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The Logos of Beauty
Steve Baarendse on the Eyes of the Heart & the Glory of God
What is the end, the telos, of beauty, imagination, and creativity? Some have said that beauty is its own end; in the arts, this was called "art for art's sake." You can see it recited as catechism in John Keats's famous epigram about the Grecian urn: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—That is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
But the Christian knows that this Romantic creed is only a tragic half-truth. Even artistic beauty is not big enough to be its own end; and art, severed from its transcendent source, is powerless to save. Keats died appealing to the beauty of poetry, but coughing up blood. He did not acknowledge the One to whom beauty points, who bled and died for sinners, the One who alone has the power over death.
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Steve Baarendse is an Associate Professor of English and Humanities at Columbia International University in Columbia, South Carolina. He and his wife Sara have three children and worship at Lexington Presbyterian Church (PCA).
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more on imagination from the online archives
18.4—May 2005
The Idylls, Idols & Devils That Corrupt the Moral Imagination by Vigen Guroian
11.5—September/October 1998
Speaking the Truths Only the Imagination May Grasp
An Essay on Myth & 'Real Life' by Stratford Caldecott
more from the online archives
32.4—July/August 2019
on Single-Mindedness in Durer's Ritter, Tod, und Teufel by Anthony Costello
28.6—Nov/Dec 2015
on the Deepest Longings of the Restless & the Lonely by William Graddy
27.2—March/April 2014
Higher Education Should Advance the Glorious Liberty of the Sons of God by Anthony Esolen
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