Beauty and Revelation
Our faith has always been an incarnate faith, one of a God made flesh. Despite various attempts to diminish or ignore this reality, from Docetism and Gnosticism through Iconoclasm and even the Reformation, it remains central to our faith that the material world is good, and that God himself entered it as a person. He came to see us face to face; he encounters us through beauty.
Twentieth-century theologian and philosopher Hans Urs von Balthasar understood the significance of beauty in our faith, the recognization that all of the created order was a gift from God. For Balthasar, the transcendentals —Truth, Goodness, and Beauty — are inseparable, and the natural beauty found in the world that is revealed to our senses is simultaneously a testament to the natural goodness and truth of the world, expounding upon St. Paul’s similar declaration in the first chapter of his epistle to the Romans. The creation of the cosmos is “the first stage of [God’s] self-giving to the creature” (111). Beauty is seen as self-giving, or kenosis. This concept, in concert with Balthasar’s emphasis on a historical view of aesthetics, is intertwined within the story of revelation.
At the center of Balthasar’s theory of revelation and beauty lies the ultimate revelation, Jesus Christ. The beauty of Christ, however, is veiled — Balthasar notes that the rare time when aesthetic categories are applied to Christ, they are applied in the negative — “he had no form (εἶδος) or glory (δόξα) that we should look at him, and no beauty (κάλλος) that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2; ESV/LXX). The crucifixion of Christ, outside of the context of historical revelation, is a barbaric affair, devoid of any beauty. But within context, in light of the beauty-as-kenosis underlying the story of revelation from creation, it is the pinnacle of beauty: Christ, God’s “greatest work of art,” emptying himself fully within human history just as he does eternally within the Trinity, reveals for eyes to see more perfectly the beauty seen from the beginning: God’s self-giving.
“Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory (δόξης) of God and the exact imprint of his nature.” (Hebrews 1:1–3; ESV/LXX).
Christ thus redefines how we ought to see beauty. Beauty is found when we stop to contemplate and engage at a deeper level. It is so for all three transcendentals: Christ reveals a truth that is a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles, a goodness that is a man leaving his family without saying goodbye, and a beauty that is the agonizing death of the innocent man. Instead of allowing one to remain unaware at the surface, Christ’s beauty shocks the senses to stop and contemplate, to understand and discover the infinite well beneath the surface.
It is for this reason, among many others, why the physicality of our faith is important. Contemporary theologian Cecelia Gonzalez-Andrieu notes in her work Bridge to Wonder how Christ revealed the Kingdom of God in aesthetic ways: causing the blind to see, the lame to walk, and the dead to come to life. God is experienced through the senses, through beauty. Similarly, Balthasar emphasizes how Christianity is more than an idea or concept: it is a reality, and a reality we can engage with. Through Liturgy, with its movements, smells, sights, sounds, and tastes all ordered specifically to celebrate and contemplate Christ, one is confronted by God through aesthetics.
The mystery of God and the story of salvation is revealed in totality in the Liturgy (as well as in art in general) but one can easily miss it. As a child, all I wanted to do was fill in my coloring books, and even now my mind is sometimes preoccupied with what I will do after mass. Balthasar reminds us that our spiritual senses must be attuned as physical senses: we must learn to engage in contemplation, and see the beauty that is veiled before us. Sight, in particular of the senses, is held in high regard by Balthasar: ultimately, our eyes are ultimately meant to see God himself in the beatific vision. Spiritual senses, to Balthasar, are the bodily senses formed according to the form of Christ. Through beauty, God is revealed — but for some “You will indeed hear but never understand, and you will indeed see but never perceive,” and for others “blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear” (Matthew 13:15–16; ESV). We must attune ourselves to see God through beauty.
Through beauty, God encounters us and reveals himself more deeply; This is the ultimate humility in the face of the temptation to compartmentalize Christianity as an idea. American slaves with attuned senses can know God much deeper through their heartfelt spirituals and historical narrative of salvation than an academic with untuned senses who studies theological works for a lifetime. The story of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the artwork depicting her can spread understanding of God where language and preaching had fallen short. Even St. Thomas Aquinas, pious monk and Doctor of the Church, left his magnum opus unfinished after seeing Christ crucified while celebrating Mass. “All that I have written seems to me like straw compared to what has now been revealed to me,” was all he would say.
Yet just as Christ’s goodness calls us to be good and his truth calls us to be true, his beauty calls us to be beautiful. Mexican Philosopher, revolutionary, and “Cultural Caudillo” Jose Vasconcelos posits that “In its highest form, ethics is aesthetics, that is, service out of love […] action as enjoyment, the highest stage” (Goizueta 93). How we act, ultimately, should not be dictated by pure logic or concepts such as duty, as helpful as those may be. Our action should be rooted in love, in imitation of what we see in Christ. Similar to Joseph Pieper’s idea that the highest form of life can be found in the contemplation of God within festival, Vasconcelos holds that it is celebration, living life for its own sake, where we become united with God. Celebration becomes liturgy. It is for this reason, he concludes, that morality is rooted in a person, Christ, and not a code of conduct. He is revealed to us in beauty, and we receive him through beauty; the final step is to act with his beauty, to imitate Christ out of love.
