Truth, goodness, and beauty are the only three things that we never get bored with, and never will, for all eternity, because they are attributes of ”Being”, and therefore of all God’s creation -Peter Kreeft
Knowledge of God
Truth, Goodness and Beauty are the "first" concepts, since they cannot be logically traced back to something preceding them. Each transcends the limitations of place and time, and is rooted in being.
The Transcendentals
Truth, Goodness and Beauty exist independently from material things, they trancend them.
Action of God in man
They signal to us that there is something much more beyond ourselves. When we pay attention to them, our heart and mind can be drawn upwards to God
The Person of Jesus Christ
Truth, Goodness and Beauty are one in the Person of Jesus Christ. All that is true, good and beautiful have their source in Christ and lead us to Him.
Today’s relativistic culture
A deceitful shift in focus has taken place: now, the true, good and beautiful are centered not on God but on self. As a consequence, the truth becomes what we make of it: “You have your truth and I have mine.” Objective beauty is treated like it doesn’t exist; it’s simply a matter of personal opinion: “Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder”. Intrinsic goodness, too, is denied; the good is only “what is the best choice for me”.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI warned: “When a culture attempts to suppress the dimension of ultimate mystery, and to close the doors to transcendent truth, it inevitably becomes impoverished and falls prey, as the late Pope John Paul II so clearly saw, to reductionist and totalitarian readings of the human person and the nature of society.”
The Goodness of Creation
This first use of “good” in Sacred Scripture predicates God’s entire creation. Everything which is good has as its root God’s creative power: “For everything created by God is good” (1 Tim 4:4). According to St. Thomas Aquinas, goodness coincides with being; insofar as a thing fulfills its existence, it is good. However, the goodness of creation is a relative goodness that is nothing in comparison to the absolute Goodness that is God. As the true source and foundation of all good, God is good in Himself. In the absolute meaning of the word, God alone is justly said to be good. Therefore, the standard of Goodness, what makes something good, is ultimately found only in God.
We can know what is truly good for us by focusing on our ultimate end, God, who is our highest Good. Goodness requires that our hearts be turned completely toward God. Then, as St. Augustine says, the Love of God will set in order all our other loves. St. Bruno, writing to encourage a friend to forsake the world and dedicate himself to God, wrote: “For what could be more perverted, more reckless and contrary to nature and right order, than to love the creature more than the Creator, what passes away more than what lasts forever, or to seek rather the goods of earth than those of heaven? … For what could be beneficial and right, so fitting and co-natural to human nature as to love the good? Yet what other good can compare with God? Indeed, what other good is there besides God?” (Letter of St. Bruno to his friend Raoul-le-Verd).
So, where can we experience God’s goodness? In the miracle of the Cross. In the Acts of the Apostles, Christ is described as “going about doing good” (Acts 10:38). But the depth of that mystery is found in His death and Resurrection. God’s goodness on the Cross was planted amid much pain, suffering and rejection. Yet goodness, love and forgiveness triumphed in the very heart of extreme malice. The more we experience Jesus’ goodness, the more we will heed His invitation that we imitate Him. Medieval philosophers defined goodness as “Bonum est diffusivum sui,” that is, goodness is diffusive of itself. This holds true for each Christian when we seek to experience the miracle of Jesus’ goodness on the Cross; goodness will lead us from the safe and unpredictable toward sacrifice and the Cross. It is, for each one of us, a defining moment: Goodness is diffusive of itself.
Source: Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted
