “The body is … for the Lord, and the Lord for the body” (1 Corinthians 6:13), where the context includes, the elided portion,

25 The affections are identified with spirit (Misc. 133, 136) and with regard to the Divine Spirit, especially identified as love and delight (Misc. 136, 157, 336).

“not meant for sexual immorality.” Corporately, “in Him the whole structure, being joined [fitted] together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by/in the Spirit” (Ephesians 22f), but further, and to my surprise, Paul concludes his instruction to husbands and wives (with “the two shall become one flesh” [again, a sexual reference]) with “This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church” (Ephesians 5:32f). The weave tightens as Paul notes that not only are we individually members of His Body, the Church, but we are members of one another (Ephesian 4:25; Romans 12:5). What could that mean: “so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another, οὕτως

μέλη”? How intimate or (co)constituent of each other are we? What kind of ‘fittingness’ is being presented here?

The key, perhaps, is in John 17 where we find “holiness” and “truth” conjoined –“Sanctify [from ἁγιάζω] them by the truth; Your word is truth. … For them I sanctify Myself, so that they too may be sanctified by the truth” (vv 17, 19) – and glory, verses 1, 4, 10, 22, 24. And to the point of the kind of fittingness or unity or belongingness of the members of his body one to another: “that they may be one as We are one” as due to that glory (v. 22), “that all of them may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I am in You” (v. 21). As “the Spirit of the Father/God” (Matthew 10:20; Matthew 12:28; Romans 8:9, 14) and ‘the Spirit of Christ” (Romans 8:9; etc.), the Holy Spirit may well be, as Edwards suggested, the prototype of consent, unity, fittingness, etc.

III. FURTHER REFLECTIONS

A. Hospitality

Hostile or hospitable (from the same root, hostis), and curiously, hostis may well have its roots in a proto-European language as the word ghostis, which in turn lead to the Latin hostis and the English ‘guest’/’host’ but also and most interestingly ‘ghost’. 26

We noted that for Paul Ricoeur translation is a matter of “Linguistic hospitality … where the pleasure27 of dwelling in the other’s language is balanced by the pleasure of receiving the foreign word at home, in one’s own welcoming house”; he sought to integrate ‘identity’ and ‘alterity,’ and thus promoted the idea(l) of “an equivalence without identity.” Does, though, Ricoeur’s position weaken and destabilize the ethical motivation and goal behind his model of linguistic hospitality by integrating or appropriating or assimilating the other (language, culture, persons, history, text, etc.) and thereby transgressing the uniqueness of either or both the source text or/and the translation? Is there always something in principle untranslatable, something incomparable, something always lacking equivalence, something fundamentally foreign or other which would remain in principle incomprehensible? This would not be to say that translation is always completely unsuccessful, just that the pair of either possible or impossible, or Ricoeur’s preferred alternative –faithfulness/betrayal—is insufficient to describe the situation. Those who challenge Ricoeur’s formulations suggest that, perhaps contrary to his explicit intentions, he overemphasizes integration and appropriation to one’s “ownness,” following a tradition that welcomes the foreign so as to enrich oneself. Regardless of whether this matter might be settled with regard to Ricoeur, the issue remains: do the ethics of hosting the Holy Spirit of Holiness, Truth, and Glory guide us here with regard to translating a text claiming to be “Godbreathed”, authored by those “carried along” (φέρω) by that same Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21)? And how is “the pleasure” Ricoeur mentions (of dwelling in the other’s language and of receiving the foreign word in one’s own language) related to the delight in excellency which Edwards notes with regard to the Holy Spirit?

26 Baugh, A.C. and Cable, T. (1993) A History of the English Language, 4th Edition. London: p. 19

27 We will take note later of this “pleasure”, as “pleasure” is often associated with aesthetic experience.

With regard to the ethical concern, § II C on hosting the Holy Spirit gives the specific guidelines of a ChristianBiblical ethic with the concern for faithfulness in translation focused beyond either the text or the reader of the translation or the translator per se to include faithfulness to the Lord Himself, first and foremost, yet in such a way as to guide and honour faithfulness to the 3 foci mentioned. This may, in fact, guide us to a resolution of the tension between, on the one hand, an overemphasis on integration and appropriation to one’s “ownness,” and on the other hand, unconditional hospitality which takes the risk of ‘the O/other’ transforming the host situation, including the language, in unconventional, non-traditional, unpredictable ways, and potentially distorting or violent ways.

Contrary to the usual contemporary contexts within which this tension is discussed (immigration, the visitation by a murderer, a ‘monster,’ or a traumatizing intruder, for instance), here we are concerned with hosting the Holy Spirit, the author of the Book being translated, the Creator Spirit of all, the Spirit of the One who providentially upholds and governs all things and in whose image humans have been created, and the Spirit who is redemptively restoring that fallen, broken image, which no doubt would be manifest in both all personnel involved with the translation as well as the host language(s) and the understandings of the source languages and texts. Sharing such beliefs, of course, would not guarantee the best solutions to translation challenges, but it does give hope and help for those hosting the Holy Spirit in appropriate ways.

B. Attunement

So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Genesis 1:28

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit28 for him.” Genesis 2:18

“‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’” Acts 17

Deep calls to deep Psalm 42:7

For it was fitting* that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. – Hebrews 2:10

* πρέπω prepó: to be fitting, proper, suitable

Recalling the references to “musicality” in § IIA and “affective sensitivity” in § IIC1, as well as the allusions to fittingness, unity, harmony, and such idioms as “walking (‘staying in step’) with the Spirit” and ‘being yoked with Jesus’ (Matthew 11), it is perhaps no wonder that “attunement” with the fundamental correlate of

28 The Syriac translates it, a helper similar to him; his image and counterpart. (Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers); before him, or correspondent to him, his counterpart, suitable to his nature and his need, one like himself in shape, constitution, and disposition, a second self: one to be at hand, or near to him, to converse familiarly with him, to be always ready to succour and comfort him, and whose care and business it should be to please and help him. (Benson Commentary); not identity, but harmony, of character (Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges); lit., “a helper in accord with him.” “Helper” need not imply subordination, for God is called a helper (Dt 33:7; Ps 46:2). The language suggests a profound affinity between the man and the woman and a relationship that is supportive and nurturing. (https://bible.usccb.org/bible/genesis/2).

human being has been proposed as a key for understanding and practicing translation, especially for properly handling ‘the subtlety of nuances, the tonality of inflections, and the richness of idioms’.29

There is more to explore. Consider: "An act of hospitality can only be poetic."30 How might that be? As humans are created as images of God, each unique, yet each an image of the same God, interpersonal relations would thus be image to image relations, highlighting the dynamics of fittingness as noted scripturally above, and recalling that for Edwards variants for fittingness include “agreeable,” “consent”, “union”, “condescent”, “image”, “type”, and “propensity”. Others have charted poetic imaging in terms of resonance and reverberation.31 Biblically, image is related to, and in parallel with, ‘sonship’ (Genesis 5:1-3; Colossians 1:15), and the renewal of the redeemed is a transformation “in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Col 3:10; Romans 8:29; 12:2), intimately related to beholding (“hosting”) the revealed (by the Holy Spirit) Glory of God (2 Corinthians 3:18) and being thereby transformed. As such, no doubt the paradigm or archetype would be the relation between the Eternal Father and Son (“the image of the invisible God,” Colossians 1:15), in the unity of the Holy Spirit.

And yet, the dynamics of hosting the Holy Spirit would involve the ‘poetic’ hosting of the other ‘images of God’ on the translation team and in the local cultural and linguistic contexts, in biblical terms, participating in the growing, building up in love of the Body of Christ as each individual part is nourished and knit together (Ephesians 4:16; Colossians 2:19). In short, the translation situation advances as His Kingdom comes, His will is done, and His Body/Temple is edified.

C. Building the Temple

Previously we have looked at Ephesians 2:19ff and 4:15f, noting the mixed metaphors of organic growth of a/the body and the building up/edifying of a building, particularly ‘the temple’ as the dwelling place for the Spirit; thus our role of hosting that Holy Spirit:

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit (Eph 2);

Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love (Eph 4).

To reiterate, the temple imagery likens individuals to living stones (1 Peter 2:5) while the body imagery likens individuals to “members” - μέλος, melos: a member or limb, of the body. What “members” adds to our understanding that “stones” does not is that the members are “members one of another” (ἐσμὲν ἀλλήλων μέλη; Ephesians 4:25; Romans 12:5, adding “individually”).32 Apparently this is both spousal (“one flesh”, see especially Ephesians 5:32) and intratrinitarian language (John 17:21ff): one’s identity is inherently, internally

29 Schalow, Frank. 2011. Attunement and Translation. Frank Schalow F. Schalow (ed.), Heidegger, Translation, and the Task of Thinking, Springer Dordrecht Heidelberg London New York, 291-311. What that ‘fundamental correlate’ is would depend on one’s position; for me, since humans are created ‘in the image of God,’ that fundamental correlate is “God” (as revealed in Christ Jesus in the Scriptures).

30 Jacques Derrida, p. 2. Of Hospitality

31 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, following Eugene Minkowski.

32 Apparently this literal language has proved troubling to translators, as evidenced by so many ways of avoiding it.

co-constituted by the other(s), and this unity amongst the family of God is a given, to be first of all maintained as always already the case (Ephesians 4:3). It is intrinsic to be created in the image of God.

The contexts of these passages helps us unfold the ethical, even programmatic, implications. First of all, both Ephesians 4:15 and 4:25 highlight ‘speaking the truth (in love).’ More than a managerial style this has in view, again, the edifying of the Body of Christ, encouraging the proper, healthy, perfect, functional, effectual, proportionate, ‘fruitful’ (various translations) participation of each member. More than managerial, this would be a ministry of those especially gifted and positioned to “equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12). Finally, for now, the contexts noted (e.g. Ephesians, Colossians, Romans) are rich with practical, ethical applications.

IV. RELEVANT ‘FIGURES’

A. Vestiture33

…taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness [having been created according to/toward God in righteousness and holiness of the truth] – Ephesians 4:21ff

Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another. – Ephesians 4:25

The figure or image of putting off and on, as of clothing, is intertwined with early themes, for instance, “truth,” “likeness-fittingness-attunement,” “holiness,” as in the Ephesians 4 quotes above. The theme of transformation, as from the Holy Spirit – “transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. (2 Corinthians 3:18) – is echoed above: renewed in the spirit of your minds. Recall that “… your bodies are members of Christ [and] he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him” (1 Corinthians 6), the context including a comparison with “The two will become one flesh” as also in the Ephesians 5 passage noted earlier. And with regard to the Holy Spirit in particular: Jesus, “I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed* with power from on high” (Luke 24:49) - * ἐνδύω enduo: put on, clothe; from ἐν en in, on, at, by, with and δύνω dunó: to enter, to sink into - in the sense of sinking into a garment); to invest with clothing (literally or figuratively) array, clothe (with), endue, have (put) on.

The point here is to highlight the intimacy of what ‘hosting the Holy Spirit’ entails.

B. Being-at-Home - Dwelling

FROM THE BEGINNING

For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens - he is God!, who formed the earth and made it - he established it; he did not create it empty (והֹ֥ת - formlessness, confusion, unreality, emptiness (primary meaning difficult to seize), he formed it to be inhabited!** “I am the LORD, and there is no other.”

Isaiah 45:18 ** בַׁשָי yashab: to sit, remain, dwell

Lord, you have been our dwelling place** in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God –Psalm 90:1f

33 See Foran (2016), “Aristotle’s description of language as the clothing of inner mental experience in many senses offers a neat summation of the dominant approach to translation for many centuries” (2); “Th e meaning, the inner logos or thought ( dianoia ) could change its ‘outer’ clothing as simply as one changes a coat” (3).

ןועָמ maon: dwelling, habitation

THE END

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place* of God is with man. He will dwell** with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God - Revelation 21:3 * σκηνή skéné: a tent / ** σκηνόω skénoó: to have one's tent, dwell

THE ALREADY / NOT-YET: IN-BETWEEN

Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. John 14:23 μονή moné: an abiding, an abode

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him – John 15:5 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you – John 15:7

Abide in my love John 15:9 μένω menó: to stay, abide, remain

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit. Ephesians 2:19ff

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners (strangers, foreigners) and exiles (pilgrims, temporary residents)

1 Peter 2:11

IN THE MIDST OF TROUBLE

You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble – Psalm 32:7

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble – Psalm 46:1

You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the LORD, “My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.” … Because you have made the LORD your refuge, the Most High your dwelling place – Psalm 91:1-2, 9

JUDGEMENT

The desert owl and screech owl will possess it, and the great owl and raven will nest there. God will stretch out over Edom the measuring line of chaos and the plumb line of desolation – Isaiah 34:11

At the heart of God’s relation with humans is His covenant promise to dwell with His people (Exodus 25:8; Exodus 29:45; Lev. 26:12; Jer. 32:38; Ezek. 37:27; etc.), with that promise announced as fulfilled in Revelation 21:3, “the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.” Further, that dwelling entails a city (Revelation 3:12, 21:2; etc.), a household (1 Timothy 3:15, 1 Peter 4:17, etc.) termed “the house of the Father (of Jesus)” (John 14:2), and indeed, a new heavens and new earth (2 Peter 3:13, Revelation 21:1). In the mean time, though, God’s people live as exiles, strangers, and pilgrims on this earth (1 Peter 1:1, 2:11; Hebrews 11:13) while simultaneously being “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:19”,

a passage we have visited above with regard to “being joined together, grow[ing] into a holy temple in the Lord… being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”34

Preliminarily (still35), consider,

The fact is that we often are disturbed paradoxically by beauty: both taken out of ourselves, hence disquieted, yet awakened to our being at home with beauty, hence enchanted and enlivened. Beauty arouses enigmatic [sic] joy in us, and we enjoy an elemental rapport with it as other. Surprised by beauty, our breath is taken away, we are more truly there with the beautiful, yet taken outside of ourselves: both at home with ourselves and not being at home, in being beyond ourselves.36

C. A Way

The Scriptures claim that Jesus is “the Way” (John 14:6), and that the Good Shepherd (Jesus) leads us in paths of righteousness (the ‘right way’; Psalm 23). How might the Holy Spirit be involved? Only those born again/from above by the Holy Spirit are enabled to know and follow that Good Shepherd. Further, those who are His own and know His voice “have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual” (1 Corinthians 2:12-13).

Doctrinally, “Illumination” indicates more about the role of the Holy Spirit. A few typical sample formulations: Illumination is that doctrine that describes the work of the Holy Spirit in helping the believer to understand God’s Word. Though regeneration is required to rightly understand the Word, while having spiritual eyes comes before having spiritual sight, they are not, strictly speaking, the same event. Rather illumination describes how the Spirit comes to us as believers opening up the Bible;37 …our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts. (WCF 1.5); … we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the Word; Nevertheless we acknowledge the inward illumination of the Spirit of God to be necessary for the saving understanding of such things as are revealed in the Word (WCF 1.6);

The Spirit of God makes the reading, but especially the preaching, of the word, an effectual means of convincing and converting sinners, and of building them up in holiness and comfort, through faith, unto salvation (WSC A89);

What, therefore, neither the light of nature nor the law could do, that God performs by the operation of the Holy Spirit through the word or ministry of reconciliation; which is the gospel concerning the Messiah, by means whereof it has pleased God to save such as believe, as well under the Old as under the New Testament (Jn 3:1-8; 2 Cor 5:18-19; 1 Cor 1:21; Heb 4:2; Canons of Dort, Article 6 (see also Article 11).

Not only would hosting the Holy Spirit facilitate and enable understanding the Word to be translated, but the Holy Spirit equips the translators. That equipping is of at least four sorts. First, God’s love is poured into the

34 This theme is developed extensively in my Towards a Christian Philosophy, Chapters 3 & 7.

35 See Part 2, “THE BEAUTY OF LOVELINESS.”

36 Desmond, William. The Gift of Beauty and the Passion of Being: On the Threshold between the Aesthetic and the Religious (Veritas Book 30) . Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition

37 https://rcsprouljr.com/what-is-the-doctrine-of-illumination/

hearts of His people by the Holy Spirit (Romans 5:5). The task of translation is difficult in itself, in addition to the challenges for ex-pats to learn languages and adjust to cultural differences. The comfort and personal encouragement through that process, involving whatever degree of suffering, is provided by the Holy Spirit. Second, not everyone has the requisite gifts, talents and abilities for the task. Regardless, every good gift is from the ‘above’ (James 1:17) with “All these [gifts being] empowered by one and the same Spirit, who apportions to each one individually as he wills” (1 Corinthians 12:11). Third, translation is not only an intellectual task, dependent on “the Spirit of wisdom and revelation” (Ephesians 1:17) for understanding “the word,” but there is also reality of “the power of the Spirit of God” along with the “word” (1 Thessalonians 1:5; Romans 15:19). Fourth, the Apostle Paul emphasizes that not only are the Word and the Spirit essential to the communication of God’s message, but also “what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake” (1 Thessalonians 1:5; 1 Thessalonians 2:10), that is, the character of those involved. He mentions being “like a nursing mother caring for her children (2:7) and “we treated each of you as a father treats his own children” (2:11). He further gives testimony to the kind of life he lead, e.g. 2 Corinthians 6:3-13. Such character formation is credited to the work of the Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:18).

V. HOSTING THE BEAUTY (OF THE LORD) – Orientation

A. Overview38

I noted above (§ IIB3) that “the glory of God is the manifest beauty of his holiness”; and again, “the glory of God is the infinite beauty and greatness of God’s manifold perfections.”

There is a long history associating the experiences of beauty with either a path to or a revelation of Divine Beauty. Such is often associated with Neo-Platonism as well as various traditions of Divine Madness. But not only;39 for instance, Peter Martyr Vermigli, the Italian reformer (1499 –1562) wrote,

By the very workmanship of this world, they [humans] knew God to be most mighty. Further, they knew by the beauty, show, and a distinction of all things, that so great a power was administered by a most high providence and wisdom.40

John Calvin (1509-1564) noted:

Wherever you turn your eyes, there is no portion of the world, however minute, that does not exhibit at least some sparks of beauty; while it is impossible to contemplate the vast and beautiful fabric as it extends around, without being overwhelmed by the immense weight of glory.41

And Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), a lover of beauty, put it this way:

God has so constituted nature, that the presenting of this inferior [created] beauty, especially in those kinds of it which have the greatest resemblance of the primary [divine] beauty, as the harmony of

38 I highly recommend https://northamanglican.online/the-witness-of-beauty-an-introduction-part-1-of-3, https://northamanglican.online/the-witness-of-beauty-an-introduction-part-2-of-3/, https://northamanglican.online/the-witnessof-beauty-an-introduction-part-3-of-3/.

39 “As Hans Urs von Balthasar has taught us, one of the most important considerations when evaluating an intellectual epoch is the status it grants to beauty” (Schindler, D.C. 2006. Communio 33. Winter 2006:521-529, p. 531); “the recovery of a genuine Christian culture the world and Christian imagination requires a recovery of beauty in its theological, metaphysical, and ultimately even its physical significance. Anything less will no doubt unwittingly trivialize precisely what it seeks to restore” (ibid. 539).

40 Peter Martyr Vermigli, Common Places, trans. Anthonie Marten (1574), 10–11, quoted in Haines, “Natural Theology,” 285.

41 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 1.5.1, trans. Henry Beveridge (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008, repr. 2019). See also VanDrunen, Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms, 99.

sounds and the beauties of nature, have a tendency to assist those whose hearts are under the influence of a truly virtuous temper to dispose them to the exercises of divine love, and enliven in them a sense of spiritual beauty.42

True knowledge is being struck by the arrow of Beauty that wounds man, moved by reality, “how it is Christ himself who is present and in an ineffable way disposes and forms the souls of men” (cf. The Life in Christ, Book II, p. 15). Being struck and overcome by the beauty of Christ is a more real, more profound knowledge than mere rational deduction. Of course, we must not underrate the importance of theological reflection, of exact and precise theological thought; it remains absolutely necessary. But to move from here to disdain or to reject the impact produced by the response of the heart in the encounter with beauty as a true form of knowledge would impoverish us and dry up our faith and our theology. We must rediscover this form of knowledge; it is a pressing need of our time 43

Further, Francis Turretin (1623 - 1687), the Genevan-Italian Reformed scholastic theologian, held that “the beauty and order of the universe…show that God’s existence can be discerned from nature”44; and Johann Gerhard (1582 - 1637), a Lutheran: “God, through the beauty of the works of His own hands, desires to call me to Himself and to incite me to love Him alone.”45 “Beauty, then, always has the potential to be recognized as an encounter with God, even as that same beauty can be dismissed by those who would not see.”46 Indeed, who can doubt that creation reveals the invisible attributes of our Creator, His eternal power and divine nature, and His glory (Romans 1; Psalm 19), indeed, the beauty of His holiness (Deuteronomy 26:19, Psalm 29:2, Psalm 48:2, Psalm 93:5, Psalm 96:9, Isaiah 63:15, Isaiah 64:11, Daniel 11:45, Isaiah 52:1, Revelation 21:2, etc.).

And His Word? Certainly the Lord Jesus Himself (John 1:14, Luke 9:26) as well as the words of God (Psalm 119, 2 Peter 1:17) are also beautifully glorious…and gloriously beautiful. What, though, would be a biblical understanding of beauty that would justify these claims, especially when we note that “he had no form [outline, form - רַׁאת] or majesty [an ornament, honor, splendor -רָדָה] that we should look at him, and no beauty47 [sight, appearance, vision - הֶאְרַׁמ] that we should desire him” (Isaiah

42 Edwards, Nature of True Virtue, 31.

43 The Essential Pope Benedict XVI: His Central Writings and Speeches. 2008 (2007):49. HarperCollins ebooks. by John F. Thornton, Susan B. Varenne.

