Beauty Redeems the World, part 3

Beauty of the cross

Cross – the token of Christianity – challenges the aesthetic reading of the Bible. The prophecy of the Good Friday says precisely, that “he had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him…like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” (Isaiah 53:2-3) This is the exact opposite of an aesthetic interest! The main artistic problem concerning the image of crucified Christ is that no artist ventures to depict the ugliness of the crucified body as it is (supposing that the image is visible in a church).

At the closer scrutiny, the cross of Christ makes the Christian aesthetics possible in its entirety. Without the Son of God who has gone through death and suffering, up to the God-abandonment at the cross, all beauty in the world would be vain entertainment, a deceptive surface that hides the cruel reality. In the end, it is the beauty of our life that gives the ultimate meaning to the resurrection. Karl Barth, for all his rejection of the natural theologies, understood this, when he said that a person who is not horrified of dying, because he/she does not rejoice in life sufficiently and thus is not afraid of its ending, in a word, a person who does not perceive the beauty of this life does not understand the meaning of the word “resurrection.” 

From a Lutheran point of view, one must ask what is “theology of the cross” over against “theology of glory”? Thinking about beauty may seem like the latter one, especially as “glory” (kabod, doxa) is the word for divine beauty in the Bible. After all, Luther does state in the Heidelberg Disputation that “theologians of glory” tend to understand the invisible qualities of God through his works. On the contrary, “theologian of the cross” recognizes God’s visible “humanity, weakness and madness.” The problem is not that one observes the works of God in the creation. Rather, a “theologian of glory” fails to see creation as it is. Perceiving beauty in the imperfect, temporary and physical world and being grateful for that is the direct opposite of the “theology of glory”, that aspires for higher, spiritual understanding.

Perceiving beauty is the work of Holy Spirit

What is the theological value of beauty? The most common way of understanding the religious meaning of beauty is to regard the universe as a ladder to God. Through beautiful things humans rise to the understanding of the true beauty and, ultimately, to God. This view is presented already in Plato’s Symposium and subsequently promoted by Augustine and others. According to this view, beauty is a medium for knowing God. It is not definite: catholic theologians say that it needs the help of grace to be correct, protestant theologians ask for the Bible for guidance. Anyway, God speaks more or less through the beauty that humans sense around them. As such, beauty may also be seductive and lead astray. Therefore, one must be cautious with it.

Is it possible that theologians are not superficial enough to know God? “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature  – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse” (Rom 1:20) God speaks not in riddles but communicates himself through the world. This kind of understanding is presented in Bonaventure’s The Soul’s Journey into God: “Concerning the mirror of things perceived through sensation, we can see God not only through them as through his vestiges, but also in them as he is in them by his essence, power and presence. This type of consideration is higher than the previous one; therefore it holds second place as the second level of contemplation by which we are led to contemplate God in all creatures which enter our minds through our bodily senses.”  When God has become human and entered into our physical being, this visible and tangible world is the place where we encounter God. As the followers of Christ, we have also an aesthetic obligation: to look at the world with loving eyes as God does in Christ.

According to Luther, perceiving beauty in this sinful and ugly world is not possible without faith. Thus, faith has the connotation of aesthetic contemplation. It is the Holy Spirit who opens our eyes to see nothing but holiness in this world. In a lecture on Isaiah, Luther said:

“Reason cannot sing about the good works of God, because it is the work of the Spirit alone to understand the mercy of God; when it knows it, it begins to praise and give thanks, Reason cannot do this by itself — it observes merely threats and terrors of God and godlessness of the world and begins to groan and reproach. Why? Because reason cannot estimate the blessings, it counts bad and not good things, therefore it cannot but groan. Reason observes an entirely godless world and complains, But the Spirit perceives in the world nothing but God’s blessings and it begins to sing.”

(With kind permission of Word&World)