Skip to main content

The Three Transcendentals

I'm going to skip right to the chase; the three transcendentals are truth, goodness, and beauty. The word "transcendental" refers to a field of interest and its transcendent ideal. In this case the three are truth, goodness, and beauty. This is an ancient philosophical concept that originated most cogently with Plato, but was picked up and developed in a thoroughly biblical and theological way by Christians centuries later.

So, why am I talking about this? Well, because I think it's right. There are at a fundamental level only three areas of human interest and life. There is truth, the study of what is and what is not. This includes things like science, education, research, and law. There is goodness, which is benevolence, medicine, charity, and community. There is also beauty, which we see in art, music, and film. 

Everything in our life can essentially be boiled down to a pursuit of either truth, goodness, beauty, or a combination of these things. We instinctively seek out these three ideas in everything we do. You could even say sin is, in one sense, looking for truth, goodness, or beauty in the wrong places or in the wrong way. 

These three fields of interest also point to a transcendent ideal that stands behind them. When we seek true things in our life we are actually seeking transcendent truth itself. The same goes for goodness and beauty. So what is the transcendent truth? Goodness? Beauty?

The answer is the same; God. The Bible teaches us that God is truth, God is goodness, and God is beauty. What those ancient philosophers figured out is that all people are searching for something that transcends themselves, they just didn't know who they were looking for. We can recognize the wisdom of their discovery and see that it is completely answered and fulfilled in God.

Over the next three weeks we are going to examine each of these topics individually and see why each are important and why we as God's people should embody each of them. I know this is different than what most of my readers are used to, but I think it is informative and a helpful way of looking at God and our need for him.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

We Need More Images

What is your favorite way to describe God? Is there a particular name of God in scripture that you are drawn to? What images and pictures come to mind when you think of God? These are questions I don't think we ask often enough. We all have an image of God in our heads that we work with. It may not be a literal picture, though it might be, but ideas and concepts we tend to associate with who God is. Some of those images and associations may come from the Bible, but some may not. These things are influenced by our upbringing, Bible reading habits, personalities, relationships, culture, and more. The way we picture God has a dramatic impact on the way we live our lives. For example, if the primary idea you have of God is "Healer," when you hear or read that you are made in God's image you will likely feel called to heal, be it physical ailments or spiritual wounds. But, if your primary image of God is "Judge," that changes things. You very likely might tend to...

Thankful

Today is Thanksgiving, the day that we are supposed to celebrate all the things we are thankful for. It is a time of family reunions, football, and turkey eating. I sincerely pray that each and every one of you has a good day today. I'll admit that being thankful has not been easy for me this year. As pretty much all of you know, my mother passed away December of last year. Though she had been in the hospital for months, we were not expecting it. In fact I was sure she would be finally able to come home within a matter of weeks. Instead she peacefully passed on into the arms of Jesus, whom she loved more dearly than anyone else. As you can imagine, the entire family was heart broken. After what can easily be described as the worst Christmas ever, I returned to home to Illinois. It was here that I finally broke down. I spent the next months doing everything except being thankful. I cursed God, wept, screamed, begged to have her back, and was generally not the nicest person to be...

The Early Middle Ages: Historical Friday

The next segment of history that we are going to overview is the Early Middle Ages. This dates roughly from AD 450 to AD 1100. This is intended to be a very general overview. There are probably historians that would classify some other time period as the "Early Middle Ages" or a more specific time period. For our purposes this will cover the aforementioned time period. This was a very influential period in the history of Christianity. It saw the formation of what we now call the Roman Catholic Church and its separation from what we would now call the Eastern Orthodox Church. Before this time there was only ONE church. There weren't different denominations or groups. It is hard for us to think about in our modern context, but there was a time when Christianity was visibly unified. Brief History The first major thing to happen during this time period is the remaining three ecumenical councils. We discussed the first four several weeks ago. These councils discussed va...