44 Grabill, Rediscovering the Natural Law, 161. See also Greeley, “Protestant Philosophy,” 315.

45 Johann Gerhard, Sacred Meditations, trans. C. W. Heisler (Ithaca, NY: Just and Sinner Publishing House, 2020), 34. See also Cooper, Prolegomena, 180, 233.

46 See Sammon, Called to Attraction, 34; Wilson, Vision of the Soul, 99 Johnson, Father of Lights, 20, 30, 187; and Myers, Poetics of Orthodoxy, 66, 68. For an account of how experiences of beauty differ between those who acknowledge the presence of God therein and those who deny it, see Johnson, Father of Lights, 57–62.

47 Preliminarily, “Christ is not devoid of beauty in the crucifixion, although ‘Jesus’s suffering, considered as suffering, is not beautiful. What is beautiful are the divine properties that are revealed through his suffering and pain: humility, self-giving, love’” (James Clark-https://northamanglican.online/the-witness-of-beauty-an-introduction-part-2-of-3/#post-15280-footnote-6 quoting Johnson, Father of Lights, 168, italics original (And referencing: “Johnson, Father of Lights, 158–60, 167–69; Maurer, About Beauty, 119–20; Harrison, Beauty and Revelation, 233–38; Dubay, Evidential Power, 310–13; Ratzinger, “Contemplation of Beauty,” http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20020824_ratzinger-cl-rimini_en.html; Richard Viladesau, The Beauty of the Cross: The Passion of Christ in Theology and the Arts from the Catacombs to the Eve of the Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 7–12; Wooddell, Beauty of the Faith, 93–94; Carnes, Beauty, 87, 161–62, 251–52; Sammon, Called to Attraction, 38; O’Collins, Beauty of Jesus, 99–118; and Myers, Poetics of Orthodoxy, 46. Given that Christ’s beauty in the crucifixion is spiritual rather than physical, Mark C. Mattes claims that the crucifixion “overturns the medieval

53:2).48 Further, as Arthur Wallis put it, "Apostolic preaching is not marked by its beautiful diction, or literary polish, or cleverness of expression, but operates in demonstration of the Spirit and of power." And with regard to the glory [δόξα, including splendor, brightness, majesty] of the Old Covenant (and a fortiori, the New?) –“a veil lies over their hearts. But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed” (2 Corinthians 3). And most especially what is the relevance of beauty for Bible translation?

“For wherever the human soul turns itself, other than to you, it is fixed in sorrows, even if it is fixed upon beautiful things” (Augustine49).

Let’s continue with The Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF), Chapter I, §5, “Of the Holy Scripture” (emphases added):

We may be moved and induced by the testimony of the Church to an high and reverent esteem of the Holy Scripture. And the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is, to give all glory to God), the full discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation, the many other incomparable excellencies, and the entire perfection thereof, are arguments whereby it does abundantly evidence itself to be the Word of God: yet notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts.

Notably, these highlighted characteristics of Scripture from the WCF correlate well with the characteristics of biblical beauty, as charted by Edmund P. Clowney in his essay “Living Art: Christian Experience and the Arts.”50 I begin by following Clowney’s approach of locating various words which are used in the Old Testament for beauty, grouping these words according to context and usage, finding other words of similar meaning, studying their usage and meaning, and finally discerning the different ideas or ‘concepts’ of beauty of which the scriptures speak. Before giving the fuller exegetical support or reasoning I first present the results of such an approach. My purpose, though, is to develop the notion of beauty as presented in the Bible,51 and propose its place and value in the practice of Bible translation

The 3 major aspects or dimensions or components of beauty from the Old Testament as presented by Clowney are (i) the beauty of Glory or Majesty, (ii) the beauty of Design or Craftsmanship, and (iii) the beauty of Loveliness or Delight.52 All three are linked with worship, and the proper mode of perception of each is criteria for beauty,” i.e., integrity, proportion, and clarity (Martin Luther’s Theology of Beauty: A Reappraisal [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017], 70). But this is not so, considering that the traditional criteria for beauty can be understood spiritually as well as physically, as discussed previously.”

48 Cf. http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20020824_ratzinger-clrimini_en.html

49 Confessions 4.10.15 (trans. Chadwick, 61).

50 God and Culture: Essays in Honor of Carl F.H. Henry, 1993, ed. by D. A. Carson, John D. Woodbridge, Carl F. H. Henry. Eerdmans Pub Co., pp. 235-253; also, Clowney, 1979:87-89. CM* *Christian Meditation. Craig Press: Nutley, N.J.

51 I leave the accumulated exegetical studies behind the summaries to follow for another occasion.

52 There is “a world of difference between an aesthetical theology and a theological aesthetics. The former takes its conditions from the 'natural' world of aesthetic categories in general, the latter quite clearly wielding only categories of beauty as they emerge from divine revelation” (Breandán Leahy. 1994. “Theological Aesthetics.” The beauty of Christ - A Introduction to the Theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, Edited by Bede McGregor, A.P. and Thomas Norris. T&T Clark. Edinburgh, 25).

“beholding”, "looking", or "gazing."53 Each of the 3 forms entail both objective and subjective aspects. By “objective” I mean ‘from the side of the object of experience,’ here, the biblical text and what it reveals; by "subjective", ‘from the side of the experience of response to that text and what it reveals’. The former would have more to do with the composition of the translation; the latter, with the experience of checking and engagement. A first step toward facilitating the quality of bible translation by considering the aesthetic dimension is to understand more about the biblical notion of Beauty.

B. Preliminary Orientation

What might be illustrations of (i) the beauty of Glory or Majesty, (ii) the beauty of Design or Craftsmanship, and (iii) the beauty of Loveliness or Delight? The following have been suggested:

1. Musical Illustrations

a. The Beauty of Glory or Majesty

i. Beauty of Majesty per se - J.S. Bach : Toccata and Fugue in D minor BWV 565; Chopin Etude Op.10 No.12 'Revolutionary'

ii. The Design of Majesty - Beethoven - Symphony No. 3 in E flat major (Op. 55) Eroica

iii. The Loveliness of Majesty - Beethoven Piano Sonata No. 17 "Tempest" Op. 31 no. 2 - 3rd movement Allegretto

b. The Beauty of Design or Craftsmanship

i. The Majesty of Design - Beethoven: Sonata No. 26 in E-flat major, Op. 81a, "Les Adieux": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z26dfRI9rqg

ii. The Design of Design (par excellence) – Bach - The Art of Fugue BWV 1080 (?); Terry Riley: "In C"https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z4k9dxs/revision/2 (an intro of how it works); https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH5sl80fCGg (an extract)

iii. The Loveliness of Design: Canon in D – J. Pachelbel, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gsVXwFaU4Q, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDSP5wA7Z0w

c. The Beauty of Loveliness or Delight

i. The Majesty of Loveliness - Eric Thiman: I wandered lonely as a cloud; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GueRvzTrOU (Sarabande in c-minor, Bach, lute); Children of the Heavenly King - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAq-PZ6KbF0 , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCHsLNacrJU

ii. The Design of Loveliness – Romance for Violin & Piano, Op. 23: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLaMIlNbs6g

iii. Loveliness of Loveliness - John Rutter: "For the Beauty of the Earth", "All Things Bright and Beautiful", "Look at the World"; J.S. Bach: Adagios- Sheep may safely graze; Schubert "Trout" Quintet, 4th Movement; Messiaen: Vingt Regards XIX. Je dors, mais mon coeur veille (I sleep, but my Heart is awake)

2. Visual Illustrations

53 The ‘gaze’, though, is perhaps more properly understood ontologically as an orientation of receptive engagement of our entire being.

a. The Beauty of Glory or Majesty

b. The Beauty of Design or Craftsmanship

c. The Beauty of Loveliness or Delight

3. Poetic Illustrations

a. The Beauty of Majesty

念奴娇 赤壁怀古

苏轼

大江东去，浪淘尽，千古风流人物。

故垒西边，人道是，三国周郎赤壁。

乱石穿空，惊涛拍岸，卷起千堆雪。

江山如画，一时多少豪杰。

遥想公瑾当年，小乔初嫁了，雄姿英发。

羽扇纶巾，谈笑间，樯橹灰飞烟灭。

故国神游，多情应笑我，早生华发。

人生如梦，一尊还酹江月。

Google Translate Niannujiao·Chibi Nostalgic Su Shi

The great river goes eastward, and the waves are swept away, and there are romantic figures throughout the ages.

On the west side of the fortress, the humane road is Chibi, the Lang of the Zhou Dynasty of the Three Kingdoms.

Rocks pierced through the sky, stormy waves crashed onto the shore, and thousands of piles of snow were rolled up.

Picturesque, a moment how many hero.

I think back to Gong Jin's time when Xiao Qiao got married for the first time and looked majestic and handsome.

Feather fans and silk scarves, while talking and laughing, the boats and oars disappeared into ashes. My motherland wanders in my mind, I should laugh at my passion, and I will be born early.

Life is like a dream, a statue returns to the moon.

Memories of the Past at Red Cliff

Tune: Charm of a Maiden Singer - Su Shi

Translated by Xu Yuanchong (许渊冲)

The endless river eastward flows; With its huge waves are gone all those Gallant heroes of bygone years.

West of the ancient fortress appears Red Cliff where General Zhou Yu won his early fame When the Three Kingdoms were in flame.

Jugged rocks tower in the air

And swashing waves beat on the shore, Rolling up a thousand heaps of snow. To match the hills and the river so fair, How many heroes brave of yore Made a great show!

I fancy General Zhou Yu at the height Of his success, with a plume fan in hand, In a silk hood, so brave and bright, Laughing and jesting with his bride so fair, While enemy ships were destroyed as planned Like castles in the air.

Should their souls revisit this land, Sentimental, his bride would laugh to say: Younger than they, I have my hair turned grey.

Life is like a passing dream.

O Moon, I drink to you who saw them on the stream.

Reflctions on the Ancient Red Cliff

To the tune of Niannujiao

Translation – Anonymous

The Great River flows, Eastward waves sweeping away,

For thousands of years, gallant heroes. West of the ancient fort, they say, stands The Red Cliff of the Three-Kingdoms' Duke Zhou. Rocks pierce the sky, shore-tearing Waves swirl into piles of snow.

What a glorious sweep of land, Once a stage for so many a hero!

My thoughts drift to those years when Zhou Had newly married the beautiful Qiao, Vigour and valour aglow.

A feather fan and a silken hat, He masterminded the fire-attack on the foe

Over a casual chat

To see their fleet perish, blow by blow. Back from my mental vagrancy in that bygone age, I must laugh at myself: letting sentiments grow Into grey hairs, too soon.

But isn't life a dream, after all?

Let me pledge this cup to the River, To the Moon.

b. The Beauty of Design

寻寻觅觅，冷冷清清，凄凄惨惨戚戚。

Google Translate

Searching and searching, deserted and miserable

林译 (T1)：So dim, so dark,/ So dense, so dull,/ So damp, so dank,/ So dead!

杨译 (T2)：Seeking, seeking,/ Chilly and quiet,/ Desolate, painful and miserable.

徐译 (T3)：I’ve a sense of something missing I must seek./ Everything about me looks dismal and bleak. / Nothing that gives me pleasure, I can find.

许译 (T4)：I look for what I miss;/ I know not what it is./ I feel so sad, so drear,/ So lonely, without cheer.

乍暖还寒时候，最难将息。

Google Translate

It is most difficult to breathe when it is suddenly warm and then cold.

林译 (T1)：The weather, now warm, now cold,/ Makes it harder/ Than ever to forget!

杨译 (T2)：Even when it’s warmer there is still a chill, / It is most difficult to keep well.

徐译 (T3)：Even the weather has proved most unkind. / It is warm, but abruptly it turns cold again. / An unbroken rest-most difficult to obtain.

许译 (T4)：How hard is it / To keep me fit / In this lingering cold!

Translators: T1 = Lin Yutang; T2 = (Mr. & Mrs.) Yang Xianyi; T3 = Xu Zhongjie; T4 = Xu Yuanchong

c.

The Beauty of Loveliness

马致远（元）《天净沙 秋思》

枯藤老树昏鸦，

小桥流水人家，

古道西风瘦马。

夕阳西下，

断肠人在天涯。

Google Translate

Withered vines and old trees, dim crows, Small bridges and flowing water, people’s homes, The ancient road has a westerly wind and a thin horse. The sun sets in the west, Heartbroken people are at the end of the world.

Translation 1:

Autumn Thoughts (Tune: Tian Jing Sha）

By Ma Zhiyuan

Tr. Qin Dachuan (秦大川)

Withered vines, old trees, crows at dusk; A small bridge, flowing water and some huts. Across the lean horse on an age-old path The chilly west wind blows; In the setting sun, A heart-broken man a world away from home.

Translation 2:

Autumn Thoughts (Tune: Sunny Sand)

By Ma Zhiyuan

Tr. Xu Yuanchong (许渊冲)

Over old trees wreathed with rotten vines fly evening crows; Under a small bridge near a cottage a stream flows; On ancient road in the west wind a lean horse goes. Westward declines the sun; Far, far from home is the heartbroken one.

Translation 3:

Autumn Thoughts (Tune: Tianjingsha)

By Ma Zhiyuan

Tr. Ding Zuxin (丁祖馨)

Withered vines hanging on old branches, Returning crows croaking at dusk. A few houses hidden past a narrow bridge, And below the bridge a quiet creek running.

Down a worn path, in the west wind, A lean horse comes plodding. The sun dips down in the west, And the lovesick traveler is still at the end of the world.

C. Preliminary Elaboration54

1. Introduction55

Operating from my understanding of the structure of concepts (like the concept of beauty),56 typically there are three major components of meaning, interrelated in a perichoretic trinitarian manner.57 Thus, if we designate these three as 1, 2, and 3, then each is also internally co-constituted by the others, something like this, proliferating endless to whatever degree of refinement one wishes:

In the catholic tradition (of Western philosophy, including Christian), beauty is commonly held to be one of the transcendentals. Transcendentals are “those properties which are predicated of every class of existent thing. This is the reason for the designation: they transcend normal categories of classification.”58 Another way of describing transcendentals is that they are “convertible with being, and so with one another,” i.e., they

54 Having introduced the nature of beauty, and discussed it under the following headings beauty defined, beauty is a transcendental, the objectivity of beauty, beauty is an intellectual experience James Clark summarize: “the beautiful is, on an experiential level, that which pleases when it is contemplated; beauty is found in all things, but it is especially apparent to us in human life and creative works; beauty is an objective reality, even as we experience it as subjects; and beauty is an intellectual experience that does not require the exercise of discursive reason, yet at the same time does not oppose reason. With these points established, it is now possible to discuss how beauty witnesses to God” (https://northamanglican.online/the-witness-of-beauty-anintroduction-part-1-of-3; accessed 23 August 2023).

55 See Bosserman, B. A. 2014. The Trinity and the Vindication of Christian Paradox (Kindle Locations 4948ff. Kindle Edition.

56 As developed in TCP, Chapter 8, §3.1, “The Form of Unity”.

57 “It seems impossible that one object should be both within and without another, or that (since it is laid down that the Beings of whom we are treating, though They do not dwell apart, retain their separate existence and condition) these Beings can reciprocally contain One Another, so that One should permanently envelope, and also be permanently enveloped by, the Other, whom yet He envelopes. This is a problem which the wit of man will never solve, nor will human research ever find an analogy for this condition of Divine existence. But what man cannot understand, God can be” (Hilary, On the Trinity 3.1.).

58 Christopher Scott Sevier, Aquinas on Beauty (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2015), 124.

are “conceptually but not really distinct from [all and every] being.”59 In short, to say that beauty is a transcendental means that “everything, insofar as it is, is beautiful.”60 Other transcendentals include goodness and truth and unity.61 62

The primary traditional transcendentals (with traditional disciplines) are

1 – Goodness (Ethics)

2 – Truth (Epistemology)

3 – Beauty (Aesthetics)

Biblically I transpose these traditional 3 as follows:

1 – Love, Father

2 – Truth, Son

3 – Glory-Light, Spirit

My focus here, for now, is “3 – Beauty.” As noted above, and to be further substantiated later (exegetically, lexically), the biblical data with regard to ‘beauty’ organizes around 3 “attractors”:

3.1 The Beauty Of Majesty Or Glory – Utmost Value, Power, Radiance

3.2 The Beauty of Design or Craftsmanship - Consent of all the parts, Harmony

3.3 The Beauty of Loveliness, Pleasantness, Grace, Delight, Incomparable Excellencies

More closely considered, based on biblical data plus the insights of many others, I propose something like this, acknowledging that though the components are widely recognized, how they are understood, prioritized and ‘organized,’ varies widely; and so my proposal is just that, a proposal. My current understanding of “Beauty” (as ‘correlated’ with the Holy Spirit) is patterned on the biblical usage of “Spirit of ____”: Holiness, Truth and Glory (§ IIB).

3 – Beauty (Spirit)

3.1 - Holiness of Beauty (Majesty)

3.1.1 – “True Virtue” (JE)

3.1.2 – Set Apart (Gap)

59 D. C. Schindler, The Catholicity of Reason (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 63–64, and Owens, Elementary Christian Metaphysics, 124. See also Maurer, About Beauty, 14–15; Clarke, The One and the Many, 290–91; Wilson, Vision of the Soul, 82n76, 85n86, 229; King, Beauty of the Lord, 18–19; and Viladesau, “Art and Meaning,” 418.

60 Wilson, Vision of the Soul, 224. See also Hall, Being and Attributes, 198, 307; Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, 30; Owens, Elementary Christian Metaphysics, 122–24; Maurer, About Beauty, 1, 23, 34, 113; Hans Urs von Balthasar, My Work in Retrospect, trans. Brian McNeil (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1993), 115; Dubay, Evidential Power, 45; Clarke, The One and the Many, 298–301; Kevin E. O’Reilly, Aesthetic Perception: A Thomistic Perspective (Portland: Four Courts, 2007), 20; Jaroszyński, Beauty and Being, 159; Schindler, Love and the Postmodern, 18–19; King, Beauty of the Lord, 17–18; Miravalle, Beauty, 37; Johnson, Father of Lights, 2; and Viladesau, “Art and Meaning,” 418.

61 I am taking ‘unity’ as the 3 as ‘organized’ as given.

62 “To grasp any transcendental at all is to grasp paradox, because their infinite character makes them inseparably interwoven with each other without allowing them to fall, as it were, into an inert synonymy. The theme of the circumincession of the transcendentals is a major one for Balthasar, and he connects this theme in a special way with beauty, on the one hand, and unity on the other. As Balthasar says in GL 1: “[Beauty] . . . dances as an uncontained splendor around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another. . . . [S]he will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance.” The importance of beauty, for Balthasar, cannot be overstated, and I will point out in a moment some of the ways in which beauty allows truth to be true and goodness to be good. The theme of the interplay between the beautiful, the good, and the true, as we said above, is the fundamental ordering principle of Balthasar’s thought” (Schindler, David C. 2004. Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Dramatic Structure of Truth A Philosophical Investigation. (Kindle Locations 8302-8309). Kindle Edition.

3.1.3 – Undoing/(re)Fitting

3.2 - Truth of Beauty

3.2.1 - Coherence (“holds together”)

3.2.2 – Design (Patterns: Parts & Wholes)

3.2.3 – Resonance (“rings true”)

3.3 - Glory of Beauty

3.3.1 - Radiance

3.3.2 - Surplus

3.3.3 – Loveliness

3.3.3.1 - Attractiveness

3.3.3.2 - Playful

3.3.3.3 - Allusivity

It is worth noting anticipating for further elaborations that 3.1 (the Holiness of Beauty) is to be distinguished from 1.3, the Beauty of Holiness, as would be 3.2 (the Truth of Beauty) from 2.3 (the Beauty of Truth), but not 3.3 (the Glory of Beauty) from 3.3 (the Beauty of Glory). The more the “numbers” are repeated (3.3, 3.3.3, 3.3.3.3, etc.) the more one might be inclined to claim the ‘essence’ of the concern; I say ‘might’, because the repetitions are endless, and contextualized by all the other proliferating components. (cf. § VC6)

There is more to be said as we prepare to consider in greater depth ‘hosting the Holy Spirit’, especially and in relation to Bible translation.

2. Subjective and Objective

I understand each component as just noted as a relation between what has traditionally been called an object and a subject pole, offering objective characteristics and subjective experiences as well as the co-constituting relation between the poles. This co-constituting “between” is a key.

That beauty involves a subjective experience has often been the prominent defining factor. For instance, “If we are to treat beauty as a particular sort of encounter with another something in the world, then we have immediately brought subjectivity into play: for it is undeniable that there is truly an experience occurring, and so some subject is having an experience.”63 Similarly, and very traditionally,

The beautiful is that which pleases us upon being contemplated. It is that which pleases us when we apprehend it with our minds alone, or, if not by our minds alone, then by our minds in conjunction with our senses, but not by the sense of sight alone. We might even say that the beautiful is something that it pleases us to behold, but only if we remember that we can behold something in other ways than by sight.64

Further,

63 Johnson, Father of Lights, 4–5. See also Johnson, Father of Lights, 4–8, 32–33, 189; Hall, Being and Attributes, 197; Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, 166n56; Dubay, Evidential Power, 47; Edward T. Oakes, “The Apologetics of Beauty,” in The Beauty of God: Theology and the Arts, Daniel J. Treier, Mark Husbands, and Roger Lundin, eds. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2007), 211; O’Reilly, Aesthetic Perception, 40–43; Williams, Faithful Guide, 288; King, Beauty of the Lord, 14; and Viladesau, “Art and Meaning,” 418.

