What Aesthetic Beauty says about God and the World
All across the world architectural monstrosities from the mid-twentieth century are being torn down and replaced with beautiful buildings that fit the architectural idiom of a given place. Michael Diamant, an advocate for traditional architecture, routinely posts “before and after” pictures to his X account, which highlight such remarkable transformations. Here are a few examples:
Gaillard Auditorium; Charleston, SC
Such new, but classically designed, buildings are popular with the majority of a given city’s residents. They are, unfortunately, however, scorned by modern architects, who design buildings for personal glory and aggrandizement rather than communal benefit and enjoyment. The fight for architectural beauty over ugliness was on display during President Trump’s first term when he issued an executive order that stated, among other things:
Applicable Federal public buildings should uplift and beautify public spaces, inspire the human spirit, ennoble the United States, and command respect from the general public. They should also be visually identifiable as civic buildings and, as appropriate, respect regional architectural heritage. Architecture — with particular regard for traditional and classical architecture — that meets the criteria set forth in this subsection is the preferred architecture for applicable Federal public buildings. In the District of Columbia, classical architecture shall be the preferred and default architecture for Federal public buildings absent exceptional factors necessitating another kind of architecture.
Although this order—and its recent renewal—was denounced by many of the leading voices in contemporary American architecture as an unjust governmental restriction on their artistic freedom, the order, while “[e]ncouraging classical and traditional architecture,” did “not exclude using most other styles of architecture, where appropriate.”
What the executive order did do was recognize that architectural beauty sends a powerful signal to those who encounter it, and that with government buildings in particular, that signal should be one that “inspire[s] the human spirit, ennoble[s] the United States, and command[s] respect from the general public.”
All artistic creations say something about the world. Buildings say something about the actions that take place within them. Clothing says something about how the wearer views the actions he engages in throughout the day. Paintings and music send signals about the nature of the world and our place in it.
Artistic creations, however, do more than simply say something about how their creators view the world. They also inevitably say something about God. In an address by the German philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand entitled “Beauty in the Light of the Redemption,” he wrote that artistic “triviality falsifies the world.” This brief phrase is striking and can be raised to a higher level: ugliness in art falsifies the world and is a denial of God.
Let’s begin with the second claim: ugliness in art is a denial of God. God is a being overwhelming in glory, which—as Herman Bavinck puts it in volume 2 of his Reformed Dogmatics—is “the sum total of all his perfections.” God’s glory is the overwhelming goodness of his being made manifest to his creatures. It shines forth in every encounter a creature has with God, but it also shines forth magnificently in the world that God has made: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Ps 19:1).
The created order is a reflection of the goodness and glory of God. We could even say that it is a manifestation of the beauty of God, a word theologians will sometimes use synonymously with glory. This, too is a biblical way of speaking, as is seen in Psalm 27:4:
One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.
Art, then, will either speak truth about God or it will tell lies. God is beautiful in his majestic glory. The world he has made reflects that beauty, which brings us to the first claim made above: ugliness in art falsifies the world. It is the task of God’s image bearers to give testimony to God’s beauty and glory in all that they create. Through sights or sounds, artistic ugliness tells lies about why (or even whether) God made the world. It proclaims to the world that God is ugly, inglorious, and debased, but it also indicates that the world he made is purposeless, meaningless, and without order. Artistic ugliness indicates that there is nothing higher in the universe than matter, and by implication, that pleasure is the purpose of life. This is, therefore, not merely a matter of aesthetic unpleasantness. Ugliness is immoral.
How we dress; how we design and decorate our houses, offices, churches, and public spaces; our literature, music, and art; these things matter. None are mere matters of opinion. Beauty is objective. Our actions in each aesthetic realm reveal what we think about God, the world he made, and our place in that world. They should reflect the fact that this world is ordered, that it is headed toward an ultimate goal, and that it is good, because God is a God of order and goodness. Artistic beauty, in other words, tells the truth: that God’s works are great, “studied by all who delight in them. Full of splendor and majesty is his work, and his righteousness endures forever” (Psalm 11:2–3).
Image Credit: Unsplash
I’ve always had a distain for aesthetics. For most of my life, I always looked at the “beauty” of something as not just secondary to function, but almost in opposition to it. Why put effort into making something look good when those efforts could go into making it WORK better? This was a heavily flawed outlook.
Beauty should be viewed as part of something’s function. Beauty serves a very real function. It changes peoples’ perception of the thing they are seeing for the better. An ugly building receives no great love or adoration from those who use it. It is in human nature to love the beautiful and to ignore the ugly things. It is why we consider it virtuous to love the ugly and impoverished people of the world: it is difficult because it runs contrary to our nature.
And so, as someone who values pragmatism, it has helped me to reframe aesthetics as a subset of functionality. A person or thing’s beauty is part of what makes that thing good. Beautiful aesthetics without function still irks me, but I’ve come to understand the value that beauty brings.
And yet, what does Isaiah 53 say about Christ’s appearance?
His true beauty was revealed at the Transfiguration, his radiance shining forth. Mark 9
The Resurrected Christ was not recognizable to his disciples, the disfigured suffering servant, transformed to the Lamb who was slain, the lamp of the Lamb that radiates the renewed Creation. Revelation 21
Christ is enthroned in the heavenly places, and is described as in glory, in radiance, in splendor and grandeur. His beauty is without compare.
By way of analogy, our senses lead is to this deeper and truer reality.
Garet,
And yet he came without being physically attractive.
We have to wait before we are changed. But in the meantime, we have to deal what what we have here and now. By way of analogy, think about how God chose the weak to shame the strong and the foolish to shame the wise. Both choices show a dependence on God rather than a dependence on natural abilities in a fallen world.
It’s not surprising you would take issue with this.
For Heaven’s sake, indeed, what a benighted view to have.
All we are told there is that Jesus was an ordinary looking man. Yet, to anyone with an aesthetic sense, that alone is a wondrous thing. Have you forgotten that we are fearfully and wonderfully made? Yes, we are fallen, but we are still magnificent, as is the fallen world and its lavish marvels. Isn’t God the greatest artist?
You must have an East Berlin of a mind.
Bob,
See my response to Garet.
The transcendent Logos manifests our reality, embodying his goodness and glory in what he has made, and ultimately, speaks clearly to us finally and forever in the person of Jesus. Creation is the language of God; and Adam, ordained to bind identity (naming- Gen. 2:19), is so crowned a sub-creator- an artist- to complete Creation by articulating its meaning on to human sensibility. Beauty is the disclosure of ultimate reality, communicating through our senses the really real beyond the senses. Earthly beauty is the light shining through the cracks around the door, inviting us to the warm meal and fellowship inside. Art, architecture, music- is humanity translating the language of the Cosmos so that we may more deeply behold the One from, through and to, all that is, exists.
Architecture is the endeavor to embody human dwelling places that will either glorify or debase God’s Image Bearers through participation.
Et lux in tenebris lucet!
Garet,
I am a musician, not an architect. And I know that some of my fellow Christian from the Reformed Traditions believe that music should always express the ideal.
I don’t agree with that view. We see that view sorely challenged the Psalms. Music needs to reflect life and life in a fallen world is not always ideal, but because of God’s common grace and redemptive grace, neither is the world all dark. Instead, the world is a mix of both.