originally published 8/1/2021

Junius Johnson warns that the pursuit of beauty is both perilous and unavoidable in his book The Father of Lights: A Theology of Beauty (Baker Academic, 2020). The desire for beauty points to the desire for God. For unbelievers, that desire for beauty, Johnson says, is “the person’s heart witnessing against them,” because beauty is particularly capable of destroying modern defenses against God. Nonetheless, humans must be wary because we are experts in twisting good into evil, “mistaking the intermediary for the ultimate.” Johnson articulates Bonaventure’s idea of “contuition” as a way to rightly align recognition of the beautiful and recognition of God. He also brings in the concept of analogy, explaining how creation is a language God invented to speak about Himself and that, therefore, “things belong to a vocabulary of the divine.” This interview was originally published on Volume 151 on the Journal.

25 minutes

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