Beauty

True beauty points beyond itself to something larger, truer, and more powerful.
BY RICHARD DOSTER

APRIL 17TH, 2019

 CLICK TO SHARE ON BYFAITH FACEBOOK (OPENS IN NEW WINDOW)
 CLICK TO SHARE ON BYFAITH TWITTER (OPENS IN NEW WINDOW)

Imagine the most beautiful thing you’ve ever encountered. 

It might have been a diamond necklace, the Mona Lisa, a Bengal tiger, or Beethoven’s “Moonlight
Sonata.” 

How is it that these things, which bear no resemblance to one another, can be described by the same
word? How is it possible that beauty — a singular characteristic — can charm us, inspire us, soothe
us, cause us to laugh, or trigger a heartfelt cry? And how is it that beauty, whether discovered in a
forest or at the Louvre, is always impossible to ignore? 

1|Page
Goodness, truth, and beauty — long ago deemed the transcendentals of the Christian tradition — “are
the three things we all need, and need absolutely, and know we need,” writes Christian
author/philosopher Peter Kreeft. “Truth relates to the mind, goodness to the will, and beauty to the
heart, feelings, desires, or imagination.” These, Kreeft says, are the only three things we never get
bored with; they’re attributes of God, and therefore of all God’s creation. Which means everything in
every category participates in them to some degree. 

“This practical modern world is prone to conceive of

beauty as an extraneous luxury. We do not think of it as an
integral and inseparable element of our living, as did the
Greeks; or as did the Christians for many centuries.”

Even so, our relationship with beauty may be more difficult than with truth and goodness. On one
hand, all humans, because we’re the image of God, yearn for beauty. It’s in our DNA; we can’t help
but admire it. On the other hand, we routinely destroy it. We build high-rise condominiums that block
the view of the beautiful ocean. We build roads through woodlands and wetlands. We’re surely
addicted to the strip malls that litter the landscape with bright-colored logos from fast-food
restaurants, mattress stores, Target, Walmart, and Costco. They make one city indistinguishable from
any other, and make portions of them all equally, monotonously ugly.  

We yearn for beauty yet create and consume music that celebrates violence. We watch senseless
videos that have “gone viral.” People spend good money on mass-produced prints of Republican
presidents playing poker, and the T-shirts in the next aisle that insist, “Old guys rule.” Such things,
even when fun, belittle the proper role of beauty in our lives and culture. 

Beauty: Objective Reality, a Matter of Taste, or Culturally Conditioned? 

Our relationship with beauty is also complicated by the fact that we’re not quite sure how to define it.
“Where truth can be verifiably established through clear, material evidence, beauty is perceptual and
experiential,” says Anglican speaker and writer Kate Harrison Brennan. “It is not written into the
physical laws of the universe, which begs the questions: Is it, then, a mere trick of the eye? Or can it
disclose something true?” The questions matter, Brennan argues, because, “When beauty is
uncoupled from truth, we potentially distrust our own perception of beauty — the beauty our eyes
see, or our ears hear. What we then experience is not seen as disclosing anything beyond the
individual person.”

It hasn’t always been this way. The late theologian Edward Farley, in his book “Faith and Beauty: A
Theological Aesthetic,” argues that our understanding of the beautiful started to unravel in the 18th
century. It was then, Farley argued, that “beauty came to be seen as mere passion and sensibility.” In
other words, beauty, once thought to be an objective reality, had become “in the eye of the beholder.”
It became “fleeting” and “only skin deep.” Which means, says philosopher Roger Scruton, that beauty
no longer has a rational foundation. To some, the painting of Republican presidents is beautiful. One

2|Page
person may like Mozart while another favors Cardi B. It’s simply a matter of taste, and who’s to say
what’s beautiful and what’s not?

A little more than a century ago, Charles G. Osgood, a Princeton scholar, saw this transition
unfolding. In his book “Poetry as a Means of Grace,” Osgood observed, “This practical modern world
is prone to conceive of beauty as an extraneous luxury. We do not think of it as an integral and
inseparable element of our living, as did the Greeks; or as did the Christians for many centuries.”  

Evidence suggests that the trend has accelerated. In 2016, Elizabeth Farrelly, a newspaper columnist
in Sydney, Australia,  observed, “We don’t talk about beauty anymore. Beauty doesn’t figure in the
public debate. It’s wholly absent from our politics and rarely championed by those professions
(architects and artisans) for whom it is called a business.”

Practically speaking, then, beauty has been divorced from truth; culturally, it no longer reveals a
greater reality beyond one’s subjective, personal taste.

And yet, we crave it. Even as we build strip

malls and produce kitsch, we grieve beauty’s
loss. Somewhere inside — our gut or maybe
our heart — we know something’s missing and
that we’re poorer for it. Still, it’s hard to
define, which makes it hard to retrieve, which
makes it difficult to reincorporate into our
lives and culture. 