64 Adler, Six Great Ideas, 108. See also Sammon, Called to Attraction, 99. Mortimer J. Adler, Six Great Ideas (New York: Macmillan, 1981). Brendan Thomas Sammon, The God Who Is Beauty: Beauty as a Divine Name in Thomas Aquinas and Dionysius the Areopagite (Cambridge, UK: James Clarke & Co., 2014); and Brendan Thomas Sammon, Called to Attraction: An Introduction to the Theology of Beauty (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2017).}

I also welcome a greater attention to beauty in all its forms, and would wish especially to undo the breach or cordon sanitaire that certain aesthetic theories have installed between beauty and passion, including erotic passion.65

Beauty witnesses an elemental rapport between ourselves and what is other. There is nothing of a vis dormativa in this rapport. We are surprised by beauty and taken outside of ourselves. We behold something or someone as beautiful, and our breath is taken away, and it is as if the other beheld had taken the secret initiative in communicating to us. Our “beholding of” the beautiful is a “beholding from” the beautiful (30)66

We are first receivers and only then perceivers and conceivers. The presence of the beautiful disarms our defenses, but the disarming is sweet and the surprise brings delight. If the surprise of beauty awakens delight, there is something given, something to which we are to be receptive (ibid.);

One has to be opened, and lay oneself open to the occasion of its summoning, but not coercing, communication. There is something like a godsend in the truly beautiful (ibid.);

This is the surprising patience to receiving the beautiful in the sense of our being overtaken by it, overcome, taken out of ourselves, transported (ibid.).

We are more determined than determining, determined not in a deterministic way but in the mode of a free receptivity, a receptivity that is also releasing of freedom (ibid. 30)

And so, nonetheless, because there is a given, “… objectivity also enters here, because one is having an experience of something”;67 “Beauty is as objective as truth and goodness…. In other words, beauty isn’t just a matter of preference.”68 Wilson, drawing on Jacques Maritain, brings us closer to the essence of beauty by defining it as “the splendor of form,” or “the shining forth of the form that makes a being to be what it is such that it exists, is intelligible as true [2.2], and is desirable as good [2.1].”69 70

65 Konstan, David. Beauty (Onassis Series in Hellenic Culture) (p. 190). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

66 Desmond, William. The Gift of Beauty and the Passion of Being: On the Threshold between the Aesthetic and the Religious (Veritas Book 30) . Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Edition. Chapter 1 of Desmond’s book The Gift of Beauty and the Passion of Being is an especially rich presentation of “beauty” by a Roman Catholic philosopher.

67 Johnson, Father of Lights, 4–5, emphasis original.

68 Miravalle, Beauty, 39. See also Hall, Being and Attributes, 196–97, 306–307; Maurer, About Beauty, 28; Dubay, Evidential Power, 47, 63–64; Hart, Beauty of the Infinite, 17–18; O’Reilly, Aesthetic Perception, 99; Bavinck, “Beauty and Aesthetics,” 246, 259; Cowan and Spiegel, Love of Wisdom, 432; Oden, Classic Christianity, 97; Scruton, Beauty, 5, 123; Joseph D. Wooddell, The Beauty of the Faith: Using Aesthetics for Christian Apologetics (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2011), 46–59; Sevier, Aquinas on Beauty, 127; King, Beauty of the Lord, 5, 14; Paul M. Gould, Cultural Apologetics: Renewing the Christian Voice, Conscience, and Imagination in a Disenchanted World (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2019), 98;Johnson, Father of Lights, 7; and Myers, Poetics of Orthodoxy, 72–73.

69 Wilson, Vision of the Soul, 16, 60, emphasis original. See also Wilson, Vision of the Soul, 85–86, 93, 194, 206, 215, 226, and Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, 25. [James Matthew Wilson, The Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2017), 75.]

70 “While beauty was often related to worship and to God's presence—as von Rad says, it is more of an event than an object it is possible to exaggerate the functional character of beauty in the OT. Claus Westermann, for example, insists that beauty is entirely a happening between persons and not a quality of an object. The goodness and beauty of creation, he claims, consist only in relation and response to the creator. Creation is beautiful because it praises God, not as we believe the reverse.13 All of this is helpful in showing the final source and end of beauty and the unique connection of beauty with worship. But this should not be stressed to the point of denying all objectivity to beauty. For our understanding must allow for the fully material and integral character of creation indicated in Genesis 1-2. That creation exists to praise God is certainly true, but it does not follow that beauty does not

Comeliness on the sense level is perhaps the most frequently envisioned meaning of beauty by the ordinary man: the brilliance of a floral display, the glittering diamonds in a jewelry shop, the multicolored varieties of tropical birds and fish.71

…subtle resonances and imagery that seize the reader by their special grace and style.72

Further, Wilson invokes Plato’s definition of beauty as veritatis splendor, the splendor of truth.73 An important implication of the objectivity of beauty is that there must be criteria by which we can judge whether something is more or less beautiful. We are seeking those criteria biblically.74

To better “host the Holy Spirit,” then, and to be prepared to recognize the beauty of His Word it behooves us to understand the components of ‘beauty’ as well as the correlated experiences we might anticipate. One such, which can be a stumbling block for some, is introduced next.

3. “Rational?” … and beyond

How rationally accessible or cognitively approachable is beauty? It’s often supposed that the experience of beauty is so subjective that “Seeing examples of great beauty and extraordinary goodness bypasses our rational faculties and strikes the heart.”75 Joseph Owens begins his treatment of beauty by saying, “Of all the transcendentals, beauty is the most evasive and the most difficult to understand.”76 Roger Scruton spends an entire book discussing different kinds of beauty, only to pointedly remark at the end that he has “not said what beauty is.”77 David Bentley Hart notes that there is an “infuriating imprecision…in the language of beauty”:

The modern disenchantment with the beautiful as a concept reflects in part a sense that while beauty is something whose event can be remarked upon, and in a way that seems to convey a meaning, the word “beauty” indicates nothing: neither exactly a quality, nor a property, nor a function, not even really a subjective reaction to an object or occurrence, it offers no phenomenological purchase upon aesthetic experience.78

reside objectively in the ordered creation of God” (Dyrness, William A. 1985. Aesthetics In The Old Testament: Beauty In Context. JETS 28/4 (December 1985). 421-432, p. 427.)

71 Dubay, Evidential Power, 30. [Thomas Dubay, The Evidential Power of Beauty: Science and Theology Meet (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1999)]

72 Konstan, David. Beauty (Onassis Series in Hellenic Culture) (p. 190). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

73 Wilson, Vision of the Soul, 73, 80, 83, 99, 229.

74 Thinkers in the catholic tradition have historically identified these to be integrity (also known as unity), proportion (also known as harmony), and clarity (also known as radiance), sometimes mentioning others as well. See Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, 24; Adler, Six Great Ideas, 112–13; Maurer, About Beauty, 10, 12, 23; Dubay, Evidential Power, 34; Clarke, The One and the Many, 299–300; Bavinck, “Beauty and Aesthetics,” 246; Sevier, Aquinas on Beauty, 103–104; Sammon, Called to Attraction, 12; and King, Beauty of the Lord, 9. Clarke writes that proportion was at some point “dropped out” as a criterion of beauty on the grounds that it “connotes some multiplicity of parts,” which goes against divine simplicity (Clarke, The One and the Many, 299). However, more recent treatments of beauty have continued to include it, with Wilson declaring proportion “the singular and central term necessary for any discussion of beauty” (Vision of the Soul, 210). See Wilson, Vision of the Soul, 196–98, 210–33.

75 Rod Dreher, The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (New York: Sentinel, 2017), 117.

76 Joseph Owens, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics (Milwaukee: Bruce Publishing, 1963), 122. See also Junius Johnson, The Father of Lights: A Theology of Beauty (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2020), 1.

77 Roger Scruton, Beauty: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 162, emphasis original.

78 David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 16, emphasis original.

In fact, Hart goes so far as to say that “it is impossible…to offer a definition of beauty, either in the abstract or in Christian thought.”79 Indeed, many have proposed various kinds of “beauty” along with different aspects or dimensions. For instance, Crispin Sartwell give six names of beauty from six cultures: beauty, English, the object of longing; Yapha, Hebrew, glow, bloom; Sundara, Sanskrit, holiness; Kalon, Greek, idea, ideal (goodness); Wabi-Sabi, Japanese, humility, imperfection; Hozho, Navajo, health, harmony.80 And Hans Urs von Balthasar says,

“Beauty is the last thing which the thinking intellect dares to approach, since only it dances as an uncontained splendour around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another.”81

On the other hand, I am proposing that beauty is multi-componential, in a more or less well-organized though multi-dimensional configuration. Perhaps this is a different notion of “definition” as well as even suggesting a different notion of “the thinking intellect.” I am suggesting that beauty not only ‘dances around’ the true and the good, but goodness, truth and beauty also dance around within each other, and so yes, there are aspects of beauty which are hard to ‘grasp’ or de-limit (“define”), like the components of the 3.3s above, but there are also aspects more congenial to ‘the thinking intellect’ (like the 3.1s and 3.2s). Nonetheless, due to the endlessly proliferating, multidimensionality of each component, yes, a final pinning down is at least elusive, if not impossible. Not that there isn’t some sort of cognitive clarity offered, and a holding and being held, if not the grasping and being grasped of traditional concepts (from the Latin capo, capere, cepi, captumtake/capture/seize/catch + con- → concipio → concept); it’s just that the structure works against turning any understanding into an idol.

In short, to say experiences of beauty do not involve the exercise of reason does not mean such experiences are irrational or non-intellectual, for “intellect is not confined to the operations of pure reason.”[104] This bears repeating: reason is part of the intellect, but it does not comprise the intellect in its entirety. Indeed, as Paul Tyson observes, “A modern understanding of reason—as formal logic, as pure, clear, secular, and nonreligious truth, as reductively scientific knowledge, and as decidedly incompatible with dogmatic theology is an entirely modern invention.”[105]

James Matthew Wilson particularly emphasizes that intellect is more than discursive reason in The Vision of the Soul:

To claim that man is an intellectual animal is not strictly identical with claiming he is rational. First of all, “intellect,” in the Christian Platonist tradition, means the faculty of thought itself, particular species of which we can distinguish and arrange in a hierarchy. “Mind” has sometimes been the preferred term, and “reason” will do so long as we distinguish it from what we shall define in a moment as the particular activity of discursive reasoning.[106]

Reason or ratio, then, is just one “species of, a participation in, intellect—intellectus or nous”82 rather than being identical to intellect itself: “The human mind participates in intellect, and so cannot be understood merely in terms of its particular, discursive mode of thinking, but must also be considered in light of its

79 Hart, Beauty of the Infinite, 17. See also Stephen John Wright, Dogmatic Aesthetics: A Theology of Beauty in Dialogue with Robert W. Jenson (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2014), 7.

80 Sartwell, Crispin. 2004. Six names of Beauty. Routledge: London.

81 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. I, Seeing the Form, Joseph Fessio and John Riches, eds., trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (New York: T&T Clark, 1982), 18.

82 Wilson, Vision of the Soul, 74, emphasis original.

participation in intellectus.”83 To believe that intellect amounts to discursive reason alone—that “the process of discursive reason is the highest or only form of intellect, or that it outfits itself with its own criteria of, or means to, truth, as if anything that comes to it from outside its own workings must be dismissed as ‘irrational’”—is to fall into the error of rationalism.84

Hence, some Christian scholars have explicitly defined “reason” more broadly so as to include discursive reason without confining “reason” to this discursive activity. Essentially, they use the term “reason” as a synonym for the broader category of intellect, as seen in the previous block quote and here: “Reason, the defining part of the Rational Soul, consists of intellectus (the ability to see self-evident truth) and ratio (the ability to arrive at truth which is not self-evident).”85

Once it is understood that the intellect is more than discursive reason, it is not strange to think we experience beauty intellectually, as the catholic tradition teaches. For example, Dubay writes, “Because we are bodily/spiritual beings, we experience the beautiful within an interdependent relationship of senses and intellect, just as we know reality with the same interdependence.”86 And Owens, “Beauty is undoubtedly something perceptible by the intellect.”87 Further, Wilson says, “The perceptions of discursive reason and the perceptions of beauty may be distinct in means, but they are one in faculty and one in end: they both are seated in the intellect and converge in being.”88 To put it pointedly, beauty is “epistemic; it is a way of knowing rooted in the seeing of the form of things.”89 Joseph Ratzinger once said,

True knowledge is being struck by the arrow of Beauty that wounds man, moved by reality …. Being struck and overcome by the beauty of Christ is a more real, more profound knowledge than mere rational deduction. Of course we must not underrate the importance of theological reflection, of exact and precise theological thought; it remains absolutely necessary. But to move from here to disdain or to reject the impact produced by the response of the heart in the encounter with beauty as a true form of knowledge would impoverish us and dry up our faith and our theology. We must rediscover this form of knowledge; it is a pressing need of our time.90 91

83 Wilson, Vision of the Soul, 75, emphasis original.

84 Wilson, Vision of the Soul, 77.

85 Michael Ward, “The Good Serves the Better and Both the Best: C. S. Lewis on Imagination and Reason in Apologetics,” in Imaginative Apologetics: Theology, Philosophy and the Catholic Tradition, ed. Andrew Davison (London: SCM Press, 2011), 74. See also Douglas Hedley, “Imagination and Natural Theology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology, John Hedley Brooke, Russell Re Manning, and Fraser Watts, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 541.

86 Dubay, Evidential Power, 36–37. See also Maurer, About Beauty, 33–38.

87 Owens, Elementary Christian Metaphysics, 122. See also Maurer, About Beauty, 31, and Johnson, Father of Lights, 129.

88 Wilson, Vision of the Soul, 128. See also Wilson, Vision of the Soul, 83–85, 195; Maritain, Art and Scholasticism, 23; Clarke, The One and the Many, 299; Jaroszyński, Beauty and Being, 26–27; Schindler, Catholicity of Reason, 75; and Schindler, Love and the Postmodern, 42.

89 Wilson, Vision of the Soul, 32.

90 Joseph Ratzinger, “The Feeling of Things, the Contemplation of Beauty,” 24–30 August 2002, Papal Archive, The Holy See, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20020824_ratzinger-clrimini_en.html.

91 Note well: beauty as a true form of knowledge. And note how this beauty of Christ is presented in Psalm 45:

1 My heart is stirred by a noble [בוֹ֗ט - good] theme as I recite my verses to the king; my tongue is the pen of a skillful [ריִֽהָמquick, prompt, ready, skilled] writer.

4. Beauty’s Potential for Witness

Even an age that can’t think or love, can still be touched by beauty. A sunrise still speaks to the most hardened hearts and arouses feelings of inarticulate gratitude. And gratitude is full of grace, arousing the desire to say “thank you” to someone. Such gratitude is the birth of humility in proud hearts, the birth-pangs of which will break the heart itself.92

Beauty is a lighthouse whose flame can never be snuffed out, even if it burns dimly in our befogged vision, and in this we can take great comfort: “Beauty represents a remarkable source of hope: it is, so to speak, a transcendent call that can be heard by the most flesh-bound ears. For the same reason, it has a universal scope: there is no human being that is not capable of being moved in some respect by beauty.”93

Beauty, then, always has the potential to be recognized as an encounter with God, even as that same beauty can be dismissed by those who would not see.94

The discursive process of abstraction, which may gradually lead us by deduction to some knowledge of God, though particularly proportioned to the human reason, is far more mediated and far less adequate than this encounter with God in Beauty. We see him under the mode of Beauty. Our sensible perception of beauty in a beautiful object is not so much a mediation as a manifestation of a divine reality; this accounts for its intensity, which the most lucid demonstration cannot rival.95

…because God communicates his beauty to creation, created beauty in turn points back to God:96

The beauty of the material world expresses transcendental beauty, acting as a “sign” from eternity: the light of God’s Being…. To experience transcendental beauty is to perceive an intimation of God’s splendor. This is the majesty of the Creator, the absolute Being, from which all things derive their being. The light of creation testifies to the glory of its Creator.97

2 You are the most handsome [הָפָי- fair, beautiful] of men; grace has anointed your lips, since God has blessed you forever.

3 Strap your sword at your side, O mighty warrior; appear in your majesty [דוֹה - splendor, majesty, vigor] and splendor [

- an ornament, honor, splendor]

4 In your splendor [רָדָה - an ornament, honor, splendor] ride forth in victory on behalf of truth and humility and justice; may your right hand show your awesome deeds.

5 Your arrows pierce the hearts of the king’s foes; the nations fall beneath your feet.

92 Joseph Pearce, Beauteous Truth: Faith, Reason, Literature and Culture (South Bend, IN: St. Augustine’s Press, 2014), 5. See also Pearce, Beauteous Truth, xii, and Gould, Cultural Apologetics, 117.

93 Schindler, Love and the Postmodern, 40. See also Hall, Being and Attributes, 196; Bavinck, “Beauty and Aesthetics,” 258; Oden, Classic Christianity, 97; and Wooddell, Beauty of the Faith, 3, 11, 56.

94 See Sammon, Called to Attraction, 34; Wilson, Vision of the Soul, 99 Johnson, Father of Lights, 20, 30, 187; and Myers, Poetics of Orthodoxy, 66, 68. For an account of how experiences of beauty differ between those who acknowledge the presence of God therein and those who deny it, see Johnson, Father of Lights, 57–62.

95 Wilson, Vision of the Soul, 203–204, emphasis original.

96 James Clark, https://northamanglican.online/the-witness-of-beauty-an-introduction-part-2-of-3, quoting Coutras, Tolkien’s Theology, 18, and referencing as well, Coutras, Tolkien’s Theology, 21; Hall, Being and Attributes, 306; Maurer, About Beauty, 100; Bavinck, “Beauty and Aesthetics,” 250; Wilson, Vision of the Soul, 206; and Myers, Poetics of Orthodoxy, 4, 15, 63, 65–67, 117.

97 Coutras, Tolkien’s Theology, 18. See also Coutras, Tolkien’s Theology, 21; Hall, Being and Attributes, 306; Maurer, About Beauty, 100; Bavinck, “Beauty and Aesthetics,” 250; Wilson, Vision of the Soul, 206; and Myers, Poetics of Orthodoxy, 4, 15, 63, 65–67, 117.

“For Joy in God’s Creation,” found in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer: O HEAVENLY Father, who hast filled the world with beauty; Open, we beseech thee, our eyes to behold thy gracious hand in all thy works; that rejoicing in thy whole creation, we may learn to serve thee with gladness; for the sake of him by whom all things were made, thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.98

Now while it is true that the natural knowledge of God renders non-Christians “without excuse” for their sin, as Romans 1:20 says,99 it is crucial to realize this is not the only function of natural knowledge another purpose of the natural knowledge of God is, in the words of Johann Alsted, “to prepare [mankind] for the school of grace.”100 That is to say, natural knowledge “prepares humanity for the supernatural revelation that culminates in the incarnation” of Christ.101 Duby helpfully explains the relationship between natural and supernatural theology this way:

Within the plan of God nature and natural theology are organically connected to grace and supernatural theology. Pace rationalism, nature and natural theology are not sufficient in themselves to lead humanity to its end (everlasting fellowship with the triune God and the people of God). Pace fideism, faith in Christ and supernatural theology do not arise ex nihilo or detached from human experience and knowledge about the external world. In other words, nature anticipates grace, and grace perfects nature.102

As sketched in § VA above, biblical Beauty is proposed as tri-partite: the Beauty of Holiness/Majesty, the Beauty of Truth/Design, and the Beauty of Glory/Loveliness. Jonathan Edwards suggested “primary” Beauty and “secondary or natural” Beauty. For Edwards, primary Beauty is “an infinite fulness of brightness and glory.”103 God himself, then, is “infinitely the most beautiful and excellent,”104 and “the beauty of the divine nature does primarily consist in God’s holiness.”105 For me this would be the fulness of Beauty as outlined above, but mostly 3.1, the “Holiness of Beauty (Majesty).” Edwards describes “secondary or natural” Beauty as that “which consists in a mutual consent and agreement of different things, in form, manner, quantity, and visible end or design; called by the various names of regularity, order, uniformity, symmetry, proportion, harmony, etc.”106 All created things both physical and immaterial manifest aspects of this secondary beauty for instance, “the beautiful proportion of the various parts of a human body or countenance,” or “the sweet mutual consent and agreement of the various notes of a melodious tune.”107 For me this would be mostly 3.2, the Beauty of Truth/Design. Though I use the word ‘beauty’ for both the Creator and His creation, I am using

98 Book of Common Prayer, 596, italics original.

99 See Muller, Reformed Dogmatics, 280, 286, 304; Grabill, Rediscovering the Natural Law, 83, 158–59; Haines, “Natural Theology,” 288–89; Fesko, Reforming Apologetics, 2, 12, 20–21, 26, 35–36, 39, 64–65, 68; and Duby, God in Himself, 68, 71, 101, 130.

100 Johann Alsted, Theologia naturalis (Frankfurt, 1615), 1.1 (3), quoted in Duby, God in Himself, 101.

101 Duby, God in Himself, 72. See also Duby, God in Himself, 101, 124, 129; Preus, Post-Reformation Lutheranism, 174; Muller, Reformed Dogmatics, 280, 304; Grabill, Rediscovering the Natural Law, 159; Holder, Heavens Declare, 46, 245; Haines, “Natural Theology,” 291; and Fesko, Reforming Apologetics, 21–22, 26, 78, 78n29.

102 Duby, God in Himself, 129n220, emphasis original.

103 Edwards, Nature of True Virtue, 14–15.

104 Edwards, Nature of True Virtue, 14.

105 Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, ed. John E. Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), 258. See also Edwards, Religious Affections, 253–58.

106 Edwards, Nature of True Virtue, 27–28, 31–32.

107 Edwards, Nature of True Virtue, 28, 34–35.

language analogically, that is, for whatever similarities there are, there are even greater differences. This is in accord with the Fourth Lateran Council (1215) which stipulated that “between the Creator and the creature so great a likeness cannot be noted without the necessity of noting a greater dissimilarity between them.”

