The Beauty of God and Music, Part 2

The voice of history and the reality of God’s beauty
Mike HardingMusic speaks to every culture. One need not speak the same language to enjoy the same piece of music, for music is a language in itself. Not only does music transcend every culture, but also time, for the same sonata, fugue, and concerto can be enjoyed by those who live well after it has been written. How did our ancestors view music? More particularly, how did they relate the beauty of God to their choices of music?

The Historical Recognition of God’s Beauty

Certainly one of the distinguishing marks of Jonathan Edwards’ theology in relation to the whole history of Christian thought is his radical elevation of beauty to preeminence among the divine perfections. Augustine, however, reflected on the nature of beauty centuries earlier.

Augustine. In his Confessions he said: “Too late I have loved you, O Beauty, so ancient and so new, too late have I loved you. Behold, you were within me, while I was outside: it was there that I sought you, and, as a deformed creature, rushed headlong upon these things of beauty which you have made. . . . They kept me far from you, those fair things which, if they were not in you, would not exist at all.”

Beauty is the perfection of God’s divine being. God alone is the essence of beauty in an original and exclusive sense.

Jonathan Edwards. For Edwards, beauty is not only that “wherein the truest idea of divinity does consist,” but also “it is first among the perfections of God; it constitutes in itself the perfection of all the other divine attributes” (Religious Affections, p 298).

He argued that the source of beauty is God Himself. God’s beauty is seen in His moral virtue and in the agreement (unity) of the Godhead. Edwards said these qualities transfer to inanimate things in a secondary beauty, consisting in “mutual consent and agreement of different things, in form, manner, quality, and visible end or design; called by the various names of regularity, order, uniformity, symmetry, proportion, harmony.” Examples of such are “the mutual agreement of the various sides of a square, the beautiful proportion of the various parts of the human body, and . . . the sweet mutual consent and agreement of the various notes in a melodious tune” (Essay Concerning the Nature of True Value, Chapter 3).

“It has pleased God to establish a law of nature by virtue of which the uniformity and mutual correspondence of a beautiful plant, the respect which the various parts of a regular building seem to have to one another, and their agreement and union, and the consent or concord of the various notes of a melodious tune, should appear beautiful because therein is some image of the consent of mind, the different members of a society or system of intelligent beings, sweetly united in a benevolent agreement of heart. . . . And here I should further observe . . . that God has so constituted nature, that the presenting of this inferior beauty, especially in those kinds of it which have the greatest resemblance of the primary beauty, as the harmony of sounds, and the beauties of nature, have a tendency to assist those whose hearts are under the influence of a truly virtuous temper, to dispose them to the exercises of divine love, and enliven in them a sense of spiritual beauty” (Ibid.).

Unregenerate people do not approve of beautiful objects because they perceive this analogy; rather, their appreciation of beauty is directly attributed to the common grace of God.

Beauty cannot originate from anyone other than God Himself, and it is a window into heaven for those who have ears to hear and eyes to see (regenerated hearts). God’s beauty is self-evident and speaks for itself through its intrinsic power of attraction to a mind not surrendered to the noetic effects of sin.

The Theological Reach of God’s Beauty:

God is beautiful in His person.

Integrity of His being. God’s self-revelation corresponds to what He actually is in word, deed, general revelation, and special revelation.

Tri-unity of God. The tri-unity of God culminates in absolute beauty. The Son is the perfect image of the Father, the “express image of His person” (Heb 1.3), the “image of the invisible God” (Col 1.15); and the Holy Spirit perfectly testifies of the Son (John 15.26).

Incarnation. The incarnation of the Son reveals the beauty of God in a special way and to a supreme degree through the personal (hypostatic) union of two such diverse natures as deity and humanity in one person. Here, we have perfect unity without monotony, diversity without chaos, with perfect proportion and splendor.

God is beautiful in His perfections.

God’s attributes unite in perfect harmony. There is no greater variety than God’s infinite perfections, nor a more intensive unity. Though holiness governs all of God’s attributes (Isa 6), the Bible does not exalt one attribute of God at the expense of the others. They form a glorious, harmonious whole without any inherent contradiction. The absence of chaos or monotony in His divine attributes amplifies His absolute beauty. They also mutually contribute to God’s purpose and performance manifesting the splendor to which man should respond.

God is beautiful in His purpose.

God has an eternal plan which embraces all that comes to pass (Ro 9.8–24; Eph 1.4–12; Jn 6.22–66). Based on His own holy and wise counsel, God governs, efficaciously or permissively, every detail of His universe in accordance with His perfect and unchanging plan. The chief aim of His purpose is to bring glory to Himself which is the aim of all beauty. Furthermore, there is perfect harmony between the purpose and performance of God.

God is beautiful in His performances.

Creation. Each person of the Godhead perfectly and harmoniously exercised His role in the Creation of the universe, earth, and man. The product, prior to the fall, was absolutely beautiful including a natural order which reflects the glory of God and culminating in man who was made in the image of God (Ge 1.31 “very good”).

The mistake many have made at this point is to seek the beauty of God’s creation and miss the beauty of the Creator [cf. Ro 1.18ff] (cf. Augustine’s quote).

