Whose Eye Beholds Beauty?
On the importance of there being Christian aesthetics, especially in light of the ugliness of this world and the majesty of Christ.
In the tradition of classical Christian metaphysics the concept of the “transcendentals” was prominent, a holdover from ancient Greek thought. Many of the theologians and intellectuals from these years that we are familiar with (like Aquinas, Boethius, Dun Scotus, Lombard, and others) reflected on these ideas. There were different formulations depending on school or region, such as Dionysius the Areopagite’s pentad of Good, Being, Truth, Beauty, and Unity or Aquinas’ grouping of ens, res, unum, aliquid, bonum, and verum.1 However, generally, the transcendentals have always followed at least a threefold enumeration consisting of the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. Typically, both in medieval Christian and even modern philosophy, much emphasis is given to Truth and Good, which might be attributed to the influence of rationalistic and scientistic tendencies in Western metaphysics, which desires to methodically uncover what is true and considers belief in this truth to be a good thing. The post-Christian appropriation of this mentality I believe is best found in the widespread sentiment that we must “trust the experts” (those holy men of the True, those ministers of the Good).
However, what about Beauty? What role does Beauty play in all this? The transcendentals are essentially unitary, one cannot exist without the others, for as the Thomistic philosopher Thomas Zigliara said: “It is impossible that anything be beautiful in itself, if it be not also true and good.” While in the modern age we might find much use for the True and the Good, it seems like we’ve lost sight of the Beautiful. Indeed, if the marginalization and atomization of the notions of Truth and Good, in the rise of subjectivism and relativism, indicates anything it’s that given the lack of emphasis on Beauty it must have been dealt an even worse hand. If Truth and Good have been mistreated yet are generally more popular, how much worse off must Beauty’s neglect be?
This certainly isn’t something we need merely speculate about, it’s clearly observable. If the bizarre and infantile style of modern “art” or what is paraded as “marketable” and “appealing” in contemporary advertising isn’t proof enough, then how we speak about Beauty should be. What is not one of the most popular sayings in modernity if not “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”? This proverb is everywhere, and I believe a most prominent occurrence is found in The Twilight Zone’s episode “Eye of the Beholder,” a pop culture classic of “pulchritude antirealism.” In that episode, we are introduced to a shadowed scene where we only hear and marginally see what is happening, which is some bizarre surgery on a Ms. Janet Tyler, who is described as having “pitiful twisted lump of flesh” as a face. When the lights are finally turned on in the climax of the episode we see that Ms. Tyler actually is a normal woman and those operating on her look monstrous, an intense plot twist. The closing narration by Rod Serling drives home the point of the episode:
Now the questions that come to mind: “Where is this place and when is it?” “What kind of world where ugliness is the norm and beauty the deviation from that norm?” You want an answer? The answer is it doesn’t make any difference, because the old saying happens to be true. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, in this year or a hundred years hence. On this planet or wherever there is human life – perhaps out amongst the stars – beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Lesson to be learned in the Twilight Zone.
However, from the very day I first watched this episode (part of an assignment for a middle school class, I believe), I found it quite odd. Intuition is often a very powerful form of logic, and when applied to this episode it was immediately clear to me that it made no sense. What do you mean, these pig-snouted surgeons are actually beautiful? Because that’s the implication. Ms. Taylor, who is “normal” to us, is considered “ugly” to the world around her, therefore her piggish surgeons are “fair-looking,” and perhaps the most piggish among them are considered beautiful.
They describe Ms. Taylor’s facial structure as abhorrent and twisted, but isn’t it obvious that she isn’t? Ms. Taylor’s actor has had no facial prostheses or makeup applied to her, she is just a regular human, and the regular human skull is in no way twisted. It has an appropriate size and proportionality, and, in fact, while doing some background research for this article I found out about a 2019 study from John Hopkins that observed the Golden Ratio in the design of the human skull. You are telling me that this could be “ugly” somehow? No, dear producers of The Twilight Zone, you can’t pull the wool over our eyes here; granted, you’ve made some very thought-provoking episodes, but here you have failed.