And to our point in this section, as noted above, “because God communicates his beauty to creation, created beauty in turn points back to God.”108 As Clark points out, the collect as found in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer entitled “For Joy in God’s Creation,” reads :

O HEAVENLY Father, who hast filled the world with beauty; Open, we beseech thee, our eyes to behold thy gracious hand in all thy works; that rejoicing in thy whole creation, we may learn to serve thee with gladness; for the sake of him by whom all things were made, thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.[27]

Thus, as it is God who is Beauty who has “filled the world with beauty,” the beauty of the created world bears witness to Him. we can recognize him in that created beauty.109

We are almost ready to further develop a biblical notion of Beauty in greater detail, in §s VI, VII, VIII.

5. Beauty and Worship

“Clearly the enjoyment of beauty was integrated into the whole experience of worship”; “the cult [the Hebrews' experience of worship] was characterized by its glory and splendor.”110

6. Beauty, Truth and Goodness

‘Our situation shows that beauty demands for herself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance. We can be sure that whoever sneers at her name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past whether he admits it or not can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.’111

‘Truth, goodness, and beauty are transcendental attributes of being, so much so that they can only be understood in one another and through one another. Together they prove the inexhaustible depth and overflowing richness of being.’112

As mentioned above, these 3 transcendentals Goodness, Truth, and Beauty are ‘interrelated’ in accord with a form of unity, unity also having traditionally been recognized as a transcendental. As mentioned earlier, transcendentals are “those properties which are predicated of every class of existent thing. This is the reason for the designation: they transcend normal categories of classification.”113 Another way of describing transcendentals is that they are “convertible with being, and so with one another,” i.e., they are “conceptually but not really distinct from [all and every] being.” So, recalling the initial schema

1 – Goodness (Ethics)

2 – Truth (Epistemology)

108 James Clark, https://northamanglican.online/the-witness-of-beauty-an-introduction-part-2-of-3/.

109 James Clark further elaborates in § 4. BEAUTY’S POTENTIAL FOR WITNESS, https://northamanglican.online/the-witness-ofbeauty-an-introduction-part-2-of-3/

110 Dyrness, William A. 1985. Aesthetics In The Old Testament: Beauty In Context. JETS 28/4 (December 1985). 421-432, p. 428, 427.

111 Balthasar. Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics (Edinburgh, 1982-1991), GL 1, 18.

112 Balthasar. Wahrheit der Welt, vol. 1 of Theologik [Einsiedeln, 1985], 255.

113 Christopher Scott Sevier, Aquinas on Beauty (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2015), 124.

3 – Beauty (Aesthetics)

…as elaborated for “3 – Beauty” as noted above

3 – Beauty (Spirit)

3.1 - Holiness of Beauty (Majesty)

3.1.1 – “True Virtue” (JE)

3.1.2 – Set Apart (Gap)

3.1.3 – Undoing/(re)Fitting

3.2 - Truth of Beauty

3.2.1 - Coherence (“holds together”)

3.2.2 – Design (Patterns: Parts & Wholes)

3.2.3 – Resonance (“rings true”)

3.3 - Glory of Beauty

3.3.1 - Radiance

3.3.2 - Surplus

3.3.3 – Loveliness

3.3.3.1 - Attractiveness

3.3.3.2 - Playful

3.3.3.3 - Allusivity

…each of the “numbers” (1, 2, 3) are actually the co-constitutive presence of the other transcendentals. Thus, for example, 3.1.2 is an ‘aspect’ or dimension of Beauty (the 3…), though co-constituted by and resonating with the .1 and the .2, each being an indication of the ‘presence’ of the “1” and the “2” and a sort of ‘wormhole’ to the Goodness of the “1” and the Truth of the “2”.

Preliminarily, and to be elaborated in greater detail (as with the “3” above), I understand the “1” (Goodness) as

1.1 Love (Generosity, Faithfulness, Hospitality)

1.2 Holiness (Other[ness],114 Righteousness, Splendor)

1.3 Communio (Sharing, Exchange, Appropriation) and the “2” (Truth”) as

2.1 Person (Way, Face, Power)

2.2 Logos-Word (Wisdom, Texture, (Up)Holding)

2.3 Image (Being of, Kingdom, Spirit)

Thus, any explication or ‘analysis’ of the Aesthetics of whatever—a text, picture, music, person, situation will always be unending and incomplete, stopping for pragmatic or circumstantial reasons, and intrinsically/inherently involves endless considerations of Truth and Goodness. Let’s take an example, perhaps the most challenging, the Crucifixion of our Lord Jesus.

7. A Brief Illustration – Is the Crucifixion of our Lord Beautiful? As noted earlier, would not Christ and the Crucifixion be a strong counter-example, especially if we honour the prophecies of Isaiah: “he had no form [outline, form - רַׁאת] or majesty [an ornament, honor, splendorהָרָד] that we should look at him, and no beauty115 [sight, appearance, vision - הֶאְרַׁמ] that we should desire

114 Uniqueness, Separateness, Set-Apart(ness), etc.

115 Preliminarily, “Christ is not devoid of beauty in the crucifixion, although ‘Jesus’s suffering, considered as suffering, is not beautiful. What is beautiful are the divine properties that are revealed through his suffering and pain: humility, selfgiving, love’” (James Clark https://northamanglican.online/the-witness-of-beauty-an-introduction-part-2-of-3/#post15280-footnote-6 quoting Johnson, Father of Lights, 168, italics original (And referencing: “Johnson, Father of Lights,

him” (Isaiah 53:2).116 Further, and again as Arthur Wallis put it, "Apostolic preaching is not marked by its beautiful diction, or literary polish, or cleverness of expression, but operates in demonstration of the Spirit and of power." And to amplify our concern, while highlighting paradoxical aspects of ‘beauty’, is not “the Passion and crucifixion of the Lord of glory … consummate splendor in monstrous horror.” There “at one and the same time we find supremely horrific ugliness and supremely divine and loving beauty.”117

Is there any hope of a resolution of this undeniable ‘paradox’, and especially with regard to beauty? Who would doubt that the plan of salvation accomplished via the Crucifixion was perfectly fitting to satisfy holiness and justice as well as achieve peace and reconciliation with mercy triumphing over judgment while

Faithful love [דֶסִֶֽח] and truth [תֶֹ֥מֱא] have met together; Righteousness [קֶדֶֶ֖צ] and peace [םוֹ֣לָש] have kissed (Psalm 85:10).

We have noted earlier that ‘fittingness’ (§ IIB2c) is at the heart of beauty, itself at the heart of truth. And, as Begbie put it, “The ‘form’ of beauty here is the radiant, splendid form of God’s self-giving love.”118 And, not only is ‘beauty’ at the heart of ‘truth’, but that beauty is noted as the radiant, splendid (3.1) form (3.2) of love (1.1).

It’s important to acknowledge, given the reality of the human condition (“fallenness”), the extraordinariness of the ordinary events in the Crucifixion: the betrayal, the false accusations, the injustice, the mocking, torture, darkness, emptiness, etc., along with the innocence, dignity, self-constraint, submission, etc. The display of such may well be the capstone of all types of beauty.

D. Excursus – Further Elaborations

In ‘the West,’ Beauty has had a varied history, from significant attention among the Greeks, to a dominant position during the Renaissance and even more so in the eighteenth century, to a dethroning such that Arthur Danto could say, “Beauty had disappeared not only from the advanced art of the 1960s, but from the advanced philosophy of art of that decade as well” (2003, 25).119 And now there is a reinstating.

The reasons for this decline of appreciation, even suspicion, were various. (i) Beauty was understand as inferior to The Sublime the quality of greatness, something close to Majesty;120 (ii) art was subsumed under

158–60, 167–69; Maurer, About Beauty, 119–20; Harrison, Beauty and Revelation, 233–38; Dubay, Evidential Power, 310–13; Ratzinger, “Contemplation of Beauty,” http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20020824_ratzinger-clrimini_en.html; Richard Viladesau, The Beauty of the Cross: The Passion of Christ in Theology and the Arts from the Catacombs to the Eve of the Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 7–12; Wooddell, Beauty of the Faith, 93–94; Carnes, Beauty, 87, 161–62, 251–52; Sammon, Called to Attraction, 38; O’Collins, Beauty of Jesus, 99–118; and Myers, Poetics of Orthodoxy, 46. Given that Christ’s beauty in the crucifixion is spiritual rather than physical, Mark C. Mattes claims that the crucifixion “overturns the medieval criteria for beauty,” i.e., integrity, proportion, and clarity (Martin Luther’s Theology of Beauty: A Reappraisal [Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017], 70). But this is not so, considering that the traditional criteria for beauty can be understood spiritually as well as physically, as discussed previously.”

116 Cf. http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20020824_ratzinger-clrimini_en.html

117 Thomas Dubay, The Evidential Power of Beauty: Science and Theology Meet (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1999), 111, 310, quoted at Ryken, Philip Graham. Beauty Is Your Destiny: How the Promise of Splendor Changes Everything (p. 129). Crossway. Kindle Edition.

118 Begbie, “Beauty, Sentimentality and the Arts,” 63, quoted at Ryken, Philip Graham. Beauty Is Your Destiny: How the Promise of Splendor Changes Everything (p. 130). Crossway.

119 Quoted by David Konstan, 2014, Beauty, p. 187. Oxford University Press.

120 Hart (2003): “Longinus's distinction between the beautiful and the sublime, one of whose unfortunate effects was to reduce the scope of the beautiful to that of the pretty, the merely decorative, or the inoffensively pleasant; in the climate of postmodern

the more general category of ‘cultural object’ and Beauty per se became irrelevant to many as cultural object took place of prominence instead; (iii) Beauty was seen as politically and morally suspect, as distracting for the powerful and comfortable from the plight of oppressed or marginalized, and dulling the sensibilities of all (advantaged and disadvantaged) to the ugliness, violence, and evil injustices suffered by so many; (iv) the evilness of evil as irrational was dismissed as contrary to Beauty understood as harmony, balance, symmetry, etc.; and (v) the ‘aesthetic gaze’ promoted by Beauty was recognized as asymmetrical, for instance, reifying and objectifying a ‘beautiful woman.’

Nonetheless, more recently Beauty has been and is being reinstated. Indications of this, in the Christian world, include the magisterial, multivolume work of Hans Urs von Balthasar (The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics), the enriching work by Stratford Caldecott (Beauty for Truth's Sake and Beauty in the Word), and the challenging and grand extended essay in theological aesthetics by the Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart, The Beauty Of The Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (2003).

From my perspective, for ‘the Greeks’ and the Classical Period, Beauty had to do with harmony, symmetry, proportion, and balance. These aspects are represented by the Beauty of Design. The challenge presented by ‘The Sublime’ would be a matter of the Beauty of Majesty, while Beauty is now being reinstated via the Beauty of Loveliness, mostly in terms of allusivity, différance, ambiguity, between-ness, etc.

Hart’s masterful overview and apologetic for Beauty follows:

1. Beauty is objective. This is asserted with neither any dogma nor any "science" of the beautiful in view; there is no objective thing that can be isolated, described, and quantified in the manifold of experience whose name is beauty. Nonetheless, beauty possesses a phenomenal priority, an indefectible precedence over whatever response it evokes. … The beautiful is not a fiction of desire, nor is its nature exhausted by a phenomenology of pleasure; it can be recognized in despite of desire, or as that toward which desire must be cultivated. There is an overwhelming givenness in the beautiful, and it is discovered in astonishment, in an awareness of something fortuitous, adventitious, essentially indescribable; it is known only in the moment of response, from the position of one already addressed and able now only to reply. … In the beautiful God's glory is revealed as something communicable and intrinsically delightful …. (17). …the objectivity of beauty still does not make of beauty a particular object. The Christian understanding of beauty is analogical, in two senses: in the simple analytic sense, that whatever "beauty" means is grasped only by analogy, by constant exposure to countless instances of its advent, and through constant and continuous revision (this because, in theological terms, God is the "primary analogate" to whom beauty is ascribed); and in the more radically ontological sense, that beauty is not some property discretely inherent in particular objects, but indwells the analogical relationship of all things, each to the other, as a measure of the dynamism of their involvement with one another. The Christian use of the word "beauty" refers most properly to a relationship of donation and transfiguration, a handing over and return of the riches of being (18);

2. Beauty is the true form of distance. Beauty inhabits, belongs to, and possesses distance, but more than that, it gives distance. If the realm of created difference has its being for God's pleasure (Rev. 4:11), then the distance of creation from God and every distance within creation belong originally to an interval of appraisal and approbation, the distance of delight (18);

thought, whose humors are congenial to the sublime but generally corrosive of the beautiful, beauty's estate has diminished to one of mere negation, a spasm of illusory calm in the midst of being's sublimity, its "infinite speed:' There is, moreover, an undeniable ethical offense in beauty: not only in its history as a preoccupation of privilege, the special concern of an economically and socially enfranchised elite, but in the very gratuity with which it offers itself” (15). We will see that biblical beauty includes ‘the sublime.’

3. Beauty evokes desire (19);

4. Beauty crosses boundaries (20);

There is, moreover, a marvelous naiveté in the response most immediately provoked by the beautiful: neither in the Bible nor in patristic theology is God's goodness, truth, or lordship distinguished from his glory, savor, or awesome holiness; that God is good may be seen and tasted; and this means that a theology of beauty should not scruple to express itself at times as an ontology, an epistemology, or an ethics (21). The beautiful, uniquely, displays the dynamic involvement of the infinite and the finite, the unmasterable excess contained in the object of beauty, the infinite's hospitality to the finite; and Christian thought, uniquely, must think the beautiful and the infinite together. Beauty crosses every boundary, traverses every series, and so manifests the God who transcends every division - including, again, that between the transcendent and the immanent (21);

5. Beauty's authority, within theology, guards against any tendency toward Gnosticism, for two reasons: on the one hand, worldly beauty shows creation to be the real theater of divine glory - good, gracious, lovely, and desirable, participating in God's splendor - and on the other, it shows the world to be unnecessary, an expression of divine glory that is free, framed for God's pleasure, and so neither a defining moment in the consciousness of God nor the consequence of some defect or fall within the divine (21);

6. Beauty resists reduction to the "symbolic’: There are, of course, symbolic practices proper to the arts, and several senses of the word "symbol" that are theologically licit, necessary, and delightful; but beauty (the purely aesthetic) lies in the immediacy of a certain splendor, radiance, mystery, or allure; it plays upon the continuous insisture of a plastic, or lyric, or organic, or metaphoric surface (24);

But the beautiful is prior to all schemes of isolable meanings: it is excess but never formlessness, a spilling over, jubilant, proclaiming glory without "explaining" it (25). The beautiful “resists the aesthetic precisely because it rests upon the assumption that some truth deeper than form has been grasped” (27).

God's glory, though, is neither ethereal nor remote, but is beauty, quantity, abundance, kabod: it has weight, density, and presence (28).

E. Literacy and Bible Translation

Louise Rosenblatt (1904 – 2005) proposed that there are two major categories of reading: aesthetic reading and efferent reading. Efferent reading is reading for gaining information from the text. Typically ‘academic reading’ is of this sort; it has also been called ‘reading for meaning.’ Aesthetic reading was understood as reading for pleasure or enjoyment. Surely there are aspects of both in almost all reading. Rosenblatt’s proposal has been supported by many others.

Though there would be other ways of categorizing reading styles, Rosenblatt’s approach highlights something too often overlooked. In general this is the affective domain of reading. If we are to take the readers of the Bible as a guide for considering what has loosely been called ‘the style’ of a translation, we ought not ignore the experiences of the readers (and hearers) of the translation. The expressions of affective engagement with the Biblical text are difficult to overlook. For instance,

I delight in your statues (Psalm 119:16); Your testimonies are my delight (v 24); Behold, I long for your precepts (v 40);

How sweet are Your words to my taste sweeter than honey in my mouth! (v 103); The precepts of the LORD are right, bringing joy to the heart (Psa 19:8);

…they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb (v 10b);

…let the peace of Christ ║let the word of Christ (Col 3:15, 16);

The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life (John 6:63).

Surely the ‘efferent content’ cannot be denied; can the aesthetic dimension?

PART 2 - BIBLICAL BEAUTY

The expression that "God is the author of all beauty" (Wis 13:3) reflects a conviction held all through Israel's history. He gives it; he can take it away. Still there is no feeling in the OT that the creature must be a lesser beauty because it is physical. Rather, it is able to display in its own creaturely way that quality or perfection that belongs to the character of God: "Thine, O Lord, is the glory"

] hattip'eret; 1 Chr 29:11). And yet one can speak of Ephraim as "the fading flower of its glorious beauty" (Isa 28:4). While this confession of God focuses on the experience of worship, it is said to characterize all the works of God, especially those interventions on behalf of his people. These acts, which are at one time called "righteous acts" (Judg 5:11b), are also in another context called "lovely" (Ezek 16:13). The implication of verses like these is that the process of God's activity that we call redemption has as a part of its purpose a restoration of the integrity of the created order wherein it will (again) be characterized by beauty and wholeness. This is a part of the end sought in God's righteous judgment. The several words for "glory," which in our positivist age are so little understood, reflect a comprehensive reality that in the process of redemption comes into human history and establishes itself, transforming all it touches until a universal reign of goodness and brightness is realized, when "the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea" (Hab 2:14 RSV).121

As noted previously, the 3 major aspects or dimensions or components of beauty from the Old Testament are taken as (i) the beauty of Glory or Majesty, (ii) the beauty of Design or Craftsmanship, and (iii) the beauty of Loveliness or Delight. I now elaborate each of these 3 in turn that we might understand more how we might host the beauty of the Lord, in our persons and our translations (teams, process, products, etc.), as well as hosting the Lord, the fullness of Goodness, Truth and Beauty.

VI. THE BEAUTY OF MAJESTY OR HOLINESS

A. Traditional

1. English Terms: Dignified, Impressive, Grandeur, Greatness, Awesome, Awful, Sublime, Wondrous, Marvelous, Magnificent, Superb, Terrific, Wonderful, Elevated, Eloquent, Exalted, Noble, Splendor, Vastness

2. Aesthetic Terms: The Sublime

B. Biblical: Majesty

1. Sample Passages: Psalm 8:5, 29:2, 96:6, 71:8, 104:1, 149:4; Proverbs 16:31; Isaiah 4:5, 13:19, 28:18, 44:23, 46:13, 49:3, 52:1, 60:19,; Jer 3:19; Ezra 10:6, 15; Dan 11:45; 1 Chr 16:37

2. Words:122 רוֹא,

3. Meanings (from lexical studies):

121 Dyrness, William A. 1985. Aesthetics In The Old Testament: Beauty In Context. JETS 28/4 (December 1985) 421-432, p. 426f.

122 Including Dyrness’s #s 1, 2, 7, respectively – יבְצ, רָדָה, הָרָאְפת. Dyrness, William A. 1985. Aesthetics In The Old Testament: Beauty In Context. JETS 28/4 (December 1985). 421-432.

a. Primary:

i. Objective: beauty; honor; glory; splendor; exalted above; strength/power; holiness; wondrous (deeds); form; majesty; dignity; shining; radiance; brightness; righteousness; faithfulness; pleasing/pleasant; refuge;

ii. Subjective: terror; trembling; fear; joy; praise; pleasure; respect;

b. Secondary: Refuge

4. Images:

c. Biblical: King, Holy Temple, Sun, Mt. Sinai, the Sea, Joyous Celebration

d. Traditional: Mountains, Crashing Waves, Thunderstorms, the Night Sky, Deep Space, Gothic Cathedrals, Castles

5. Subjective Aspects

a. Primary: Fear, Trembling, Awe, Wonder, Adoration, Worship; Judgment, Submission, Humility; Righteous Reorientation; Beauteous Transformation; Ecstasy, Rapture;

b. Secondary: Admiration123; Fulfillment-Infilling, Satisfaction (as of a feast); Peace, Relief from Distress; Gladness, Joy; Gathering (with others, within self)

6. Summary Chart

I. The Beauty of Majesty

A. Objective Qualities - SPLENDOR

1. Enduring Value; Permanence

Righteousness (Ps 50 ║ Ps 19)

Love

2. Power

Sublime

Subdue

Unite

3. Radiance

Unapproachable (awe)

Revelation

Generative (gives growth, transformation)

B. Subjective Qualities Valuation?)

1. Awe, Wonder, (Fear), Adoration

2. Submission to, Peace

3. Transformation

C. Exegetical Elaborations

My purpose in quoting these passages will be to 1.) substantiate that "the beauty of majesty" is biblically valid, and 2.) to become more sensitive to the contexts of usage and so to refine or develop this notion of beauty.

123 “Beauty in these verses [using יבְצ] is that which sparks admiration but may also cause undue pride and thus merit destruction by God's judgment” (Dyrness, p. 423).

1. Psalm 96:6

Splendor (דוֹה) and majesty (רָדָה) are before Him Strength (זע) and beauty (הָרָאְפת) are in His sanctuary.

דוֹה splendor, majesty, renown

רָדָה splendor, majesty, glory

זע strength, power, might, firmness

הָרָאְפת splendor, beauty, magnificence

First of all, “beauty” is almost the unanimous English translation of הָרָאְפת as is “majesty” for רָדָה Further, various dictionaries give for “splendo(u)r”, great beauty that attracts admiration and attention,” “great and impressive beauty,” and “grand and impressive beauty” (Cambridge, Britannica, Oxford, respectively). Second, the sense of “majesty” is reinforced by the broader context: God is king (v. 10) and is to be worshipped with praise, fear, and trembling (v. 4, 9). The objective qualities of this beauty as presented in this passage are taken to be (a) glory (v. 3, 6, 7, 8), (b) power (v. 6, 7), (c) permanence (v. 10). To a lesser extent we might note (d) that the beauty "dwells" or is located (v. 6, 8), and (e) that this majesty is associated both with judgment (v. 13; cf. also Psalm 94:1; Ps. 50: esp. v. 1-6, where beauty, especially the radiance, the shining forth of the glory is in a context of judgment) and holiness (v. 6, the holy place, שָדְקמ ; v.9). Thus “majesty” is associated with ethical concerns (d, e).