Beauty Is Something We Share

Luci Shaw, the esteemed Christian poet, gets us moving in the right direction. Shaw concedes that
beauty is personal, and she grants that we all have different tastes and varying standards. And yet, she
says, “I love to think of beauty’s universality.” She talks about how we all gasp at the sight of ocean
waves, how we breathe in the silent greenness of a meadow after rain, with its moist fragrances, how
we marvel at the icy glory of the Antarctic.   

Janine Langan, professor emerita of Christianity and Culture at the University of Toronto, is thinking
along the same lines. In her view, beauty is “one of the deepest experiences of community.” And
while some may value the painting of presidents (or dogs) playing poker, Langan points out that we
know the difference between a private pleasure and rejoicing in beauty; we know that our personal
taste is different — and something much smaller — than a moment that, in the words of Pope John
Paul II, “unites humanity, one in admiration.” 

That explains why we can’t wait to show somebody — even a passing stranger — the eagle soaring
overhead. It’s why we must grab someone — anyone — and point to the pod of dolphins who, like
synchronized swimmers, simultaneously surface for air. It’s why we point to the deer grazing in the
forests and whisper to anyone who’s in range, “Over there.” 

3|Page
We burst with wonder at the sight of such things. We long for loved ones to be by our side because
we know — down deep — there are things too splendid, too glorious, too magnificent for our eyes
alone.

“Beauty is real. It has substantive meaning. It is not

ephemeral, as in the passing, subjective taste of an
individual or the fleeting feeling evoked by a sunset.”
Delight in beauty is not self-indulgence, Langan says. It is a most sensible and realistic response to
the reality around us. 

Kate Harrison Brennan takes us a step further. Brennan makes the case that if beauty, goodness, and
truth are “transcendental,” then, “Wherever we find or create beauty, we’re participating in God’s
own self. On this account,” she continues, “beauty is real. It has substantive meaning. It is not
ephemeral, as in the passing, subjective taste of an individual or the fleeting feeling evoked by a
sunset.” Rather, “each moment or instance of beauty points to further beauty to be found. It stands for
something about our reality.” Real, transcendent beauty, then, has a sacramental quality, meaning it
points beyond itself to something larger, truer, and more powerful. 

Like what? What is it that lies beyond the waves, the meadow, the frolicking dolphins? 

In Luci Shaw’s opinion, beauty, like few other things, calls us back to God. “It reminds us that a
standard of goodness, vitality, and reality embodies the beautiful,” she says. And in that, it’s
redemptive and powerful. Beauty makes us aware of the world — of constellations, the rhythm of the
tides, hummingbirds, golden retrievers, and daffodils — of a thousand sights, sounds, and smells that
delight us, warm our hearts, and fill us with awe. 

Dallas Willard, the now-deceased Christian philosopher, expanded on the same idea when he vowed
that he’d never cut himself off from beauty. “For me, it is part of the way of celebration,” he said. “It
is God’s grace in action, the invisible made visible, the Word made flesh and dwelling with me, grace
in astonishing three-dimensional color with better-than-Dolby sound, and fragrance, taste, and texture
thrown in.”

A Gratuitous Gift of Pure Grace

If Shaw and Willard are right, then, in a sense, beauty is gratuitous — and marvelously so. The
world, the solar system, the cosmos — it doesn’t need to be beautiful, Shaw says. Which means that
beauty is a gift of pure grace — one that gives us pleasure, makes us more alive, more aware, and
more connected to the world God made. We hear it in music, ocean waves, and singing birds. We see
it in the mountains, zoos, art galleries, and the flower gardens of our own backyards.  

We caress silk. We warm our hands around a cup of just-poured coffee. We pet soft, furry cats. We
smell honeysuckle and fresh-cut grass. We savor the taste of chocolate, fine wine, and buttery
biscuits. Our appreciation of beauty begins with our senses, but it takes us further. “Beauty is also a

4|Page
sign of what’s just beyond our senses,” said the late Christian philosopher Eugene Peterson. In his
book, “Leap Over a Wall,” Peterson explained that there’s more to beauty than we can account for
empirically. And it’s there — in the more and beyond — that we discern God. 

When we’re in the presence of authentic beauty, we respond in delight, he said. We want to be
immersed in it. We’re eager to come near, to enter in. We can’t help but tap our feet, hum along,
touch, kiss, believe, pray. It begins with our physical senses, but it penetrates deeper. It draws us
further and further into whatever’s there: scent, rhythm, texture, vision. “Beauty in bird and flower, in
rock and cloud. Beauty in ocean and mountain, in star and sand. Beauty in storm and meadow, in
laughter and play.” Instinctively we recognize that there’s more to beauty than what we discern with
our senses. It’s then that we know beauty is never “skin deep”; that it is always revelatory of
goodness and truth. Beauty, Peterson says, “releases light into our awareness so that we’re conscious
of the beauty of the Lord.” 

