Thoughts on Truth, Beauty, And Goodness

It has been a while since I posted, and one of the things I want to discuss today is something that to be honest is often hard to articulate, but thanks to some good textbook work during my Master's program at Steubenville recently, I am able to at least know something about how to express this, as I feel it is important to document.  The topic also bridges a long-held hobby of mine with my faith at this point, and that is integral as well given at times over the years some bad thinking on the part of some Christian traditions at times almost discourages the reality that nature too can proclaim the glory of God, often in unexpected ways.   The hobby I speak of is my collection of vintage big band recordings, something which as of this month I have had a passion for collecting over 36 years.  Since discovering a more traditional Catholic faith, I have learned that even a masterfully executed secular piece of music can be appreciated and even celebrated as a divinely-endowed gift, and it has actually been liberating.  I want to first talk about that aspect of it, and then move on to the main discussion

Throughout the opening passages of Genesis, we are reminded that after each act of creation, God would step back, look at it, and declare that it was good.   By the time we get to the Fall in Genesis 3, something has happened - because of the Fall, all nature has become corrupted.   However, in its being as originally created, God still sees it as potentially good.  Over the years, the extreme pietism of some Evangelical and Fundamentalist Protestants has essentially led to an over-spiritualization of how they understand these concepts of nature and being, and in doing so, they often feel they are obligated to reject "the flesh" or "the natural," as many of those identifying as Pentecostals and Charismatics often call it, and that their minds should only be focused on "spiritual things" to the utter rejection of all "flesh."  A person who holds such a view has a serious problem, in that what often they call "flesh" in an evil sense is in reality still a creation of God, and they confuse the corruption that happens as a result of the Fall with the very thing itself.  This has never been an teaching of the Church, and is by no means orthodox at all - as a matter of fact, the only other group that held a similar view was an early heresy called Gnosticism, which held that the material is evil and only "the spiritual" (whatever that is!) is good.  Many Evangelicals fail often to realize how dangerously close they are to an outright heresy, and that is why a short Bible study is warranted here. 

In Acts 10, we read about a conversion experience of a certain individual named Cornelius, who interesting enough was a Roman military officer.  Cornelius was not the sadistic butcher that we see later in such individuals as Caligula or Nero, but he actually had been in Palestine a long time and had learned something about Jewish culture and appreciated it.  In keeping up with the affairs of Jewish society from his residence in Caesarea, Cornelius was also made aware that an enigmatic figure called Jesus of Nazareth was causing quite a buzz in the community.  Acts 10:2 even says that Cornelius had essentially come to accept that Yahweh whom the local Jews professed to worship was the true God, and his faith eventually bears fruit in verse 3 of the chapter, where on one afternoon an angel of  God appears to Cornelius in a vision.   God has honored Cornelius's faithfulness, and as a result God Himself was offering Cornelius a precious gift, and that was to be communicated to him through the Apostle Peter, who was staying in the nearby town of Joppa with some friends.   Cornelius is of course ecstatic about this, and immediately sends for Peter.  As for Peter, in the meantime he is doing his daily prayers on the rooftop of his friend Simon the tanner's house, and God sends a vision to Peter to prepare him for the meeting with Cornelius.  At this point, Peter is still somewhat young, and many of his old holdovers from Jewish tradition - in particular a bad prejudice against Gentile people, in particular the occupying Romans - still color his perceptions.  But, here God teaches him a lesson - in the vision, a sheet is sent down from heaven with all sorts of animals on it that Jews would have considered "unclean" based on Levitical law - pigs, probably a lobster or two, etc.   God then commands Peter in verse 13 to "Kill and eat!" as Peter was also getting a hankering for lunch.  Peter, being the good Jew he was, said essentially "No way am I even going to touch those filthy beasts, as we can't eat those!"  But, that invites a strong rebuke from the Lord in verse 15 - "Do not call unclean what I have cleansed!"  The lesson in the story, which also is one of the first passages I actually wrote a sermon on some years back, is that God loves all humanity, and that Jesus died for all people, not just a "chosen few."  We see an interesting parallel with other areas of Scripture too, as essentially Peter was almost on the verge of making a mistake in reverse of what Eve did in Genesis 3 - he was about to apply interpretations of moral law that God never made in order to "add to" the actual command of God.  We also see a parallel with Jonah as well, in that Jonah had a similar prejudice and resistance to preach to the people of Nineveh.  While at its core this story is evangelistic, we must remember that Scripture is a multi-dimensional book, and its truths can also apply elsewhere too.  And, that is one of the ideas I want to talk about today.

