What God Does.

Last October I took part in a week of guided prayer in Warwick Chaplaincy and I became very aware of something. With prompting from Steve my prayer guide, I thought back to my times sitting in the woods, or on the train or anywhere else where I was just watching the world go by. I spoke of these times as times of great contentment at just being within the world. I also told him about my great sense of the presence of God at these times. He asked me about what I thought that God was doing at these times, or how he was looking at me. The answer was that God was just watching.

When I was sitting there watching the world, it was a very special moment, for I was still and complete, for I am whole in the world when nothing is wrong that I can or must affect. It is a way in which I feel the goodness which underlies reality and that I could abide forever in that moment in perfect contentment, if that moment would just remain. So God was watching the world as well.

Like when I sat and looked down the valley behind my house. I sat on the grass in a warm summer, looking down the valley, past the golden and brown fields and trees and watching the sun go down behind the treetops. I watched this happen and drank in the beauty of it and I has the most incredible sense of watching it with God and of him watching it to, and appreciating it to, for he need do nothing but watch, and sharing this beautiful vision of what he had created.

I realised that I saw a piece of beauty, unique in the history of the world and the Universe, and I realised that no-one but me saw it, no-one but me and God. I realised that he must see this beautiful sunset every day, every day a little different, and that most days he saw it alone, unseen and unappreciated by anyone else. But this day he shared it with me, and I felt that God smiled, and that I was supremely honoured to share this moment where I was experiencing the pleasure of a maker at the success and unveiling of the beauty of the thing he had made. Like the pride of a parent at their daughter’s wedding, or their graduation from University. Love mingled with pride and the one reinforcing the other.

Thinking about this time I think that this is what God always does. He watches and waits for the time to come and sometimes he watches beauty and sometime he does not, but always he watches, and when the times is right he acts and he is working his purposes out from year to year. I had never thought about what God does with the world when he is not dealing with people, with thinking beings. What did he do in the aeons before the founding of the world. The answer, I think, is very simple, he watched.

God in the Bible and in the experience of my heart is not a God of many words. In the Bible God never uses ten words where one would do. I admit that this is not always true. God’s silence is broken by action, and powerful action to, and speech. In Jesus, God spoke at length but still the Gospels leave the feeling of so many words unspoken, so many parables we wish could be more completely explained, so many pages that could be in there.

Furthermore, my own explorations have led me into the search for stillness, in being able to move with rather than against the universe and God’s truth and the nature of what is valuable. It is a feeling of seeking a Taoist-like harmony with the universe, in Christian terms being in perfect obedience with the will and intentions of God. This is in terms of harmony and an important part of that harmony is both inner and bodily stillness and watching and waiting and acting when it is needed. In Taoist terms, doing by not doing. Actions, and powerful actions, puncture silence and watching. It is impossible, however, to underestimate the importance of watching and listening, and experiencing, for to do such a thing is to drink in the world as it moves around you.

Neither does it have to be contrary to God’s ever-activity and care. It is the nature of things that God pervades all. God acts constantly, both in his intercession in the world and through the constant over-flow of his Love into the world, that we call Grace. However, in any particular strand of existence, viewing any particular slice of time, looking at all the places in the cosmos, overwhelmingly in terms of their number God watches and does not directly act, although still his love and compassion overflow, as we know that we can merely watch someone and yet still our love and care can flow onto them.

A Defense of Truth in Art - Some Preliminary Ideas.

These are some of my first brief thoughts on looking at how we consider and access Truth in, and through, Art and Literature and how this is fundamentally different to how we generally model and determine truth through maths and science. This is something that I believe has interesting possibilities for helping to explicate an explanation of the ways we access and react to the truth and knowledge we experience and rely on in ordinary life (and also in religion), in a fuller and more useful manner than the simplistic model we often rely on from the hard sciences and mathematics.

These ideas are inspired as a response to an article by J.Stolnitz 'The Cognitive Triviality of Art', which can be found here and argues for precisely the title, that Art is cognitively trivial, containing no unique useful knowledge or truth. The idea of this article is that supporters of Art often make claims to such a thing as Artistic 'Truth' or even knowledge. It takes a very narrow sense of truth and knowledge and then proceeds to use this to ridicule claims of Artistic truth or knowledge. To the extent it does not particularly engage with the wider questions it is merely a polemic, but it is a interesting starting point to bounce off of and give us somewhere to start in forming and defending the opposite view.

