The Aesthetic Obligation
"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 s...