David Hume, the father of modern skepticism, illustrated the same mentality in writing in his Essays that
Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty. One person may even perceive deformity, where another is sensible of beauty; and every individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to regulate those of others.2
Skepticism being such a large element of modernity it’s no wonder why such sentiments have filtered down into the cultural river. However, it’s plainly untenable. First, if we accept the authenticity and observability of an external reality, which we most certainly can,3 and that there are genuine rules and principles that can be apprehended about this reality (which moral realism, ontology, logic, and the whole gamut of metaphysical practice would affirm), then clearly such a thing as “Beauty” could exist. That it does can be seen intuitively, from the universal human experience of such a notion and a profound appreciation by many for it. If you recall my article on existential nihilism, “Whenceforth Meaning?”, you’d recall I argue that no reason can be presented for existential needs and immaterial proclivities if there was no true basis for these sensations, just how eyes wouldn’t exist in a world without visible light to process.
To deny that there are “incidentals” that manifest Beauty is patently absurd. To look at the quaint landscapes of an old village on the Italian Riviera, to gaze upon the snowcapped enormity of the Alps, or to enter the edifice of the Sistine Chapel and observe the abundance of stunning illustrations and not be mesmerized obviously implies a deficiency in yourself, not in the world you are perceiving. If looking at Ivan Kramskoi’s Christ in the Wilderness doesn’t impress you by how such a simple scene and downcast visage can convey the sense of a cosmic burden, or if Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog doesn’t kindle for you the same awe of sublimity it has for thousands of others in its 200 years of fame, I have some choice words for you.
I’ve come across so many exhibits of genuine aesthetic or human beauty daily that I can certainly phrase all this for you in a hundred different ways to a dozen different degrees until my soul collapses into a singularity of flowery purple prose. And when it comes to pass that I inevitably witness some ugliness I follow in the footsteps of my medieval forebears and assess the matter as privative: as cold is the absence of warmth, rather than a thing in itself, ugliness is the absence of beauty, a negative space that cries out to be filled. Unlike the existential nihilist who trips in life and laments, “Woe is me,” I, the good pulchritude realist that I am, when I experience a privation of Beauty resolve to myself that I need treat myself with a good dose of Rembrandt or Tchaikovsky. Some words of wisdom from Eastern Orthodox theologian Dr. Timothy Patitsas apply very well here:
We begin with positive appreciation, by seeing riches where others only see poverty. As one of our theological students, Andonis Prayannis, so insightfully remarked, to see abundance where others see only lack is a practical apophaticism. I thought that was brilliant, since we normally use the term “apophatic” for the theology that describes what God is not, and Andonis was describing a particular Christian who was able to see what “lack” is not—not proof of God’s absence, nor even of real poverty! Rather, poverty is often the prerequisite for the riches of God’s kind presence.4
When I see ugly or vicious5 things in the world I am convicted not to mope and feel dread—I might truly be upset or indignant (cf. Eph. 4:26-27), but this isn’t the same as “wallowing in self-pity.” Rather, when I witness a privation I acknowledge that it must be filled, and what must fill it. For the Christian contra mundum it is eminent what that should be: the Cross of our Lord.
As Paul reveals, that infamous beam was nothing less than the very power of God made manifest (1 Cor. 1:18), that on the Cross the full majesty of God was demonstrated for all men. Greg Boyd, a major contemporary proponent of Theologia Crucis, reflects that
The cross is the absolute center of God’s revelation to humanity and his purpose for creation. It is the paradox around which the world revolves. The cross is the mystery that explains, accomplishes and redeems everything. The fullness of God is most perfectly revealed in his becoming the Godforsaken man dying on a cursed tree.
The beauty of the Cross is found in its ugliness, because through this ugliness we experience salvation and communion. As can be found in the long historical tradition of iconography of the Cross, the aesthetic splendor of Christ Crucified has always been cherished by the Church. While it might seem that I am contradictorily saying that ugly things can be beautiful (and thus have no ground to rant about postmodern architecture or Pollockian rubbish), all that I mean is that in the Cross we find something Beautiful, which is the True and the Good. As I said earlier, all the transcendentals are unitary, and an experience of Beauty necessitates an experience of Truth and Good, and so, as the Catholic educator Nathaniel Peters explains,
In this sense, beautiful objects are not only proportionate and unified, but excellent examples of themselves. They express the truth of good things that God has made, both in their parts and in their whole. Moreover, beauty makes the truth perceptible and desirable when it might not otherwise be. Beauty shows us that the truth is good. Take, for example, Canova’s famous sculpture of Cupid awakening Psyche with a kiss, now in the Louvre. We could examine this work in terms of its lines and accuracy, its proportion, the way Canova captures the folds of fabric and the filaments of feathers and the beauty of the human form—all of which are part of why it has become so famous. But what we find so compelling is the way it realizes truths of human love and desire: the tenderness between two lovers, their deep mutual affection, and the way that becomes physically expressed.
