Firbush Retreats Firbush retreats are organized and led by Robert T. Walker. Firbush retreats are designed to make the best theology accessible to as many people as possible and especially those not trained in theology and often not familiar with routine technical terms. They combine times of worship and prayer with reflection on a theme related to Torrance theology. For more information see https://tftorrance.org/firbush. ----------- Firbush Retreat Summer 2017 June 15, 2017 David Thistlethwaite, "Beauty in Creation and Faith" https://tftorrance.org/firbushS2017 The audio recording for this presentation is available on the Firbush Retreat section of the website for the Thomas F. Torrance Theological Fellowship. The following AI transcript is too rough to rely upon, but perhaps useful for word searches and time-stamps. It is unretouched; if anyone wishes to listen to it and clean it up we will be happy to post an improved version (contact the webmasters). We invite speakers to send us slides for their talks, which we will post alongside the audios and transcripts. If any speaker wishes to have their talk removed from the website, just let us know and we'll take down both the audio and the transcript. ------------ 00:00-00:09 Bob has prepared us for this talk very well and I'm hoping that you better stay for this 00:09-00:19 first point Bob actually because if we get the first point then we've got everything. 00:19-00:25 The heavens are telling the glory of God. The heavens are telling the glory of God. 00:25-00:46 I'm illustrating this with, I will do when it comes back. 00:46-00:54 This is a sketch by John Constable. Apologies that he's an English painter but anyway there's 00:54-01:02 plenty of weather in Scotland so you get the idea. But he meditated a lot on the clouds 01:02-01:07 and I would like to sometimes do a Bible study on clouds because they're enormously important 01:07-01:15 in the Bible and somebody must have thought about it. But what struck me really is about 01:15-01:23 the scripture is it says the heavens are telling the glory of God and our tendency is when 01:23-01:31 confronted with a scripture like that I think it is to try to look through it and say well 01:31-01:40 what are the heavens telling us about God? Can we look for a message in the heavens? 01:40-01:45 But it's the heavens itself that tell the glory of God. 01:45-01:54 And just to say something very briefly about Constable. He was one of the first people 01:54-02:02 to really study clouds and at his time there was a scientist called Luke Howard who published 02:02-02:07 a manual on different cloud formations and he gave them names and things like this. So 02:07-02:13 with Constable you've got, I mean it's extremely difficult doing painting clouds and nobody 02:13-02:20 really knows how he did it because by definition clouds move especially if it's a windy day 02:20-02:27 and supposing it takes about an hour to do a sketch about this size and we know how long 02:27-02:33 they took because very often he wrote down on them an hour or an hour and a half or whatever. 02:33-02:39 By the time you've been even there 10 minutes the whole formation has moved so the only 02:39-02:48 way he could have done it is a combination of sight, memory and understanding. And in 02:48-02:55 terms of the science we've been talking about, Bob's been talking about, he's understanding 02:55-03:03 the interrelations between the light, the wind and the you know the paths of clouds 03:03-03:10 and so on. So he's understanding what Torrance would call their internal relations and he's 03:10-03:16 engaging with that. But at the same time there's another level going on, there's the emotional 03:16-03:25 level, just give you another one, which we pick up very much in all Constable's painting 03:25-03:31 really you get this contrast between the dark clouds and the light clouds, a sense of light 03:31-03:39 coming through and it's something we can emotionally respond to. It has the capacity to stand for 03:39-03:47 all of life where we're constantly in this, not exactly flux, but where things are going 03:47-03:57 well, things with difficulty, but light is coming through. And Constable called the clouds, 03:57-04:03 this guy, the chief organ of sentiment in a painting, so he understood that. But there's 04:03-04:09 a further level behind that and this is the one I want to really fasten on and I'll come 04:09-04:18 on to a little bit more later, which is the level of contingency. And this book has got 04:18-04:23 all the answers in and I certainly don't pretend to understand it, but it has helped me enormously. 04:23-04:31 And the point is that when we look at the clouds, when we, you know, I lay my back in 04:31-04:35 our garden the other day and just looked up at the clouds, which I don't do nearly often 04:35-04:42 enough, and it's they that tell the glory of God, it's not their message, it's not a 04:42-04:50 metaphor, it's not a parallel, it's the clouds themselves, it's the sheer beauty and wonder 04:50-04:56 of this thing that God's created. And of course one of the wonderful things about clouds is, 04:56-05:02 unlike much in creation, they haven't been seriously messed about with, they are there 05:02-05:08 as they've always been. I think I've got one more of these. Here's a lovely one where I 05:08-05:15 see that the gold of the sun is just poking through and so often we need that sense of 05:15-05:25 hope. Constable, after his wife died very young from tuberculosis, he said after that 05:25-05:34 I can't really paint clouds anymore because I feel such a sense of bereavement inside. 05:34-05:43 So emotion as well as science were very much bound up together. 05:43-05:50 Another point, and this is another point that's going to go right through the whole talk, 05:50-05:59 is that the stars and skies are visible, the glory of God is invisible. So the heavens 05:59-06:05 proclaim the glory of God. Now we don't even vaguely know what glory means, but we're in 06:05-06:12 touch with it when we look at the heavens. And the glory of God is something we'll never 06:12-06:17 see, but we experience very visibly. We can sometimes see it in each other, we can sometimes 06:17-06:25 see it in situations. So beauty contains visible and invisible elements. So really just the 06:25-06:29 beginning I'm saying we've got to get used to seeing the invisible. And Alan brought 06:29-06:36 it out in his question from Romans this morning, it's the invisible things of God that have 06:36-06:42 been made clear in the things that have been made. It doesn't make a lot of sense because 06:42-06:51 we're very visual people, but I'm going to try and draw out the invisibles that we see 06:51-06:57 through things in our eyes. And the last point that is really a theme for the whole thing 06:57-07:09 is the beauty of creation has to do with its completion and freedom. Anything in creation 07:09-07:14 is its beauty is there in that it is complete and we'll look at one or two