Let's pray and ask the Lord for his help. Father, it's been a long week, but we thank you for it. We thank you for the blessing of all that we have heard thus far. And we ask for more of your blessing now as Mr. Hodges speaks to us. We pray in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Thank you, sir. That's very, very kind of you. It's all very much overblown and unnecessary. I'm glad to see you. Some of you I know from past years. How many of you were here the last time I came? Oh, my goodness. Well, I'm going to have to rewrite all my talks then. Now, only one I think may be a repeat for you. But before we start, I want to make one quick schedule change, logistical change, if you don't mind. I have it here on the computer, so I'm going I'm going to, just a minute, technology, you know. No, it's not working. I don't really believe in PowerPoint anyway, so it doesn't seem to work. What are you laughing about? I can't seem to make it go the way it's supposed to go. What? Maybe it's because I don't have this other thing hooked in, but. Something's going on here. All right. I'm sure I can get it fixed in just a minute. Oh, OK. Here, I think I figured it out. I was pushing the wrong button. button. This is a schedule change for today and tomorrow. I have five talks, two today, one this evening, and then two tomorrow. And the two today are beauty and art, one and two, and the two tomorrow are ordering our loves and moral imagination. What I'd like to do is reverse these. So tomorrow we'll have the Ordering Our Loves, I mean today rather, we'll have the Ordering Our Loves and Moral Imagination stuff, and then tomorrow I'll talk about Beauty and Art 1 and 2. Beauty and Art 1 is going to be about visual art, Beauty and Art 2 is going to be about form in music. And then this evening's talk will remain the same, the one I have planned for tonight, okay? So just switch those four if you would, I'd appreciate it. Okay, now, since we're going to talk about ordering our loves, what I want to do is explain to you that that's the purpose of education. You may think that the purpose of education is for you to gather information. Ultimately, that's not what it's all about. In fact, most schools nowadays think that it's an interaction between the school or the faculty member himself and the student and that the student is the client paying tuition and the teacher is the provider providing the service. Well, for Christians, that leaves out the most important character in any kind of human interaction, and of course, that's God. And I would like to come up with a better picture of the interaction between teacher and student for you so that we can get at a better definition of education. Education is not for the purposes of imparting information. Education is for the purposes of ordering your loves. Education is for the purpose of getting you to love that which is worth loving to the degree that it's worth loving. And to do that, you have to know the difference between information or knowledge and wisdom. And maybe you've heard this before, but information knowledge is like knowing that a tomato is not a vegetable, it's a fruit. Did you know that? Yes, some of you knew that. That's knowledge. But wisdom is knowing that a tomato doesn't belong in a fruit salad. That's wisdom. Wisdom is understanding the natures of things. And to understand the natures of things, you have to know the one who created them. God has an intention. He has a design. He has a form. He has a purpose for everything that he makes. And to discover that purpose is more than just information. It's wisdom. to be able to know how wood grain works so that you know how to cut the tree in order to make it the strongest to build your house with or to cut it with the grain or against the grain or whatever in order to build a piano or a guitar or something like that. You have to know the nature of the tree before you can do the work that God calls the carpenter to do. It's the same thing with anything else. You have to know the natures of cats and dogs. Cats and dogs have different natures, don't they? You can ask your cat to fetch the newspaper all day long and the cat will look at you like you've lost your mind. In fact, I saw a t-shirt one time that said, dogs have masters and cats have staff. It's an attitude difference, right? It's a difference in nature. Well, human beings have natures, too. And human nature is something that you need to know in order to be able to properly understand who we are and what we're built for and what we're supposed to be doing, where we're going, and so on and so on. So education is for the purposes of knowing knowledge, surely, but it doesn't stop there. It goes to the point of wisdom. The idea is that you would become wise, and the only way to become wise is to get to know who God is and how he has designed those things, you see. Well, education then is geared not so much for the student as for God. When you think about a client and a provider, you may think that the student is the client and the school or the teacher is the provider of the service. But that's not quite how Christian teachers look at their work. The reality is, Christian teachers should be thinking of God as their client. That