We had a lively discussion about a passage from David Bentley Hart’s The Beauty of the Infinite. Here’s the quotation
The delightfulness of created things expresses the delightfulness of God’s infinite distance. For Christian thought, then, delight is the premise of any sound epistemology: it is delight that constitutes creation, and so only delight can comprehend it, see it aright, understand its grammar. Only in loving creation’s beauty – only seeing that creation truly is beauty – does one apprehend what creation is.
Hart is basing his doctrine of creation on his doctrine of the trinity. For him, perichoresis is the basis of the life of the trinity, uniting the three Persons while preserving their difference. They are bound together by love, and their eternal existence is one of delight and pleasure. For Hart, this is part of what “God is love” means. Likewise, in order for man to have knowledge of God he must first be drawn by the Spirit to love Him.
Love for God ————————-> Knowledge of God
Since creation imitates and reflects its Creator, Hart says that this scenario holds true for creation as well. In order to truly know and understand the world, we must first love it and appreciate its beauty. Notice that he is not saying that you must love God in order to understand creation (though that may be true in one sense) but that you must love creation in order to understand creation.
Love for creation ——————————–> Knowledge of creation
Hopefully this helps clear up Hart’s point.
Discuss.
Two questions this quote and the class discussion brought to mind:
(1) Can you have love for creation/things without having love for the Creator? Some non-Christians are very passionate about elements of the creation, but are they truly loving it if they are not loving the One who made it? Can a non-Christian have a love for creation which leads to knowledge of creation?
(2) Is Creation fallen? You seemed to say in class that it was. But Man was the one who sinned, not creation. The ground was cursed for his sake, not its own. Would you say that because Man is the head of creation when he fell creation fell as well (because it was federally represented in him the way Adam’s posterity was represented–”In Adam’s fall, we sinned all”)?
Rose
(1) There seemed to be quite a lot of disagreement on this particular question in class. I’m inclined to say Yes and No. Certainly a non-Christian can have some degree of love for creation (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek-era Annie Dillard, for example). But it seems that loving the Creator allows you to love creation to a greater extent. As far as knowledge, there seems to be one sense in which it is impossible for a non-Christian to have knowledge of the world. A good translation of Proverbs 1:7 is “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.”
(2) I think the phrase that Hart used was that the world was “clouded” by sin. So man sinned, but creation has suffered the effects of that sin. I like the way you put it above.
In fact, now that I think about it, Dillard might be a great example of someone whose love for creation in large part contributed to her realization of its Creator, and who eventually converted. So it seems to be circular: love for creation can lead to love for God, and vice versa.