Cognition & Beauty: Faith & Aesthetics (Paths to Wisdom Book 4)

Faith and Rhythm

Some persons say that rhythm is only in music, but I say that there is rhythm even in things we cannot touch or feel or see. For example, there is rhythm in our faith. If rhythm is a strong regular repeated pattern, then surely the words we use to assent to what we believe can be seen as a rhythmic pattern. The words we begin within our Creed say “I believe in God,” “I believe in God.” For that matter, there is rhythm in all of our speech. Some words are more rhythmic than others while some have less rhythm than all of the. Take, for example, the words “all” or “but.” You can hardly say they have rhythm at all since they are only one syllable long. On the other hand a word like “Con-glo-me-rate,” I would say has more rhythm and is more rhythmical.
Day-after-day billions of dollars are used every day throughout the world in advertising slogans of multi-national corporations. It is so important that these slogans, which represent the nature of companies thinking and practices stay before the public in a graphic and easily remembered way. Such slogans as “Think outside the box,”(Taco Bell) “Think different,”(Apple) “Just do it,” (Nike) “Impossible is Nothing.” (Adidas) If there is an aesthetic difference between repeating to oneself the words “Think different” and “I believe,” then it must be in the assent to faith and divine revelation rather than in human ingenuity, since Jesus Christ made the promise “those who have faith have passed to eternal life, but Apple computer cannot promise eternal life to those who repeat the words “Think different.” Though assenting to the truth of divine revelation is a way of thinking different and as Augustine says that just as there could be no believing without thinking, there could be no thinking without the power of God. If thinking itself comes from God, how much more is the gift of eternal life that comes from assenting to the truth in divine revelation?