An Exploration of “Being”

Koal Manis

I attended a school for elementary through high school that pushed for understanding of who God is.

God is not merely the Creator of the Universe—rather, he is the standard for how we understand the world in which we live.

The motto for The Academy of Classical Christian Studies was, “Love the True, the Good and the Beautiful;” the transcendentals, which are explanations of “being.”

God is being, everything has been created in imitation of who God is. God is ultimate being.

The apostle Paul used Greek philosophy to show that true being (the ancient Greeks were interested in the idea of being and what being meant for the world) is found in God.

Acts 17:28 reads, “for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’”

Paul used quotes from Greek philosophers to show that their ideas about “being” were correct, but they did not attribute the correct God, the Christian God, as the source of being.

The world and the things of the world have “being,” they have essence because God created everything.

Because of who God is as Creator and how he created all things, He is the standard for truth, goodness and beauty (a return to the transcendentals, medieval ideas that explain the inner connections of being).

This implies, however, that there is no relativism or subjectivism. Because God is the standard for truth, goodness and beauty, there cannot be individual views on whether something is true, good or beautiful.

With God as the Creator and the source of all being, this implies an objectivity when it comes to truth, goodness and beauty.

Jesus, being fully God and fully man explains that he is the standard for truth.

In John 14:6 it reads, “Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Jesus is not truth, there are not true things about Jesus, Jesus is THE truth. Jesus is the standard for truth and the ultimate truth.

God is also the standard of all that is good. God created the world and chose to allow Adam and Eve to come into the world.

Adam and Eve brought sin into the world, bringing evil into the world. God cannot do evil and cannot sin, He is objectively good.

Psalm 5:4 reads, “For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you.”

The Bible affirms that God cannot sin. As the Creator of all, all good things are judged as good in reference to God, measured against God.

There are beautiful things in the world that reflect the beauty of God. Beauty is not “in the eye of the beholder,” rather some things are objectively and inherently more beautiful than other things.

 A waterfall is inherently more beautiful than a urinal. Beautiful things reflect their creator: God.

The transcendentals are pictures into who God is and his relationship with his creation. We truly ought to see them as objective. Subjectivity destroys our view of who God is as ultimate Creator and the source of all that is good.

It is from God that all things have their being, it is from God that all people have being. And the characteristics of God are reflected in people all across the globe.

We also ought to love the true, love the good and love the beautiful.

Love for these transcendentals ought to propel us towards telling and speaking truth, loving and doing good and celebrating the beautiful.

Therefore, speaking the truth about God, loving and doing good through God and celebrating the beautiful of God.