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 t