Beauty and Process Theology:
A Journey of Transformation
By
Patricia Adams Farmer
Topical Line Drives
Volume 42
Energion Publications
Gonzalez, Florida
2020
Copyright © 2020, Patricia Adams Farmer
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Scripture quotations marked RSV are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, and 1971 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
ISBN: 978-1-63199-621-4
eISBN: 978-1-63199-623-8
Energion Publications
PO Box 841
Gonzalez, FL 32560
https://energion.com
Dedication
To Ron,
a beautiful soul
and my partner in the adventure of life
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: The Dream of Beauty 4
Chapter 2: The Poet of the World 8
Chapter 3: The Art of Beauty 13
Chapter 6: Beauty and Creative Transformation 24
Introduction
In De Musica, Augustine described beauty as “a plank amid the waves of the sea.”1 From the perspective of process theology, the experience of beauty not only offers life-saving rescue from the storms of life, but also serves as a glimpse into the very nature of God and the world.
Writing this book during the coronavirus quarantine offers new meaning to the phrase, “waves of the sea,” as waves of the virus sweep across the globe, ravaging lives and livelihoods. This new catastrophe layered atop systemic racism, economic injustice, and the existential threat of climate change, catapults Augustine’s words into a new world on the brink of drowning. How can beauty be a plank against such waves? How is beauty relevant in such times as these? What part does beauty play in the transformation of our exhausted and beleaguered world? And how can beauty tend to our aching souls in these times of crises on every front?
These are some of the questions I address in this short theology of beauty, inspired by process theology, scripture, experience—and in loving companionship with poets, philosophers, artists, mystics, musicians, and the mother of all teachers: nature herself.
In this offering on beauty, I will often refer to philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), whose works are the primary source and inspiration for process theology. In Adventures of Ideas, he often referred to beauty with a capital “B,” surely to distinguish it from our everyday use of the word “beauty,” which often falls short of its fuller meaning. I will follow his cue from this point forward, primarily using Beauty (with a capital B) to indicate this larger theological sense of the word.
Finally, this book seeks to offer a pastoral process theology for those seeking a deeper experience with both Beauty and God, for this is the story of a beautiful God. And, while profound expressions of process theology are found in other faiths besides my own, the process theology expressed in this book issues from my own progressive Christian standpoint. As a companion to Bruce Epperly’s foundational books in this series, including Process Theology: Embracing Adventure with God2 and Process Spirituality3, this offering introduces process theology through the eyes of Beauty.
Chapter 1: The Dream of Beauty
“The teleology of the Universe is directed toward the production of Beauty.”
– Alfred North Whitehead4
I once defined Beauty as “that which glistens on the edges of our yearnings and lures us into the depth of things.”5 This definition was born of the marriage between process theology and my personal experience in the arts. Growing up a musician, artist, and dancer, I longed for a spiritual home that took account of the tender experiences of Beauty in this world. As a deeply religious person, I struggled inwardly to harmonize an all-good God with the realities of hunger, injustice, and war. The problem of evil and suffering hovered over my young life, eventually leading me to a religious crisis.
After I discovered the God whom Alfred North Whitehead described as “the poet of the world,”6 everything changed for me. I read the Bible differently. I began to let go of the traditional God of the philosophers and embraced the relational God whose character is love and whose vision is Beauty. This story of God comes in many different expressions. But for those of us who find our religious identity under the umbrella of progressive Christianity and/or process theology, we see this God of love and Beauty unfolding in a special way in the compassionate ministry of Jesus. This divine image writes itself into our intimate lives as Deep Empathy—the very real Presence in whom we “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). This God does not act unilaterally as an all-powerful Greek deity or a policeman in the sky. Rather, this God feels our pain and transforms our suffering with all the creative energies of a divine Poet.
Whitehead also suggested that Beauty is God’s vision for the world—the very dream of God. What does this dream look like? How can we define Beauty (with a capital B) in this divine and cosmic sense?
Intense Harmony
Our culture often uses the word “beauty” in the shallow and rigidly narrow sense of glamor or prettiness. That long-standing distortion has some philosophical precedence in the aesthetic works of two eighteenth-century philosophers, Edmond Burke and Immanuel Kant.
Kant, in Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, developed Burke’s idea of relegating beauty to the realm of the feminine, while suggesting an even higher category of finer feeling called the “sublime,” which was understood by the male sensibility alone.7 Kant and Burke spoke of the sublime as the feeling one has when gazing at mountain peaks, raging storms, and night. The beautiful was limited to the gentler beauties of flower beds, grazing flocks, and daylight. Naturally, the