Subjectively, this experience of beauty involves (a) worship, especially that of praise (v. 2, 4), telling about the one experienced (v. 2), bringing and offering of gifts (v. 8), and drawing near (v.86), (b) fear (v. 4, 9), (c) reflecting or being like the one worshipped (v. 9) ("in the splendor [דוֹה; “majesty”] in v. 6) of holiness").124

NB: “Worship the LORD in the splendor of His holiness” (v. 9) – HOLINESS, שֶדק qodesh: apartness, sacredness.125

Such considerations, together with that of other passages, will give us much of value for both an understanding of and an application of the beauty of majesty for literary concerns, whether criticism or translation. Later we will see more clearly certain correlations between the objective and the subjective qualities.

2. Isaiah 28:1-8

1 Ah, the proud crown of the drunkards of Ephraim, and the fading flower of its glorious beauty [ י֣בְצ וֹּ֑תְרַׁאְפת ], which is on the head of the rich valley of those overcome with wine!

2 Behold, the Lord has one who is mighty and strong; like a storm of hail, a destroying tempest, like a storm of mighty, overflowing waters,

124 Dyrness notes that רַׁאָפ is “to make something into an object of adoration or praise, or to make it assume a place of honor,” the noun being הָרָאְפת (1985:423). BDB gives “beautify, glorify.”

125 “Another possible interpretation grows out of usage in cognate languages. In related terms the meaning can relate to an epiphany of God. See G. R. Driver, Canaanite Myths and Legends (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1956) 136. In this case the order of the Hebrew may not be a construct, and the correct translation may be "worship in his holy manifestation" or "in the appearance of his holiness." Support for this lies in the command to tremble or writhe in awe (Ps 96:9b) and in the fact that angels too are to worship this way (92:1). They wear no special clothes” (Dyrness, William A. 1985. Aesthetics In The Old Testament: Beauty In Context. JETS 28/4 (December 1985). 421-432. Footnote 11, p. 426.)

he casts down to the earth with his hand.

3 The proud crown of the drunkards of Ephraim will be trodden underfoot;

4 and the fading flower of its glorious beauty [ י֣בְצ ּ֑תְרַׁאְפת ], which is on the head of the rich valley, will be like a first-ripe fig before the summer: when someone sees it, he swallows it as soon as it is in his hand.

5 In that day the LORD of hosts will be a crown of glory (יבְצ), and a diadem of beauty (הָרָאְפת), to the remnant of his people, 6 and a spirit of justice to him who sits in judgment, and strength to those who turn back the battle at the gate.

7 These also reel with wine and stagger with strong drink; the priest and the prophet reel with strong drink, they are swallowed by wine, they stagger with strong drink, they reel in vision, they stumble in giving judgment.

8 For all tables are full of filthy vomit, with no space left.

Verse 5 again uses the word הָרָאְפת, this time in coordination with יבְצ, splendor, glory, beauty. No doubt, as with Psalm 96, there is an especially close relation between beauty and glory. There is however much more of interest in the context, v. 1-8. First we note that the beauty of v. 5 is contrasted with the fading beauty of the flower in v. 1, 4 (again י֣בְצ תְרַׁאְפת ).

The "glorious beauty" of Samaria was a beauty of magnificent luxury. "Summer" and "winter houses," distinct each from the other (Amos 3:15); "ivory palaces" (1 Kings 22:39; Amos 3:15); a wealth of "gardens, vineyards, fig-orchards, and olive yards" (Amos 4:9); residences of "hewn stone" (Amos 5:11); feasts enlivened with "the melody of viols" (Amos 5:23); "beds of ivory" (Amos 6:4); "wine in bowls" (Amos 6:6); "chief ointments" (Amos 6:6); constituted a total of luxurious refinement beyond which few had proceeded at the time, and which Isaiah was fain to recognize, in a worldly point of view, as "glorious" and "beautiful."126

Thus, though the ‘glorious beauty’ of earthly realities can appear to be permanent, as earthly realities they are not, and especially so when contrary to the glory and beauty of the LORD Himself (v. 5), which alone is enduring. This permanence is specifically a quality of God's beauty which is to be highly valued in reference to the fading beauty of the drunkards of Ephraim.

Next, we again have a context of judgment (v. 6) "justice" and "judgment." No doubt there is a decisive redemptive focus. Our concern here though is to note the ethical modifications which constitute the beauty of majesty. Further, we note that "strength", "might", and "power" are again associated with הָרָאְפת (v. 6, 2). These four associations glory, permanence, judgment, and power I take to be objective qualities of the beauty of Majesty.

Subjectively we see (1) the power being effective to subdue in judgment (v. 2-4, 7-8), (2) the beauty, which is of the LORD, beautifies His people (v. 5; Ps. 149:4), and (3) maybe there is an infilling or control in judgment and celebration for the recipients of beauty (v. 5) analogous to the effect of drunkenness as in v. 7-8, 2. This however would need to be substantiated elsewhere in scripture (e.g. Eph. 5:18).

3. Isaiah 60:19

126 Pulpit Commentary (https://biblehub.com/commentaries/isaiah/28-1.htm)

The sun shall be no more your light by day, nor for brightness shall the moon give you light; but the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory [from הָרָאְפִּת, beauty, glory].

Isaiah 60:19 further develops the theme of glory or splendor which was seen to constituent the beauty of majesty in Psalm 96 and Isaiah 28. Here brightness (הַּׁגנ), radiance (shining, from הַּׁגָנ, to shine; brilliancy), and light (רוֹ֣א) as from the sun or moon are the qualities of glory (הָרָאְפת - beauty, glory). This quality of beauty I shall call radiance. Again permanence is noted as a quality of this light, "an everlasting (םָלוֹע) light".

Subjective qualities given in the context include (1) peace (v. 17), (2) relief from sadness (v. 20), though stated in the negative; the positive i.e. joy, gladness is elsewhere stated explicitly, Is. 61:7, 60:5), (3) and righteousness, (v. 21, 17); that is, the people will be transformed to be like the God of glory who will oversee them, (4) being gathered together, (v. 4), and (5) fulfillment as of a feast (v. 16). These subjective responses are responses to the revelation of God's light (60:1-3), or more precisely, to the light of God's redemptive glory. If there is to be a standard of beauty, we must say that that standard is God's beauty, just as we say that God's truth is the standard of truth, or God's righteousness, the standard of righteousness. God's beauty in these passages is a redemptive beauty, as indeed truth and righteousness are also redemptively qualified. It must be so, given the situation of sin in which all participate in every aspect of our lives, and given God's redemptive plan toward the world (John 3:16ff). This is not to say that there is no other beauty (or truth or righteousness); Is. 28:1-8 has already made that clear. What it does say, at least, is that in terms of the beauty of majesty, permanence is a quality of beauty. Temporally, great art has enduring, though perhaps not permanent, value as is well-recognized in the history of art.

NB: Isaiah 60:9 – “for the name of the LORD your God, and for the Holy One of Israel, because he has made you beautiful” – Holy One (שוֹדָק qadosh: sacred, holy); beautiful (רַׁאָפ paar: to beautify, glorify)

4. Psalms 19 & 50

The heavens declare the glory [דוֹבָכ] of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. (Psalm 19:1)

The heavens declare his righteousness [קֶדֶצ], for God himself is judge! (Psalm 50:6)

”On occasion righteousness and beauty are even used interchangeably. Paths of righteousness are simply walkable paths (Ps 23:3); trees of righteousness are lovely trees. The opposite of this would be trees that bear no fruit or stony paths, rather than ugly trees and paths.”127 Here the ethical value of God’s glorious beauty is highlighted.

5. Further References

You are resplendent with light, more majestic than mountains rich with game (Psalm 76:4 NIV).

Adorn yourself with majesty [ןוֹ֣אִָֽג] and splendor [הַׁבּ֑ג] And array yourself with glory [דוֶֹ֖ה] and beauty [רָ֣דָה ] (Job 40:10)

127 Dyrness, William A. 1985. Aesthetics In The Old Testament: Beauty In Context. JETS 28/4 (December 1985). 430. Also, William A. Dyrness. 2001. Visual Faith: Art, Theology, and Worship in Dialogue, pp 81ff.

Great [םילדְְּ֭ג] are the works of the LORD, studied by all who delight [ץֶפֵח - delight, pleasure] in them. Full of splendor [דוֹה] and majesty [רָֹ֥דָה] is his work, and his righteousness [הָקָדְצ] endures forever (Psalm 111:2, 3)

“Who is like you, O LORD, among the gods?

Who is like you, majestic in holiness [ רָ֣דְאֶנ שֶדּ֑קַׁב ], awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders [אֶלִֶֽפ]?

(Exodus 15:11)

Psalm 145:

6. Summary

a. Primary: Highest, Enduring, Permanent (Ethical) Value; Honourable; Holiness; Most (greatest) Excellent; Radiant, Majestic Splendour-Expressivity; Power-Expressivity; Object of adoration, praise;

b. Secondary: Dwelling

In summary of the beauty of majesty thus far, we can say that this beauty consists objectively of 1.) enduring value; permanence, 2.) power, and 3.) radiance; and subjectively, 1.) fear, awe, wonder, adoration, worship, 2.) submission to, 3.) transformation. Less prominent aspects or facets. of meaning are objectively, 4.) dwelling, and subjectively, 4.) fulfillment or satisfaction, 5.) peace, relief from distress, 6.) being gathered together (with others and perhaps within ourselves.)

Two final comments: first, on the relation of the objective qualities with the subjective. Most directly, from the passages studied, we have seen that the power of God's majesty subdues unto itself. Thus these qualities one objective and the other subjective are especially linked. We have noticed that radiance and transformation are also both mentioned in all three passages. Whether the transformation is especially linked with one aspect is however not so clear. It can be seen though I think from Ps. 96:9 and Is. 28: 5 that glory or splendor is the special quality in view. We are not left with just these passages as 2 Cor. 3:18 is explicit that we are transformed from beholding his glory.

Second, it is worth noting that there does exist a decided ethical cast to all these considerations of the beauty of majesty. This will be taken up later.

D. Applications - Examples

1. 1 Chronicles 22:5

a. the house that is to be builded for the LORD must be exceeding magnifical, of fame and of glory throughout all countries (KJV)

b. the house that is to be built for the LORD must be exceedingly magnificent, of fame and glory throughout all lands (ESV)

c. the house to be built for the LORD should be of great magnificence and fame and splendor in the sight of all the nations (NIV)

2. Psalm 18:4

a. The waves of death engulfed me, the currents of chaos overwhelmed me (NET)

b. The cords of death encompassed me; the torrents of chaos overwhelmed me (BSB)

c. The cords of death encompassed me; the torrents of destruction assailed me (ESV)

d. The cords of death encompassed me, and the torrents of ungodliness terrified me (NASB)

e. The pangs of death surrounded me, and the floods of ungodliness made me afraid (NKJV)

f. The anguish of death surrounded me; the floods of the lawless troubled me greatly (OrthSB)

g. The cords of death wrapped round me, and the torrents of perdition dismayed me (Alter)

E. EXCURSUS

Linguistic Registers, e.g. Psalm 145 vs Psalm 55 vs Psalm 133; Psalm 46 – terror / peace; “Up from the grave he arose” – minor / major key.

“My contention is that an accurate rendering of the text [Ezekiel 16 and 23] would match the rhetorical style and purpose of the original text, related to what translators call the "register" of a translation” (Church and Members: English Translation and Sexualized Rhetoric in the Prophets. SECSOR Annual Meeting, March 16, 2013, p. 2).

MAP 30 September 2022

Sameh Hanna: I wonder if anyone has come across or has been involved in a translation project in a dialect where the Lord's Prayer is translated in a higher/more formal register. What is the rationale behind this choice? How is this decision received by the users of the translation, if any?

Waseem Raza: On top of my head, I can think of two examples Sameh.

The one by Benjamin Schultze of Danish mission was rejected by his own colleagues. They did not accept it as standard Hindustani/Urdu language.

Another was produced in 90s by one of our colleagues. This is now out of print. I will see if I can find it's pdf. Someone came up with an idea to translate whole Sermon on the mount for Muslim audience in the country. The register used in this translation was very formal.

The reason behind this decision is our world view about the word of God which says, God's word should be in a literary style people can appreciate it's aesthetics (no matter they can fully understand or not).

It was well received, I should say.

VII. THE BEAUTY OF DESIGN - CONSENT OF ALL THE PARTS, HARMONY

How many are your works, Lord! In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. Psalm 104:24

From the schema suggested earlier, we might expect ‘the Beauty of Design’ to reflect both the theories of Correspondence and Coherence. As I characterized such, with the help of Jonathan Edwards, “fittingness” would be prominent (see § IIB2), and indeed we find this to be the case

A. Traditional Western: “Classical conceptions define beauty in terms of the relation between the beautiful object as a whole and its parts: the parts should stand in the right proportion to each other and thus compose an integrated harmonious whole” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty; 6 Aug 2022).

B. Biblical: Design

1. Passages: Exodus 28, 31, 35; 2 Sam 11:2, Esther 2:7; Psa 33:1, 49:14, 93:5, 147:1; 2 Chr 3:6; Song of Songs 4:1, 10

2. Words:128 ה ֶאְרַׁמ רַׁאֹּ֙ת־תַׁפְי (Esther: beautiful of form and face); הָרוּצ form/beauty); תַֹׁ֥בוֹט (beautiful; Bathseba); הָרָאְפת (beauty, glory); הֶואָנ 129 (See Appendix A: BIBLICAL WORDS – DESIGN)

3. Meanings (from lexical studies)

a. Primary:

i. Objective: form / shape; outward appearance; beauty; comely; glory; fitting (ethical); desirable; useful / advantageous; functional suitability; goodness for something; properly ordered; pleasing; serviceable;

ii. Subjective: desirable; pleasing;

b. Secondary:

4. Meanings (from exegetical studies): Interrelations between Parts/whole(s)

a. Structured Complexity: Hierarchy; Richness; Dimensionality (contextual embeddedness);

b. Coherence/Well-formed/Good of Appearance: Integrality; Organic Unity; IntelligenceSkillfulness; Patterned; Fittingness (הֶואָנ); Repetition-Variation

c. Progression/Dynamism: Directedness toward; Construction; Movement

5. Images

a. Biblical: Breast Plate of High Priest; Furniture in Tabernacle; the Temple; Alphabetical Psalms; Human Form-Face;

b. Traditional: Human Form-Face; mathematical realities; biological structures; physical structures

6. Subjective Aspects Uniqueness/Personalizing/Individuating; Emergence/Discovery/Opening; Im/Balance;

128 Including Dryness’s #s 4 & 5, respectively הֶפָי, הֶואָנ. Dyrness, William A. 1985. Aesthetics In The Old Testament: Beauty In Context. JETS 28/4 (December 1985). 421-432.

129 “The characteristic of what is fitting is especially evident in the word group associated with the verb nâ'à, which appears twelve times in all forms” (Dyrness 1985:425).

a. Wisdom; Cohesion; Harmony (musical, e.g.)

b. Purposefulness; Belonging(ness); Resonance

7. Summary Chart

F. Add ‘pleasing’ – Dryness na’a*** EXCURSUS

Remember the introductory concern: Might there not be a challenge if not a danger of distortion when ‘unbalanced’ attention is given to “the cognitive,” to the “Truth,” to “knowledge”? The Beauty of Design has the most to do with those rightly highlighted values; and yet, the Beauty of Design has to do with the “beauty dimension” of the truth. As the scientist, David Bohm put it,

Now, there is a common notion that beauty is nothing more than a subjective response of man, based on the pleasure that he takes in seeing what appeals to his fancy. Nevertheless, there is much evidence that beauty is not an arbitrary response that happens to “tickle” us in a pleasing way. In science, for example, one sees and feels the beauty of a theory only if the latter is ordered, coherent, harmonious with all parts generated naturally from simple principles, and with these parts working together to form a unified total structure. But these properties are necessary not only for the beauty of a theory, but also for its truth.

Of course, in a narrow sense, no theory is true unless it corresponds to the facts. But as we consider broader and broader kinds of theories, approaching those of cosmology, this notion becomes inadequate . . . In the broad sense with which cosmology is concerned, the universe as a whole is to be understood as “true to itself”—a unified totality developing coherently in accordance with its basic principles. And as man appreciates this, he senses that his own response with feelings of harmony, beauty, and totality is parallel to what he discoveries in the universe. So, in a very important way, the universe is seen to be less alien to man than earlier excessively mechanistic points of view seemed to indicate.130

C. Exegetical Elaborations

Exegetically the beauty of design is displayed by “the beauty of the breast plate of the high priest or of the golden furniture of the tabernacle” (CM, p. 88). Three central passages which help us elaborate the beauty of design are Ex. 28:1-43; Ex. 31: 1-11, and Ex. 35: 30-35. For instance, those with ability (28: 3; 31:3,6; 35:31), intelligence (31:3; 35:31) or an able mind (28:3) are to do the work. The work is to be done skilfully (28:5,8, 15), with knowledge and craftsmanship (31:33 35:31). It involves design (31:4; 35:32, 35) and construction (36:1). Included with such skilfully designed construction is the traditional aesthetic notion of form. The meaning of form consistently represents the manner or way in which something appears. In both 2 Sam.11:2

130 Bohm, David. 1996. On Creativity. London: Routledge, 39-40.

and Esther 2:7, "good of appearance" ( ־תַׁפְי

) is translated beautiful (RSV), beautiful of appearance or beautiful of form (NAS), lovely in form and appearance (BSB), beautiful figure and lovely to look at (ESV). Both refer to women with reference to the body and the face.

־תַׁפְי fair, beautiful רַׁאֹּ֙ת outline, form

pleasant, agreeable, good

sight, appearance, vision

In short, the form is that which appears to the eyes. Similarly, Gen 29:17, Dt. 21:11, 1 Sam 16:12, Song of Songs 6:4. In each case a word for beauty has been used with regard to that which appears or more precisely expressed, the form. In Psalm 49:14, ריצ, which means form or shape or image, has been translated ‘beauty’ (KJV, NKJV, AB, ASV, Geneva Bible of 1587, Bishops' Bible of 1568, Lamsa Bible) as well as ‘form’ (NIV, ESV, BSB, NASB, etc.).

In the above passages various words for beauty have been used, as noted, each with the formal aspect particularly in view. Elsewhere הָרָאְפת is similarly used: “you shall make holy garments for Aaron your brother, for glory and for beauty” (ESV, Ex. 28:2, also v. 40), “He adorned the temple with precious stones for beauty” (BSB, 2 Chr. 3:6). Perhaps also Ps. 96:6; cf. above I C 1, “strength and beauty [הָרָאְפת]are in his sanctuary” (see later discussion).

The relation between form and design may be merely a matter of the choice of words. When we consider the descriptions of the work done by the “craftsmen and designers" in Ex. 36-39 we see elements of artistic form. Briefly these are 1) organic unity all was commanded by the Lord (31:11); all were parts of the one temple; 2) theme—the temple was made “according to pattern" with the central idea that this was a place for the glory of the Lord to dwell (40:35); 3) thematic variation with the same materials gold, blue, purple, scarlet, linen—being used in a variety of ways; 4) balance with each thing in its proper place (40:1-33); 5) progression—the “one temple was arranged in a series of courts leading to the Holy of Holies, with the design of each court being fitting to its use; 6) tiered order the courts were in a hierarchical arrangement, the inner being the holiest.

1. Objective Qualities of the Beauty of Design

As we look how to recognize the objective qualities of this beauty of design, Clowney suggests that as “the beauty of glory presents the majesty of God, the beauty of design reflects the wisdom of God" (CM, p. 88). "Wisdom" here means significant and fitting form—meaning or knowledge which is appropriate to the situation and/or purpose. Form and meaning, structure and function are viewed as a whole. Throughout the aspects of the beauty of design we see design, organization, order, shape, arrangement and the like as especially prominent.

Jesus as the wisdom of God especially exemplifies this quality. His manner of life was the perfect embodiment of the message which he bore. The temple of the Old Testament was of course the type of this embodiment of Christ. (John 2: 19-22).

Secondly, we recognize complexity as an objective quality of the beauty of design. The work of the temple required skill of a high degree as Ex. 34-40 verifies. Richness is a term we will use for one aspect of this complexity. Richness is the density or saturation of information or images either in sheer number or in type of images or senses involved (sight, taste, etc.). It is also a term with ethical tones of valuation. More will be said when this quality is discussed subjectively. Hierarchy would be an aspect of complexity which denotes the arrangement and especially the subordination of one part to another and/or to the whole. Hierarchy is the

formal quality which especially puts form in service to content and function, or of parts of form/content in service of theme. Hierarchy will be seen to subordinate the beauty of design to the beauty of majesty.

The third aspect of complexity dimensionality will serve as a transition from complexity as the second aspect of design to coherence as the third. Dimensionality is a term which denotes the interrelations within complexity and especially the inter-relations which unite. The ways of uniting will be discussed under coherence (centrally repetition/variation). The differences (variations) between terms or parts (of the whole) which are united serve as the basis for dimensionality; the similarities highlight the coherence between parts.

The third and final aspect of the beauty of design to be discussed now is coherence. Coherence consists of the unity which is established by means of repetitions and variations of materials (e.g. gold; meanings), shapes and forms (pillars or curtains; words, styles, genre), and functions (e.g. objects of worship; character, behavior). Progression of the parts in relation to one another is a coherence factor which is motivated more by content or theme than by form. As in the temple , the progression afforded. by the design of the temple was motivated by the purpose of the temple the dwelling and worship of God, so too progression (evolution or plot line) is motivated by the purpose or theme (the "idea") of the work of art. Coherence will be discussed further under the beauty of loveliness and as with each of these aspects developed more when these aspects of beauty are applied below.