Peters is right, “Beauty shows us that the truth is good,” in other words, it points us toward the whole and full experience of the transcendent. If we apprehend Beauty, we will soon after apprehend the Good and the True. Patitsas writes that, “If Christ had not risen, no one would be preaching His cross.”6 Taking the Cross and Resurrection as a unitary event,7 we rework Patisas’ bifurcation of the two into a unification as both constituting the Beautiful, which brings us to the Good—worship and life in and of God, which culminates in the Truth: partaking in the divine nature (2 Pet 1:4), in the Truth itself (Jn. 14:6).8
This is precisely why the maiming of Beauty is such a terrible thing, an act of gravest blasphemy, for it undermines Christ. Nay, it undermines God. Isaiah prophesies to the Israelites that their “eyes will see the King in His beauty” (Isa. 33:17), and likewise the Psalmist yearns for but one thing: “That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the LORD and to meditate in His temple” (Ps. 27:4). God is exalted as beautiful, as being in Whom man will find the most splendor and peace and glory (the revered “beatific vision”). However, if beauty is just a figment, existing “merely in the mind which contemplates them,” then for God to be beautiful is meaningless babble. If there is no distinction between looking up at an apse and beholding an icon of Christ In Majesty and a banana taped to a wall, then we cannot attribute such things to God as “majesty,” “glory,” or “splendor,” for these are all aesthetic (as well as moral) judgments. Indeed, the annihilation of beauty allows for the proliferation of ugliness, for, as the pop philosophy outlet The School of Life remarks, “If there’s no such thing as an objective measure of beauty, then you can pretty much do whatever you like to a city or a landscape.”9 I think about the recent criminal felling of the Sycamore Gap Tree in England, a wanton and meaningless desecration of natural beauty, and of the many dimwitted comments I saw in response that “It was just a tree” and that mourners should “grow up.”10 The tree was not “just” that, because its historical and symbolic as well as simple environmental value made it beautiful.
Nature isn’t a “thing” or a “that,” but something very much alive, repeatedly personified in Scripture and described as universally proclaiming, “To Him Who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever” (Rev. 5:13). A sense of Nature’s majesty can be best engendered by contemplating the legendarium of J.R.R. Tolkien, “an unabashed partisan of trees,” who presents an autonomous and vivacious characterization of the natural world in Middle-earth, in that it participates in the story as much as its protagonists do (most literally in the Ents and the Great Eagles). Indeed, the ugliness that can be engendered from this devaluation of Beauty can have a very humanitarian impact, for if God saying “you are precious in my eyes, you are honored, and I myself love you” (Isa. 43:4) doesn’t truly contain any substance but is purely a cognitive idiosyncrasy, then any notions of human dignity evaporate, and the Beauty to be found in the human condition at once vanishes. No wonder that in a supposedly “progressive” and “future-focused” postmodern, post-Christian society as ours the desolation of humanity has only worsened, in wanton abortion, endless wars, the objectification of sexuality, and countless other crimes of the modern era.
As it tends to be for many things, I believe this whole popular attraction to this notion of “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” disregarding its ethical and cultural implications, derives from misplaced and misunderstood emotions. Similar in mentality to those who call Christian morality “judgmental” or “hateful,”11 there is the belief that if we positively evaluate something, or better, someone, as “ugly” we must be grievously condemning or dehumanizing the subject. Nothing is further than the truth, and constitutes a blatant misunderstanding of what it means for something to be “ugly.” This is a strength of the Christian faith, for we can best understand the distinction between ugliness and love in the supreme exemplar of these two, that which has already been discussed: the Cross. The Cross is at once supremely hideous but also supremely loved, we look at the Cross and call it ugly (although note the nuance to this given earlier) but all the same we love it for we’ve “determined not to know anything…save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2). Remember, ugliness is privative, and so in its absence we seek to welcome or find the grace of God in action, “by seeing riches where others only see poverty,” as Patitsas put it. Therefore, we need not be concerned about being unkind, judgemental, or unsympathetic by labeling anything (or anyone) as ugly, but by recognizing what truly matters in a person: that they have been crucified with Christ (Gal. 2:20).
