Philosopher Peter Kreeft says: “Everything that exists is in some way true, good, and beautiful.” 2 And humans via the imago Dei (image of God) are able to know the truth, desire the good, and love the beautiful. When God created, he imbued the cosmos with truth, goodness, and beauty. Thus Christian civilization would dominate the Western world and parts of the East for largely a millennium (about 500 to 1500). Christian philosophers and theologians appropriated the truth of these cosmic values as truths of general revelation but grounded them in the nature of the triune God. God doesn’t have truth, goodness, and beauty rather, God is truth, goodness, and beauty. 1Ĭhristian Civilization’s View of Truth, Goodness, and Beautyīy the fifth century AD paganism had been largely converted to Christianity. Truth, goodness, and beauty are cosmic values that communicate divine meaning to the intellectual, moral, and aesthetic capacities of the human soul, which brings a balance in the soul, which, in turn, harmonizes the human person with divine meaning and purpose of the cosmos, which was considered the prerequisite to human flourishing. Turley describes the classical view that human capacities match with and are fulfilled by these cosmic values: Since human beings had the internal capacities of logos (reason), ethos (morality), and pathos (emotion), these internal capacities corresponded to the cosmic values and brought forth human fulfillment: The cosmic values of truth (that which defines reality), goodness (that which fulfills its purpose), and beauty (that which is lovely) were objective in nature and knowable by the noble seeker. Some of the dominant philosophies of this era included Platonism, Aristotelianism, and Stoicism.įor the famous Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, the world had genuine meaning and purpose.
The grand cities of this period included Athens, Rome, and even Jerusalem. The classical world (or classical antiquity) consisted largely of the Greco-Roman society that was centered around the Mediterranean Sea and existed at its peak for roughly a millennium-from about 500 BC to 500 AD. The great cultures of Greece and Rome flourished and deeply influenced Europe, North Africa, and West Asia. Then I’ll show how Christian civilization accommodated them as truths of general revelation and grounded them in the nature of the triune God.Ĭlassical Civilization’s View of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty In this introductory article I’ll briefly describe how the three transcendentals of truth, goodness, and beauty were viewed in the classical world. Therefore, one may think of these values as timeless universals and attributes of being.
In philosophy, the transcendental relates to and seeks to describe the nature of reality or being. It is a universal reality that extends beyond our everyday sensory experiences and is thus considered nonphysical, immaterial, conceptual, or even spiritual. Prominent philosophers through the centuries have called these three cosmic values transcendentals. A transcendental refers to something that exists beyond the time-space-matter world. What is real? What is right? What is lovely? Human beings ask these kinds of questions because we long for at least three things: truth, goodness, and beauty.
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