Redemption. Salvation is beautiful in that it involves perfect and harmonious actions of the triune God. The product of salvation is beautiful in that it blots out the ugliness of sin and restores the believer in the image of God which was marred at the fall. The believer is a new man created by God in righteousness, holiness, and true knowledge. Finally, salvation culminates in the believer being conformed to the image of Christ through glorification (Ro 8.28–29).

The Practical Response to God’s Beauty

Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us. Ps 90.17

The objective view of beauty evaluates the arts on the basis of excellence of craft and the admirability of the object. The subjective view evaluates beauty on the basis of human response alone and experience.

Immanuel Kant, father of the Enlightenment, maintained that beauty was solely subjective and that art could be considered beautiful only if it produced desired feelings in the audience (Critique of Judgment). Kant’s ideas have deep roots in modern culture. Since Kant denied the reality of God, he also denied the reality of objective beauty. To Kant, God was whatever you “postulated” Him to be; likewise, beauty was whatever the individual wanted it to be. Kant exalted the idolatry of self.

Relativism encourages us to make choices based on what makes us feel good, rather than on the basis of excellence and admirability. We must learn to enjoy that which is admirable and excellent through study, discipline, proper exposure, and teaching.

C. S. Lewis wrote in An Experiment in Criticism, “the first demand art makes on us is to surrender.” Art is communication, and we must carefully analyze it to see to what we are surrendering. Unity (without monotony), Diversity (without chaos), Proportion (without distortion), and Splendor (the ability to manifest one’s perfections and attributes) describe the object, not the listener. They are qualities of the piece of music, and either they are there or not there. Just as a reader must have a good knowledge of language to appreciate fine books, so a listener must have a knowledge of music to appreciate fine compositions.

Our culture is so steeped in pop music that requires nothing of us that we may soon forget there is anything else to be known other than the trite and profane. If we understand, for instance, that it takes a musician 15 to 20 years to learn to play the cello well, shouldn’t we be willing to work a bit and learn to listen well? With an objective, God-centered view of beauty vis av vis a subjective, man-centered view, we will see what is good even when it doesn’t please us, giving great works the chance to speak to us over time.

The objective view of beauty also protects our sensibilities from lethargy and carnality. It takes little patience or work to enjoy the things on which Americans spend most of their time. Television, pop music, movies, fast food, advertising, etc. are all designed to be easily digested by a dumbed-down general public. They require little if anything of us. As a result, we become lethargic, and our attention span decreases, losing the ability to see as God sees, hear as God hears, and perceive as God perceives.

A theocentric (God-centered) view of beauty also develops a sense of “taste.” Some think taste simply means “personal preference,” but the Miriam-Webster Dictionary defines taste as “the power or practice of discerning or enjoying whatever constitutes excellence, especially in the fine arts.” As such, taste is a facet of wisdom, the skillful application of God’s truth, and the ability to distinguish what has value from what does not. Learning to enjoy what is admirable is to improve our tastes and a sure way of glorifying God for the gifts He has given our artists. Animals do not possess “taste” and appreciate beauty, either their own, or anyone else’s; it is a gift to men alone made in His image (Gen 1.27–29).

Some mistakenly equate subjective enjoyment with objective excellence. There is such a thing as a counterfeit aesthetic experience, that is, the feeling that you have experienced something profound when all you have really experienced is a fake. Whether it is a telephone commercial on TV that brings a tear to the eye or a pop song that manipulates our emotions, entertainers have learned how to get a cheap response from their audience when nothing admirable or excellent has been offered. Like a cheat, some offer an emotional experience; and the naive mistake it for a spiritual experience. This is the artistic equivalent of fast food – all the fun of real food with none of the nutrition.

Pop culture, unfortunately, is determining the worship in many “evangelical” churches. The result is that we are increasingly offering cheap, sensational, and superficial Christian music which at best is smarmy and “feel good.” There is a creeping banality in our musical choices. The main requirement is popularity without admirability. If the most important thing in music is that we “feel good,” what is to stop us from following our appetites for their own sake in other areas. When left to ourselves, our sensibilities always tend toward the low, debased, superficial, trendy, and eventually the depraved (Rom 1.18–31).

Conclusion Kant articulated the modernists’ position: There are no absolutes; therefore, we can know beauty only by our subjective feelings. Edwards, who has all but been forgotten in our modern age, reflected the Biblical view declaring that the source of beauty is the nature of God. Christians hold to absolutes. Why not here?

The way to live faithfully in our world and not be of our world is to lead the way regarding the nature of beauty. Why should we design another shapeless building in which to proclaim the eternal truths of God? Lewis said we will not read nothing. If we do not read good books, we will read bad books. If we do not delight in refined things, we will delight in debased ones. The same is true of music.

Man must submit his intellect to the truth of God, his emotions to the love of God, his will to the holiness of God, and his aesthetic values to the beauty of God. Since Christ is the apex of the beauty of God, conformity to the image of Christ is the ultimate and chief result of man’s response to the beauty of God. John said, “We shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” (1Jn 3.2) Isaiah foretold of that day when we shall see the returning Christ: “Thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty.” (Isa 33.17)