Once this Christocentric perspective is adopted many issues can evaporate, both metaphysical, ethical, and semantic. It can also help us notice issues previously unnoticed. Once an absolute understanding of beauty is acquired, once an aesthetic framework is erected, we can gauge things as Beautiful, or not Beautiful and thus corrupting or debilitating. Patitsas, in his Beauty-first approach to metaphysics, remarks that “until God reveals himself, be it ever so slightly, man can find no stable ground upon which to stand nor solid reason for which to commence any action.”12 God, Who is supremely Beautiful, reveals His Beauty to us so that we may be transformed by it; Christianity is Christocentric, our worldview and our metric Christocentric, but Christ is Beauty (as He is Truth and Good; cf. Jn. 14:6), so thus our faith, our worship, our prayer, and the entirety of our new creation is Beauty-first.13 So, with this absolute foundation, and when a proper valuation and application of the Transcendentals is possessed, we have a powerful rubric on our hands; evils aren’t just “false” or “mean,” but they are ugly. Patitsas uses the language of theophanies in his work, of events and acts that constitute revelations of divine majesty, but he contrasts these with anti-theophanies, which given his Beauty-first approach presents the notion of a demonic pseudo-majesty, a direct revelation of cosmic hideousness.14 It’s not that akrasia is statistically erroneous15 or hazardous to public safety,16 rather and far more significantly these things are hideous. In the Beauty-first approach to life, the one promoted herein, it’s not that these other concerns cannot be mentioned or approached (as Truth and Good are legitimate transcendentals, but not at the expense of or superlative to Beauty), but that when we approach reality with our emphasis on Beauty we first apprehend whether or not it tarnishes or complements the divine aesthetic.
I believe it’s here that I can, “briefly” (relatively), flesh out a theory of aesthetics that we can operate with, based on all that I’ve set forth thus far. The greatest issue anyone could have with a notion of absolute beauty (of objective aesthetic value[s]) is the seeming ineffability of that notion. Can we genuinely say that one person’s interests are actually uglier than another’s? It seems, practically, all this talk about Beauty must collapse back into relativism. However, I’d first refer back to what I said about the concerns precipitating the eye-of-the-beholder sentiment, that being the desire not to insult people for being ugly and wanting to be kind to everyone, because clearly there’s more to a person than their looks. Evaluating one’s tastes as “ugly” doesn’t condemn them as a person, it merely points out the privation in their worldview. So, to paraphrase Michael Steinberg, I merely am interested in people who share my standards, but not my taste, for while I shall hold all to the same aesthetic how exactly you arrive there (whether you paint with heavy or light strokes, whether you prefers blues in your portraits over reds, or whatever) is your freely-endowed subcreative privilege. Accordingly, as I point out with regards to the ugliness of persons as well as the privation of beauty, we know what the solution is: the Cross.
The Cross is the locus classicus of Christian aesthetics,17 and so in what it reveals about God and humanity, Heaven and Earth, and all things we find what can be considered Beautiful, True, and Good—and how. While I can definitely benefit from further study in Theologia Crucis, I still believe I can make something out of what I do know. First, the Cross is the fullness of humanity on display, for Christ was not just fully man but truly man, the Second Adam, and lived a perfectly human life. Second, the Cross is the fullness of deity on display, for likewise Christ was not just fully God but truly God, the incarnate image of God (Col. 1:15-17; 2 Cor. 4:4-5). Third, the Cross is the ultimate expression of wisdom and power, through outpouring (kenotic) self-sacrifice, extreme humility, ceaseless lovingkindness, and eternal love for one’s other (1 Cor. 1:18-2:16). Fourth, the Cross is the ultimate humiliation, in that humiliation is the making of one humble, and Christ, “gentle and humble in heart” (Matt. 11:29; cf. Phil. 2:8), thoroughly lowered Himself and exposed Himself (in the fullness of His humanity and deity)—“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it” (Lk. 9:24; cf. 14:26; 17:33; Matt. 10:39; 16:25; Mk. 8:35; Jn. 12:25), Christ lost His life for the sake of all men, and this we revere, and is why we too shall be willing to lose our own lives.18 Fifth, the Cross is honest, and while this might not be something we often think of when we contemplate the Crucifixion, the truth is this is a very appropriate word for it: God wasn’t “afraid” of showing man the heinous consequences of our rebellion and of His wrath; the Cross is a hard thing to look upon,19 and it is very much “a hard teaching” of the sorts the disciples ponder and hesitate to accept (Jn. 6:60),20 yet God teaches us it nonetheless, placing it at the center of our faith, making us ponder and accept this cruelty and malice (the blood, the torn flesh, the demonic midday darkness,21 etc.) as well as all its attendant dogmas (such as the nature of man, sin, holiness, salvation, family, work, even history). Taking these five principles into consideration, a cruciform aesthetics would operate as follows:
What is aesthetic, what constitutes art or beauty, must begin with realism. Not in the sense of literal or natural, as artistic realism often connotes (perhaps “figurative” is more appropriate and traditional), but in the sense of truthfully, vividly, and clearly relaying its subject matter (principles 1 and 5). Aesthetics must not be bland but neither extravagant, but by its nature it must seek to most efficiently capture what something truly is. Contrary to cubism, Dada, Boterismo, or any other grotesquerie, what is depicted must be honestly portrayed (principles 4 and 5). Thus, like the capstones of the Renaissance, in Raphael or Michelangelo, a remarkable attention to detail and capacity to communicate is necessary, not being obfuscated by vanity or pomp in thought or technique (which many artists tend toward). Beauty must be simple and lowly accordingly, for how else can it stray from vanity or pomp or some other manner of aesthetic bacchanal (principle 4)? Beauty found in art, then, consists of an aesthetic (as well as a technical) Occham’s razor, not overpopulating one’s canvas (or marble, software, wood, or any other medium) with superfluity. Michelangelo’s Pietà captures the softness of the sorrowful Virgin’s gowns, the lowly deadness of the Son, and the vivid grief of the whole event simply and powerfully: the lifelike scene embraces the viewer, yet it is mere stone and a thousandfold chiselstrokes. Expressionism might have room here, but insofar as it becomes meaningless abstractions open to a hundred hypersentimental interpretations it must be ruled out as a legitimate style.22 In the human person, in what we may call more specifically “cosmetics,” this is where we find modesty (1 Pet. 3:1-7; 1 Tim. 2:9-10): not in adorning the human with extravagance, but, like our Savior, reducing ourselves to a meek and plain form,23 like the pastor in his black robes; as Boethius wrote, “Do you try to satisfy your desires with external goods which are foreign to you because you have no good within you which belongs to you?”24 At the same time, all this art should speak beyond itself and its meekness, for as Peters put it, art is loved for “the way it realizes,” how it brings forth for our perception by the Beautiful the True and the Good (principles 3 and 5, perhaps 2 as well). Return to La Pietà, in the clear and humble depiction of its subject it makes us cognizant of the ultimate reality behind the subject, the ultimate reality behind all things that we’ve discussed: the Cross. Consider likewise The Last Judgment, by Michelangelo as well, immortalized in the Sistine Chapel, and while all of its features may be waxed poetic about consider in particular the lone damned sinner to the right of the seven trumpets: in his forthright nudity and in the reality of his anatomy, deftly crafted by Michelangelo, we are enamored with just how vivid the look of horror on his face is as he comprehends his eternal fate, while being pulled down by demons to it. The sinner does not receive the blessings of the Cross, rather its opposite, everlasting perdition. Accordingly, medieval intellectuals recognized a hierarchy of genres, proceeding from still life (like Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, which I’ve seen in many homes) to the sacred icons of cathedrals at the very top (whether due to the holiness of their subjects, as all Christians can agree, or due to their mystical properties, which only the iconodules can agree on). The reason for this hierarchy is, clearly, the depth of the subject as well as the subjects capacity to speak to these greater realities, i.e., how more cruciform each genre could be. An icon of the Cross is evidently infinitely more cruciform than a bowl of fruit or Loraine’s Loss of the Chaplain, although certainly natural and environmental beauty can be thought of capturing the beauty of God’s creation, which must point to the Cross before long. In all these ways, we can speak toward a cruciform aesthetic.
I hope this formulation is at once broad and simple. I notice I’ve failed to include music, and I know I could definitely extend this conversation for much longer (as my exclusion of music alone indicates). However, let’s be real, this article is waxing poetic par excellence. I am more than content with all that I’ve said up to this point, and I believe I’ve deftly addressed the modern state of aesthetics, the nature of theological aesthetics, and the theory of a practical Christian aesthetic. Give me fodder for future elaborations on any points made in this article (more of an essay, I’d wager), I’d be more than happy with that, since Beauty plays such an important role in my theology, and I wish for it to be so for others.25 Following the words of the old hymnist George Bennard,
In the old rugged Cross, stain’d with blood so divine
A wondrous beauty I see
For ’twas on that old cross Jesus suffered and died
To pardon and sanctify me.
In the Cross we will find true Beauty, and through the Cross we will be able to bring Beauty into the world around us. Like Christ impels us, we are to share His light, the light of Beauty, with the reprobate world (Matt. 5:14-16). In a world yearning for meaning and purpose, the restoration of Beauty to its rightful place is not a superficial pursuit but a profound spiritual endeavor, driving back ugliness, and drawing closer to the source of all Beauty, Truth, and Goodness. As we strive to appreciate and cultivate Beauty in our lives, we draw closer to the One in Whom all Beauty finds its ultimate expression. We may behold the greatest mystery of them all: God.
David Hume, “XXIII. Of the Standard of Taste,” in Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, Part I, 230.
Poohpooh to the Cartesian, Humean, and Kantian schools of the Enlightenment! Philosophical skepticism is quite honestly mere sophistry, representative of a great tendency observable in modern metaphysics to convolute just about anything to entertain the lives of philosophers who have abandoned God and thus cannot find fulfillment in anything more than kindling metaphysical Schadenfreude. The English philosopher G.E. Moore I have a great respect for, as he was a committed realist and cogently argued against skepticism with his famous and simple argument:
“Here is one hand, and here is another. There are at least two external objects in the world. Therefore, an external world exists.”
All the babbling of these misosophers is instantly refuted through a simple appeal to common sense. Like Simon Blackburn said, another esteemed English realist, naïve realism “is the natural view of people everywhere, and of philosophers when they are off-duty” (Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy [3rd ed.], 320, emphasis mine). Any logic, any dialogue, anything human must of necessity occur in or relate to an “external reality,” therefore making the presupposition of its reality inexorable. Who are these skeptics pontificating their views to if not Thous external to their perception? Sadly, many of the absolutely real subjects these persons are speaking to are impressionable and wayward youths, the cultural and ethical impact of which is pronounced, which I reflected on in part in my article “Whenceforth Meaning?”
For some good resources on realism I’ll provide you with the following articles: first, classic readings from G.E. Moore himself, the essays “A Defence of Common Sense” and “Proof of an External World;” Michael Moval’s article “A Critique of External World Skepticism;” and Hendrik van der Breggen’s “Reasonable Skepticism about Radical Skepticism.”
Timothy Patitsas, The Ethics of Beauty, 110.
In the archaic sense of the word, as derived from “vice.”
Patitsas, The Ethics of Beauty, 105.
I discussed this in part in my article “The Resurrection of Christ and the Authority of Scripture” (see esp. fn. 5). See also Greg Boyd, “The Revelation of God in the Cross.”
Patitsas, The Ethics of Beauty, 75-76.
In the context of how “property developers” can make use of this relativism to seek profits over people.
It’s a common theme in my writings (and my thought at-large) that “the kids aren’t alright” (I’ve even mentioned this here earlier). The perpetrator of this act was a 16-year-old boy, who I can only imagine has been nurtured by a culture of narcissism and pulchritude antirealism, as have countless others.
