Is God dead?| More of beauty

Beauty. Such an interesting topic. It is a topic everyone has an opinion about, and all opinions are that we want more beauty in our lives. As we said last week, beauty is food for the soul. In fact, true beauty is said to be so personal and so transcendent that talking or writing about it seems to do them a great injustice and tarnishes their radiant glow. Perhaps it is because, as John-Mark Miravalle explains, beauty affirms balance, order, and a longing for the transcendent. Thomas Aquinas was keen on this. He once wrote, “Nature is nothing other than a certain kind of art, namely God’s art.” This is why there is often a haunting loneliness when experiencing true beauty; our soul longs for the transcendent Artist of all the beauty we see. Human beings have a personal moral obligation toward beauty’s creation and preservation because of linking beauty with the transcendent. We know this because nothing evil can be beautiful. Think about it. Can a beautiful evil be conceived? Nor does evil bring serenity, peace, or anything humans long for. And if it did, it would immediately cease to be beautiful because it was ugly from the start. That is why beauty is a common ground between believers and skeptical unbelievers like Michael. Michael appreciates and loves beauty just as much as the ardent Christian. Miravalle explains that “we believe in objective standards of goodness and morality. In other words, beauty isn’t just a preference.”

At any rate, humans have a mutual obligation to pursue beauty. John-Mark Miravalle writes that when people seek truth and goodness (or beauty), they will conform to goodness by becoming morally upright. “There is, in other words, a continuity between the things pursued and the pursuer’s own attributes.” That is why the apostle Paul once said, “Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things” (Phil 4:8). Why? Because beauty draws us outside of ourselves and to a higher reality; that spiritual reality, we have said, is the Creator: the Designer of the cosmos, the Designer of the “irreducible complexity” found in human beings. A complexity not unlike man’s body/soul duality—that immaterial soul that needs to be fed—that soul that hungers for something higher and beyond itself—that soul that yearns for its Creator.

A few weeks ago, we looked at the beauty beheld in the Golden Ratio, and last week, we looked at the beauty found in music that follows the Golden Ratio. But it is the beauty of nature that surpasses all else. Indeed, St. Augustine of Hippo once wrote of the orderliness of nature: “From this stage, reason advanced to the province of the eyes. And scanning the earth and heavens, it realized that nothing pleased it but beauty; and in beauty, design; and in design, dimensions; and in dimensions, number.” After all, God used the wonder and beauty of nature to offer a defense of Himself against Job (Job 38-42). And it is from the beauty of nature that Paul claims we cannot deny that there is a Creator of all that we see (Rom 1:19ff).

Once again, evolutionary explanations fail to offer the best possible solution as to why humans have such a keen sense and a longing for beauty. Philosopher Mahan Matthen summarizes the evolutionists’ dilemma: “Why is it valuable to be absorbed in contemplation, with all the attendant dangers of reduced vigilance? Wasting time and energy puts organisms at an evolutionary disadvantage.” Christian scientist Fazale Rana states, “An obsession with aesthetics could be properly seen as maladaptive.” It is not a good thing to daydream about the beauty of a rose or the beauty of a sunrise, all the while living in the woods with a saber-toothed tiger! But if the eyes of the soul are open, then the often-breath-taking beauty beheld in nature can bear God’s fingerprints.

The point is this: after a thorough investigation, it seems to me that human beings alone possess both a body and a soul. And the soul of man longs for something that transcends this world. The Creator often feeds the soul of His creatures through divine serenity found in beauty. Philosopher Richard Swinburne notes, “If God creates a universe, as a good workman, he will create a beautiful universe. On the other hand, if the universe came into existence without being created by God, there is no reason to suppose that it would be a beautiful universe. It seems to me that divine agency is the best explanation for the beauty in the world around us. And it is further evidence of the human soul. Join us next week as we look once again at the human drive and capacity to feed the soul “real food” and glimpse the Creator’s fingerprints. Until then, what will you say: Is God Dead?

Gloria in excelsis Deo!