Do any of you remember the late Guy Lombardo (1902-1977)?  If so, you will know he was a very famous dance band leader whose career stretched from around 1922 to his death in 1977, which happened ironically while he was on a tour with his great orchestra and had a massive heart attack that took him out of this world.  The tag-line that Lombardo's orchestra, the Royal Canadians, used for all those many years was "the Sweetest Music This Side of Heaven."   Indeed, Lombardo's music was some of the best too, and I say that with some bias as a record collector with a strong partiality toward what were known as "sweet bands," of which Lombardo was the pioneer.  In the late 1920's, Lombardo's orchestra played a lot in Cleveland, which at the time was a major venue for some of the biggest dance bands in the country then, and at that time a young orphan kid who was selling saxophones to pay his rent happened to cross paths with Lombardo.  This young kid was not only an instrument salesman, but he also could play as well.  Lombardo became sort of a protege to the young man, and in a few years this young man had an orchestra of his own with a very distinct sound based on his own tenor sax technique.   The young man Lombardo mentored was none other than the late Freddy Martin (1906-1983), known perennially as "Mr. Silvertone" for his technique, and of all the great orchestras I have on record in my collection, Freddy Martin has always been the one I have admired the most - when I was beginning to learn on sax back when I was in high school, I wanted to play like Freddy Martin, as I loved his music.   My personal take on this is that as good as Lombardo's Royal Canadians were, I believe that the "Sweetest Music This Side of Heaven" tag fits Freddy Martin even better, as his orchestra sounded absolutely heavenly.   I tell that story for a reason, in that it relates to this lesson in a very special way. 

Aquinas taught that as part of God's special creation, he endowed within it a number of attributes that he and other great Doctors of the Church called "transcendental properties of being," and of those three are very important - truth, goodness, and beauty.  As Fr. Norris Clarke defines a "transcendental property of being," he does so on page 290 of his book, The One and the Many (Notre Dame, IN:  University of Notre Dame Press, 2001) as describing a transcendental property as a positive attribute that can be predicated of every real being, so that it is convertible with being itself.   Ultimately, as humanity is concerned, God is the full embodiment of those properties, as God Himself is the ultimate Good, and the ultimate Truth (John 14:6), and He is infinite Beauty beyond description.   As man is created in the image of God, this also includes a creative impulse that seeks to express these properties in tangible ways.   It might shock some of our Evangelical friends to hear that this is not limited to just faithful Christians, as it means that all humanity possesses this quality, and indeed talent, skill, and other creative impulses are given by God to all.  Of course, the idea of supernatural grace plays into this for the Christian, in that supernatural grace can take those things and elevate them to what God intended.  But, it also reminds us that God's creation proclaims him even without realizing it.  So, how does that relate to Acts 10 and Freddy Martin's records?  This is where I am about to personalize it a little.