The slogan that “there’s no hate like Christian love,” along with the overarching issue of religious hypocrisy, is often handled defensively by Christians, who produce content demonstrating the good fruits of the faith (which is good in and of itself). However, I think this sloganeering is best handled offensively, by pointing out that those who say these things don’t understand what it means to be good or loving because they have a corrupted, sin-stained understanding of the world. What right does a progressive, given the fruits of their ideology, have to condemn Christianity? The terms of the debate must be made Christocentric for true progress to be made.
Patitsas, The Ethics of Beauty, 101.
Go ahead and reread 2 Cor. 5:14-17 with this in mind; cf. ibid., 78-79.
Providing any one section of Patitsas’ discussion I feel wouldn’t do it justice, so I recommend you the entire first chapter that Patitsas makes mention of this notion: ibid., 1-42.
E.g., the focus given on lifestyle risks by the same conservatives to lambaste homosexuals; many of these same Christians cheer on athletes every Sunday after church, yet how much more (or equally) risky is their lifestyle that we do accept? See Shirl Hoffman’s book Good Game for more on the “theology of professional sports.”
Von Balthasar, the authority on theological aesthetics mentioned earlier, placed considerable emphasis on the “kenotic love” of the Cross and the “beautiful glory” of God in his thinking; I haven’t found an intersection/synthesis of the two foci in his writings, however. Cf. with Augustine, who wrote that Christ was “everywhere beautiful: beautiful in the hands of His parents, beautiful in His miracles, beautiful in His flagellation, beautiful giving up His spirit, beautiful carrying the cross, beautiful on the cross, beautiful in Heaven” (Augustine, Expositions on Psalms, 6 vols., 2:230).
Perhaps, even, Christ also lost His life for His own sake, being that the Crucifixion was as much an intra-Trinitarian event as it was part of the economic Trinity. However, this might be pushing the kenotic and Trinitarian theologies of the likes of Von Balthasar, Boyd, Moltmann, and others too far, and the standard recapitulative basis of this teaching is likely far more grounded (exegetically and logically).
Just try watching Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.
Indeed, the disciples repeatedly misunderstood Christ and His premonitions of the Cross (cf. Jn. 2:19-22; 3:3-8; Matt. 16:21-23; Mk. 6:51-52; 14:68-72).
Perhaps this is something I’ll flesh out in a future article, since I haven’t found anything on the Internet about it. It’s an interpretation I first found from Greg Boyd, and it makes sense, being coherent with the overarching cosmic warfare elements of the Crucifixion (see Greg Boyd, The Crucifixion of the Warrior God, 2:1058).
Impressionism is certainly the favored child.
How this relates to modesty in dress, in doing away with skimpy and lascivious apparel, shall certainly be a matter of further and future discussion, for if our Lord was modest and was exalted in nudity, how is that nudity shameful? Similarly, what may we say about sexual modesty?
I wished not to interrupt the flow of the text, but the whole passage from Boethius’ Consolation is of great insight:
Do you try to satisfy your desires with external goods which are foreign to you because you have no good within you which belongs to you? What an upside-down state of affairs when a man who is divine by his gift of reason thinks his excellence depends on the possession of lifeless bric-a-brac! Other creatures are content with what they have; but you, made in the likeness of God by virtue of your reason, choose ornaments for your excellent nature from base things, without understanding how great an injury you do to your Creator. … Your error is painfully evident if you suppose that a man can improve himself by adding ornaments that are not his own. It cannot be done; for if a thing attracts attention by added decoration, that which is added is praised, but that which is covered and disguised remains as base as before! (Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, 26.)
Certainly, a sort of revolution is occurring in contemporary theology, ecumenically, which I’ve noticed. Classically, certainly the likes of Augustine, Maximus the Confessor, Jonathan Edwards, J.R.R. Tolkien, Francis Schaeffer, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and others have propounded a “theological aesthetics,” but a paradigm shift doesn’t seem to have been appropriately or enduringly engendered by any of these men. Yet, I’m noticing a gradual uptick in the prevalence and respect of this subject in contemporary scholarship, and I’m more than happy to see it and do my best to contribute to it. In the West, scholars such as Nicholas Wolterstorff, Jeremy Begbie, and Jonathan King are good pioneers of the push toward theological aesthetics, while in the East, Timothy Patisas is certainly as good as any (I must admit theological aesthetics does have a greater presence in Eastern theology, even though it may be more “subsumed” and taken for granted).