things later 07:14-07:20 on. But it doesn't need any further explanation, that's the beauty of creation. Everything 07:20-07:33 works, everything lovely. If you take a flower or a bush or something it's complete or a 07:33-07:39 tree it's complete and it's free, it could be as Bob was saying, it could be other than 07:39-07:48 it is. So there's this combination of freedom and completion and that is the model for manly 07:48-07:56 beauty. If you desperately want to go and do those things, thank you very much. Bob will 07:56-08:05 be back before we talk about contingents again, so it'll be easy. Now I'm going to talk about 08:05-08:18 manly beauty which reflects but doesn't replicate divine beauty. This is really just to make 08:18-08:23 the point that beauty is always an option. You can sling your breakfast on the plate 08:23-08:28 like this, especially if it goes wrong, or you can try and make a bit more effort as 08:28-08:37 I did on this occasion. So whatever we do we can veer in the direction of disorder or 08:37-08:48 chaos or we can veer in the direction of beauty. And the option of beauty is all round us. 08:48-08:57 I'm now going to just take some sort of physical illustrations here. This is a lump of clay 08:57-09:04 and in Genesis it says the earth was without form and void. We don't know what that means 09:04-09:09 but it's, you know, a lot of molecules jumbled up together but it had no shape or form to 09:09-09:18 it. So this is not disorder, this is just not yet order. This is non-order. Now this 09:18-09:26 is a pot I made. I'm not particularly good at pottery but it illustrates the point. So 09:26-09:38 this is clay coming into order and it has some beauty to it I believe. And this is where 09:38-09:49 I'm going to talk about the visible beauty as it were, is the sense of this line stretching 09:49-09:59 round quite tensely and then you've got a long slow line and then there's a break and 09:59-10:07 it curves in and the short concave bit answers the long curve and there's a sense of balance 10:07-10:20 about that. But in order to make a pot there's also a physical engagement with the physics 10:20-10:28 that you're dealing with. So for example because it's made on the wheel it has a natural tendency 10:28-10:36 through centrifugal force to expand so the pot wants to go outwards so your hands are 10:36-10:41 holding in this outward movement and this pot which is not fired so if I dropped it 10:41-10:53 it would break, freezes a moment of time in a sense. It freezes that dynamic of the power 10:53-11:04 of the wheel and the constraint given it by my hands. So when we're looking at this pot 11:04-11:13 we're looking at a physical object with a design but we're also aware of an engagement 11:13-11:18 with the physics of the world. Now that's the invisible part. And then there's another 11:18-11:25 element to that too, it's not just my hands constraining it, bringing it in at the top 11:25-11:34 like that but it's my mind is involved as well. And so the molecules of this pot have 11:34-11:42 to some extent had mind impressed on them. I hope that makes sense because it relates 11:42-11:47 to our discussion this morning and I think it's quite difficult to work out the ideal 11:47-11:59 way of saying it but mind has to some extent impregnated matter. Now how we deal with that 11:59-12:09 in terms of the creation because as Bob was saying the creation is not infused with God 12:09-12:17 but to some extent mind is represented in the creation, the intention of the creation. 12:17-12:27 Now I'm going to just look at a third level here. This is a pot that I bought in Morocco, 12:27-12:32 once from the Rife Mountains and apparently there were a couple of old ladies who used 12:32-12:36 to make these things, they were the last of the makers and they're not made anymore and 12:36-12:44 it was probably made in the 1970s and was used for honey or oil or anything really. 12:44-12:53 Now the interesting thing here is it is quite a simple hand-built shape so just moulded 12:53-13:03 with the fingers without a wheel probably and a fairly ill-fitting lid but the maker, 13:03-13:10 the old lady, has sought to adorn it with these really nice, I love these patterns on 13:10-13:17 it, everyone can see that I hope. And what we're seeing here and I think this is very 13:17-13:27 important to man-made beauty is a relationship between the maker and the pot and the relationship 13:27-13:39 could be described as one of love. Love meaning that in its bare stage the maker thought this 13:39-13:49 needs more, it's the pot that needs decoration, it's the pot that needs adorning, it's the 13:49-13:58 pot that needs honouring and so all this kind of relationship between maker and made object 13:58-14:07 is going into it. And so when we look at a pot like this we're not just seeing a beautiful 14:07-14:17 pot if you think it's beautiful but we're also seeing a whole set of relationships of 14:17-14:23 a human being with an object and so this is part of the invisible side of beauty. So I 14:23-14:31 think it's quite sensible to say that the invisible part of beauty is to do with invisible 14:31-14:45 but nonetheless real relationships. So this sort of order signifies healthy human-object 14:45-14:52 relations, making things beautiful is when we have the time and energy to make things 14:52-14:59 well. Disorder on the other hand, and I'm not going to go into ugliness a lot because 14:59-15:05 there's so much of it around we don't need to have it illustrated, but ugliness represents 15:05-15:12 disordered broken human-object relations. It's where people simply don't care, either 15:12-15:22 they don't know or they don't care. And I've looked at the visible and invisible relationships. 15:22-15:31 Now the next session, and like Bob I've got six points, so we're now onto the third point. 15:31-15:43 I'm going to talk about beauty sickness I've called it, the ambivalence of beauty. Now 15:43-15:53 this painting you may know it's in the one of six I think huge works on paper by Raphael 15:53-15:57 and his workshop which are in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, they belong to 15:57-16:02 the Queen, and they were designed for tapestries for the Sistine Chapel, so it was the most 16:02-16:09 prestigious site in Rome. And this picture is Saint Paul preaching, probably Saint Paul 16:09-16:15 preaching in Athens, but there's nothing very Greek about the architecture here and I think 16:15-16:21 in Raphael's mind is really the architecture of ancient Rome because the Greeks didn't 16:21-16:29 use arches, this is much more of a sort of Roman style of architecture. And bearing in 16:29-16:39 mind the subject of my discussion is beauty sickness, it wasn't Raphael's subject particularly, 16:39-16:45 but I do think Raphael has picked up on something. Now Raphael and his friend Bramante who may 16:45-16:51 have helped design this little circular temple here and all the rest were obviously fascinated 16:51-17:00 by the