The Aesthetic Obligation

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"We know God by two means: First, by the creation, preservation, and governmentof the universe,
since that universe is before our eyeslike a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God: God’s eternal power and divinity, as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1,20." (The Belgic Confession § 2)

As a point of departure in this post there is a quotation from a classic Reformed text. Reformed Church is readily thought as the anti-aesthetic branch of Christianity. The Reformed do not have the liturgical richness of the Catholic Church, the musical heritage of Lutheranism, not to mention the visual imagery of the eastern Orthodox Christianity. That notwithstanding, Reformed theology maintains that the beauty of the universe is a way to attain knowledge about God. Jean Calvin himself (Institutes 1.5.1.) spoke about the "workmanship of the universe", that eventually compels even stupid people to see God. The Reformed historians tend to emphasize the connection between this theological conviction and the emergence of modern Western science, and not without vindication. 

That even Reformed theology  has an aesthetic view at its center is a thing worth noting. Theological aesthetic is thus an ecumenical endeavor (while Reformed theology is presumably the least aesthetic of all Christian theologies). Yet there are traits in the Reformed aesthetics that are not fully satisfying.

Why did God create the universe? A Reformed answer would be that the world is the theater of God's glory (theatrum gloriae Dei). As if God needed a stage and an audience to perform his power. Perhaps a better way to put it were to say that the universe was created to be the object of God's love, and more than that, as something to love unmerited. God did not need the universe for anything. The world is totally contingent, created merely to delight its creator, and created for his pleasure.


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