Faith on View

Corrective lenses: Why I was wrong about spanking my children

A recent trip to the optometrist reminded me that the unfortunate realities of aging include worsening eyesight. At this rate, my eyesight may soon be as bad as my hearing; at least that is what …

Even though I live in town, there’s a non-park wooded area within a short distance of my house that I sometimes like to go for a walk through. As woods go, they’re not as enchanted …

“A fool hath no delight in understanding, but that his heart may discover itself.” -Proverbs 18:2- “We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried …

Rondall, Pamela, and the kids in a fall 2014 portrait

A little while back I had a fan of Faith on View message me on Facebook asking me to once again post regularly on Faith on View. Okay, truth be told it really was more of an internet friend teasing me for my failures. For those who follow this blog, they noticed that in September posts stopped fairly abruptly. What happened was that I had the wonderful opportunity to become a Senior Lecturer at California College of the Arts which is one of the top Art Schools in the nation. But, I had previously committed to teaching two classes at William Jessup University, an evangelical school in the Sacramento area, and a class at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, where I am pursuing my PhD. This meant that in addition to the Theological Aesthetics course I was auditing from the esteemed Frank Birch Brown, I was also now teaching five classes at three different institutions. All that to say I was really busy and I let my writing on Faith on View slip. The good news is that this semester my teaching is reduced and I am only teaching one course at GTU and one at CCA. This should translate into more regular writing from me. I have a lot of ideas so I am looking forward to having more time to get them on “paper.”

Rondall, Pamela, and the kids in a fall 2014 portrait taken by Nicole DiGiorgio of Sweetness and Light Photography — Rondall, Pamela, and the kids in a fall 2014. Portrait taken by Nicole DiGiorgio of Sweetness and Light Photography

If you haven’t read Part 1 of this series please take a look. When I started to think about my aesthetic system, it was in large part inspired by my belief that there is an overlap …

Last semester I used my blog as a platform to think through a project I was working on entitled Five Evangelical Christs. It was a six part series which allowed me to think through ideas that turned into a more developed paper. I really enjoyed the process and got some great feedback, though more of that feedback was written on Facebook than showed up directly on this blog.

I think I will do something this semester in connection with my Philosophical Aesthetics class. I’ve decided that my big paper will be a systematic look at the concepts of the Beautiful and the Sublime. But, as I’ve been thinking this through, I believe I need to include two additional concepts: the Pretty and the Ugly.

The relationship of Beauty, Sublime, Pretty, and Ugly.

Beauty and Sublime both have a long history. Typically, they are set in opposition to each other. I, on the other hand, have a slightly different conception. The basis of my idea isn’t without historical precedent, but that is for another blog post…maybe. My conception has overlapping areas as illustrated with the above Venn diagram. In some ways the diagram is misleading. For example, I don’t believe that the majority of beauty is free of the pretty, sublime, and ugly. But, this is the best way I have, so far, been able to visualize my concept. Please feel free to make suggestions on this.