The article accuses Art of lacking the definitions of knowledge and truth that would provide us with a range of propositions whose truth is uniquely or best discoverable through that area of knowledge and a method by which such propositions could be compared and verified. He then claims that this demonstrates that the idea of Artistic truth or knowledge is essentially vacuous since there is no knowledge that is not more easily comprehendible and verifiable in some other area of understanding or by some other method. He contrasts this with examples of proper areas of knowledge such as science, history, religion, and even 'garden-variety' knowledge and examples of their respective unique propositions such as, ‘nothing can travel faster than the speed of light’, ‘the Battle of Hastings occurred in 1066’, ‘the Trinity consists of Father, Son and Holy Spirit’ and ‘summer is warmer than winter’.

I am sympathetic to the article to the degree that I feel that talk of Artistic beauty is more immediately useful and relevant as a starting point of discussion of Arts than that of "Artistic Truth", which is to introduce a model of evaluation that is immediately likely to confuse when related to Art, especially when imported with all its retinue of ideas of contradiction, proposition, law of excluded middle etc,which is the baggage of formal logic. Any idea of Truth in Art or truths imparted by Art, let alone 'Artistic knowledge' is going to be considerably more difficult. The evaluation of beauty is perhaps hence a more useful starting point, possibly even because of, rather than in spite of, the fact that it itself is not a precisely defined concept and hence does not bring such immediate baggage with its use, it is however one that strikes most people at some point with immediate force, whereas Artistic Truth is ironically the more amorphous idea in most people’s minds.

The Article plays on this ambiguity to ridicule the prospect of Artistic truth and knowledge by taking a strictly propositional definition of truth or knowledge. He demands to know precisely what substantive and interesting propositions can be discussed and verified solely, or even best, through the medium of fine art. In this regard he appears to be correct. Any particular proposition about the world expressed in a piece of Art would seem better justified and grounded through some other means and area of knowledge particularly designed to develop and assess claims of that type of knowledge, whether history or science or philosophy.

In my view though, this merely shows the weakness of his model of artistic truth, or indeed of truth in general if he believes that the propositional model is the only one that there can be, or which can be useful (or indeed if he limits the range of his proposition to factually statement about the composition of the world as he seems to do).

My personal distaste for his talk of artistic knowledge or artistic truth leads me to constantly seek to phrase these ideas rather as the truth of Art or the Truth through Art. But that is merely personal preference.

I believe that the model in which we must discuss truth in Art is precisely not a propositional model but rather one of the immediate synthetic realisation of a whole manifold of truths, their inter-relation and their importance in terms of their aesthetic, moral, religious and existential value. Within a piece of Fine Art we can see captured and revealed an instantiaton of a scene or idea or or maybe just one element of a scene, whether in terms of a snapshot of a something, or a revelation or all eternity, enhanced and shown to us for our appreciation and understanding, with all the infinite, interwoven detail, connotations and connextions such a thing can produce. Such a picture, once (partially, for that is all it could ever reall be,) atomised into its constituent propositions, will inevitably lose its richness, not only in the sheer range of propositions, but also in the inter-related nature they share and the emotional impact which can actually bring them home. It is near (though I do not say entirely) impossible to achieve the same effect, of the over-arching view and connexion of something, with what must become in the end a mere list of individual propositions.

I believe that it is this precise feature of the encounter with truth that we reach in Art that gives a study of this truth the greatest relevance because it is this structure that it shares with so much of the truth or "truth" that we meet and deal with in our ordinary lives, where decisions from the trivial to the overwhelmingly important are so often based on an image or a glimpse or a moment and the immediate intuitve apprehension of what they mean, from our ordinary human perspective and which can so rarely be boiled down into one of logical atomism.

These ideas are not withstanding the eminent human tradition, whose most well known advocate that comes into my mind is Plato, which all but equates beauty and truth and hence the regards the insight of beauty, which many sense in even the most unadventurous or un-humanist Art as an authentic meeting with some truth in the universe that exists in the sense of deeper value and constitutes a meaning and being that gives surface reality and propositional truth its purpose and use and hence constitures a deeper and better truth than that expressed through any proposition. I recently read a man saying that we do science and technology so we may have the means and leisure to do Art, to create. And this is by no means an unheard of view.

Through Art, even apart from the conviction of beauty we can realise many truth and realise them deeper and better than we can through them merely being told to us. I do agree with the article further to the extent that not many of these ideas or propositions would necessarily be justified or grounded in their explanation through Art. Art may show me that a sunset is a supremely beautiful thing, but this would not be because of any particular painting that this was true. Aesthetic, Moral, religious, Existential propositions will often have their basis in some other area of knowledge, and merely receive expression through Art. Again though this is not necessarily true though, as with any of these categories, Fine Art, especially perhaps literature, may lay out the case for them in such an intricate detail unobtainable elsewhere that Art itself is uniquely situated to provide the evidence and backing for them, even if the particular events depicted are fictional. This could be thought of as in a way similar to an extended thought experiment.