is the truth. Loved what our fellow said just now in the last session about Jesus himself being the truth. That's a radical statement. I hope you get chills going up and down your spine when you think about that, because nobody in the history of the world has ever said that except him. I mean, except people who've lost their minds, maybe. But nobody sanely said, I am the truth. The Buddha would have said, I can enlighten you about truth, maybe. But he never would have said, I am the truth. Muhammad would have been called a blasphemer if he said, I am the truth. He would say, I can I'm the prophet of Muhammad. I can speak for him, but I'm not the truth itself. It's a truly radical idea to say I am the truth. And yet, that's what Jesus actually said. He said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Huh? I am what truth is? I am what life is? But that's the way it is. And there's never been anyone else to say that in the history of the world. So, the way to get to know God would be to get to know his son. If we want to know the truth, then our education has to be based on revelation. Now, you know as well as I do that the typical university setting now is completely separated from any kind of notion of revelation. The idea that we would that we would turn to God and ask him to speak to us is out of the question in most universities today. But that's not how they started. And what I want to explain today is a little bit of a history of how it is that the university came to be and how they took that serious step of connecting revelation to reason. In the Middle Ages, that's what you have, is what we call the medieval synthesis. medieval synthesis. In the Middle Ages, you had Christians, who were also academics, who created the university. The university is an invention of the Christians. Did you know that? The first university, well, many people say it's the University of Bologna, but Bologna was mainly for law. The first university that was thinking in theological terms, theology as a as an endpoint, was the University of Paris. And the University of Paris, called the Sorbonne now, even still, the University of Paris patterned its curriculum after what they call the cathedral schools. There were various cathedrals in northern France, Chartres was one of them, Amiens was another one, Rouen was another one. They taught young boys, sorry girls, it was only for boys, they taught young boys what they had learned from the ancient, what they called the arts, the liberal arts of the Greeks. The Greeks established a good number of things properly, they got a lot of things wrong, But one of the things they really were good at is establishing what it meant to have a liberal art education. The word liberal, first of all, in that phrase, means free. It doesn't mean like we mean politically liberal or theologically liberal now. That's not what it meant. What it meant was for the free man. There were two kinds of education in the Greek world. That was education for the slave, and education for the free. You know the Greeks had slaves, right? Well, they taught their slaves a lot. Their slaves were doing some pretty complicated things, we might consider. They would do bookkeeping and accounting. They would do math. They would do language tutoring. They would build ships. They would be good at stone work or, you know, building temples and things, you know. I mean, some very impressive things that these slaves would do. But the education that was given to the slaves was considered, was what they called, what the Latins later called vocational education. That is, their education was to teach them to do a particular job. Vocation, the root of vocation is voca, which means to call. And so, if someone's called to work as a shipbuilder, he needs to learn the vocation of shipbuilding, do you see? So there was a whole apprenticeship and teaching arrangement in the Greek world for people who were slaves. But there was a different kind of education for people who were free men. And that was what they called the liberal education, the liberal arts education. Now the word arts is an interesting word too. What we think of as art is usually painting or sculpture or music composition or something like that. The performing arts or the visual arts or the musical arts. But for the Greeks and interpreted by the medievals, the word art simply meant skill. It means the ability to do a certain thing. It's a skill. And so shipbuilding was an art. Accounting was an art, but they were arts that were taught for vocation only. The liberal arts, the arts that were taught to the free men, were arts that taught you how to think. And that's what we mean by liberal arts. And they were very specific. In the Middle Ages, those liberal arts were boiled down to seven. Do you all know about the seven liberal arts? Anybody, can you name them? Anybody name them? Astronomy is one, yes. Geometry is one, good. Logic is one, yes. Arithmetic, super, you guys are on the ball. Rhetoric, yes, that's five. No, not philosophy. Music is one, yes, strangely enough. And one more. the sort of basic one, not philosophy. Well, it's kind of like, it's in the language category, it's grammar. So, you have what they call the trivium, three