2. Subjective Qualities of the Beauty of Design

Subjectively, the central experience of the beauty of design is taken to be dwelling. With the temple of course it was God who dwells and others who dwell with Him in worship. Here we revisit “Hosting the Holy Spirit” (§ II). With other art works it is those who experience the work who dwell. A "world" is created in which the reader (viewer, inhabitant) dwells. In more familiar language we can say that the central experience of the beauty of design is contemplation or meditation.131

Wisdom calls us to enter into ‘the world of the text’ in a certain way. A good art work would "usher" or draw us into this world with great success. The form and the meaning work together to this end, mutually supporting one another. The complexity of a work is experienced as touching us in many ways and in many areas of our lives. Due to the complexity we can identify with a work in a wholistic way. The better the work, the more involved we become and more of us is so involved. Richness is a value-laden term which conveys that not only is there an attraction or desirability to becoming involved, but that that attraction is due to the value of what is said, as well as to the form of expression. Here again ethical reasons (questions of valuation) become involved. Dimensionality is that which leads us deeper, opening up to us richer meaning and value of the work. Symbolism finds a basis here with complexity. Finally, the experience of coherence in design will be discussed further within the discussion of the beauty of loveliness. Preliminarily this delay of discussion will serve to anticipate a consideration of the interlocking aspects of the three concepts of beauty.

Along the same line, it is appropriate here to note haw the beauty of majesty is integral to the beauty of design. Psalm 96:6 together with our discussion of the temple, show that that which is beautiful in majesty in "in His sanctuary" or we might say by analogy, the beauty of majesty resides in the beauty of design. It is the glory of the Lord which dwells in the temple. And finally, the design is for the sake of the majesty. So we might well see a subordination within beauty of design to Majesty; i.e. even within beauty considered as a whole, there is a hierarchy with the beauty of design being subordinate to the beauty of majesty. Hierarchy is an aspect of design. Thus within the beauty of design there may well be discerned the principle of the sacrifice of itself for a higher value integral to

131 For the relation between contemplation and dwelling consider, Col. 3: 16; Jn. 15:1-10; Jer. 17: 5-8 with Ps. 1; Ps. 27:4.

the meaning of design. Critically conceived, this principle of sacrifice means that the formal elements of a great work ought not to remain prominent, but instead be in service to the "majesty" of the work.

3. For further attention later “Live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble” 1 Peter 3:8.

D. Application

1. EXCURSUS - How is ‘form’ meaningful?

Here are two preliminary items. First, consider Psalm 139:14a, usually translated “I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” However, the ESV Study Bible notes: ‘The word translated “wonderfully made” (Hb. nipleti) has a slightly unusual spelling (the expected spelling is niple’ti), which favors the ESV footnote: “I am fearfully set apart”’ (ESV Study Bible (Kindle Locations 152556-152557). Here the yod [‘] makes the difference to the form, and the meaning. Does this not recall the words of our Lord:

For I tell you truly, until heaven and earth pass away, not a single jot, not a stroke of a pen, will disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished – Matthew 5:18;

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away – Matthew 24:35

Second, not all of the design is in the print, or at least not as often understood: there are “white spaces” around the graphic marks; there are blanks between words and/or other ‘units; and there are potential connections between and among graphic marks, small (features) and larger, what we might call “gaps.” The claim of the phenomenologist of reading, Wolfgang Iser,132 is that these are structures of textual indeterminacy which stimulate or induce operations of “ideation to be performed by the reader on terms set by the text” (Iser 1978:169). These are potential connections between textual perspectives which “designates a vacancy in the overall system of the text” (182), they are “the unseen joints of the text” which break up the connectability of the text (189). The “most decisive function of the blank” (198) is the formation of the structure of the referential field which guides the build-up of the aesthetic object.

The “... structure of the blank organizes [the reader’s] participation [in the text]” (203) stimulating “the reader into filling the blanks with projections” (168) and thus to become involved or entangled in the text. Though Iser speaks of the blanks as “a self-regulating structure in communication” (194; emphasis added), this structure functions differently, and thus appears differently (and consequently, as different, 118) for every reader (119). The reason is simple: “... each textual segment does not carry its own determinacy within itself, but will gain this in relation to other segments” (195); but which “other segments” is a matter of individual interaction with the text. In short, “... texts always take place on the level of their reader’s abilities” (207). Blank are “... the unseen joints of the text ... [which] trigger acts of ideation on the reader’s part” (183), automatically mobilizing the imagination (186).

As connections are made, promoted by the blank, it is as if the blank shifts to propose new possible connections. In fact the shifting blank is responsible for the sequence of colliding images which condition each other and out of which the aesthetic object emerges (203). Second, the promotion of reader-executed

132 Iser, Wolfgang. 1974. The implied reader: patterns of communication in prose fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Iser, Wolfgang. 1978. The act of reading: a theory of aesthetic response. Baltimore, Md.: John Hopkins University Press.

Iser, Wolfgang. 1980a. Interaction between text and reader. The reader in the text: essays on audience and interpretation, ed. by S.R. Suleiman and I. Crossman, 106–119. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.

Iser, Wolfgang. 1980b. Texts and readers. Discourse Processes 3. 327–343.

connections is the very means by which reader participation is induced. This execution “transmits the reciprocal interaction of textual positions into consciousness” (203) and inextricably “entangles” the reader with the work.

2. Biblical Examples – Concordance, Cross References, Intertextuality and Intratextuality

A few obvious ‘more aesthetic’ aspects of translation would be metaphor and simile, concordance, and discourse-genre-narrative. There has already been much attention to the importance of metaphor and simile and their translation (e.g. TWOG, chapters 8, 9; Larson 1998, M-BT, chapter 23) as well as concordance (e.g. TWOG, chapter 10; Larson 1998, M-BT, chapter 14) and discourse genre (e.g. Longacre’s many articles and books; Larson 1998, M-BT, chapters 29-34).133

I will, though, illustrate here otherwise, in particular around the principle of Scripture interpreting Scripture, sometimes called the analogy of faith. In order to allow the functioning of that principle a certain kind of intertextual concordance must be preserved. It’s here that the Beauty of Design, what the WCF calls “the consent of all the parts,” may help to guide Bible Translation.

a. First Biblical Example

1. Ephesians 5:18-21 18 And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit, 19 speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; 20 always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father; 21 and be subject to one another in the fear of Christ

2. Colossians 3:16-17 16 Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father.

Most would admit a parallel here, e.g. (and there are many others) the correspondingly ‘highlighted’ portions above: speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord; // admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God.

It's unclear which was written first (both around 60), though no doubt Paul wrote/dictated one first before the other. (a) Did Paul have the first in mind when he wrote the second? Can we know? Does it matter? (b) Are the two passages identical in meaning? Probably we'd all say, ‘no, not exactly.’ (c) Do the passages comment on each other? Most would say, ‘yes’, and if so, they provide a good basis for the principle of letting scripture interpret scripture. The objective qualities of the Beauty of Design could, therefore, be recognized and as such the quality of a BT would be enhanced by preserving such qualities.

The passages present a kind of parallelism which sets up a metaphor-like ‘this is that’ structure, though at an intertextual level, with the “is” entailing both “is” and “is not,” similarity (or identity) and difference. For instance, What is the relation between 'being filled with the Spirit' (Ephesians) and “letting the Word of Christ dwell richly within” (Colossians)? …between the verbs: “being filled” and “letting dwell”? …between the nouns: “the Spirit” and “the Word of Christ”? First, are these worthwhile–even important–questions, and something we can learn from the NT as we ponder the parallels, i.e. the similarities and differences simultaneously? I'd say yes, and aspects of beauty of design which attracts, draws, instructs and delights us as our Father’s children,

133 Also, of course, K. Barnwell, I. Fleming, Deibler, the Pikes, Nida, etc., though there are limitations and concerns, e.g. “Although Nida's theory is not restricted to Bible translation, it has some limitations in guiding literary translation because it fails to address the transference of aesthetic elements for literary translation” (Ma, Hui-juan. (2007). Exploring the differences between Jin Di's translation theory and Eugene A. Nida's translation theory. Babel. 53. 98-111. 10.1075/babel.53.2.02ma).

activating the subjective qualities noted in all 3 of the types of beauty.

EXCURSUS

I just said “metaphor-like”. In that this structure is not the traditional rhetorical trope so-often designated “metaphor,” I prefer to characterize such parallelisms as cases of metaphoricity. As with metaphor, there is a frame (of recognizable similarity) and a focus (or foci) of relatable differences within that frame. This type of event of meaning has been much discussed with regard to metaphors per se. Relevant concerns include: (i) are similarity (identity) and difference irreducible primary relations? (ii) are the emergent metaphoric meanings shown and/or said? (iii) are the emergent metaphoric meanings invented / created anew or discovered? (iv) “from where” is the new meaning/similarity introduced by metaphor? (v) is the storehouse of conventional meanings (lexical and/or encyclopedic) adequate to account for the newness often claimed for metaphoric attribution? (vi) how are the new meanings verified or validated, or falsified? (vii) how, if at all, are religious metaphors different from poetic, ideological, and scientific metaphors? The same questions and concerns would apply to these and other such biblical examples as to the traditional rhetorical trope so-often designated “metaphor.”

Beyond such matters of interest, this and the following examples raise the subject of the intertextuality of texts.

b. Second Biblical Example: a set of texts on “transformation”

1. Ephesians 4:23: “that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind,

2. Romans 12:1-2: “Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. 2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.”

3. 2 Corinthians 3:18 18 But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.

Clearly (to me anyway) these passages all deal with the same thing (and other things too), and so all comment on each other. But did Paul have in mind in any of these texts all the content of the other texts? Can we know for sure? Does it matter? Is it OK to put these texts in conversation with each other and meditate on how they shed further light on each other? Why not? And don’t we all do this anyway? But note: the further light here is not (just) in the particular texts being enlightened (from the other passages). Does that further light help us see something in the text that is there but we hadn't seen before? Does what we see in this ‘new light’ emerge as much from “between” the texts as from the texts themselves, giving us some new meaning(s) which, to be honest, we'd have to say is not actually in either (or any) of the texts under consideration? For example, first with regard to the human ‘faculty’ involved in this process:

What is the relation between “the spirit of your mind” (Ephesians), and “your mind” (Romans)? And what about “your bodies” (Romans)? The West has inherited a mind-spirit/body dualism; but is that dualism operative here, in our cognitive environments? And/or in the texts? Or are these texts ‘undoing’ or at least ‘renewing’/ ‘transforming’ that inherited dualistic mindset? How much of our mental meanings is the old which is being transformed and how much (and which “part[s]”) is the new into which we are being renewed/transformed? Can we really sort that out with precision, and if so, by what standard or procedure?

Second, with regard to the activity occurring: How are the renewing, transforming, presenting, and beholding related to each other?

Third, with regard to the source of the change: How are glory, Lord, Spirit, obedience, and at least implicitly, the Word of God, interrelated in this process?

I have stayed within the Pauline corpus, but the same applies between any set of similar passages. Regarding

the above, might we add Psalm 27:4 and 63:2 and their contexts...and many more? Might Paul have had these in mind? Are they to be denied relevance because they occurred earlier in redemptive history?

Psalm 27:4

One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.

Psalm 63:1-8

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. 2 So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. 3 Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. 4 So I will bless you as long as I live; in your name I will lift up my hands. 5 My soul will be satisfied as with fat and rich food, and my mouth will praise you with joyful lips, 6 when I remember you upon my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night; 7 for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I will sing for joy. 8 My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.

You see the “problem”: the intertextual connections are (almost?) endless...and in many cases at least, in ways that surpass the “intention of the human author”, at least in any determinable sense. I would say, though, not the divine author. And, my guess would be that it is just such (often) unanticipated connections that provide the clues for translation in many cultural contexts otherwise distant from either the Biblical culture or/and our own cultures. If so, without such clues, and without a theory that guides (or at least does not prevent) the use of such intertextual connections, the rich resources needed and available may well be overlooked and/or denied.

EXCURSUS

With regard to any literary work of significance no one doubts the reality or the importance of intra- and intertextual cross references, allusions, echoes, quotes, influences, etc. How much more with regard to the Bible. The “Objective Qualities” of the Beauty of Design (re)present and reflect such intra- and inter-textual connections. See § VII B 6 a portion of which is reproduced here:

The various cross-reference systems in different Bibles recognize the importance of these intra- and intertextual connections. No doubt we have all been enriched, delighted, instructed, blessed, benefitted, and transformed from our studies, meditations on the Word, and communion with our Lord due to such available guidance. And, if you are like me, I am often lead to relevant passages that are no where represented in the cross-reference systems in the multiple Bibles I use.

To the extent that such complex textuality is an integral part of the Biblical text, translation of the Bible would

want to honor such, leaving the translated text as richly meaningful as possible.

As noted, these gaps or blanks have been recognized by students of literature as part of the “self-regulating structure in communication.”134 Further, these potential connections function differently, and thus appears differently (and consequently, as different) for every reader. The reason is simple: “... each textual segment does not carry its own determinacy within itself, but will gain this in relation to other segments” (195), but which “other segments” is a matter of individual interaction with the text. In short, “... texts always take place on the level of their reader’s abilities” (207). Consequently, because “... the formulated text means something that has not been [fully] formulated” (130), efforts to achieve an agreed upon text grammar will always be frustrated. In brief, the “... structure that regulates but does not formulate the connection,” and therefore the meaning, is “unseen,” and as unseen will always be to some extent indeterminate (196). Further, the blanks in the text function to disrupt “good continuation” in reading. Impeded image-building compels us to give up images we have formed for ourselves, so that we are maneuvered into a position outside our own products and thus led to produce images which, with our habitual way of thinking, we could not have conceived (188).

c. Final Biblical Example

Nor is this phenomenon limited to ‘cross-textual’ or intertextual parallels or cases of disputed temporal priority. There are parallels of all sorts within a particular text. This is not the place to catalogue such examples. One final example for now:

Psalm 1:1-6

1 Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers;

2 but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.

3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers.

4 The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away.

5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous;

6 for the LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish.

Only this, for now: what might it be about the root system of the tree in v. 3 that is relevant for understanding the meaning of such key words as “meditates” in v. 2, and “walks,” “stands,” “sits” in v.1?135 “Meaning,” I say: how could the imagery of v. 3 affect in any relevant way the lexical meanings noted? And yet, I suspect we all know that it does, and practice such inter-domain meditations regularly in our own readings, if not exegesis.

Attending to such imagery would be a type of aesthetic attending, more ‘right hemisphere’ than ‘left,’ though linked as noted with the more cognitive-verbal concerns as noted (vv. 1, 2), integrating the beauties of design and loveliness.

EXCURSUS

As just noted with regard to Psalm 1, images are intertwined ‘in parallel’ with other textual features. Furthermore, images in Scripture have their own intertextuality as well. For instance, agricultural imagery –trees, seeds, roots, vines, etc.; or architectural imagery, especially of interest with regard to features of design.

134 Iser, Wolfgang. 1978. The act of reading: a theory of aesthetic response. Baltimore, Md.: John Hopkins University Press, 194. The following quotes in this paragraph are form this same source.

135 See, e.g., Ephesians 3:17 (in context) and Colossians 2:7, etc.

VIII. THE BEAUTY OF LOVELINESS, PLEASANTNESS, GRACE, DELIGHT; HEAVENLINESS OF THE MATTER / INCOMPARABLE EXCELLENCIES

A. Traditional Western: charm, fairness, ineffable loveliness; allusivity; surprise; play

B. Biblical: Loveliness

1. Passages: Psalm 19:1, 90:16-17, 27:4; Proverbs 6:25; Song of Songs 4:1, 10

2. Words:136 הֶפָי, דַמָח, הֶאְרַמ, רָדָה, םַעֹנ (See Appendix A: BIBLICAL WORDS – LOVELINESS)

3. Meanings (from lexical studies)

a. Primary:

i. Objective: to be fair/beautiful; form (physical), appearance (including clothing); graceful; character (morally appropriate, wise, gracious, righteous); attractive; sweetness;

ii. Subjective: able, sufficient; whole, complete; kindness; desire, longing; delight, rejoice; pleasant

iii. Overlap with Beauty of Majesty - רָדָה

b. Secondary: ripe;

4. Meanings (from exegetical studies): Loveliness, Pleasantness, Grace, Delight, Desire

5. Images

a. Biblical: Trees, Garden; Women (Sarah - Gen 12:11, Rachel 9:17, Abigail 1 Sam 25:3, Esther Esth 2:7, Bathsheba)

b. Joseph Gen 39:6; Zion, Psalm 50:2

c. Traditional: Flowers, Butterflies, Children

d. Summary Chart

Delight / Pleasantness

Fragrance, SoS 7:8

C. Exegetical Elaborations

The third concept of beauty is termed the beauty of loveliness, or alternately, the beauty of pleasantness or delight. The references from which we will look at are Psalm 90:17 and Psalm 27:4. Other references using the same words and idea will also be given.

1. Psalm 90:17

136 Including Dryness’s #s 3, 4, 6, respectively דַׁמָח, הֶפָי, םיעָנ. Dyrness, William A. 1985. Aesthetics In The Old Testament: Beauty In Context. JETS 28/4 (December 1985). 421-432.

Let the beauty [םַׁעֹ֤נ] of the LORD our God be upon us, And establish the work of our hands for us; Yes, establish the work of our hands. םַׁעֹ֤נ beauty, delightfulness, pleasantness

The use of beauty (םַׁעֹ֤נ) in v. 17 is set in the portion of the prayer of Moses which beseeches God for his blessing (vv. 14-17). The culmination of that prayer for blessing is for the beauty of the Lord to be upon the people and for their work to be established. Whether a large distinction can be made between the glory (רָדָה) of v. 16 and the beauty of v. 17 may be hard to establish from the immediate context. However, רָדָה consistently can carry the sense of pleasantness or delightfulness (BDB) while ָה רָד never has such a sense by itself. The chiastic arrangement (v. 16 and v. 17) between work-glory: beauty-work would, nonetheless, tend to draw the two together in meaning. There is, though, enough difference between the "works" in the first and last phrases of the chiasm to support maintaining the usual distinction between םַׁעֹ֤נ and רָדָה. Thus the chiasm is a b b’ a’. One distinction in context between the usage of םַׁענ and רָדָה which is helpful for our purposes of clarifying the beauty of loveliness is that רָדָה is used with reference to the future generation while

םַׁעֹ֤נ refers to "upon us" as temporally immediate. This is useful because elsewhere in vv. 14-17 reference is made to "us": v. 14a, “satisfy us"; v. 14b, "(we) rejoice and be glad"; v. 15, "make us glad." I think it not unusual to consider these petitions as all coordinate and closely related both in petition and in fulfillment. That "of the Lord" which will satisfy , make glad, etc., is "the beauty of the Lord" (v. 17). That which is םַׁעֹ֤נ is delightful or pleasant, and so will satisfy, make glad, cause to rejoice. Thus, not only structurally, but also in terms of meaning, these expressions are very closely related. In one sense this beauty seems to be complete in that it is the summary term which answers and fulfills the other requests of vv. 14-16. On the other hand, there follows the prayer that the work of “our hands" be established (v. 17b). This “establishment", "success" (JB), "confirmation" or "permanence"(NAS) is seen as due to the favor of God's blessing just mentioned as "beauty" or "sweetness" (cf. Is. 53:10-12; Josh 1:8; Ps. 1:3). Here we see a close relation to the beauty of majesty with its "enduring value".

2. Psalm 27:4

One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty [םַׁענ] of the LORD and to inquire/meditate/seek [רֵֹ֥קַׁב] in his temple.

Here we find that the beauty (םַׁענ) of the Lord is desirable and sought (4a). The beauty here is "in the temple". The attitude toward the Lord in His beauty is to behold or to enquire, both expressions of openness and wonder. We notice here the correlation between "pleasantness", i.e. the beauty of loveliness, and "the temple" and "dwelling" which we particularly correlated with the beauty of design. Though the two are very close, there is a distinction. The beauty of the Lord resides in the temple. The temple too is beautiful in its design and parts of it could even be termed lovely. But the temple is not the Lord, as the exile so dramatically taught the people. The temple as beautiful however was the place which the Lord chose as the appropriate place for his beauty to dwell. Analogously, loveliness dwells in form, as does majesty.

The beauty (םַׁענ) of the Lord is both desirable in and of itself, and as serving another purpose (cf. Ps. 45:11). Such beauty does not simply rapture one out of this world, but seems to be part of equipping and preparing one to live confidently even in the face of enemies as the rest of the psalm makes plain. This beauty ministers courage, strength, confidence, and as (or a means of) instruction or counsel. Not only does the psalmist behold, but he receives through that beholding the answer to his inquiries (v. 14). Finally, I notice that the beauty of the Lord serves as a focus for the desires of the psalmist "one [thing] I have desired." This aspect of beauty I find related to the satisfaction sought in Psalm 90, which is the fulfillment of what is sought. Even

Christ prayed that our joy might be complete, and John wrote his first epistle for that purpose (1 John 1:4). There again "joy" serves as the culmination or summary expression of the blessing of God.

Thus we see םַׁענ—joy, fulfillment, completion as integrally related ideas. Previously when discussing the beauty of design we mentioned coherence as a central feature of beauty (or art) and promised to say more about it later. Here we come again to this sense of "hanging together", but now from more the experiential or existential side. In such terms as satisfaction, "one thing", fulfillment, completion or completeness I find the same principle of coherence or unification. However, now coherence is involved in a secondary or an implied way. For there to be fulfillment of completeness there must be coherence internally, but now the fulfillment is viewed as simple ("one thing") rather than related to internal complexities and interrelation as it was in design. Coherence now is more conceived of as organistic, viewing the whole in it simplicity. To extend and refine our analysis of loveliness we might first consider the usages of םַׁענ elsewhere. Second, we could follow the usages of the other words closely related in context and meaning to םַׁענ, such as “gladness" and "joy.” These two lines of development will be only briefly traced here.