Have you ever heard a piece of music where something about it just grabs you as you listen to it?  It may not be the whole piece of music either, but maybe that one stanza or even one note.  Yesterday, while I was at work listening to some MP3 recordings of some of Freddy Martin's LP recordings from the 1960's, I heard this one excerpt from a medley of songs he was doing.   For those of you who may not have heard Freddy Martin's orchestra before, it is a very satiny-sweet orchestra characterized by rich ensemble work - a lush string section, a tenor sax-led reed section, and a trumpet section that has an almost carillon quality to it.  On some of his records, such as his 1946 recording of the standard "Laura," he does this tenor sax interlude toward the end of the song, which is accentuated with a lush string background and cascading crescendos on twin pianos.  When he plays like that, something just resonates with me to that, as it is just indescribable as to how really beautiful it is.   That is one of the reasons I have both collected these recordings for years as well as aspiring when I was younger to play the sax like Freddy Martin.  As John Saward notes on page 76 of his book The Beauty of Holiness and the Holiness of Beauty (San Francisco:  Ignatius, 1997), although not every artist, musician, or other creative genius has been religious or particularly Christian, all great art is in a sense religious in that it manifests the wonder of being, the beauty of things reflecting the Creator that made them possible.  That means that even if someone refuses to acknowledge God and follow him, their talents can be inspirational to others even when they don't intend them to do so.  The other side to this though is that many people fall short of that mark too, and when truth, beauty, and goodness are either distorted or dispensed with because of man's own self-centeredness, it results in a deficiency of those properties - this is one reason why such things as pornography, rock music, and bad movies and television have come to exist.  So, yes, we can be an improper steward of natural talent that the Creator gave himself, and when that happens, just like morality the concept of aesthetics is warped.  This is where I now want to make a very important point before wrapping up.

It is ironic at times that the most profound expressions of truth, beauty, and goodness often come from those who are not Christian, yet that creates a huge problem.   Christians, who have embraced the heretical quasi-Gnostic idea mentioned earlier that anything "in the natural" is bad, have often rejected what is truly good and have instead come up with poor and substandard substitutes.   I have very little use for instance with much of what is called "contemporary Christian music" due to the fact it is often devoid of the divine attributes of the Lord it claims to proclaim, and to be honest I am more stirred and inspired by a good secular recording which is artistically done than I am by a bad "religious" song that just employs gimmicks and poor mimicry of "Top 40" rock industry standards, and rock music itself is a rebellion against the natural inclination to truth, beauty, and goodness.  One reason I have loved vintage big bands and the huge legacy of recordings that era has left us is that these were men and women who took their music seriously enough to learn it correctly, and in doing so they created an important piece of Americana.  Now, big band musicians were by no means perfect - they had more than their fair share of alcoholics, drug addicts, and other vices among them for sure.  But, even the most tormented, alcohol-drenched musicians of that era (Bunny Berigan comes to mind here) out-shined the supposedly "virtuous" so-called "Contemporary Christian artist" of today in that despite vices, there was a standard.  It is pretty bad when an alcoholic like Bunny Berigan or a reefer addict like Woody Herman was can express more of what God intended for our abilities than can many self-professed "Christian" music artists, yet I will often hear Evangelicals in particular come down hard on any secular music while at the same time calling some of the worst caterwalling ever bellowed in some obscure megachurch somewhere as being "anointed."  I beg to differ, based on the Acts 10 example - God gives the talent, and regardless the human condition of those that possess it, God gave it to them and it still is good.  And, what it can produce can also be good and beautiful.  It is also important to understand as well that many of the great classics - meaning Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, etc. - are not even as "secular" as they are portrayed by some tone-deaf Fundamentalist;  indeed, much of that music has its own roots in the Church too, and great composers - some Catholic, some Orthodox, and even some Protestant or Jewish - produce phenomenal works that they themselves acknowledge they couldn't do without God giving them the gifting to do so.  Therefore, it is vital that we recognize true transcendental properties in great music, instead of in our own arrogant self-righteousness offering in its stead some bad knockoff which is often gracefully endured as a "joyful noise" by polite churchgoers with better taste.  Therefore, give me Freddy Martin's masterful tenor sax anyday over Michael W. Smith's whiney pre-pubescent singing (sorry to the Smith fans, but his voice does grate on the nerves a little!), as for me the former reflects more of what God intended talent to be than the latter, although it is in an Acts 10 sense a plate of "kosher ham."  Blessings until next time.