From Dean Ohlman
I’m convinced that the beauty we see and sense in the natural world is one of the most important evidences of God’s divine nature. Nineteenth century American statesman George Bancroft expressed it like this: “Beauty is but the sensible image of the Infinite. Like truth and justice it lives within us; like virtue and the moral law it is a companion of the soul.” In commenting on poet William Cullen Bryant’s beliefs about beauty in nature, theologian Augustus Strong observed: “The external world is beautiful, because unfallen. It shares with man the effects of sin; but whenever we retreat from the regions which man’s folly has despoiled, we may find something that reminds us of our lost Paradise.” [Strong here makes an important biblical point that should inform our theology: the created world is not fallen. It is mankind that is fallen. Nature has been "cursed," but that curse was for the discipline of mankind, not because nature sinned.]
Maybe that’s why I admire Cole’s paintings and not Picasso’s. If we saw something like a Picasso in nature, we’d know at once it did not come from God’s hands! Beauty may be nature’s most profound apologist for God. [For a very deep look at Picasso and the issue of beauty, see this essay by N. A. Berdyaev.]
[Painting: "Falls of the Kaaterskill" Thomas Cole, 1826]
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