First, then, from the other usages of םַׁענ—Pr. 2:10, 3:17; 15:26, 16:24; 24:25; Ps. 141:6; Cant. 7:6—we see that the basic meaning is "pleasant.” Nuances added are "peace" (Pr. 3:17) where the pleasant is also associated with "riches" and "honor" (note these words were also used for beauty elsewhere); "sweetness" (Pr. 9:17; 16:24; Ps. 141:6), “purity" (Pr. 15:26), here with some ethical overtones; "healing", refreshing, restoration (Pr 16:24); and "charm" (Cant 7:6).

Secondly we will follow various usages of gladness to give a hint of the riches available for this line of inquiry. Following a scripture reference where "gladness” is used, elements in the context which are closely related will be given.

Ps. 4:7, light, food and wine, peace, security, dwelling;

Ps. 30:11, deliverance from distress, dancing, gladness as clothing, songs of praise;

Ps. 45:15, Ps. 51:8, "joy and gladness";

Ps. 45:7, oil of joy, (Holy Spirit, anointing?).

Passages relating joy & gladness to feasting: Ac. 14:17; 2 Ch. 30:21, 23; Est. 9:17, 19; 8:17; Ps. 104:15; Ps. 4:7.

Other verses relate joy and gladness to the presence of God, Ps. 16:11, 17:35, 21:6.

3. Psalm 50:2 - "Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth" (Ps 50:2; 4. For further attention later

D. Applications

1. EXCURSUS

The Beauty of Loveliness – Subjective Qualities (in part)

Add: Enjoyment

There are “areas of concern” which are so ultimate that they are literally out of sight and can easily be not only out of mind but dismissed as not worthy of being in mind because they cannot be thought of

in the way we think about breakfast, or geography, or pneumonia” (Haughton, Passionate God, 5, quoted at Heaney, Maeve Louise. Music as Theology: What Music Says about the Word, p. 305).137

The beauty of loveliness with its qualities of charm, delight, pleasantness, playfulness, allusivity, for instance—may well be indications of such “areas of concern”; and who could doubt that the matters of which the Bible speaks are areas of ultimate concern, nor that the One therein revealed is “literally out of sight and can easily be … out of mind”? Jesus, for instance, was characterized by his family as “out of his mind” (Mark 3:21), and Paul noted the uttering of mysteries in the Spirit which no one understands (1 Corinthians 14), not to mention his unique experience noted in 2 Corinthians 12. Perhaps more in line with “woman” as a biblical model around which the Hebrew words for ‘loveliness’ cluster, would be the ecstatic and intoxicating delights noted in Song of Solomon “How fair/beautiful [תַׁפְי] and pleasant [םַׁענ] you are, O loved one, with all your delights [גונֲעַׁת]!” (7:6ff; 4:10; 1:15f). More specifically, the focus would be the man-woman relation, and more specially still, the difference, the ‘gap’, the relation itself.

How then to consider such “areas of concern,” the kind of thought required (not being like thinking about breakfast but in some sense “out of mind”), and translation? Heaney, who drew my attention to the introductory quote, suggests that “music … could help us to access areas … not automatically accessible to ‘rational’ [“in mind”] conceptuality” (291), and such as the ordinary experience of making music and of creativity more generally, rather than some exotic or mystical or extraordinary experience. For instance, she notes that

In a relatively recent conference on beauty in theology, the difference between musical expression and intellectual reasoning was highlighted in the contrasting ways academics and composers present described the process involved in musical composition. A speaker who himself admitted to not being familiar with the dynamic involved in composing music, ventured a description of the creative process as that of moving from an idea the composer wishes to transmit to the form it finally takes; the group of composers in the audience, of different styles and genres, were unanimous in saying that they did not, in fact, follow the process of ideas through to music, but rather the opposite, allowing music to emerge, listening to and receiving that which it seemed to be expressing, while seeking to give it form. Fresh concepts will not be born of repeated or reformulated ideas, and while suggesting this is but one way forward, perhaps learning to expand our awareness to those zones of our person that are “under the surface,” out of sight, or perhaps we could say “preconceptual,” would help us to widen and refresh our thinking. Music can help in that process” (291f).

And we might think that translating the Bible would require fresh forms of expression if not “fresh concepts” in the host language and culture, especially to the extent that the Bible is ‘foreign’ and the message is “new”, that is “good news,” the revelation of God, God’s Word.

And the link to translation? I turn to an understanding of translation which links thought (especially about ultimate concerns) and language and translation via the notion of attunement (Stimmung) and especially the tonality of the attunement, drawing on the musical understanding. Closely related is the “phenomena of the resonance-reverberation doublet” as experienced via the (so-called) poetic image, highlighting the role of the human imagination.138

137 Haughton, Rosemary. The Passionate God. London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1981.

138 Bachelard, Gaston. 1964/1994. The Poetics Space. Translation © 1964 by The Orion Press, Inc. First published as a Beacon paperback in 1969. First published in French under the title La poetique de l'espace, © 1958 by Presses Universitaires de France.

The claim is that via an “attuned” comportment to the most fundamental of correlates of the human being— biblically, that would be the Triune God via humans as images of God access to the key to the meaning of any utterance, and especially key terms, is granted via the “’pitch,’ ‘inflection’ and ‘tonality’” (Schalow Kindle Locations 8717-8718). Not to be overlooked here is that this attunement is of the comportment of the human being, that is, the being of the human, inclusive of ‘the conceptual, rational mind’, but more holistic and fundamental. According to this understanding “translation is an attuned comportment” which “receives its guidance from the future,” that is, from possibilities beyond “the sensibilities of the status quo” (9010-9014; 9028-9031). “Put another way, the decisions themselves originate from a ‘call’ – hence their relatedness to an attunement – that “echoes” the specific claim that being makes upon thought. Because of the echo of this call, translation rises to the level of a “craft,” which stands in the service of thinking” (9012-9014). Here the communication is via such (beauty of loveliness) qualities as surprise, intimacy, allusivity, etc. “In the stillness of this humility echoes the “voice (Stimme) of being [I would say, Spirit],” which calls thinking and translation alike into a common mission” (9059-9061).

Other have written of the same realities in other, though similar, terms. For instance, the 1993 Nobel Laureate in Literature, the American writer Toni Morrison, “And the sound of the novel … must be an innerear sound or a sound just beyond hearing, infusing the text with musical emphasis that words can do sometimes even better than music can.” Or, the scholar, musician, radio producer, co-President of the William Faulkner Society, and a member of the editorial board of Sound Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Julie Beth Napolin in her 2020 book The fact of resonance: Modernist acoustics and narrative form (Fordham University Press, p. 1), “we have yet to understand the acoustics underlying legibility, audibility, and visibility in the production and reception of narrative. … To ask after the forces that determine that availability, but also that disclose its availability as the realm of the apparent, is to exit the realm of narrative theory as it concerns itself with representation.” Further,

A literary resonance lacks the definition afforded by a traditional acoustic instrument where the shape and substance of a physical object produces timbre. A temporal fact, literary resonance which is not acoustic but acoustical—means that what was in one moment on the verge of ceasing to be a thing becomes in another moment significant, the experience of reading being not only diachronic but anachronic and translative—the present resounds into and against the past. In this way, resonance presages mutuality and reciprocal encounter. Acousticality is at the fold between matter and metaphor” (8).

The “fact of such resonance is neither a showing nor a telling but a sounding” (3), an attunement, an echo. There is much of interest to be further explored, once we become aware of these realities, as testified to by so many others: “In resonance, things go beyond their immediate being” (123); “In resonance, the fundamental unit is two” (124); “The address is not given in advance by discourse but won through a textual effect of resonance” (124); “But the peculiar being of resonance is to be both localized and an array” (223); “the nonlocalizable structure of resonance’s occurrence” (223); “This placeless place of resonance” (218); and “It demands reading for resonance: a ‘recalling’.” Words vanish but later strike what Faulkner calls “the resonant strings of remembering” (213).

The suggestion, then, or the “call,” would be for translators to read, the source and the host texts, is the way of such an attuned comportment.

2. Postscript: The three aspects or dimensions of Beauty as integrated:

God’s beauty is delight and the object of delight, the shared gaze of love that belongs to the persons of the Trinity; it is what God beholds, what the Father sees and rejoices in the Son, in the sweetness of the Spirit, what Son and Spirit find delightful in one another, because as Son and Spirit of the Father

they share his knowledge and love as person. This cannot be emphasized enough: the Christian God, who is infinite, is also infinitely formosus [well-formed, beautiful], the supereminent fullness of all form, transcendently determinate, always possessed of his Logos. True beauty is not the idea of the beautiful, a static archetype in the “mind” of God, but is an infinite “music,” drama, art, completed in but never “bounded” by—the termless dynamism of the Trinity’s life; God is boundless, and so is never a boundary; his music possesses the richness of every transition, interval, measure, variation— all dancing and delight. And because he is beautiful, being abounds with difference: shape, variety, manifold relation. Beauty is the distinction of the different, the otherness of the other, the true form of distance.139

IX. BEAUTY AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

How does this suggested biblical understanding of beauty fare when different cultural judgments of beauty are considered? I myself expect that different dimensions or aspects of beauty are valued and highlighted differently in different cultures. As such, the test for the proposed understanding of beauty in Part II would be to see if culturally different understandings and appreciations of beauty are included in the tripartite, multidimensional schemas noted in §s Vi-VIII. To do so, I take guidance first of all from Crispin Sartwell’s 2006 Six Names of Beauty. No doubt, and hopefully, this will become an open-ended and on-going project to which many might contribute. Sartwell himself says, his book *** …is intended to be an essay in universal appreciation. My goal above all was to experience the beauty of as many sorts of things as possible. For that reason, my conceptual treatment of beauty is both cursory (in order to make room for beautiful things) and as general and open ended as I could make it. My feeling was that adequacy of definition was of less moment than creating an open structure into which as many things as possible could be drawn (xi).

Perhaps I too am proposing such an open structure, though I’m inclined to consider such an open structure also to be the structure of definitions.

A. Six Names of Beauty – Crispin Sartwell

Sartwell considers the words for beauty in six languages (xii):

1. beauty (English): the object of longing

2. yapha (Hebrew): glow, bloom

3. sundara (Sanskrit): whole, holy

4. to kalon (Greek): idea, ideal

5. wabi-sabi (Japanese): humility, imperfection

6. hozho (Navajo): health, harmony

Let’s see how these six are—or are not—included in the understanding presented earlier.

1. English

Sartwell claims “beauty is the object of longing” (3) or, varying the term, desire or pleasure (pleasantness, 55); for instance, “Beauty calls to desire in every possible configuration: the desire to possess, to love, to enjoy, to gaze, to use, to lapse into silence or unconsciousness, to let go” (25). First of all, desire is very much included in the beauty of loveliness, or alternately, the beauty of pleasantness or delight. Secondly, though, Sartwell’s meditations are wide-ranging, including:

a. Uselessness (7) and usefulness (23)

139 Hart, David Bentley. 2003. The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 177.

b. Moral beauty (10)

c. Spiritual values (15)

d. Disturbed beauty, distressed beauty, complicated even disgusting beauty (16)

e. The beauty of power (16)

f. The sublime (18)

g. Ultimate abstraction (21), abstract form (18, 19, 21)

h. Loveliness (23)

For me, this is all good, recognizing longing or desire as potentially integral to any experience of the beautiful. Nonetheless, though the subjective experience of the beautiful may entail longing or desire, the variation of the objects noted recommends more careful and nuanced consideration. For instance, the Beauty of Majesty (b,c,e,f), of Design (a,g), of Loveliness (h).

2. yapha (Hebrew): glow, bloom.

Given our treatment of Old Testament words for beauty 17 in total categorized under three multidimensional headings (Majesty, Design, Loveliness) including reference to William A. Dyrness’s 1985 “Aesthetics In The Old Testament: Beauty In Context” cataloguing seven Hebrew word groups, treatment of on Hebrew word (yapha, הֶפָי ) is ‘thin.’ In addition, Sartwell gives to yapha the senses of glow or bloom, while BDB gives only fair, beautiful, https://www.wordhippo.com/what-is/the-meaning-of/hebrew-wordf18f301bc6fab5bbf0c2e862cf0fd950a6c06f9c.html gives 14 meanings not including glow or bloom, https://www.morfix.co.il/en/%D7%99%D6%B8%D7%A4%D6%B6%D7%94 gives 7 meanings not including glow or bloom, similarly with all other sites checked.

Further, Dyrness says, with regard to הֶפָי

The word group associated with the verb yâpâ, "to be fair/beautiful," appears eight times as a verb, nineteen times as a noun and thirty-six times as an adjective. These words are ordinarily associated with the outward beauty of a person and, less often, of an object. It is a very common description of the beloved one in the Canticles ("you are beautiful," Cant 4:1, 10 et passim); it describes Sarah (Gen 12:11), Rachel (29:17), Joseph (39:6), Abigail (1 Sam 25:3) and Esther (Esth 2:7). Israel is called lovely because of God's kindness to her (Ezek 16:13-14; Jer 11:16, "a green olive tree, fair with good fruit"). This beauty is dangerous only when it becomes a matter of pride, as in the moving progression in Ezekiel 16. Under God's care Israel had become famous for her beauty (w 12-14). Then she trusted in her beauty (v 15) so that soon she began to offer it to passersby in harlotry (v 25; cf. Jer 10:40).

So important is this beauty that it can refer to God's very presence in Zion: "Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth" (Ps 50:2; cf. 48:2 RSV). And again it is to characterize God's people in the last days (Zech 9:17). I

nteresting is the use of this group in the wisdom literature (nineteen times excluding wisdom material in the Psalms). Here it indicates the highest natural perfection that God's ordered creation can reach. He has made everything beautiful in its time (Eccl 3:11). In the same manner enjoyment of this is also lovely. It is lovely to eat and drink and find enjoyment in all one's toil. But taken out of this context it becomes a snare: "Like a gold ring in a swine's snout is a beautiful woman with no discretion" (Prov 11:22; cf. 31:30) (424f).

Further, Sartwell includes under his meditations on הֶפָי the following topics, for which we have found different Hebrew words prominently used:

• The loveliness of birds

• The splendour of jewels

• The structure of jazz music

• The improvisation of jazz music

• Lightning and thunder

• The “psychedelic” experience of a black light

• The colour of flowers

• The scents of flowers and perfumes

• The harmonies and designs of nature and the arts

• Cloudscapes in their elusiveness

• The Milky Way

• Fireworks, including Handel’s “Music for Royal Fireworks”

• Sacred fire, including its representation by a phallus

• The descriptions of the lovers in the Song of Solomon

3. sundara (Sanskrit): holiness

Earlier we took note of the biblical phrase “the beauty of holiness” and characterized one of the 3 main foci as the beauty of majesty or holiness. Sartwell notes that “Beauty is fundamentally connected to spirit in every culture, and every religion expresses its spirituality in some of its most exquisitely made objects, which are offered to God, or to the people as a way to achieve contact with God” (57), though he also confesses “I don’t believe in God” and “Religion, I think, is fundamentally arbitrary” (58). Further, though Sartwell highlights “Sundara” in his title, he also notes that

the term “kalyani” can mean “beautiful,” but its primary meaning is “fortunate,” or “blessed.” … it connects the idea of beauty with the idea of flourishing or happiness. “Rasa,” … derives from “flavor,” and indicates an enduring emotional state, like a flavor lingering on a palate. It is perhaps possible to understand it as the proper effect of a great work of art on a mind fitted to receive it; an emotional disturbance transformed into tranquility by the aesthetic situation. “Ramyani,” too, focuses on the experience of beauty, an experience that leads us into love and through a cycle of incarnations. The primary Sanskrit term for beauty, however, is “sundara” (61).

In addition, Sartwell acknowledges that

All of these terms have a spiritual valence, and the Hindu sage and writer Visvanatha remarks that the experience of beauty is “the twin brother of mystical experience, and the very life of it is supersensuous wonder.” Thus the connection of beauty and spirit in the history of India amounts very nearly to identity, nor are these dimensions of human experience distinguished on the subcontinent in any firm way until the Western domination of India (61).

Because Sartwell affirms that “The idea that the worship of God and the experience of earthly beauty could be actually the same thing … coax[ing] us from our senses and their world toward the mystery that cannot be sensed (62), he turns toward a wide-ranging meditation on connections between beauty, sensuality, and spirit (62ff).

He particularly pays attention to music, and especially popular music. Notably he highlights the structure of music, and

Specifically that “All music makes use of repetition. The fugue structure, for instance, is a structure of growth within repetition” (65). Furthermore,

As every rhythm is a structure of repetition, repetition is itself the very principle of unity for beings who are condemned to live in time. As life swings around through its days again and again, it develops structure, becomes rhythmic. What is spiritual in music is above all tempo: the structure of its development and return through time that becomes our own development and return (67).

That is, the structure of unity in and with and as repetition is “what is spiritual in music”, especially with regard to time. For me this is the core of ‘the beauty of design.’

In addition, Sartwell calls attention to the Australian bullroarer, or “voice of God,”

…a block of wood at the end of a cord or thong, which is spun around the body to produce a very peculiar noise, a kind of simultaneous buzz and hum that seems to occupy all frequencies simultaneously (68). Perhaps this highlights dimensions of ‘the beauty of Majesty.’ Similarly his attention to ecstasy. Further, notes that “Even a crucifixion can be beautiful” (70ff); see § VC7.

Finally, Sartwell illustrates artists seeking to merge or unify the ‘objective’ and the ‘subjective,’ making themselves the work of art in different ways (75ff). This too is worthy of note, especially with regard to (i) § V, “Hosting the Beauty of the Lord,” and (ii) the affirmation in Ephesians 2:10 that “we are God’s masterpiece [poema]. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago” (NLV).

Finally, and closer to home, Sartwell notes

The Protestant Reformation was a spiritual revolution. But as well, and in direct connection, it was an aesthetic revolution. Indeed, the aesthetic, ethical, and religious aspects of it cannot be distinguished. And they cannot be distinguished firmly, it seems to me, in the life of any culture (79f).

In addition to all the “high art” associated with both the Catholic and the Protestant traditions, Sartwell focuses on the Shaker approach to ‘beauty,” highlighting aspects of both design and loveliness:

Indeed, “devotion” denotes both the attitude of the worshiper and that of the crafter, and is a way of showing that these two functions were the same in Shaker communities. There is a beauty, of course, in simplicity and function: whole aesthetic movements have emphasized that, though others have rejected it outright (83).

4. to kalon (Greek): idea, ideal

For Sartwell,

The Greek words for beautiful (kalos) and beauty (to kalon) have moral as well as aesthetic force. They refer to “nobility” as well as what we would think of as direct visual beauty. But these terms also have an epistemic dimension; they are connected to the idea of knowledge. All of these meanings might be brought together in a notion of “illumination”: the kalos is above all, we might say, what is drenched in light.

Sartwell’s mediation is wide-ranging, and helpful, though how specifically associated with to kalon would be debateable.140 Indeed, though much discussed, typically

140 “It is important to note that the concept of ‘symmetry’ in classical texts is distinct from and richer than its current use to indicate bilateral mirroring. It also refers precisely to the sorts of harmonious and measurable proportions among the parts characteristic of objects that are beautiful in the classical sense, which carried also a moral weight. For example, in the Sophist (228c-e), Plato describes virtuous souls as symmetrical.

The ancient Greek word kalon can be translated as beautiful, good, noble, or fine yet somehow it transcends any one of those concepts. In art and literature, it can apply straightforwardly to figures like Helen or Aphrodite, or enigmatically to the pais kalos: the youthful athlete that decorates so much sympotic [related to the ancient Greek symposium] pottery. In the philosophy of Plato, Aristotle and Plotinus, meanwhile, it takes on an ethical, even transcendent dimension. And yet, the thread between a beautiful painting and the Platonic form of the beautiful is never completely broken.141

The classical conception, from the Greeks (and through the Renaissance) has had to do with “an arrangement of integral parts into a coherent whole, according to proportion, harmony, symmetry, and similar notions.”142 For instance,

Aristotle says in the Poetics that “to be beautiful, a living creature, and every whole made up of parts, must … present a certain order in its arrangement of parts” (Aristotle, volume 2, 2322 [1450b34]). And in the Metaphysics: “The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree” (Aristotle, volume 2, 1705 [1078a36]).143

Whether or not kalon has to do with, as Sartwell claims, being drenched in light epistemic, moral, spiritual we have found both radiance and moral value to be integral to the Beauty of Majesty. Furthermore, we have also found the elements of the classical conception alluded to above to be integral to the Beauty of Design. In addition, to the extent that eros is linked (by Sartwell) to beauty, such desire has been noted as integral to the Beauty of Loveliness, in particular.

6. wabi-sabi (Japanese): humility, imperfection

Sartwell notes that Japanese has a variety of words of aesthetic interest; for example, “shibusa” indicating an elegant refinement, though without being gaudy, something like an elegant mathematical proof or an elegant scientific theory. Also, “yugen” indicates something both mysterious and elusive or obscure and profound, something that “invites you or seduces you to tumble into it, to lose yourself” (113). Both use absence or emptiness to suggest rather than move directly toward what might be considered perfection.

