Five Reflections of God
Truth is the reflection of God's mind, Goodness of his character, and Beauty of his glory, as they are manifested in the world he has made.
If that is true, then the True is that which deserves to be believed, the Beautiful that which deserves to be contemplated, and the Good that which deserves to be done, just because of what they are as reflections of God's essential nature.
Now, here's a fourth element: Love. Truth is the reflection of God's mind, Beauty of his glory, Goodness of his character—and Love of his heart. The lovely is therefore that which deserves to be adored. All three of those former acts—belief, contemplation, and action—are therefore performed as the expression of our love. For the Father is the Source and Summation, and the Son the Embodiment and Incarnation, of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful in their ultimate essence. We love him because he first loved us—in spite of the fact that we did not deserve to be loved.
And that brings us to the fifth element, even more profound than Love and passing all understanding: God's unmerited favor to those who deserve the opposite, making Goodness, Truth, and Beauty available to them out of Love, God's riches at Christ's expense—Grace.
Donald T. Williams is Professor Emeritus of Toccoa Falls College. He stays permanently camped out on the borders between serious scholarship and pastoral ministry, between theology and literature, and between Narnia and Middle-Earth. He is the author of fourteen books, including Answers from Aslan: The Enduring Apologetics of C. S. Lewis (DeWard, 2023). He is a contributing editor of Touchstone.
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