arts, tri-via-um means where three roads come together. So, the trivium is grammar and logic and rhetoric. And the other four are called the quadrillion for obvious reasons. And they are the ones you mentioned, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music. Why would they think those were the most important things to teach? Well, first of all, the goal, you remember, of education was to know God. That's the purpose. to know him and then to be able to love what he loves to the degree that he loves it. Augustine had a word for this in Latin. He called it the ordo amoris, the order of our loves, the proper order, the hierarchy, if you will, of our loves. You put first things first and you put second things second and third things third and so on. And in doing so, you reorder your heart. One of the most grievous of the effects of the fall is the change in our hearts about what we love and what we attach our hearts to. And if we attach our hearts to the wrong things first, we lose the things that ought to be first, and then we lose the thing that we put first, too. Can you imagine why? It's because the secondary things find their source in the primary things. If I were to love my dog more than I love God, or let me make it simpler, how about I love my dog more than I love my job, my responsibility to provide. And so every chance I had, I spent with my dog, Because I love him, her, I got a girl dog. I love her more than I love going to work and making a living. Well, strangely enough, I'd be fired from my job, wouldn't I? Nobody would pay me not to show up. But the really funny thing is, my dog would starve. You see? Because she depends on me making that job higher in the hierarchy than she is. And if she were smart, she'd be glad that I do put my job ahead of her. You could say the same thing about your children or about your spouse. You could say, I can't love my wife more than I love God. The reality is I lose God then, but then my wife suffers too, because it's by loving God that I'm able to love her better. Do you see? So if you have your loves out of order, the strange thing is you lose the thing you put second, but you also lose the thing that depended on that second thing for its existence and its life and health. So the ordo amoris is extremely important, and the way to get to know What to love is by way of theology. We study God and what he wants to tell us. And the way, they said in the Middle Ages, to study God is to learn the skills that you need to unpack what he reveals to us. Because, can you imagine for a minute, a finite creature like me? Not only am I sinful, but I'm also, even if I weren't sinful, I'm still finite. I'm dependent on someone else for my life. How on earth would I ever get smart enough to figure out what God believes, thinks, loves, hates, any like that? On my own, I mean. Well, it's not going to happen. He's infinitely greater than I am. Beyond my wildest dreams, I'm not going to be able to fathom even the beginnings of his mind on my own. But thanks be to God. He hasn't left me to figure it out myself. He's revealed himself to us, hasn't he? Well, how does he reveal himself to us? Well, he does it in two ways, we're told by our theologians. He reveals himself to us in what they call special revelation, and he reveals himself in what we call general revelation. Now, special revelation, Special doesn't mean, now isn't that special? It means specific, it has the same root as specific and what else would you say? Specific, special. At any rate, I'll think of the other one in a minute. But it means particular, it means specific, it means something in particular rather than general as opposed to general which has its root in genus. Oh, I know what it was, species, there it is. The root of special is the same as the word in species. The root of general is the same as the root in the word that we use for genus. And genus, think of the genus of hamburger and then the species of whatever you like, Wendy's or Whataburger or something, right? Some sort of subset of hamburgers. Well, in the same way, we've got revelation that is general. We're told about it, interesting enough, in special revelation, so we know it's reliable because we always interpret general revelation by way of special revelation. Special revelation has a higher authority in a sense, but it's not older. Strangely enough, the written word, the special revelation of the Bible, which is what it is, is much younger than general revelation. Have you ever thought about that? The creation of the world itself is much older than the written books that we have in the Bible. Now, how much older is always debated, and I'm not going to get into that. But the point is, general revelation starts at the beginning of Genesis, where you see him speak the world, the universe into existence, creation into existence. So you've got general revelation, you've got special revelation. So the educators thinking about how to think in Christian categories about what to teach the next generation, turned to the Greeks and saw all these arts that they taught, all the ones I just mentioned, and there are more, too, but they picked these in particular. What is it that the trivium has to do with