L/V 10+ Tip of the Day #292 Logos bias - truth (yes), goodness (sort of), beauty (oops) - the three

Another tip of the day (TOTD) series for Logos/Verbum 10. They will be short and often drawn from forum posts. Feel free to ask questions and/or suggest forum posts you'd like to see included. Adding comments about the behavior on mobile and web apps would be appreciated by your fellow forumites. A search for "L/V 10+ Tip of the Day site:community.logos.com" on Google should bring the tips up as should this Reading List within the application.

This tip is inspired by the forum post: L/V 10+ Tip of the Day #290 Logos bias - propositional vs. narrative, historic, mythic, covenant . . . - Logos Forums

[quote]

"Truth is what is, goodness is what ought to be, and beauty is what pleases God. Together, they form a triad of transcendentals that are essential to our understanding of God and the world."

Reference: Packer, J. I. Knowing God. InterVarsity Press, 1993, p. 92.

[quote]

"Truth is the foundation of all goodness and beauty. If there is no truth, then there is no standard by which to judge what is good or beautiful."

Reference: Sproul, R. C. The Holiness of God. Tyndale House Publishers, 1998, p. 143.

[quote]

"The three transcendentals are the three things that God is most fully: truth, goodness, and beauty. When we seek these things, we are seeking God himself."

Reference: Piper, John. Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist. Multnomah Books, 1986, p. 22.

[quote]

"The three transcendentals are the three things that make the world a meaningful place: truth, goodness, and beauty. They are the three things that God has created us to pursue."

Reference: Mohler, Albert. The Well-Ordered Life: Living with Purpose in a Chaotic World. Crossway Books, 2005, p. 120.

[quote]

"The three transcendentals are truth, goodness, and beauty. They are the ultimate realities to which all other realities are related. They are also the ultimate goals of human life."

Reference: Lossky, Vladimir. The Vision of God. St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1997, p. 21.

[quote]

"The three transcendentals are truth, goodness, and beauty. They are the three aspects of God's self-revelation in the world. They are also the three ways in which God calls us to participate in his life."

Reference: Balthasar, Hans Urs von. The Glory of the Lord: Theological Aesthetics. Vol. 1. Ignatius Press, 1982, p. 41.

[quote]

"The three transcendentals are truth, goodness, and beauty. They are the three most important things in the world. They are also the three things that God is most fully."

Reference: Barron, Robert. Catholicism: A Journey to the Heart of the Faith. Image Books, 2011, p. 12.

[quote]

"Truth, goodness, and beauty are the three transcendentals that express the divine perfection."

Reference: Dulles, Avery. The Splendor of Faith. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009, p. 75.

[quote]

"Truth, goodness, and beauty are the three words in which the meaning of reality is to be found."

Reference: Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Papers from Prison. SCM Press, 1953, p. 124.

[quote]

"Truth, goodness, and beauty are the three transcendentals that express the divine perfection. They are the three ways in which we can encounter God in the world."

Reference: Pope Francis. Lumen Fidei (The Light of Faith). Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2013, §27.

Okay, this is an overkill of quotations showing the importance of goodness and beauty but that is because Logos is so biased against beauty as an element of scripture study that something is needed to make up a post. Truth is the transcendental that Logos is focused on. Logos tools can be reshaped and abused to cover goodness. But beauty - visual arts, verbal arts, performing arts - is so neglected that it cannot even be linked into or used as a base for a workflow. The entire set of tools does not even include search tools into music, poetry, films, visual arts, ... for all of these I use external tools. Logos doesn't even carry the basic index resources ... for those I turn to my print library.

This is the total support from 418 resources owned in Logos -- the reason for padding the post with quotes on the importance of all three transcendentals.

Because different people learn best in different ways, this is a significant limitation to all users and to those building Bible study materials.

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Comments

DMB

Since I regard 'truth' (as commonly used in religious circles) as just guy-opinions, largely predicted by clan/family, I wouldn't be a good conversationalist.

But I think I've been reasonably chatty over the years, that Logos, structurally is a database mentality. Label it with no associated likelihood. One-to-one in the internal tables. A language to pull it back out. If you grew up with Excel and Access, you'd recognize Logos as your friend.

But it goes further, I think. You have your morphing, then your 'syntax' (barely), and then your discourse (also just barely). Maybe Biblical scholarship is stuck in the late 1800s (from whence each of these applied), but Logos seems stuck in time .... of greek philosophy, blind to the semitic world.

Impact-wise, I have to run software in parallel (mine) to get beyond Logos and its design. And buy from Amazon for ideas. That's ok, but I grind my analytical teeth, when I see the 'syntax' graphs or propositional outlines ... vs someone in the 1st century who tried to describe powers, faced with real spirits that people saw (or thought they did). Beauty in the face of the common death of ones child?

Lew Worthington

It's been said that two out of three ain't bad:

‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’

-- Keats

I have a bajillion Logos resources that cite that. And the Bard (the one from Stratford, not the one from Google) hints at most of this triad in another way:

The hand that hath made you fair hath made you good: the goodness that is cheap in beauty makes beauty brief in goodness.

I love exploring these kinds of things in Logos. One of the most fascinating aspects is how much diversity there is in understanding anything even if there's a near consensus on the topics of discussion.

xnman

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1272177#Comment_1272177

Since I regard 'truth' (as commonly used in religious circles) as just guy-opinions, largely predicted by clan/family, I wouldn't be a good conversationalist.

"God give us "truth" which is His word, the bible. By following it, we obtain goodness and beauty in God's eyes" - xnman September 20, 2023.

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1272177#Comment_1272177

Since I regard 'truth' (as commonly used in religious circles) as just guy-opinions, largely predicted by clan/family, I wouldn't be a good conversationalist.

And I'd get in trouble distinguishing between truth and ontological truth [:#]. But I've almost (well nearly almost) learned to not call out errors in logic.