architecture of ancient Rome, but I think there's a message in the way that Raphael 17:00-17:05 has painted Saint Paul. I think we know from history Saint Paul probably wasn't quite as 17:05-17:13 good looking as that and probably not quite as tall, but the point is that, can you see 17:13-17:25 here all these, I've got a stick somewhere, did I? All these pillars, this is a picture 17:25-17:32 about pillars, but Saint Paul is the greatest pillar of them all isn't he? He is very strong, 17:32-17:40 very upright with this absolutely wonderful gesture of both hands raised. And so you're 17:40-17:46 saying well what is going on here? There's actually a presentation by Saint Paul of the 17:46-17:57 message about Jesus which is not just directed in this architectural theatre of Rome standing 17:57-18:07 for Athens, but to some extent is directed against it because Saint Paul is saying you 18:07-18:13 are in idolatry and you can see the idols, the little nichids there and the idol on the 18:13-18:25 flint there and probably a gilded bronze statue of Mercury. You are in idolatry but... 18:25-18:29 The internet's down, so they can't email that and they're not set up for Macs. Has anybody 18:29-18:38 got a pen drive or memory stick? Well, don't let's worry about it, we'll do this later. 18:38-18:40 We're doing fine. Thanks. 18:40-19:09 Can you just rewind and there's a big book where you were saying against it, against 19:09-19:12 the lost. 19:12-19:23 Okay, right. Well, yes. So I'm saying that Paul is to some extent not just preaching 19:23-19:29 in the theatre of Roman architecture but he is preaching against it. Now that's a huge 19:29-19:40 statement to make, so I'll try and unpack that. These Roman buildings, and I'm sure it 19:40-19:48 would have appeared to Paul and anyone, you know, he ended up in Rome, but to anyone at 19:48-20:08 that time, this looks like a very complete system. So this arch is broken here and we 20:08-20:14 don't know, perhaps there was a building boom on in Rome at the time, Raphael is trying 20:14-20:23 to suggest, but this is the human system, it works beautifully and let's just think 20:23-20:32 of what Roman architecture is for a moment. You've got this really wonderful system that 20:32-20:39 was developed by the Greeks and then continued by the Romans, where a column doesn't just 20:39-20:48 support the weight of the building above this architrade here, but it expresses support. 20:48-20:56 So you've got these rings, I can't remember all the technical terms, but it's as if the 20:56-21:05 energy, the weight of this expressed very strongly in this horizontal movement here, 21:05-21:15 that is supported not just with a thin pillar like a modern building, but there's a whole 21:15-21:26 sprung energy that that pillar seems to bring about. And this is a little bit hard to see 21:26-21:36 from the side, but you've got these flat square columns that are going to arches and then 21:36-21:42 the capitals are just flat, but they also suggest the way weight is carried. So it's 21:42-21:48 a speaking architecture, it doesn't just do the job, but it has a language for doing the 21:48-21:56 job, it tells you about gravity and it's very powerful because it's a bit like modern science, 21:56-22:01 it gives a complete picture of the world, it tells you we've got gravity under control, 22:01-22:06 we've got building under control, we've got religion under control, we've got law under 22:06-22:14 control, everything works. And then this itinerant preacher comes along and he says, 'back where 22:14-22:21 I come from a man has been raised from the dead and he's coming to judge you'. And it's 22:21-22:30 a completely new system that Paul brings into being. He says, 'this world is not the world, 22:30-22:35 you've made it look like the world, but there's a different world, there's a higher world 22:35-22:45 and he's coming back to judge you'. And all the mythology of Rome, which you know, these 22:45-22:53 idols that they felt they'd got everything completely in order, is blown away. So I'm 22:53-23:02 using Raphael as a picture, but I'm going to talk a little bit more about that. So my 23:02-23:07 criticism really of Roman architecture is not that it isn't a fantastic system, but 23:07-23:17 that it appears to be self-sufficient. Here is a reconstruction of the Colosseum. If you 23:17-23:23 went to Rome today you'd find quite a lot of it missing, but some computer boffers managed 23:23-23:34 to put it all together again, including having Michelangelo's Moses right in the middle there. 23:34-23:39 But again this is a work of genius really, because we've got a very strong structure 23:39-23:52 of these arches, but these thin pilasters, and they've got the orders from Doric to Ionic 23:52-24:00 to Corinthian at the top, these make the whole building look much lighter, they express a 24:00-24:11 lightness of strength that makes the whole building a sort of glorious really. So I doubt 24:11-24:23 if - oh sorry that's the wrong way - oh I'm holding the thing the wrong way round, sorry. 24:23-24:29 That's another version of it without the statues, but what you might have seen if you were going 24:29-24:35 to the circus or to watch a gladiator fight or something like that, and that's with some 24:35-24:43 colour on. You might have appreciated the architecture so much if you were one of the 24:43-24:52 Christians there, let alone the Christians set a flame on crosses around the edge. So 24:52-25:01 the architecture of power is very ambivalent I think, and this is a excuse, excuse a holiday 25:01-25:11 snap, this is from the city of Volubilis which has been dug up in in Rocco, it was a very 25:11-25:18 big centre, but it illustrates the same point really. This is an arch, the sort of main 25:18-25:28 gate expressing Roman power and authority, and as you can see it's a very strong and 25:28-25:33 very you know massive piece of stonework, so that's the essence of the building, but 25:33-25:40 then on the outside are these long delicate columns just standing forward and there would 25:40-25:51 be another pair that side as well, and they are expressing a kind of likeness to Roman 25:51-25:55 rule as it were, and I think if you look at empires around the world they've probably 25:55-26:02 always been very keen on columns, certainly we had some very nice columns in India when 26:02-26:10 we ruled it and built the Viceroy's Palace, because columns always make look, make raw 26:10-26:21 power look a little bit more civilised. Now this is a different sort of building and I 26:21-26:31 don't know what your feelings are about St Peter's and Roman Catholicism of the Counter-Reformation, 26:31-26:37 this facade was built in about 1607, but I want to look at this quite carefully for a 26:37-26:46 moment because it's going to show you that in case you think I'm not in favour of Roman 26:46-26:51 architecture, that there's another way of looking at things. 