Symposium

GORDON COLLEGE SPRING SYMPOSIUM—A TRADITION!
Thursday, April 18, 2013

Theme—"What is Beauty"

“One thing I have desired of the LORD,” the Psalmist writes, “That will I seek: That I may dwell in the house of the LORD All the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, And to inquire in His temple” (Psalm 27:4) “Beauty awakens the soul to act,” wrote Dante, while the American theologian Jonathan Edwards once mused of “the beauties that delight us but we can’t say why [when] we find ourselves pleased in the beholding of the violets, but we know not what secret regularity or harmony it is that creates that pleasure in our minds.”

What, then, is this thing we call beauty? This question is the theme of the 2013 Spring Symposium. In reflecting upon it, participants are enjoined to consider many related questions:

• What is the relationship between the experience of beauty and religious experience? Can beauty lead one to God?
• What role should beauty play in Christian worship?
• Is beauty a timeless notion or one that is culturally and historically constructed?
• Is the goal of the artist (broadly understood) to produce something that is beautiful? Always?
• How has/how should the Church treated its artists?
• What is the relationship between our desire to make things (homo faber) and the production of the beautiful?
• Do we have a moral obligation to render our surroundings beautiful?
• What forces in society shape our understanding of beauty?
• To what extent should the pursuit of truth or virtuous action be considered beautiful?
• Are Christian notions of beauty appreciably different from generally human notions?
• Are there regnant understandings of beauty in our culture that we should reject?
• Satan, remember, is described as an angel of light. What is the relationship between beauty and evil?
• Many forces in our culture (not least advertising) focus attention on the body and our anxieties about it. What is a morally and theologically sound understanding of the body?
• What implications do some Christian teachings—Creation, the Fall, Incarnation, Trinity inter alia—have for thinking well and wisely about beauty?
• If we are to understand the Creation as beautiful, what do we make of the wanton death and destruction that we see in the natural world?
• How does beauty intersect with the categories gender and race?

Purpose

The purpose of Gordon College Symposium is to allow students, faculty and staff to engage in conversation about a major contemporary or perennial issue toward the goal of learning from one another. The events of Symposium day will include panel discussions, exhibits, debates, poetry readings, presentations, performances and outside festivities at various campus locations.