Revelation? Grammar, logic, rhetoric. What do they have in common, grammar, logic, rhetoric? Well, they're all language. They're about language, right? Grammar of of sentences, logic, connecting sentences together to come up with syllogisms, rhetoric, the ability to speak your thoughts compellingly, to hear and make sense of other people's speeches and respond. There's a whole lot to do with language in there. Why would that be important? Because special revelation is the way God revealed himself to us. Special revelation is in words. And so, you need the tools by which, the tools necessary to make sense of words. Well, what about the quadrivium? Well, the quadrivium is arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music, and those four actually have to do with numbers. Arithmetic, obviously. Geometry, shapes, plane and three-dimensional and two-dimensional shapes, you know. Astronomy has to deal with grand distances between the Sun and us, various things like that. All the physics of the stars and so on. And then finally, music. A lot of people don't understand why music is included there, but let me tell you why. It doesn't have anything to do with composing music or singing music or playing music. It has to do with math. Music turns out to be a study in ratios. Arithmetic is a study in number and function, geometry and shape, astronomy and distance, and music is about ratios. There are whole number ratios in a string, like in that piano there, that give you overtones, and that generates harmony. And harmony, Plato argued, is the essence of what it means to appreciate beauty. He argued that we ought to teach beautiful music to young people before they're able to reason. when they're young, so very young, you know, before they're actually thinking in logical terms. Because you want their hearts to attach to beautiful things, to harmony. And the reason for that is that later on in life, when they start thinking about things, they'll figure out how harm, their desire will always be for harmony of any elements they find in the world. They long for harmony. They long for harmony in a painting or harmony in a sculpture. The various elements being in right relationship with each other. But then it goes beyond that. It goes to the harmony, say, of a decent business arrangement. I'll give you 10 of these if you'll give me one of those. And we both say, yeah, that's a fair deal. That's a good deal. There's a harmony of 10 and one in that case. Ultimately, well, not ultimately, but close to that, there's the harmony of a good marriage. A man and a woman are, as you know, very different. But they're harmonious with one another. They're intended to be. They're supposed to be complementary of one another. But ultimately, what Plato said was, the greatest harmony of all is justice. He says that if a person, a citizen, does something that is worthy of honor, then the state ought to give him a medal, you know, or throw him a parade or, you know, something. Do something honorable in return. There's a relationship between the exercise of my citizenship and the response of the state. If I do something dishonorable, if I go rob a bank or something, then the state ought to respond in the negative, that is, to bring punishment against me, and that each of those, if done in accordance with harmony, will be just. And that's what he longs for. If you've ever read The Republic, that's what he's talking about, the proper city arrangement, the arrangement of politics, as it were, in the true sense of the word, the polis, the city. How is it that we're supposed to relate to one another? He draws a direct connection between the harmony that you learn when you're very young and the harmony of a good society in the end. Do you see? So, these guys in the Middle Ages, these scholars, were serious about trying to figure out how they might make sense of what God has revealed. Theology. Theos is the word for God, right? And logi is the word for word. Logos. That's why we have, if you were wanting to study rocks, you would study geology. If you wanted to study life, how is it that the cells work? How is it that our lives are possible? You would study bio, which means life. Bio-logy. Bio-logy, right? Well, theology was the study of God. And the way to study God is to study his revelation. And the way to study his revelation, they argued, was to teach young people the tools necessary to unlock what God has spoken. Now what I want to do now is take you to Chartres Cathedral and show you, this is what it looks like on the west end. This was a building that was built in 1145. That was like six months ago, a long time ago. 1145, and then it burned down, part of it burned down, and it was rebuilt in 1194, I think. And you can see, if you look on the right side, the old spire in what they call the Romanesque style, and the new spire built into the next century on the left, the new Gothic style. But that's not what I'm going to talk about today. I want you to see the three portals. Do you see the three doors at the bottom there? This is at the foot of the cross. Think of the building as a cross. You're at the foot of the cross. It's laid down on the ground. And the length of the cross goes away from you. And then there's a transept. The