Beauty is the least threatening transcendental value in postmodern context because it doesn't argue or preach but shows itself self-evidently, making it a more winsome entry point into truth and goodness than direct assertion in an age of skepticism about objective values.

We perceive values as hierarchically ordered (some things are truer, better, or more beautiful than others), and we can only make these comparative judgments implicitly in relationship to something we consider highest in goodness, truth, and beauty—an unconditioned form toward which being naturally tends.

The alignment of nominalism, Duns Scotus, William of Occam, and certain forms of Protestantism with the rejection of participatory metaphysics and the univocal conception of being set the conditions for modern problems including scientism.

Modern Western consciousness has flattened out liturgical churches by presenting the Bible through pure historical criticism while also emptying churches of mystical and cosmic symbolism (images, color, hierarchy, saints, angels), creating aesthetic and spiritual deprivation.

Four essential capacities constitute proper rationality: being attentive to what is actual, being intelligent (discerning intelligible form), being reasonable (making judgments about what is true), and being responsible (following through on implications)—and the human mind is fallen in all four, requiring disciplinary process.

Recovery of objective value against the culture of self-invention (where individuals generate their own values) is key to addressing meaning crisis and spiritual death, and is what churches should emphasize alongside recovery of authentic mysticism.

Acts of will are always directed at some good, but those goods nest in higher goods, and we cannot regress infinitely; therefore we must finally arrive at some supreme good (summum bonum) that motivates all lower acts—this final good is what religious relationship addresses.

Angry atheists often prove to be traumatized former fundamentalists when examined closely, suggesting that the psychological root of strong atheism is frequently religious trauma rather than intellectual refutation of religious claims.

Young people are leaving the church primarily because of intellectual problems (not understanding doctrines, conflicts with science, questions not being answered) rather than primarily because of scandals, yet the response has been to 'dumb down' both doctrine and aesthetics rather than to clarify and elevate them.