Nonetheless, Sartwell highlights instead wabi-sabi, “an aesthetic of poverty and loneliness, imperfection and austerity, affirmation and melancholy. Wabi-sabi is the beauty of the withered, weathered, tarnished, scarred, intimate, coarse, earthly, evanescent, tentative, ephemeral” (114); or again, that which is plain, unagitated, uncalculated, harmless,

“The ancient Roman architect Vitruvius epitomizes the classical conception in central, and extremely influential, formulations, both in its complexities and, appropriately enough, in its underlying unity:

“Architecture consists of Order, which in Greek is called taxis, and arrangement, which the Greeks name diathesis, and of Proportion and Symmetry and Decor and Distribution which in the Greeks is called oeconomia

“Order is the balanced adjustment of the details of the work separately, and as to the whole, the arrangement of the proportion with a view to a symmetrical result.

“Proportion implies a graceful semblance: the suitable display of details in their context. This is attained when the details of the work are of a height suitable to their breadth, of a breadth suitable to their length; in a word, when everything has a symmetrical correspondence.

“Symmetry also is the appropriate harmony arising out of the details of the work itself: the correspondence of each given detail to the form of the design as a whole. As in the human body, from cubit, foot, palm, inch and other small parts come the symmetric quality of eurhythmy. (Vitruvius, 26–27)” (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauty/#PhilConcBeau (accessed 16 December 2023).

141 Heather L. Reid and Tony Leyh. 2018. Introduction. Looking at Beauty to Kalon in Western Greece: Selected Essays from the 2018 Symposium on the Heritage of Western. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvcmxpn5.4

142 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauty/#PhilConcBeau (accessed 16 December 2023).

143 Ibid.

straightforward, natural, innocent, humble, modest that which is for practical everyday purposes or functions, but in such a way that the ordinary loses its ordinariness overcoming the dualism of the ordinary and extraordinary: …these art forms are designed for contemplation, for a total immersion in the beauty of the world that moves beyond or underneath the opposition of beauty and ugliness. In each case, the artist stills the spirit, contemplates the object, and moves it slowly in the direction of the ideal. This is in part a training in seeing the world (121f).

Perhaps the closest our considerations come to wabi-sabi would be our consideration of the Crucifixion (§ V C 7).

7. hozho (Navajo): health, harmony

Hozho expresses the Navajo concept of beauty or beautiful conditions. But beauty is not separated from goodness, from health, from happiness, or from harmony. It is not an abstractable quality of things or a fragment of experiences; it is the normal pattern of nature and the most desirable form of experience.144

Sartwell highlights the comprehensive senses of “beauty,” “health” or “balance,” “harmony,” and “goodness,” especially as a “people inhabiting a community that inhabits a world,” and especially as characterized by flourishing (135). Hozho expresses an integration of all aspects of community life including weaving, blacksmithing, silver work, basket making, pottery, song, sand painting, with moral, aesthetic, and health-related values and realities (137ff) For Sartwell, being at home, especially with the earth, is a key summarizing experience (132ff).

For my proposed schema, hozho expresses many aspects of all three “beauties,” though lacking in the redemptive glories.

X. shalom, meaning: “flourishing, wholeness and delight!”

*** BIBLICAL AESTHETICS AND CHECKING

No doubt the checking of translations with native speakers and readers may also incorporate approaches to gauge the aesthetic dimensions. For instance, the artist, architect, and designer Christopher Alexander once designed an empirical test to train people in their perception of beauty and of what he calls the quality of “life” in things.26 In comparing any two objects chosen at random, Alexander shows how different types of questions determine the level of our response to the objects. For example:

1. Which is the more attractive of these two objects?

2. Which do you like best? Why do you like it?

3. Which gives you the most wholesome feeling?

4. Which of them better represents your whole self?

5. If you had a choice, which would you spend eternity with?

6. Which of them would you be happier to offer to God?145

XI. Literary Examples

Seven elements of literary art will serve as the basis of our treatment. These seven are: 1) the structure of the work, 2) narrative point-of-view, 3) setting, 4) tone, 5) writing style, 6) mythic parallels, and 7) characterizations. Each of these seven will be considered in terms of the qualities of beauty. Biblical Examples*** “sore afraid” Eccl 12 – keeping poetry Isa 7 – firm/firm: “If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all.’ Exo 1:5***

144 GaryWitherspoon. Language and Art in the Navajo Universe,quotedatSartwell,p.135.

145 Stratford Caldecott. Beauty for Truth's Sake (Kindle Locations 406-412). Kindle Edition.

A. The Last Battle

a. The Structure. This book unfolds as an adventure in various episodes.! The children are not introduced until the end of the fourth chapter. By that time, the scene has been set and the problem of the pseudo-Aslan and the plight of the deposed King has been well established. To consider the structure of a work is mainly a question of design. To evaluate the structure aesthetically we look then at the various. components of the beauty of design.

We shall ask first about "wisdom". It is difficult to speak of the beauty of wisdom without discussing the truth of this wisdom. We shall try to maintain a focus on the design which leaves the consideration of theme, questions of the internal logic of Narnia., and the Truth of Narnia untouched. It is sufficient here to merely mention that there is a problem with doing this.

There is much wisdom expressed in this book. The meaning of courage and discretion (Chap. 2), deception and counterfeit (Tash, Aslan, Tashlan), willfulness and selfishness (the dwarfs), death and reality, all in subordination to the major theme of Redemption in Christ,2- are treated in this book. In 7 addition, there are many “side comments" which also convey much insight and meaning sprinkled throughout the book (e.g. "freedom", p- 137; “within/without", p. 140, 180; "greed", p. 1475 "running", p. 172). The main themes are quite naturally carried and developed by the form of an episodic adventure. the "side comments" however are often not well integrated as we will see later. Further, that which is not commended in behavior and value is represented often by non-humans (ape, ass, dwarfs) or adults (Calormenes) which conveys a warning.

In terms of "complexity" there is much that is beautiful. Hierarchically, all is submitted to Aslan, his appearances and the desire and. expectancy for him. This "truth" of the theme is also in the form. Similarly, the children often: play the prominent role which if fitting in literature designed for children, especially literature of such a didactic sort.’ This encourages identification.

The dimensionality of this book as it is seen in the design is exemplary. The use of the "doors" in the story especially highlight this fact. The tent door, the stable door and the “further in and up" of the later chapters especially promise new and needed information and meaning in order to continue in the story. And finally the entrance into the "real" Narnia is the fulfillment of the dimensionality hinted at throughout because of the difference between the old Narnia and the world of the children (in England). If there is a weak point in the complexity of the design it is a lack of richness. The story is not as dense or saturated with information, images, and involvement as an adult reader might wish. (As an example of richness, consider Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.) This will be seen most clearly when we discuss characterization, setting, style; and coherence, but even with the plot, we may well consider it simplistically developed.

Finally, the coherence of the design is well done. The main lines of development and design are clear and well integrated. The main figures, the ape, the ass, Tirian, the dwarfs, the children, are interwoven with one another throughout the story. Various characters as well as themes and symbols (e.g. "the door", "the lion skin") are often repeated in various contexts to provide good coherence. The shortish chapters, the varied action, and the ever present problem of the presence of the pseudo-Aslan and the absence of the true Aslan, all motivate the action , contributing to the coherence. A weakness in coherence could be noted at various points of transition such as p. 146 (the introduction of Aslan), p. 150 (the remembrance of Jill and Eustace), and p. 157 (the golden key) . This however, may be more a question of style.

b. The Narrative Point-of-View. The narrative point-of-view is the third person limited. This fits well the telling of a story to children (or to anyone for that matter).

c. Setting. We begin a consideration of the setting in terms of loveliness. Narnia certainly is lovely; that may be its main characteristic. Tt is delightful to have talking animals, and the beauty of it is very evident its

attractiveness (p. 167), its felicity (p. 151), the mystery and depth (fecundity) (p. 167), the fullness (p. 171), and the peace (p. 172-184).

Lewis however leans a lot on giving evaluations of its beauty and pronouncing on it rather than actually describing and thus conveying the fact of the beauty to us directly. Of course, he says he can not (p. 170), and such might be excusable (1 Cor 2:9). In spite of this a very lovely place is presented (Chapters 15,16).

The setting as designed is consistent enough to warrant belief, but yet incomplete enough to make us want to know more of it, which of course is done by design. Thus we long to enter in as "Aslan" would have it. However, the scenic development is not complex. It is simple. Richness is especially lacking. It is perhaps a child's world. Further analysis here would be more epistemologically than aesthetic.146

We might also say that the setting is majestic for as described it is of enduring value the “real" Narnia is forever. Here we see the ‘necessity of the other analyses, for we must decide whether in fact what is presented is enduring, not just that it says it is. The ethical is also called for to judge what is in fact of enduring value. We will not pursue the ethical but will note in closing that Narnia is radiant (p. 170-171) and full of power ( p. 172). Such is its description and thus we can say that it intends to be majestic in setting. Whether it is or not is a further question of style.

d-e Tone/ Style. Lewis’s style is perhaps the weakest point in this analysis. He writes as if from the outside, from a distance. He is condescending and pedantic ‘in his approach. He knows "too much "in an obvious, pretentious way and manipulates the scenes and situations for his allegorical purposes. This is illustrated in several ways. His “side comments” though they be wise, true, and very insightful are not well integrated into the story. They are instead deposited from without. For example, "But very soon....", p. 147; "You see....", p. 148; p. 165. This is a weakness in design (interrelation of form and meaning; integrality).

A similar fault is his use of parenthetical statements, which seem to be used to add what he thinks needs to be known to make the story ‘coherent, but which he does not integrate into the story. For example, p. 138, 140, 142, 144. Again this is a difficulty of design, especially coherence. This style then impresses me as moralistic.

Similarly, the tone and style are not in themselves majestic. There is a lack of power (intensity) and radiance, except when certain "lovely" or aweful scenes are described. Otherwise, the style is too simple, perhaps simplistic. Nonetheless, this simplicity is often "lovely" (e.g. Chap. 15,16). The style is also even delightful. Yet there is a lack of depth and the allusions are rather obvious, losing subtlety and the surprise which delights. These “faults" may again be due to the children's literature genre. What has been said of style I believe applies to tone as well.

6. Mythic Parallels. The only parallels I would be qualified to draw are the biblical parallels. Clearly The Last Battle is allegory the end of human history is graphically portrayed: the Antichrist, the battle of Armageddon, death (represented by the stable), the general resurrection, and the consummation of the plan of redemption in a New Heaven and a New Earth. Within the allegorical style, Lewis has done well. This type of symbolism is included under dimensionality (design) and fecundity (loveliness). In both ways the author has been successful. The lines are clear between the story and the reality referred to. What weakens the allegory is the quality of style referred to earlier. For children this may not be a weakness.

146 Epistemology would have to do more with “Truth” as related to both “Goodness” and “Beauty.” Remember, as in the introduction, “Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance.”

7. Characterization. Certain characters, at certain times are "lovely", even in their awfulness Tash, for example, is attractive, "vital", and has depth; Tirian is noble and courageous; the Ape is scheming, deceitful, and self-seeking; the Ass is pathetic, simple, and likeable; the Unicorn is loyal; the dwarfs are greedy, warped, and stubborn. However, their character development is very incomplete. There is not much development of character evident, except perhaps with the dwarfs and Tirian.

In terms of loveliness, I am ambivalent about the characters. In terms of design, we can say that they are relatively coherent. They are true to themselves. but with little variation or progression. Certainly they are not complex. The insight gained "from them" comes usually by way of fiat Lewis simple, as narrator, comments. He motivates the story from the outside, more from the development of the plot than from internal character development. He seems intent on teaching morals rather than on showing the lived out versions of these morals. This I take to be a weakness in “wisdom”. He wants the story to be instructive to children, especially their values, but he does very little from the "inside" of a child. Thus the design of the characters is disappointing. The characters are however majestic, especially because of the value put on faith (obedience to the word of Aslan in waiting upon his return), hope (He will return), and love (toward Aslan and one another). These enduring values are seen in and through them, but in a naive and childish way. This concludes our aesthetic analysis of The Last Battle.

A more complete critique would require a thorough treatment of each aspect of beauty as developed earlier. It would also require, in addition to the aesthetic, .and ethical and epistemological critique.

B. "Like a Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan

I have chosen a poem for the second literary work to be analyzed. "Like a Rolling Stone” by Bob Dylan is a song which was recorded first on the Highway 61 Revisited album. The version as presented there will serve for analysis. A copy of the poem is included below.

The poem starts as a story, "Once upon a time...." (1.1) and presents us with a vividly displayed description of a woman who begins “in her prime” (1.2). The first six lines describe her former life, addressing it in the past tense, thus alluding that a change has occurred. Lines 7-9 make that change definite. This poem is well structured. It consists of four nine-line stanzas alternated with a common (with some variation) refrain of 5-6 lines. However, what strikes us first is not the order of the verse but the vividness and power of the images. We are attracted by the vitality and impact of the rhythm and the allusive and insightful imagery. Consider e.g. l. 2, 9, 15-16, 20 ("mystery tramp"), 22 (“vacuum of his eyes"). This vitality of image and style (the driving rhythm and the questioning address) is well formed to support and serve the issue at stake, the theme of the poem, which is lostness presented in its existential intensity. The title and the refrain make this plain. Following this brief introduction we will now consider the poem in terms of the three beauties as outlined earlier.

Loveliness. As is usually the case the case the design of a work is not what is immediately evident to us. Instead the ‘loveliness,’ the life, the charm, the pleasure is what first meets us. The style and the form support this loveliness and serve to attract us and draw us into the world and message being presented. Immediately, from l. 1 on, the rhythm and rhyme capture our attention. Note the rhyme in l. 1-2, "time', "fine", "dime", "prime." The imagery also is arrestive, "dressed so fine", "threw the bums a dime." The style and point of view support this involvement- 1.1 "you", and the form of question (1. 1-2) brought home at the end of 1. 2, “didn't you?" as well as in the refrain. Thus, from the start, the poem is "delightful" (III. 1). There is felicity, attractiveness and a playful vitality. These qualities continue throughout the poem. (It may be added that though the voice of Dylan is often scoffed at, his verbal presentation of this poem in song I find supportive of these qualities. Though he has been suspicious of surface beauty in sound, his tone is fascinating, fresh, and surprising in a way which many do find attractive)

The scene as presented in the four stanzas is intense, and again, because of the allusive and insightful imagery, as well as the meaning of the scene which initially is more felt and anticipated than spelled out, we are aware of a depth of life and meaning which seems to continually elude us. The images are familiar enough (1. 2; “hangin out", 1.6; "home" in refrain; "school", 1. 15, etc.), but their arrangement and the impact with which they are presented strip us of a superficial reading. The intensity of presentation (to be discussed later under design and majesty) as well as the abruptness of involvement in which we are immersed convince us that these are depths yet unexplored. Two other factors support the fecundity of this poem. The first is the unusual images which shake and dislodge us from an ordinary reading (hearing) of the song. Consider ll. 1516, the clash of "finest schools" with "juiced in it"; ll. 20-23, "mystery tramp", "alibis", "vacuum of his eyes", "make a deal" – this is frightening and awesome; ll. 30-31, 34-35, "jugglers and. clowns", "chrome horse", “diplomat (with a) Siamese cat"; l. 50, "Napoleon in rags." These are stunning images, which are far from ordinary. Secondly, the tone is pleasant (especially the music) but yet unpleasant in roughness on the surface. These factors, together with the refrain which questions the main character, and in that, us, the reader (hearer), opens us to these depths. In addition to the depth, the poem is fecund in the intimacy which it presents. The images and the questions penetrate and search us. It does not exactly present “habitability" for that would be to contradict its chosen theme which is being without a home (cf. refrain). Yet it penetrates to the intimacy which inhabits and displays the disarray of that "region of dwelling within" the main character. The allusiveness and insight of this poem have already been referred to. Thus this poem rates high is fecundity.

The fullness of the poem will be shown more in terms of its wisdom complexity, and design. However, in terms of the more experiential category of loveliness, the completeness of "Like a Rolling Stone" is given through its images and questions which present satisfaction via negativa. What is shown is not emergence or exaltation but destruction and descent; not integration but disintegration; not peace, but confusion. Such an effect testifies to the objective fullness. So, in our sense as outlined, "Like a Rolling Stone" is "lovely" in a manner fitting to its theme. Here we see loveliness in subordination to the wisdom of design and value of majesty (as well as to the epistemological and ethical categories which are not being considered in this treatment.) We now turn to consideration of that design.

Design: The structure of this poem is quite coherent and well formed. Each of the four stanzas of nine lines is formed of two couplets, four line groups, and a ninth line which ends in a word rhyming with the last word of the ninth line of each stanza ("meal", 1. 9; “deal 1.23; “steal’, 1. 38;“conceal’, 1. 53.) which also rhymes with a central word of the refrain, “feel".

The main coherency factor is the repetition and variation of sounds (rhyme).

Stanza 1.

l. 1-2 time, fine/ dime, prime. you 3-4 call, doll, falj/ all you 5-8 about/ out//loud/ proud (note the closer coupling between 5-6 and 7-8 Stanza 2.

l. 15-16 you, school/ you, you, used, juiced it 17-18 you/ you, you're, used it

19-23 compromised/ realize/ alibis/ eyes Stanza 3.

l. 30-31 around, frowns, clowns/, down for you

32-33 understood, good. shouldn't,(your) for you

34-37 diplomat/ cat/ that/ at Stanza 4.

1. 45 steeple, people

46 drinkin, thinkin made

47 exchanging, things

48 ring babe

49-52 amused/ used/ refuse/ lose *** The last four lines of each stanza are the same in having each of the four lines end with a rhyming word. The first four lines display more variety. Stanza 1 and 3 are composed of two couplets. Based on sound, stanzas 2 groups the first 4 lines together and stanza 4 groups 1 and 2-4 together. However in each of the four stanzas lines 1-2 and 3-4 are coupled due to the last word in 2 and 4 of each stanza either being the same or rhyming strongly.

In addition to the above rhyme schemes, the rhythm is used to bind together the lines. This is more obvious when Dylan is heard to perform the song. I am not competent to judge the meter of this poem, which would be beneficial at this point.

In ‘addition, to these patterns of coherence which bind the poem as a whole together, several other factors should be mentioned. The constant use of "you" and the long u-sound provided continuity. The refrain of course also binds the work together.

The progression of the poem is also interesting. Formally we are set up to expect a story with, I suppose, the normal beginning and end. ("Once upon a time,” l. 1). However it is difficult to discern actual progression even though the rhythm and the form of repetitions of sounds and refrain might lead us to expect such development. The form then conflicts with the actuality. But this is not a defect but in fact is "wisdom" for the meaning of the story is just that, lack of direction (cf. refrain). And that conflict between form (l. 1-2) and reality (the rest of the poem) is the message.

"Wisdom" can be seen in other ways in this poem also. The images which are so intense and promising of meaning, elude us in meaning, leaving us a bit confused. But that is "her world". How does it feel? We are brought along with her to confront not meaning so much as feeling. And feeling is quite likely just what so often serves as the standard of a life style as presented. Thus on her own standard she is asked to judge for herself. The form and style leave one with the experience of (almost ) complete unknowing, lack of direction, yet the motion of rolling on (as conveyed by the rhythm) continues. The rhythm, style of rhyme and beat convey that sense of motion, while the images and questions strip of meaning. Thus the form, style and meaning interact well together, supporting and reinforcing the confrontation with the actuality of the

situation which is sought. The constant use of the second person you, together with the questions also maintain that ‘confrontation. Thus in design, this poem is “wise.”

Various factors of complexity of structure, of the richness and intensity of the images, of the depth or openness of the language in its effect have been discussed above. The question of hierarchy also reveals design. Except’ for the refrain , and the introduction, there seem to be very little subordination of parts. That too has a desired effect – the whole is not ordered in that way. That is part of the confusion. All considered then this poem is well designed.

Majesty. The majesty of the poem is the last beauty to be considered. We have spoken of the power and the confrontation (even submission?) which the song communicates upon the hearer. The theme is of enduring value—the home or belonging. Yet it is treated in the negative. Thus it is like the "curse song" of Dt. 32 which the people of Israel were taught by Moses to sing as a witness against themselves. Its value then is that it deals well with the opposite of that which itself is of high value. The most explicit values in this poem are honesty, frankness, truthfulness.

Its radiance is seen most in the penetration of the images. The transformation offered and available is that of unmasking and confronting. This is transformation of an intermediate. sort, limited by the lack of a positive substitute. The majesty then is of a limited sort.

G. A final comment about characterization may be in order. The main character is "Miss Lonely" (l. 15). The description given of her I would judge to be well done. There is some detail about her social situation (i. 15, 45-48), but mostly her inner life and attitudes are described. What has been said about her above in general, applies most specifically to her as the ‘central character.’ Similar comments apply to the setting. *** The Text: Like a Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan

Once upon a time you dressed so fine

You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?

People'd call, say, "Beware doll, you're bound to fall"

You thought they were all kiddin' you

You used to laugh about everybody that was hangin’ out

Now you don't talk to loud

Now. you don't seem so proud

About having to be scounging for your next meal.

REFRAIN #1:

How does it feel

How does it feel

To be without a home

Like a complete unknown

Like a rolling stone?

You've gone to the finest school. all right, Miss Lonely

But you know you only used to get juiced in it

And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street

And now you find out you're gonna have to get used to it

You said you'd never compromise

With the mystery tramp, but now you realize

He's not selling any alibis

As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes

And ask him do you want to make a deal?

REFRAIN #2:

How does it feel

How does it feel

To be on your own

With no direction home

Like a complete unknown Like a rolling stone?

You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns

When they all came down and did tricks for you

You never understood that it ain't no good

You shouldn't let. other people get your kicks for you

You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat

Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat

Ain't it hard when you discover that

He really wasn't where it's at

After he took from you everything he could steal.

Refrain (same as refrain #2)

Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people

They're drinkin’, thinkin' that they got it made Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things

But you'd better lift your diamond ring, you'd better pawn it babe

You used to be so amused.

At Napoleaon in rags and the language that he used Go to him now, he calls you, can’t refuse

When. you got nothing, you got nothing to lose

You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.

Refrain (same as refrain #2, 3) ***