arms of the cross are further back like that toward the east. And then finally above that is the head of the cross where what they call the apse is, where the choir sits and so on. Well, this is the foot of the cross, and these three portals here are the main entrances into the building. What you'll see here in this next slide is that rightmost portal. There's a door there, and above it, it's kind of dark, I guess. Is there a way we can turn the lights down in here, do you? Is there a way for them to see the, thinking about the ones that are actually on the stage. You don't need to see me, you can just hear me. If it's a lot of trouble, don't worry about it. But the, hey, maybe, oh, super. That's what the French say, super. If you can see this, I'm going to give you a close-up in a minute, but it's a little fuzzy, I think. But anyway, this is called a tympanum, this area above the door. And in the tympanum, you see a large figure there, that's Mary. Remember back in 1145, everybody was a Catholic in the West, right? This is long before the Reformation. So Mary is seated in heaven on a throne, and she's got a crown on her head. She's the queen of heaven, they say. Okay. In her lap is Jesus as a baby, basically. If you could get up there close to him and see him, you'd see that he has a kind of an old man's head. It's very bizarre. He's got an old man's head and a baby's body. because they couldn't imagine Jesus even as a baby not being wise, you know, and old and all. Okay. So on either side of him and her, there are angels. Can you see those big angels with the wings? I'll give you a close up. There you go. There are wings on those characters. And so they're angels and they're worshiping. Here he is in heaven. He's enthroned in heaven. They're worshiping him all around. But on the outside of these, of the tympanum, the round tympanum in there, you see these two what they call archivolts. This area here is one of them, and this area here is another one, and they go up and around. They're twin archivolts that go up and around the outside of that tympanum. And in that first inner archivolt, you'll see more figures with wings. You see this guy here? He's got wings. The one up there has wings. On the other side, it's the same way. But outside, these characters don't have wings. Can you see? This is a woman in robes. That's a man up there with a little lap desk and pens behind him. And down here, you see another one. I'll show you a close-up of the others. On the other side, it's the same way. Yes? Oh, indeed. Happy to. There. Does that help? Here's the other side. And you see in the inner archivolt, you'll see more wings. You see the top one up there, the next one down, the next one down, they all have wings. But then you come to this woman here and she's got no wings. And there's a little man here, there's a little man here, another woman with no wings. Who are these people? Well, I'm going to tell you. They are the seven liberal arts manifest in two statues for each art. One of them is a woman anthropomorphizing the art. Kind of like, you know, Lady Liberty. She's standing for liberty, you know, the Statue of Liberty in New York. Just like that. Here you have a woman, you see her there, and she's got a hammer in her hand and she's striking a bell. Can you see that? and in her lap is a kind of a harp. And on the wall next to her, on the right side there, is what they call a viol, which is an early medieval sort of ancestor of the violin. And on the left, she's got another stringed thing there, and that is a monochord. It's a piece of equipment that Pythagoras created, in order to talk about the ratios of parts of a string. So he moves a little bridge to maybe one-fourth, and he compares the string on the left side with the string on the right side, and he gets two pitches, but they happen to be in harmony with each other. And he moves it to the center, and he, you know, plays both. You get a feel for what the ratios generate in terms of harmony. So this is the lady music. That's who she is. She's the personification of music. And right below her is this little fellow, working away. And this is Pythagoras. Pythagoras was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and religious guy, pagan religion guy. And he's working like mad. He's got pens, you see, up there on the wall, and he's working, writing on his desk in front of him. That's Pythagoras. Now, what is a pagan mathematician and pagan worshiper doing on a Christian church? Keep that question in mind. Here's another one. This is the lady logic. What she's got is, in her left hand, is a torch. Do you see that? It's a torch with light because logic sheds light. She's got a creature, a kind of critter, looks like a half snake, half, I don't know, dragon or something. And it's squirming around in her hand. And that's to signify that logic is tough to hold onto. It's difficult to hold. So it's squirming. She's trying to master it, you see. Well, right below her is this fellow. And this is Aristotle, the great Greek pagan philosopher. Aristotle wrote a book on logic that everybody still uses. Here's another one. This is the lady. Well, I'll tell you about it in a minute. You see what she's got in her? She's got a book