Let us identify the Good with the top, normative layer concerning morality and politics.
Next, let us identify the Beautiful with the middle existential layer, the layer of symbol and narrative.
Finally, let us identify the True with the bottom ontological layer, the location of the Real.
Thus:
The Good [Moral]
The Beautiful [Existential]
The True [Ontological]
Here are some initial thoughts about how such a mapping might be fruitful.
First, I've suggested in this series that working the existential layer is the path forward for post-Christian evangelism. Our culture is thirsting for meaning. But more than that, there is also a desire for beauty. For example, as I describe in The Shape of Joy moral beauty is the biggest predictor of wonder, transcendence, and awe, an experience that creates a "small self," a feeling of connection with a reality greater than your own. There is an aesthetic aspect to the moral life. There is an artfulness to living well. The Beautiful suffuses the Good with zest, passion, unity, and light. The Beautiful keeps the Good mysterious and ineffable. Separated from the Beautiful, the Good becomes grey, grim, legalistic, and puritanical. The Good can even become ugly.
But the Beautiful needs its connection with the True. The Beautiful must touch the Real. Otherwise, the Beautiful will become sentimental or merely self-expressive. If the Beautiful loses contact with the True it becomes kitschy, a pretty patina. That, or it becomes a reflection of the artist's inner life. Now, insofar as an artist's self-expression taps into the True, giving voice to something shared and universal in the human condition, it becomes art. But given how human persons can be malformed in various ways, creative expressions can be self-indulgent, performative, bizarre, elitist, neurotic, sick, or vacuous. Creative self-expression is not the same as art, and the critical issue is its connection with the True. Lacking contact with the Real creative expressions can function as communication (let me share with you something about myself) or consumed as entertainment, but they fall short of being art.
And let me make a point here about the scope of the True. In our increasingly post-Christian world the scope of the Real has been delimited to subjective human experience. As I point out in The Shape of Joy, the only thing that is "real" for us is the drama within the human mind. Thus, "truth" in art increasingly means "true to the human experience." And while this is correct as far as it goes, when limited to human psychology art becomes a neurotic mirror and loses a capacity for transcendence. Art has suffered in the modern world as a consequence. Consider the beauty of nature, Notre-Dame Cathedral, the music of Bach, or the life of Jesus of Nazareth. The ontological realm of the Beautiful is large and far exceeds inner human drama. Yes, the subjective life of the artist can be a truthful reflection of the human experience. The particular can express the universal. And a feeling of solidarity can result. This is no small achievement. But the Beautiful and the True transcend human psychology. The Real is greater than what is locked up in our minds, and art reaches toward and expresses that transcendent ontological encounter.
