How Do We Know the Beautiful?
The doctrine of divine simplicity (DDS) in classical theism states that God is simple. This means that God is identical to His nature, is without parts, and has no distinct attributes. Since His nature or essence is identical to His existence, God is also identical to His existence. The DDS teaches that there is no distinction between God’s being (that He is) and the various attributes used to describe His essence (He is this). That is, simplicity denies any metaphysical composition in the divine being. That also means that the characteristics of God are not parts of God that together constitute God. In the words of Aquinas, God is God’s existence, and God’s essence is God’s existence.
Similarly, following this line of thought, God does not have goodness but simply is goodness; God does not have beauty but simply is beauty. That is, it is because God is beautiful that any creaturely being also has beauty by virtue of participating in God. In other words, as perceivers, we experience aesthetics in the world as an echo of the Creator. The beautiful sunset and sunrise are meant to point us towards God Himself. By contrast, when we only focus on the form that was created as opposed to considering the Creator, we place the weight of glory that is not to be worshiped against the way that the Creator is. Simply put, any beautiful thing, be it mountain summits, roses, things, or people, illustrates the magnificence of God. We are now ready to examine the following argument: 1. If God is omni-beautiful, He is simple. 2. God is simple 3. Therefore, God is not only omni-beauty but is Beauty itself.
The Beauty of God Through Scriptures and Tradition
Beauty is considered one of God’s summary attributes, which holds all other attributes together. Reflecting on that, C.S. Lewis notes in The Weight of Glory, “The books or the music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them; it was not in them, it only came through them.” As highlighted by Lewis, beautiful things are not the thing in itself; beauty in the world is evidence of the attribute of the Creator. Something is beautiful because it reflects or participates in divine beauty. In the words of Samuel Parkinson, divine beauty is the evocative brilliance of the truth and the good calling forth of the affectionate response of the perceiver. That is, divine beauty is more real than the beautiful expressions through which it is revealed; it is transcendental, real, and central to the fabric of reality, just as truth and goodness are. Sadly, we tend to think that beauty has to be subjective; however, it is only subjectively perceptible.
Beauty is subjectively perceptible, and we know what it is whenever we see a sunset, roses, and sunset, or hear The Halleluiah of Handel, songs, and liturgies. These beautiful things have this transcendental quality where they grab hold of one without asking for permission. There is no such thing as beauty that is affectionately indifferent. An object or action must conform to that objective beauty especially when the desire is awakened with and through some objects. In other words, the thing attracting one to that object, calling her to it, is calling her through that object beyond itself. Augustine argues that “It is actually God calling me through the things that He made, He was calling me through Himself.” So, it makes sense when we start conceptualizing beauty in a realist account to note that everything that exists on the creaturely claim owes its existence to God. However, although all participate in God, this participation is asymmetrical. For instance, it is not us who define God, but God defines us. That is, because God is beautiful, what He created reflects Him. One has beauty by virtue of participating in God.
Thus, apparent attributions of beauty to God abound in Christianity. We find God’s beauty praised at length in variable passages. Scripture describes God as ‘the King in His Beauty’ (Isaiah 33: 17), and the Psalmist expresses the desire to ‘behold the beauty of the LORD’. Augustine describes Him as ‘the most beautiful of all beings’ (Augustine 1961: 49), and Aquinas proclaims that He ‘is goodness and beauty itself’ (1273 / 2006: 2441). From these examples, we can argue that a tradition is committed to claiming beauty is a divine attribute. This is the baseline coming from the early classical patristic and medieval periods. That is, a complete account of the nature of God’s beauty would be impossible and unnecessary for our present task here. Instead, we defend the view that God is omni-beauty, and in so doing, we are thus committed to particular views that will determine.
To query what divine beauty means, regardless of one’s position concerning beauty in general, especially for Christians who have praised God’s beauty, when keeping with the tradition of perfect being theology, the suggestion is that God possesses the highest possible degree of beauty or is beautiful if and only if God is more beautiful than any other possible being. With God posing as the highest aesthetic value, the aesthetic argument for God’s existence also proposes that an abundance of beauty and the human capacity to appreciate beauty fit better in a world with God than in a world without God. Beauty here is best explained as a pointer to God. The skeptical philosopher Paul Draper considers the idea that “A beautiful universe, especially one containing beings that can appreciate that beauty, is more likely on theism than on naturalism.” That is, the outward beauty of God is expressed and perceivable as an aesthetic quality of His glory in His work or creation, redemption, and consummation. The Psalmist himself reminds us, “The Heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands” (Psalms 19:1). David later highlights, “Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth” (Psalms 50:2).
That is, the premise that “God is beautiful” is not only widely accepted and not problematic but also well supported in the Western tradition. This Western tradition also provides the precedent for us to think about beauty explicitly theologically. Augustine asserts: “I have learned to love you late, Beauty at once so ancient and new!” Nevertheless, one can argue that claiming that God is beautiful is not equivalent to the claim that God is exceptional, for instance. Also, it is not because God is excellent that God must be beautiful because there are things that can be excellent but not necessarily beautiful. That would be correct. But our premise supposes a distinct claim and carries the type of excellence God has: aesthetic excellence.
Divine Beauty Is Objective
God is beautiful, and God is true. We recognize that something is truth to the degree that it conforms with objective Truth. The problem is that one can be a realist regarding truth and goodness but embrace subjectivism regarding beauty. Yet, we know what beauty is because we have seen it (a sunset) and heard it (through the Handel Messiah piece), but the beauty of creation points to the even greater beauty of its Creator. That is, saying that God is beautiful entails that aesthetic properties can be instantiated by entities only perceivable subjectively by means of sensory perception. It does not mean that beauty itself is subjective, but only the appropriation of it. God gives His image bearers the capacity to perceive beauty and reflect the artistry. But the key to beauty is God Himself since all beauty in the created world is from Him. In Theology as Aesthetics, Jonathan King points, “Beauty is objective, and it is defined by a certain fittingness.”
The concept of fittingness implies a judgment about the degree to which something or someone exhibits beauty. In other words, that something or someone is not limited to an object or a thing as we normally think of in such terms. Rather, it is the divine beauty attribute that is mostly connected to the glory of God. For instance, we see God’s beauty displayed and embedded in His creation as a stunning echo of His glory. The ocean swelling, the redwood forest, the sunset, a relationship, the intricate details of a single flower, the majesty of a towering mountain, and the awe-inspiring patterns of a starlit sky invite us to explore the beauty found in nature. However, those examples demonstrate how beautiful gifts are given to us to catch divine glory. Jonathan goes further to say that glory is both ad extra and ad intra. Meaning that the glory of beauty expresses itself in God’s outward works, and also emanates from God’s own being. That is, the beauty of God ad extra [outwardly] is perceived and experienced by human beings. It is what most people see. The beauty of God ad extra displays that perfection of beatitude that belongs to God ad intra [inwardly].
Therefore, beauty is not simply in regards to objects or things or the sunset or whatever. Beauty is within the context of a relationship. It has to do with the theological and aesthetic relation between God in Himself and His creation. The outward beauty of God is perceivable as an aesthetic quality of His glory in His work of creation and redemption. Moreover, it is important to pay attention to the distinctive characteristics of beauty here. Beauty has the characteristics to communicate delight as its end is correlative to that absolute self that characterizes God’s internal life and glory. Beauty is predictable for every existing entity. Plants, cars, and people exist and have some predication of beauty.
God’s Beauty as Opposed to the World’s Beauty… Beauty From Plato to Aquinas’ Perspectives ( coming up next… )