in her left hand or sorry. Yeah, her left hand. And she's got two boys at her feet and they've got books in their hands. Do you see that? But one of the boys is reaching across and pulling the hair of the other boy. You see that? Some things never change. Remember, this was carved in 1200 A.D. And you see what she's got in her right hand? They're switches. They're branches for discipline. She's going to spank this boy for pulling the hair. That's what she's doing. She's the lady grammar. she's teaching grammar to the children, you see? And right below her is this fellow, and that is the grammar, Roman grammarian Donatus. So you've got, oh, I'll give you one more. This is the lady astronomy, you can tell because she's looking up, do you see? She's looking at the stars. And right below her, is this fellow, worked with his desk, and that's Ptolemy. Do you know about Ptolemy? When this building was built, they still taught that the Earth was the center of the solar system, and that was taught by Ptolemy. It wouldn't be for another 400 years that we would come up with, through Galileo and Copernicus, come up with a, what they call a a heliocentric theory about the solar system, that is the sun is at the center and the earth revolves around it. Ptolemy argued the earth was in the center, geocentric view and that's what they still taught when this building was built and for 400 years more. So, what you're looking at is Christ enthroned in heaven, this is their depiction, Christ enthroned in heaven with all the angels around him, worshipping him, and outside that, the seven liberal arts, worshipping him. That's what they're there for. For the medievals, there was no distinction when they dealt with the truth. There was no distinction between Revelation and reason, that's a modern problem. Do you see what I mean? It's a modern problem. It's really only in the last 300 years that we've had a serious debate or assumption that we could somehow continue to learn properly if we left God out of the equation. And that's what we've got today in spades. And we're looking at the result, I think, in our culture. But for the medievals, with this idea of a medieval synthesis, they needed to be able to connect the revelation of God, what God has said about himself and about the world he's created, about the nature of human beings and so on, in his revelation, with the reasoning that they were getting that came from the Greeks and was established by, well, It was established in the Bible too, but there were a lot of tools that the Greeks had come up with that were helpful to deal with language and the world. It took the medievals though, with their Christian orientation, to take those tools and make use of them to God's glory. That's what we have here. And so education is for the purposes of knowing God, And if you take him out of the equation, you no longer have any kind of education. What you've got is a reduction down to a materialistic kind of view of life. Now, in the talks that I want to give today, I'm starting with this one on purpose because I want to lay this foundation. What I want you to be able to see by the end of the day tomorrow is how it is that beauty works. Beauty, I'm arguing, is the relationship of the material with the invisible, the material world with the invisible world. What beauty is, is the recognition, that spark of recognition that we experience when we see something made out of stone or paint or music or theater or film or whatever else we use to create, language, When we find something made that way that opens our eyes to the ability to see, makes us able to see something that we couldn't see otherwise. Let me give you a quick example. Jesus talked this way all the time. Many people want to argue, how is it that you think that beauty is defined in the Bible? There's not anything that says, you know, red is beautiful and blue is not, or straight lines are beautiful and curved lines are not, or something. There's nothing didactic in the Bible about what might be considered beautiful. But I argue there is. First of all, you can find it in Psalm 27, verse 4. David says, one thing I ask of the Lord, one thing I desire. This is the thing he wants more than anything else. And that's to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to do a particular thing. Do you remember what it is? That's right. To gaze upon the beauty of the Lord. In other words, the Lord himself is what beauty is, just like he is what truth is and just like he is what goodness is. The glory of God is at least these three things combined. Truth, goodness and beauty. There's more than that, but there's at least that. And so our experiences of the beautiful in this world are God's attempt to get our attention to him. because we don't want to stop looking. When we find something beautiful, we don't want to stop looking at it. We want to look through it to the God that made it. So there's something that resonates with us about God's beauty when we find something beautiful in this world. So the artist has the responsibility, I argue, to take the material that he's shaping, that is, whether it's stone in this case, or music or poetry or whatever he's shaping, painting, and put it in such a way that it opens