26:51-26:56 Ah bless you Bob, thank you very much. 26:56-26:58 [audience chuckles] 26:58-27:26 Right. Now when you get to this we're still under heading for the beauty sickness. I'm 27:26-27:33 not sure if you can see it. You've got to share the actually run out of paper. [audience 27:33-27:34 laughs] 27:34-28:00 [audience chatter] 28:00-28:07 Okay now my undergraduate degree, part two was in Baroque architecture so this is probably 28:07-28:12 why I like looking at this kind of thing, but I'm going to try and explain something. 28:12-28:15 When you look at a building like this, at first glance it just looks like a large railway 28:15-28:24 station doesn't it? In other words it's just a mess of columns and windows and things. 28:24-28:31 When you look at the size of people down below you can see it's ridiculously big and one 28:31-28:37 of the possible faults with the building is that everything is outside so you can't really 28:37-28:44 get the scale of it when you look at it. But the mind does try to make sense and whenever 28:44-28:50 you look at something like this your mind is actually trying to read it. And so the 28:50-28:55 first thing you do is you probably look at this pediment in the middle and then you read 28:55-29:02 that as the main entrance and obviously the Pope appears on that from time to time. Then 29:02-29:07 you might try and look sideways and think what are these two things here? Well these 29:07-29:14 are kind of extras, you can see the sky through there, so these are really towers at the ends 29:14-29:19 and that's really where Madonna's, he was the architect, troubles began because how 29:19-29:25 do you make sense of a building which is facade and yet it's got towers at the end, it's all 29:25-29:35 one thing. But it's very hard to read, you see you've got a central section here which 29:35-29:45 has got these half pillars and a relatively small pediment at the top here. So you can 29:45-29:56 read this as a unit, then you can read this as a unit, these towers, with flat pilasters 29:56-30:02 here. But then you've got a rather chaotic bit here because if this is a unit, on one 30:02-30:07 side it's got a flat pilaster, on the other side it's got a half column. And this is the 30:07-30:14 sort of thing that Baroque architects wrestled with. And then we've got another issue here 30:14-30:23 really which is that we've got all the pilasters along the top here, flat ones, so you read 30:23-30:28 this whole attic story as one thing. Whereas in the bottom half you're really supposed 30:28-30:34 to read this as a central building and these are the side towers. Now I'm going to show 30:34-30:44 you why this got into such a mess. This is, sorry about all the pixels. When Michelangelo 30:44-30:49 planned the building and the dome, which is rather flatter than the dome we have now, 30:49-31:01 it was a centralised building and there would have been a big pediment on the front. But 31:01-31:07 this is what he planned, it was a square building, then with a very large portico on the front. 31:07-31:14 And the whole thing was pretty rational. But it was found that they needed lots of room 31:14-31:21 for processions and things so they had to go for a Latin cross. So this is the Latin 31:21-31:26 cross that was completed and then this is the facade. So these are the two towers on 31:26-31:33 the ends and then this is the main portico and you can see how confusing it is really 31:33-31:40 because the side aisle goes up to here but then it stops with these big piers at the 31:40-31:46 crossing and then the side aisle's there. Now the point I'm making is not to give you 31:46-31:51 a lesson in architectural history but it's really to say very simply that the cross of 31:51-32:03 Christ messes up the architecture. We've always sought ideals but the cross of Christ, 32:03-32:11 Latin cross, the cross of a human figure is not symmetrical, it's symmetrical one way 32:11-32:17 but not the other way and that always causes problems. And if you look at any Christian 32:17-32:30 building it's very seldom consistent because it doesn't really work, it always causes difficulties. 32:30-32:37 Right now this shows you how it looks from a distance with the dome on top. This is really 32:37-32:42 what Michelangelo wanted, the dome to rise higher over everything and that's fine if 32:42-32:51 you're on the rooftop. But if you're down to the square the dome is cut off halfway 32:51-32:56 and it doesn't really look right and this is because they had to build that massive 32:56-33:01 nave, so it was a sacrifice that had been made and I think we should, when we look at 33:01-33:05 this building, we should just be grateful for the cross of Christ that they couldn't 33:05-33:18 make an ideal building. If you want an ideal building you need to go to the Taj Mahal and 33:18-33:27 this building, if you've ever seen it, is absolutely exquisite, it's profoundly moving 33:27-33:35 and yet to my mind there's something odd about it as well. It's seductively beautiful, 33:35-33:42 these curves are absolutely lovely and then this sort of crystalline delicacy of the lower 33:42-33:52 half. But there's also something remote about it and I may be betraying a slightly non-pro-Islam 33:52-34:05 prejudice here, but to me it's a sign of the remoteness of God in Islam, that it's 34:05-34:14 very idealised, it's probably logical in terms of the way the theology is put together 34:14-34:20 from a man-made perspective, but it completely lacks the incarnational element of the cross. 34:20-34:28 Because God's out there in this beautiful architecture and we're here but there's 34:28-34:35 no bridge between us, that's the way I read that building and we can argue about that 34:35-34:36 later. 34:36-34:44 This is another holiday snap of mine, this is a building in Morocco built about the same 34:44-34:53 time as the Alhambra in Granada, it's the same sort of school of architecture. And it's 34:53-35:02 undoubtedly beautiful, I think that the contrast between the clear lines, designs, so you can 35:02-35:10 read it very clearly between these arches and so on and then you have areas of great 35:10-35:17 complexity so it's mentally satisfying that you can go from, as in many things in creation, 35:17-35:22 you can go from the big lines to the little lines to the complex parts. But I think it's 35:22-35:30 also got this very abstract view of God in it that you can't really get beyond this 35:30-35:42 abstract pattern, it's as if God's face is unreadable, it's just like a pattern. So I'll 35:42-35:50 just see where we've got to next. 35:50-35:59 I'm going to go, this is under the heading of a beauty sickness. With the facade of St 35:59-36:07 Peter's I was representing the struggle that Madonna had had to create something that really 36:07-36:12 worked given the conditions and I think there is a beauty, there's the beauty of struggle 36:12-36:20 about it. But part of what I'm calling beauty sickness is where everything is completely 36:20-36:28 under our own control and this is the Royal Palace in Brussels which was built about 1900. 36:28-36:34 And this is essentially, I don't want to be unkind to the architect, but it's classical 36:34-36:46 architecture by the yard. It's totally legible, you've got a big temple like Portugal there, 36:46-36:51 the pavilions at the end with the four pillars, there are no surprises, there's no strain, 36:51-36:55 there's nothing, everything basically works and so we're back to the world of the Roman 36:55-37:04 Empire where you've got a created man-made system that works for you but it doesn't tell 37:04-37:14 anything about the glory of God. So that's my complaint about that one. And you know, 37:14-37:19 better a building like that than many of the things we put up today. I'm utterly in favour 37:19-37:28 of it from that point of view but it's dead, it's sort of like dead works I think. And 37:28-37:36 this is another issue of this kind and I think this is where beauty sickness takes a more 37:36-37:45 personal stance. This is a painting by an Irish painter called Sir John Lavery done in 37:45-37:54 the 1900s of the double cube room at Wilton House. Has anyone seen that room? It's known 37:54-37:59 as the most beautiful room in England and it is every single painting in it except one 37:59-38:06 is by Van Dyck and this is a huge painting of the Herbert family all looking very elegant 38:06-38:16 and the carvings are immaculate, everything is good about it. And you just see in this, 38:16-38:21 not very good slide, can you see there's a woman draped in this chair reading a book 38:21-38:29 and there's a couple talking to each other, a young flapper or whatever on the sofa and 38:29-38:37 a young man talking to her. And it's this relation between the people and the beauty 38:37-38:43 that I think it calls into question a lot of what we do. You see we can create beauty, 38:43-38:52 we can create worlds within worlds that are completely self-sufficient but what does it 38:52-39:00 do to you to go into a room like that? Who are you? And it seems to me that the people, 39:00-39:09 there's a kind of decadence about it that it's too good for them in other words. That 39:09-39:22 sounds cool doesn't it? We'll come back to Lavery a little bit later. I'm sure now on 39:22-39:31 here would be tempted by such things and I don't think I would be either. Although if 39:31-39:38 I looked at it long enough it might start to work for me and I would like to question 39:38-39:50 whether it is really worth the two and a half million dollar asking price. And now point 39:50-39:57 four which is called the mischief of aesthetics and it's really how do you deal with beauty 39:57-40:04 in modern world and I'm going to talk for a moment about Augustine. I don't claim to 40:04-40:13 know very much about Augustine's aesthetics except from secondary sources but Augustine 40:13-40:21 who as you know studied rhetoric and had an acute love of beauty really. People of his 40:21-40:28 generation sought God with a passion and they didn't want anything to distract them and 40:28-40:34 I'm sure if you offered Augustine a watch like this he would not give it a second thought. 40:34-40:42 But he was very aware of the lure of beauty and that beauty can cause us problems in the 40:42-40:52 area of temptation. And the solution he and people like him came up with was really to 40:52-40:59 make beauty transparent to God. They headed beauty in the God-worth direction so if there 40:59-41:05 was anything that at all tempted them they would say let's leave the material behind 41:05-41:10 and head on up to God. Now I think this is exactly the opposite of the contingency that 41:10-41:20 Bob was talking about this morning. I'm sympathetic towards it but I think it doesn't work. This 41:20-41:30 is a wonderful Notre Dame in Paris and you could say that this is the fruit of Augustine 41:30-41:39 Aquinas that medieval theology and aesthetics that they to some extent they dematerialised 41:39-41:44 stone especially if you went inside. Don't forget the Chartres Cathedral and the walls 41:44-41:52 more or less disappear and they become glass windows to the divine area. They now create 41:52-41:59 architecture which really prioritised heaven over earth and it is very beautiful. I'll 41:59-42:06 just point out, you'll see it more clearly when you're in Paris but it's quite subtle. 42:06-42:12 This tower looks identical to this one but in fact it's narrower and if you see this 42:12-42:18 arch is different from this arch. There are all sorts of subtleties within it so that 42:18-42:23 that's what gives it its sense of life. It's not just a dead product like so many Victorian 42:23-42:30 churches. But it's pushing beauty in the heavenly direction whereas I think what we need is 42:30-42:42 to really receive it as from God in its totality. Now I'm going to talk for a moment about enlightenment 42:42-42:52 aesthetics and this is really the point I'm making is that bad beauty, sick beauty, bad 42:52-43:00 beauty and bad aesthetics go together. Now this is actually a very good painting, terrible 43:00-43:06 reproduction. This is by, I hope you can hear me, Chardin, the French 18th century painter 43:06-43:17 who did wonderful still lifes mostly. I really want to use this as an illustration of the 43:17-43:25 kind of aesthetics that is completely in effect humanistic and internal. If you look at this 43:25-43:29 diagram here, I don't think anyone can see it, everyone can see it. It just says S and 43:29-43:38 O, subject and object and the essence of most aesthetics is that everything is worked out 43:38-43:44 in terms of the relationship between subject and object. There's no God behind everything 43:44-44:00 in the picture. Can everyone hear by the way? Yes, you can hear. So this is in a sense a 44:00-44:08 very objective painting, a wonderful painting of apples and silver and so on. It's also 44:08-44:17 extremely controlled. This rhythm going from here around here up to the spoon and then 44:17-44:23 down to these, I don't know what they are, plums I think. This rhythm is very tightly 44:23-44:33 controlled. If you moved an inch or two the design of the picture would go. So Chardin 44:33-44:40 is looking through his metal box and he's set it up and it works exactly right. Now 44:40-44:49 that is very like the aesthetics of the enlightenment that our reason is thoroughly in control of 44:49-44:58 everything. But there's a massive, I'm just going to move another, okay now this is a 44:58-45:04 modern version of the same sort of thing. This is by an American called Jordan Sokol 45:04-45:12 who is a teacher in New York and teaches an academic system of painting and as you can 45:12-45:17 see he's very, very good. He knows exactly how to get everything, all the tones just 45:17-45:23 right. Now look at this beautiful reflected light in there, reflecting the white from 45:23-45:30 the glaze there into the material and then as the reflection goes away it deepens. It's 45:30-45:39 a kind of thoughtless picture. I don't like