This will not be true in all places, however, some Art will merely convict you at that point of ideas and propositions best grounded elsewhere and sometimes Art will reveal knowledge primarily or only in the form of the revelation of Beauty itself (not that this is to be disparaged) and sometimes it will reveal truth in the sense I have just described above. What this all goes to show though is that there is in fact an entire range of meaningful that Truth in and through Art can be studies and considered and through which we may then gain a great deal.

Trying again.

I'm going to try again with post. What started out as some brief notes has now turned into a small essay. Hopefully it will prove more readable. I plan to continue from there.

Still no clue how to improve the layout but that will have to wait for the moment.

First Post Made. Plenty to think about.

There we go, first post made. I fear that my style of writing is still far too brief and discursive, as though I am writing notes to myself. If I wish to be understandable to anyone else I will need to explain myself at greater length, though of course this varies depending on the topic.

Also of course need more work on formatting, both of posts and of blog, make the place look prettier. Still off to a good start, may seek to extend article at future date, to make more understandable. Hmmmm.

A Defense of Truth in Art - Some Preliminary Ideas.

These are some of my first brief thoughts on looking at how we consider and access Truth in, and through, Art and Literature and how this is fundamentally different to how we generally model and determine truth through maths and science. This is something that I believe has interesting possibilities for helping to explicate an explanation of the ways we access and react to the truth and knowledge we experience and rely on in ordinary life (and also in religion), in a fuller and more useful manner than the simplistic model we often rely on from the hard sciences and mathematics.

These ideas are inspired as a response to an article by J.Stolnitz 'The Cognitive Triviality of Art', which can be found here and argues for precisely the title, that Art is cognitively trivial, containing no unique useful knowledge or truth. The idea of this article is that supporters of Art often make claims to there being such a thing as Artistic 'Truth' or even knowledge. It takes this possible claim in a very narrow sense of truth and knowledge and then proceeds to use this to ridicule the idea of Artistic truth or knowledge. To the extent it does not particularly engage with the wider questions it is merely a polemic, but it is a interesting starting point to bounce off of and give us somewhere to start in forming and defending the opposite view.

The article ('The Cognitive Triviality of Art') accuses Art of lacking the definitions of knowledge and truth that are useful and applicable in such fields as science, history, religion, and even 'garden-variety' knowledge, which would include such propositions as "summer is warmer than winter".

I am sympathetic to the article to the degree that I feel that talk of Artistic beauty is more immediately useful and relevant as a starting point of discussion of Arts than that of "Artistic Truth", which is to introduce a model of evaluation that is immediately likely to confuse when related to Art, especially when imported with all its retinue of ideas of contradiction, proposition, law of excluded middle etc,which is the baggage of formal logic.

Any idea of Truth in Art or truths imparted by Art, let alone 'Artistic knowledge' is going to be considerably more difficult. The evaluation of beauty is perhaps hence a more useful starting point, possibly even because of, rather than in spite of, the fact that it itself is not a precisely defined concept and hence does not bring such immediate baggage with its use.

The Article ridicules the prospect of Artistic truth and knowledge by taking a strictly propositional definition of truth or knowledge. He demands to know precisely what substantive and interesting propositions can be discussed and verified solely, or even best, through the medium of fine art. In this regard he appears to be correct. In my view though, this merely shows the weakness of his model of artistic truth, or indeed of truth in general if he believes that the propositional model is the only one that there can be.

My personal distaste for his talk of artistic knowledge or artistic truth leads me to constantly seek to phrase these ideas rather as the truth of Art or the Truth through Art. But that is merely personal preference.

I believe that the model in which we must discuss truth in Art is precisely not a propositional model but rather one of the immediate synthetic realisation of a whole manifold of truths, their inter-relation and their precise importance in terms of their aesthetic, moral, religious or existential value. Such a picture, once atomised, will inevitably lose its richness, not only in the sheer range of propositions but also in the inter-related nature they share and the emotional impact which can actually bring them home.

I believe that it is this precise feature of the encounter with truth that we reach in Art that gives a study of this truth the greatest relevance because it is this structure that it shares with so much of the truth or "truth" that we meet and deal with in our ordinary lives, from our ordinary human perspective, which can so rarely be boiled down into one of logical atomism.

These ideas are not withstanding the eminent human tradition, whose most well known advocate that comes into my mind is Plato, which all but equates beauty and truth and hence the regards the insight of beauty, which many sense in even the most unadventurous or un-humanist Art as an authentic meeting with some truth in the universe that exists in the sense of deeper value and constitutes a meaning and being that gives surface reality and propositional truth its purpose and use. A recently read a man saying that we do science and technology so we may have the means and leisure to do Art, to create. And this is by no means an unheard of view.