Stephen Wolfe has written a blog post entitled “A Reformed Perspective on Natural Beauty”. How does God reveal himself in nature? “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.”
I admit that my attempt to describe the perception of eschatological beauty lacks clarity. But I’m in good company, because I find no place in Calvin where he made the attempt. He says, counterintuitively, that “faith is…looking at things that are invisible” (emphasis mine). How can one look at the invisible? “Looking,” of course, is used metaphorically for a form of perception. But that illustrates the problem: all descriptor are metaphors. It is difficult to get to the literal. I do not have a satisfactory answer to this problem. I will simply say, with Calvin, that the future glory can be perceived by faith.
This post is groundwork for what I hope becomes a discussion among Reformed Christians on the subject of beauty, especially on the perception of eschatological beauty. I welcome the reader’s thoughts.