Beauty Begets More Beauty

That may explain why we feel such satisfaction in our creation of beautiful things: a scarf, a portrait,
a story or song of our own making. With such work, Shaw believes, we form a bond with God. That
bond springs from the reality that “God was the first Quilter (of prairies), the primal Painter (night
skies, snow on cedars), the archetypal metal Sculptor (mountain ranges, icebergs), the Composer who
heard the whales’ strange, sonorous clickings and songs in his head long before there were whales to
sound them, the Playwright who plotted the sweeping drama of Creation, Incarnation, Redemption,
the Poet whose Word said it all.”

Beauty, then, begets more beauty. It prompts the creation of new things, says Brennan. We hear
beautiful poetry and we’re stirred to put pen to paper, to take an idea deeper and further; thus, new
poems are born. We hear a new melody and something inside begins to stir; we become aware of
something different, something more, something that’s never before been known. 

“Beauty may then be considered objective,”

Brennan says. “[It’s] something we experience
that is independent of individual, subjective
taste, something that when encountered raises
our eyes above the material world.” 

For our benefit, then — for our inspiration,

happiness, and health; and out of sheer gratitude
— we ought to slow down, to hear it and see it;
to pay attention. To show indifference to beauty
is to neglect its Creator, says Shaw. It is to
disregard the fingerprints of God on the natural
world, “and in human beings who reflect the
Creator’s identity.” 

5|Page
Beauty matters to God. “Why else would he shape and color fish, birds, insects, rocks, plants, and
people with such rich diversity?” Shaw asks. She quotes her friend Elizabeth Rooney, who said,
“Imagine making something as useful as a tree, as efficient at converting sunlight into food and fuel,
as huge and tough as a white oak that lives 300 years, and then decorating it in spring with tiny pink
leaves and pale green tassels of blossoms.” 

The writer Annie Dillard brings added perspective. When interviewed by Life magazine several years
ago, Dillard told the interviewer, “We are here to witness and abet creation. To notice each thing so
each thing gets noticed. Together, we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the
beach, but we notice each other’s beautiful face and complex nature so that creation need not play to
an empty house.”  

The Redemptive Power of Beauty

In his “Nobel Lecture,” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, “Dostoyevsky once dropped the line, ‘Beauty
will save the world.’ What does it mean? For a long time it used to seem to me that this was a mere
phrase. Just how could such a thing be possible? When had it ever happened in the bloodthirsty
course of history that beauty had saved anyone from anything? Beauty has provided embellishment,
certainly, given uplift — but whom has it ever saved?” 

Later, Solzhenitsyn reflected on the idea that there’s “a special quality in the essence of beauty,” and
particularly in the status of art. A true work of art, he said, “tames even the strongly opposed heart.”
That’s because art speaks to us differently than, say, a political speech or a persuasive editorial. Such
things may be expertly crafted. They may be logical, with one assertion cogently leading to the next.
They might possess an enchanting rhythm and cadence, thereby mesmerizing their audience. But they
can still be false. They can be wrong, dishonest, or the product of the writer’s or speaker’s twisted
thinking. They can, therefore, lead their audience astray. What’s more, Solzhenitsyn argued, the
counterargument can be  just as convincing — and every bit as wrong. 

Roger Scruton calls this the “subversive nature of beauty. Someone charmed by a [lie] may be
tempted to believe it, and in this case beauty is the enemy of truth.”

But Solzhenitsyn believed a work of art is less likely to deceive. When distorted concepts or mistaken
ideas or outright lies are presented as images, they “somehow fall apart and turn out to be sickly and
pallid and convincing to no one,” Solzhenitsyn argued. On the other hand, “Works steeped in truth
and presented to us vividly alive will take hold of us, will attract us to themselves with great power
— and no one, ever, even in a later age, will presume to negate them.”

In a culture where truth has become relative and where goodness is a matter of endless debate, there
may be a rekindled and essential role for beauty. Solzhenitsyn wrote, “If the crests of these three trees
(goodness, truth, and beauty) join together, as the investigators and explorers used to affirm, and if
the too obvious, too straight branches of Truth and Goodness are crushed or amputated and cannot
reach the light — yet perhaps the whimsical, unpredictable, unexpected branches of Beauty will make
their way through and soar up to that very place and in this way, perform the work of all three.” And

6|Page
in that case, it was not a slip of the tongue of Dostoevsky to say that “Beauty will save the world,”
but a prophecy. 

Philippians 4 tells us, “Whatever is true, whatever is noble … whatever is lovely … think about such
things.” Beauty cannot be merely ornamental. Nor can it be viewed as expendable or as an
extravagance. The secular journalist Elizabeth Farrelly makes a valid theological point when she
argues, “Beauty is a necessity, fundamental to civilized existence — and, no, that’s not a joke. To
take something beautiful and make it ugly (or, worse, boring) … is amongst the vilest sins, since it
takes the axe to the heart of what makes us human.” 

What makes us humans is the image of God. Which is why beauty points us to something beyond
itself; to something larger, truer, and more powerful.  

Richard Doster is the editor of byFaith magazine.

We like to hear what you think about this. Please submit a letter to the editor or write to
letters@byfaithonline.com.

7|Page