it very much, it's quite hard to say why, 45:39-45:46 but I think it's, I relate it to this kind of enlightenment sense of control. There's 45:46-45:56 no presentation of things being in themselves, it's all how it relates to me. Right, I'm 45:56-46:07 going to show you two slides, I can't move this thing but I hope you get the idea. This 46:07-46:17 is quite important, between subject and object, I'm subject, the subject I'm painting is 46:17-46:24 object. It's a little bit difficult because subject's got two meanings but when we're 46:24-46:30 trying to work out a sort of aesthetic theory you can either go on the object end or you've 46:30-46:41 gone the subject end. If you're on the object end, here's a photograph of a rose bush. Just 46:41-46:49 look at these arrangements of roses. This is the way it grows but it's not random is 46:49-47:00 it? If I was to take a computer and clone some roses so that I'd put things in different 47:00-47:05 places and move them around a bit it wouldn't look right. So when you're looking at this 47:05-47:13 and you know it looks right you're picking up some very complex mathematical relationships 47:13-47:17 down to the way a plant will grow and if you try and paint that and if you paint it wrong 47:17-47:24 it'll just look a mess. So it's extremely difficult to get these relationships all right. 47:24-47:36 So that's the objective end. Now this is a painting by a Danish artist of a rose bush 47:36-47:41 and you can see he's pretty much done the same thing. To my eye it's not quite as convincing 47:41-47:48 as the photo that these rhythms are a little bit, I can't quite believe it actually grew 47:48-47:56 like that but near enough. So this is the subjective end where it's what the rose means 47:56-48:06 to me and within that framework you've either got very accurate or something on the feelings 48:06-48:16 end and to me the weakness of this painting is that you've got a very rather sentimentalized 48:16-48:24 picture of this woman who has probably, well she's completely passive isn't she? She's 48:24-48:32 the kind of ideal of womanhood who never has an argument, throws a plate or gets a PhD 48:32-48:37 or anything like that. She just sits and looks at her woman's magazine and she's content 48:37-48:44 to be there. So and you read the cross there from the roses and you say they're completely 48:44-48:49 passive too, they're just what I want a rose to be. There isn't that kind of grit that 48:49-48:59 real life has that might be expressed in mathematics. So I think what I'm saying is art is very 48:59-49:05 easily boxed into this humanistic world whether it's either very objective or it's very subjective 49:05-49:13 but there's no real ontology, there's no real depth to it. Now this building is beloved 49:13-49:21 of all us remainers because we love the EU council don't we? That was a very provocative 49:21-49:27 statement but this actually is the building where it all happens in Brussels and there's 49:27-49:36 a new one now just next door and it's the European council. And to me this architecture 49:36-49:44 pretty much signifies the enlightenment perspective I'm looking at. There's a total kind of ceiling 49:44-49:48 on human knowledge, it's just a little bit different when you look around the site but 49:48-49:55 can you see this kind of box thing? There's no relationship to the sky whatever, there's 49:55-50:02 no heaven, there's nothing, it's just knowledge is all boxed in under here and that's really 50:02-50:12 the situation of enlightenment thinking. You've got object, subject, everything is an internal 50:12-50:21 relationship between one and the other. Now my next section is called the cure of contingency. 50:21-50:31 That's asking a lot for me to try and explain this to you but I think that if we go back 50:31-50:39 to the scripture it pretty much tells us what we need to know. Through faith we understand 50:39-50:45 that the worlds were framed by the word of God so that things which are seen were not 50:45-50:56 made of things which do appear. So in terms of our diagram, instead of this eternal thing 50:56-51:08 going on here, God is here, behind everything, as we've been told there's no logical bridge 51:08-51:17 between one and the other but the fact that God made everything is inherently stabilising 51:17-51:26 for everything in creation. In other words, the problem with the enlightenment system 51:26-51:33 is we never really know whether the thing we're seeing is part of our own mind or fully 51:33-51:41 itself but once we really accept a contingent creation that God made it then we can begin 51:41-51:50 to, we can both load the objective end with real full deep reality and we can value our 51:50-52:02 own personhood as people who see it. How am I doing for time David? This is an absolutely 52:02-52:13 gorgeous painting by the French impressionist with English parents who's called Alfred Sisley. 52:13-52:21 And with French impressionist paintings you tend to get this feeling of the world breaking 52:21-52:30 up into sense impressions. In other words we're loading, we've got a very objective 52:30-52:37 view of the world, it is just stuff, but we're loading it onto the subjective end where it's 52:37-52:47 all about how I see it. But because the impressionist painters were great painters and Sisley I 52:47-52:54 think won the best of them, there is this just sense of the absolute glorious givenness 52:54-53:03 of the world that he's stirred to his depths by this flooded river, this reflection and 53:03-53:08 the sheer existence of this tree with the way it catches the light and the way this 53:08-53:13 building catches the light and reflects the light here. Even the smoke from the chimney 53:13-53:21 just, it just touches him. This beautiful violet bit of reflection of whatever sky I 53:21-53:28 don't know but there's a sheer joy in it. So this is what I mean by contingency, it's 53:28-53:37 the givenness of the thing really existing for itself and he's taken that into himself. 53:37-53:41 So I'm saying that contingency enables beauty to be a real feature of the world, in other 53:41-53:47 words not just what we think is there but it really is there. It's not just a mental 53:47-53:55 creation but God's idea, not transparent as in Augustine but freely created. And I think 53:55-54:01 that meditating on the Incarnation is incredibly, well it's obviously going to be central to 54:01-54:07 all this, but that phrase 'we beheld his glory full of grace and truth', they saw the man 54:07-54:15 Jesus but they beheld glory in it, they saw the man Jesus but they saw grace and truth. 