Introducing Scott

I've been talking to the authors of this blog about art and God and art for over twenty years, so I am both flattered and humbled to be invited to join them here. I can't say I'm an aspiring author--I've written one book and spend a lot of time dodging fans who want the sequel.

I can't say I'm an artist, either (read the book and you'll understand). But I am an obsessive-compulsive philosopher who fell in love with the philosophy and theology of beauty after reading On Beauty and Being Just by Elaine Scarry.

Scarry identifies a defining trait of beauty--beauty makes us want to copy it, sustain it, repeat it. We sketch images, hum melodies, hang pictures on our wall. Beauty asks us to look twice--great beauty wants us to look over and over.

Scarry's observation enables us to ask new questions about beauty. With something specific to measure, we can identify beauty's extremes. Scientists do this all the time. For example, physicists define temperature as a measure of molecular motion. "Cold" means slow atoms; "real cold" means real slow; "absolute zero" means the atoms aren't moving at all. If beauty wants to be copied, then greater beauty wants to be copied more. Absolute Beauty would satisfy the viewer forever.

Lovers express this concept all the time. They say, "I could look at you forever!" The divorce rates prove that human beauty isn't really absolute. No earthly beauty is.

Beauty is real but it dazzles us. We look at a flame and think it is the sun. We look at the sun and are blinded. We can't imagine Light in such intensity that the sun is just a minor star lost in an average galaxy. Whenever my heart says, "I want to look at this forever," I make an idol out of something that can't really satisfy.

That is--unless the Beauty that moves my heart is really Absolute. For there is a Beauty that does satisfy forever.

And that's what Art&God&Art is all about...