The Fine Line Between Creativity and Bartok

My darling Emma is like a sedulous little truffle pig for current events, especially those musky tidbits that stir one to indignation.

One of today's offerings was due to the anniversary of the martyrdom of 21 coptic christians in Libya. They were kidnapped and beheaded on video by the Islamic State (IS) for their refusal to renounce their faith. They died with a bold confession on their lips. Scripture is clear about what awaits them; a martyrs crown and the wedding feast of the lamb. Heck, even Pope Frank said as much.

But "not so fast," say the forces of internet trad catholicism. "Don't think they are getting in that easy."

You see, these coptic christians are not in communion with the church of Rome, and don't we all know from the canons that a martyr can only be one who is in communion with Rome? These were schismatic heretics; one can hardly know if they make it in.

The split was at Chalcedon. Both Rome and the copts rejected nestorianism (real heretics), but split over whether it was two natures (human and divine) distinct and coexisting in one christ (dyophysitism) or whether there was one nature where the human and divine were fused into a single nature in christ (miaphysitism).

In other words, the copts and Rome split over a disagreement on Aristotle. And the trad caths don't accept the witness of the martyrs because they do not submit to the correct ecumenical supervisors.

We are creative creatures. We love to create. We love to invent. We love to take an idea and try to deconstruct, reconstruct, and perfect it. But in excess, it is a tendency that leads nowhere good, or worse, to Bartok.

Perhaps you could convince me that diaphysitism vs. miaphysitism is vitally important. I read the passages used pro and con in scripture, and what I arrived at is that god and man is one christ, but I'm not sure why greek philosophy had to get involved. Do you both agree that God and Man suffered death on the cross for the sins of the world? Great. Why are we splitting this hair again?

But we love to split the hairs. And then split them again, and again, and again.

I kind of figure that is how roman canon law got where it is, so far away from any sedes doctrina that they can't even see one through a telescope. So far from being grounded in the primary text that they doubt the fate of the coptic martyrs.

We are all like the sadducees in Mark 12, setting up insane, convoluted, scenarios to test the weird extremeties of the technicalities of the law. We love to play with the edges, and in doing so we risk losing site of truth and beauty, even as the sadducees lost the hope of the resurection.

It is funny, I only recently had the aha moment that this human tendency to take and riff on ideas until they were tortured and twisted beyond belief was actually ancient. It is something that I'm used to associating with modernism and the sins of the academy, and it was crazy to reflect that talmudic disputes and roman canon law are actually exhibit A of torturing the good, the beautiful, and the true into horrific new shapes to impress your friends with.

So let me step back and say something that maybe I need to say explicitly for the reader. There is one ultimate source of truth, goodness, and beauty, and that is God. There are two places from which we learn about them: revelation and nature.

Rome and the Sadducees play out this abuse of revelation by creating inventions that are ever more distant from the source text, but which they claim have legitimacy because their traditions are revelation apart from scripture. Even above scripture (barf).

Where I'm used to complaining about this tendency more frequently is in the secular sphere. Bartok is my favorite shorthand for the uglification and march away from truth in the service of playing with interesting ideas. Tonality, besides being self-evident and pleasing to the human ear, is inherently mathmatical. Music can be studied as a mathematician or a physicist. You can write a formula for things that will sound nice together.

Atonality, or "post-tonality" is built upon being freed from natural harmonics. Free from things that are consonant. Free from beauty. Free to make ugly music. Free to make things not immediately recognizable as music. I like to pick on Bartok, but at least he has his moments. We have deconstructed so far since then. I admit my education stops in the 20th century with George Crumb, but I'm not sure I'm prepared for what comes after.

Or consider architecture, where art deco and neoclassicalism gave way to brutalism, and from thence into games with deconstruction and games with perspective. At least the Guggenheim is cool ugly. Its philosophical children--think Kunsthaus Graz or the VM Houses--are simply hideous. Even the 'organic' themes that are woven in are a subversion of what is actually seen in nature. It is only evocative of nature to a trained eye that is used to how other architects have made their own sideways allusions to nature.

I'm sure it could be played out even further and into things that mean less. There are gatekeepers out there inventing and extrapolating out starwars lore so that they can delight in their special secret knowledge to jump in with a well timed 'well ackshwally.'

There is objective reality. Objective truth. Objective good. Objective beauty.

We should absolutely play games with one another to explore truth, good, and beauty in all areas, but we have to stay grounded. We need to keep tethering ourselves back to reality. We need to remain objective.

The coptic martyrs are in paradise. Anyone who disagrees needs to spend less time in theological Bartok.