54:15-54:25 So it's these invisible components which always go behind beauty and we must obviously be 54:25-54:34 very struck by the fact that Jesus himself, if Isaiah is to be believed, was not himself 54:34-54:40 distinguished by good looks, beauty, you know he was just a guy. Which is shocking to us 54:40-54:46 because every time we film Jesus he's generally going to have blue eyes, hasn't he? We cannot 54:46-54:55 tolerate something less than this kind of perfect but not for the Son of God. 54:55-55:12 This is obviously a photo of a peacock and now I just want to return briefly to something 55:12-55:19 we were talking about this morning because we can't talk about creation without talking 55:19-55:29 about Darwin. Because Darwin to my mind has messed things up thoroughly and I find it 55:29-55:38 very difficult to sit down with it but what do we do? Now I'll tell you the problem, if 55:38-55:46 we're taking the line of contingency it is that we see this glorious bird as a whole, 55:46-55:54 as a given and from an aesthetic point of view I think it's absolutely lovely this relation 55:54-56:02 between the single colour here, that long line, the dignity and the dignity of the stride 56:02-56:09 and then the complexity of this extravagant long tail which is too much yet just right. 56:09-56:17 You know it's ridiculously generous but it's exactly right the balance is perfect and obviously 56:17-56:27 when the tail is displayed you've got something that's beyond wonder, aren't you? But according 56:27-56:40 to the biology that we are taught there is nothing here apart from what I call sex and 56:40-56:51 tears, death and reproduction. The only person engaged with the beauty of this creature is 56:51-57:02 the dull looking Mrs Peacock. She's the only one to appreciate it. Now as an artist this 57:02-57:10 makes no sense to me. I leave it with you but I think I just I would love to live you 57:10-57:13 know I've lived long enough to see the Iron Curtain fall I would love to live long enough 57:13-57:21 to see a different paradigm apart from natural selection I just don't see that that is sufficient 57:21-57:30 to produce something like this. Anyway you can run me out of town but it's what I'm trying 57:30-57:35 to say is I think there's a fact here which has got to be put alongside the other facts 57:35-57:44 we can't just lamely say it happened because it happened and just going into that a little 57:44-57:54 bit further in Darwinism death is the hero well sex and death are the heroes you know 57:54-58:00 they're good things whereas in the Bible death is the last enemy and I don't think you can 58:00-58:13 have it both ways death is either good or not good so that's my thought on that subject. 58:13-58:19 Right now this is another building in the Baroque style and I just want to talk very 58:19-58:29 briefly about beauty as a given. This was built by Baldassare Longuena you don't need 58:29-58:37 to know that but it's in the 17th century and again I think it's a bit of a theme really 58:37-58:45 but you've got this beautiful open shape here of the dome and then it's subsidiary dome 58:45-58:52 and then you've got this kind of mess underneath of very complex things and then see these 58:52-58:59 volutes there's a kind of heavenly compromise because the dome is round the building is 58:59-59:09 octagonal so you can't put the volutes out in a sort of circular form but they you've 59:09-59:13 got two straight ones and then suddenly it shifts then two straight ones there and so 59:13-59:17 on and it's a kind of complexity that is very delightful but a little bit strange and then 59:17-59:23 you've got these chapels on the inside kind of stuck on the outside and again it's a little 59:23-59:31 bit strange but it's really fun. And I'm just going to what I really want to say here is 59:31-59:38 that there's a there's a givenness about this which I think is very true of artistic creation 59:38-59:45 is anything you write that's artistic or make this artistic there's an element of it just 59:45-59:50 coming to you isn't it and you don't really know where it came from and I think that's 59:50-59:59 true of this it's a building that we're used to but it sort of has to be there he's taken 59:59-01:00:03 a piece out of the sky if you may put it like that that belongs to him and it just belongs 01:00:03-01:00:12 to this building. Now I googled for a long time to find something that was at all parallel 01:00:12-01:00:20 to that dome but I think we've got it here this is a opium poppy flower and we've got 01:00:20-01:00:25 this lovely combination of the what's like the dome it's that the smooth and then the 01:00:25-01:00:32 complex as this flower just begins to open and this lovely long line there and then these 01:00:32-01:00:37 frills at the bottom so you've got this tension between different kinds of element and that's 01:00:37-01:00:49 the kind of thing that Longinus played with. And oh the sun's coming out now. This is a 01:00:49-01:00:57 painting by the English semi Danish whatever impressionist Walter Sickert who spent a lot 01:00:57-01:01:05 of time in Venice and I think it's a beautiful painting where he's got the light picking 01:01:05-01:01:13 up these different elements and I think what it shows me is that when you've got a building 01:01:13-01:01:19 that's a real gift a given building like that one it can be seen in many different ways 01:01:19-01:01:27 by many different people. The constant is the thing that's the gift but human sight 01:01:27-01:01:34 is endlessly rich. None of us will ever see that building in quite the same way and there 01:01:34-01:01:45 will be never a shortage of people to see it in a fresh way. I had to go to the hospital 01:01:45-01:01:51 the other day for some minor thingy and I was sitting there and I just looked ahead 01:01:51-01:02:00 and I thought gosh this is dismal. You can't really see it properly but it says pressed 01:02:00-01:02:06 open but it's terrible lettering but some guy in a factory made it and well done you 01:02:06-01:02:19 know spelt it right and everything. So ugliness is really it's the opposite of receiving the 01:02:19-01:02:29 gift that beauty brings. Ugliness is a form of neglect and it's a form of self-neglect. 01:02:29-01:02:41 It's a lovelessness that absolutely permeates everywhere. So I think I'm really getting 01:02:41-01:02:50 to my last section now which is called beauty in an evil world. We cannot just recommend 01:02:50-01:03:00 beauty. All my life I've felt very stressed about ugliness and it's just the way I am 01:03:00-01:03:06 and so I thought long well what do you do about it? Do you give lectures on how to design 01:03:06-01:03:13 things properly? Lastly I thought if everybody could be made to read theological science 01:03:13-01:03:22 and divine and contingent order from schools upwards then that would probably be. But we 01:03:22-01:03:31 live in an evil world where even if you recommend it half the people are going to say no and 01:03:31-01:03:40 I'm always struck reading that terrible story in the New Testament where the woman pours 01:03:40-01:03:47 her life savings and ointment over Jesus feet breaks the alabaster vase and this is the 01:03:47-01:03:57 moment in which Judas takes supreme offence and it's too much for him. He cannot see this 01:03:57-01:04:05 waste as he sees it, this waste of beauty. And so whatever beauty or goodness there is 01:04:05-01:04:14 around there will always be people who are hostile to it. And that story about Judas 01:04:14-01:04:19 this represents what a person will do. There's always something free in beauty, there's something 01:04:19-01:04:34 personal. It doesn't happen unless there's a real sort of gift of a person involved. 