your eyes to something that you weren't going to be able to see otherwise, that is only invisible. So not only does the psalm describe God as being beautiful, but the Bible is full of examples of literary technique, that is, God speaks in literary forms, tells stories, tells parables. He uses metaphors. Think about John 15, I am the vine and you are the branches, you know that? Well, that's a metaphor, isn't it? I am the vine and you are the branches. He doesn't even say I'm like the vine and you're like the branches, which would have been a what? Simile, very good. But he says, I am the vine. You are the branches. So what's he trying to say? You can put yourself in the framework of the disciple hearing this. He's saying, I know vines and branches, and I know how they work, right? branch gets disconnected from the vine, well then it shrivels up and dies, it's no good anymore, right? So maybe he's saying that he's the source of life and I'm the branch that needs to stay, okay, I get it, oh, dink, a light goes off, cool, I get it, right? And that's exactly true, all of that is right, and that's part and parcel of what he's trying to say. But he's also trying to say the opposite thing, and that's this. He didn't just cast around looking for something. Oh, is there anything out here that looks a little like me? Oh, I know, that vine there. No, no, no, no. That vine that he speaks of, he created. So he's the original, and the vine is the imitation. The vine is the artwork. Think of it like that. The invisible relationship between Christ and his followers, is manifest in the physicality of that vine and branch. And that's the process I'm trying to get you to see. Artists take things and shape them in such a way that they can open our eyes to things that you can't see otherwise. You can't see the relationship between Christ and the church. You have to see it metaphorically. In fact, you can't see it except for metaphors. Did you know that? Every time God reveals himself to us, he speaks metaphorically. I'm not taking anything away from the truth. What I'm saying is that is the truth. He is the king. He is the shepherd. He is the bread. He is the vine, you see. But it's because those things are the closest thing that our little minds can get our heads around, you know, to be able to make sense of the reality. He's the king. Earthly kings are a bad imitation. He's the father. Earthly fathers are a bad imitation, but they're there. He said, I'm going to put my thumbprint on the world. Like that. I'm going to make vines look like me. I'm going to make doors look like me. I am the door, he says. What's a door, anyway? It opens, it makes it possible for you to pass through a wall, right? You go from this room to the lobby out there by way of a door. If there wasn't a door there, you wouldn't be able to do that. You'd have to cut one, wouldn't you? You'd have to do something. Dramatic. So a door is a means by which you get from one place to the other. And then Jesus says, I'm the door. What does that tell you? My question is, since he created the world, would there be doors if he weren't the door? Would we have doors in the world if it weren't for the fact that he is the door? suddenly makes the whole universe seem like a very complicated and expensive sermon illustration. Because it's all there. Why do you have a stomach and why do you need to put bread in it? Because he's the bread and that's the metaphor, do you see? So, we do the same thing with our art. We write, we write, what light through yonder window breaks, it is the east and Juliet is the sun. Well, Juliet's not the sun, obviously. So why would Shakespeare write that? Well, first of all, he wants us to get a glimpse of Juliet. She's shining forth like the, like, like the sun. But I think the invisible part of that metaphor, the thing that the metaphor is really revealing to us, Juliet is the sun, it's revealing Romeo's heart. We, in a sense, see Juliet through his eyes because of that metaphor. Does that make sense? So that's what art does, and I think recognizing That spark of recognition that you get when you hear, Juliet is the sun, oh, I get it. That's what our experience of beauty is. And so, beauty turns out to be harmony. There's a harmonious relationship between the object, the material object, and the thing that it's pointing to. Just like music. So music becomes one of the greatest possible ways to reflect the beauty of God, I think. Of course, I'm a musician, so what can I say? So that's what I'm about, and that's what we're going to be doing. In a few hours, I'll come back and we'll talk about how the Ordo Amoris came apart. The medieval synthesis came apart. in the Enlightenment, and when it did, the kinds of problems that came with that. And then tonight, I want to talk to you about form. I want to talk to you about how it is that form and content go together, because it's not enough just to say the truth. You have to say the truth beautifully. You have to do it in a way that opens the eyes, as I was just talking about. And then tomorrow, I'm going to give you examples in visual arts about how beauty works, and then how form shows up in music. Sound good? All right, you've been very patient. See you in a few hours.