Theology of Beauty?

[VerticalLiftEnjoyer]

Recently, I had a "discussion" with a very weird Roman Catholic woman regarding beauty. I put discussion in quotations, because when she said she found killing beautiful, it quickly devolved into me trying to convince her of her own depravity.

Looking back, it was less her thinking killing was beautiful and more her finding the circumstances beautiful--valiant last stands, dying for a lover, sacrificing thyself for a movement, etc--the same thing that influenced a lot of Romantic-era paintings (objectively beautiful) which had Napoleon or some other figure clamoring over peaceful dead bodies in picture-perfect poses; ignoring mourning mothers and the fading lives of men who'd been consigned to deaths more befitting of hospice care than young men. [this is why I cannot find beauty in war itself]

And this brings me to my question: what is the objective standard of beauty? A lot of people, when talking about the beauty of art, are actually talking about catharsis: Edvard Munch's paintings say far more than the DSM-5, and this enlightens the heart more than the eye. But what about that true beauty, when, the eye just knows that it's right? Kelly Johnson said that aircraft that look beautiful, fly beautiful. He later on called the F-117 an ugly bug, and everyone who ever saw it agreed--and so did the flight testing (which has the final say in such a statement; stealth aircraft are so unstable they cannot be flown manually)

Spoiler: Have Blue (F-117 prototype) for reference

Despite this, we know God does not despise hard-angle geometry, like polygons and the like. Contrarily, they are some of the most amazing parts of His creation!

Spoiler: Trypophobia warning; geometry in nature

Similarly, we know when someone colors their hair in unnatural (relative to mankind) colors, something is deeply wrong with them...

But yet, God's most beautiful creations are His most colorful ones!

Spoiler: Colorful things in nature

(Bioluminescent Algae ^)

So, from what evidence I've gathered, I've come to the conclusion that while these things can be made beautiful, they can easily be exploited to disgust (groundbreaking, I know). Mardi Gras is an abomination to the eyes, yet this does not make colorful dresses disgusting. Why is this so?

Thus far, the notion of the 3 transcendentals are the only real anchors I've been able to find.

What are your thoughts on this?

 

[Ben Zartman]

People have studied proportions in architecture to find what pleases the subconscious eye: a surface treatment of this (but very interesting) is Jim Tolpin's "By Hand and Eye" mostly about antique furniture. A lot can change, visually, by making the plinth of a column taller or shorter in relation to the column's diameter--subtle stuff like that.

Of course, there's great variety in taste: beauty is in the eye of the beholder, after all, but I think that under it all there's rules of proportions that used well will make something feel right to the beholder.

 

[Northern Crofter]

I think that under it all there's rules of proportions that used well will make something feel right to the beholder.

I would suggest these can all be traced back to what we see in nature. We might not always - or even rarely - consciously sense the patterns, orderly proportions, and juxtapositions of colors in God's creation, but it is there. If there is a natural moral law for one aspect of creation (humanity) that affects all other aspects, it figures that there is a natural law in how the cosmos is ordered physically. In other words, the law of God written in our hearts is not necessarily limited to moral law - the universal fear of falling from a great height is the "law" of gravity written in our hearts (which like anything else the heart can be hardened to). Since creation was done by a perfect Creator for the manifestation of the glory, it must not only be beautiful but also be the definition of beauty itself.

 

[hammondjones]

I would suggest these can all be traced back to what we see in nature. We might not always - or even rarely - consciously sense the patterns, orderly proportions, and juxtapositions of colors in God's creation, but it is there.

Tangentially, this is why Machine Learning / AI seems so spooky to us - computers find patterns we are oblivious to.

 

[Northern Crofter]

computers find patterns we are oblivious to

And yet we "trained" them to do it.

 

[HauerVos]

Jonathan King's The Beauty of the Lord (2018) is good on this. Check out this article for a survey of his project.

 

[Northern Crofter]

Jonathan King's The Beauty of the Lord (2018) is good on this. Check out this article for a survey of his project.

I like where he is headed, especially the concept of "fittingness" and how he links it to the beauty of the Trinity. The omni-beauty of God is something we commonly overlook - when is the last time that came up in a sermon!

 

[HauerVos]

I like where he is headed, especially the concept of "fittingness" and how he links it to the beauty of the Trinity. The omni-beauty of God is something we commonly overlook - when is the last time that came up in a sermon!

Same. Fittingness is the gauge through which we can discern true beauty from warped and twisted "beauty." What do people mean when they call a homosexual "marriage" beautiful ? It's certainly not fitting and thus can't be truly beautiful. I haven't fleshed out the full implications of it, but Sergius Bulgakov has a helpful quote on this. He talks of God's beauty as the "beauty of Holiness" which is true and objective -- it's the beauty that will save the world (quoting Dostoevsky) at the eschaton. Bulgakov contrasts it with "pseudo-beauty," which maintains the outward radiance of the Spirit from creation, but is a mirage. Here's the full quote:

"Beauty will also save the world from the enchantments of illusory beauty, pseudo-beauty, which is alienated from and even hostile to Holiness. It will save it from the pseudo-beauty of the "whore," whose image can be found in the Old Testament (the Proverbs) as well as in the New (Revelation), in opposition to the true Beauty of Christ's Bride (The Song of Songs and Revelation). Beauty, as beautiful appearance, which has preserved the outward radiance of the Holy Spirit but has separated itself from His power, which has become an instrument of sin and temptation, the lie of Sodom - this beauty is a whited sepulcher, inwardly full of a corpse's decomposition. It is sufficient for this pseudo-beauty to lose its opacity, its external character, and it will disappear like a mirage, exposed and condemned in its own ugliness.... Beauty will defeat beauties in their soulless beautifulness; only spiritual beauty will become real, and true spirituality will arm itself with the power of beauty and become invincible and irresistible." (Bulgakov, The Comforter, p. 280).

The last sentence feels gnostic, but he doesn't mean spiritual as immaterial. He affirms the bodily resurrection. I think this insight can be "unhitched" from his sophiology and universalism (note I'm not endorsing Bulgakov's theological system).