01:04:34-01:04:43 This is also from Volubilis that wrote in place. You see this variant on a Corinthian 01:04:43-01:04:50 papa it's just so delightful some carver has just been alive sufficient freedom to make 01:04:50-01:04:57 it up himself a bit. That's got a political background too. I mean this Roman Empire obviously 01:04:57-01:05:03 was not so totally stultifying that everybody had to do everything exactly the same. There's 01:05:03-01:05:11 an element of personhood in that. Now this is our penultimate slide. I don't know if 01:05:11-01:05:21 you can see this but it's a punting. There's a woman with an enormous hat. Oh it's a parasol. 01:05:21-01:05:37 There's her man and she's tremendously impressed. Soon they'll be married and then she'll go 01:05:37-01:05:45 and live on his vast estate and he will neglect her and spend his time riding and gambling 01:05:45-01:05:59 and other things and that'll be the end of that. This picture is in Dublin by Sir John 01:05:59-01:06:05 Lavery the chap who did the Wilton House picture and it's actually quite shocking because it 01:06:05-01:06:14 was painted in the middle of the First World War when you know I don't need to say anymore 01:06:14-01:06:21 and of course there were a lot of people both fighting in the First World War and afterwards 01:06:21-01:06:29 and indeed fighting in the Second World War who thought are we dying in order for this 01:06:29-01:06:38 to continue. Is that what it's all about? A rich man's war people used to say and you 01:06:38-01:06:44 know a lot of people who somehow managed to carry on a pretty sweet life while the carnage 01:06:44-01:06:56 was going on. So beauty raises the question of truth. Now to my eye there is something 01:06:56-01:07:02 slightly even if I didn't know about the First World War there's something slightly sick 01:07:02-01:07:08 about this picture. It's too perfect everything's just right. It's like the holiday brochures 01:07:08-01:07:16 where you know the waves are lapping on the shore and you know the waiter is appearing 01:07:16-01:07:25 with the martini and everything is just right. Life isn't like that and I mean I can't remember 01:07:25-01:07:33 days on the cam with a punt when it was pretty much like this but life is much more complex 01:07:33-01:07:42 than that and yet Lavery has, the design is so careful isn't it the way this what are 01:07:42-01:07:49 these things called? A skiff. A skiff that's right it's just rowing into view. The design 01:07:49-01:07:53 is exactly right he's just caught the frame at exactly the right moment. Brilliant painting 01:07:53-01:07:57 I mean what painting of war sorry I'm not you know I'm not trying to criticize it as 01:07:57-01:08:06 a bit of painting but it's not truth is it? It's a highly selective view of truth. So 01:08:06-01:08:13 I'm going to get to our last slide. People have mixed feelings about the hay wane but 01:08:13-01:08:20 I really want to look at it for a moment. This was Constable's great painting of 1824 01:08:20-01:08:31 I think or maybe he's putting on but it represents a Suffolk scene with you know a sort of lazily 01:08:31-01:08:38 preceding cart going through the ford, dog, willy lots cottage, there are reapers out 01:08:38-01:08:48 here. If you read Marxist critics which I don't but I've heard of them they get pretty 01:08:48-01:08:55 aggravated by this picture and by others like it and they're aggravated because Constable 01:08:55-01:09:03 came from a relatively well-off mill business owning barge owning business in Suffolk and 01:09:03-01:09:13 around the time this picture and others were being painted there were riots, Hayrick burnings, 01:09:13-01:09:19 everything else going on in Suffolk because due to Napoleonic wars and things like that 01:09:19-01:09:27 there was tremendous poverty in the countryside. So the Marxist critic will come along and say 01:09:27-01:09:33 this is just a patrician's painting this is like well the peasants are happy and I'm happy 01:09:33-01:09:39 so everything's good and we do know there are plenty of paintings like that but having 01:09:39-01:09:46 started with Constable I want to sort of I do trust Constable in many ways although I 01:09:46-01:09:55 prefer the sketches a little bit more to some of these big pictures but the centre of this 01:09:55-01:10:03 it's a June day a bit like today you don't really know whether it's going to sun or rain 01:10:03-01:10:12 the dark clouds are gathering but these clouds are lifting. And the centre of the picture 01:10:12-01:10:19 is this patch of light and the sun going through the leaves of the tree now and it is really 01:10:19-01:10:31 beautiful and it's like a kind of picture of hope this sluggish world is going on a 01:10:31-01:10:37 bit like what Bob was saying about this is old time old creation and then you get this 01:10:37-01:10:45 burst of light coming through here and it's just glorious. And so the question arises 01:10:45-01:10:51 is it true? Now for the Marxist he says no it's not true but you see that the Marxist 01:10:51-01:10:58 has a problem because however bad the world is there is a lot of beauty in it you know 01:10:58-01:11:06 the clouds part the lights come and wherever we go even in slums and you know if you ever 01:11:06-01:11:18 watch Nordic noir films on TV or something awful murders beautiful film beauty is just 01:11:18-01:11:28 around us so the question is is beauty a fake is this all some ghastly lie you know he's 01:11:28-01:11:33 got to have you a joke you know it's a terrible world there's all this beauty and there's 01:11:33-01:11:43 no goodness in it at all. Or do we believe in the return of Christ you see if God makes 01:11:43-01:11:51 a promise he puts it right there's no promises without God actually entering the situation 01:11:51-01:11:57 to fix things. I believe that for Constable and for many artists there is a residual hope 01:11:57-01:12:07 the hope is present in nature but they believe it they believe that things are going to work 01:12:07-01:12:13 out and some of them like Constable himself believe that Christ will come back and so 01:12:13-01:12:19 when they paint something like this it's a sure thing it's not a tentative thing it's 01:12:19-01:12:26 not to sell the picture in the Royal Academy it's because hope is real. So I really come 01:12:26-01:12:34 round to saying that beauty can be a very sick thing if it's just all internal all about 01:12:34-01:12:42 us all about what we like but beauty can also speak very strongly of God who made us and 01:12:42-01:12:57 Jesus who will return. I hope that wasn't too long. That's it. Thank you very much indeed.