Beauty For Truth’s Sake: The Creed’s Amazing Hidden Symmetry Between Son & Spirit

One of the most persistent claims of the Catholic tradition is that truth, goodness, being, and beauty are convertible.

Yet, the relationship between truth and beauty is probably the most difficult to see for us. Leo Tolstoy is representative of this trend (think: Nietzsche’s saving lie)  when he says  in his Kreutzer Sonata, “It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.” 

Hans Urs von Balthasar almost single-handedly fought to repair this rift in his theological aesthetics, especially in Seeing the Form. In turn, Stratford Caldecott picked up on this school of thought by writing about beauty for truth’s sake.

One example is his discussion of the Apostles’ Creed in All Things Made New. See how his rearrangement of the Creed in the following pictures sheds light upon the elegant form and symmetry, in other words, the beauty of the Creed:

The commentary unpacks the implications:

Here’s the rest:

Nearly every page of All Things Made New is packed with memorable and useful insights like these. They suggest conversion is a matter of seeing our everyday world with new eyes.

It’s as beautiful and true as Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata: