What is beauty? The question has perhaps been asked for centuries. I want to attempt to answer it now, then revisit the question in several months after study in a college course dealing with the very subject of beauty. The following essay details my current beliefs of what beauty is, and what beauty should be. I do not exclude the possibility of coming across ideas and facts which will alter my belief; in fact, I hope for it, and I will seek it.
First, there can be no one-sentence definition of beauty, for there are different kinds of beauty, and I will discuss each at length. There is aesthetic beauty, beauty which we see, hear, and smell. There is also what I will call functional beauty, that is, beauty of operation, efficiency, and grace. I wish to first discuss both aesthetic and functional beauty as it appears most often, and then go on to discuss what aesthetic and functional beauty should be.
In the secular world, aesthetic beauty is king and queen. Aesthetic beauty has been demonized of late, and its definition broadened; but all is still in response – and is therefore subservient to – aesthetic beauty. For a time, and still in many circles, aesthetic beauty is valuative; that is, aesthetic beauty is preferred to aesthetic non-beauty. The person or thing which has beauty is valued over the person or thing which does not have beauty, to the extent that the non-beautiful person or thing is somehow lesser than the beautiful. Rather than beauty being the superlative, beauty is the norm and non-beauty is the short-coming. In response, in the realm of beautiful or non-beautiful persons, there has come the sense of an “inner-beauty,” but often this is said in the sense of making up for a lack of aesthetic beauty. “Well, I have an inner beauty...” But such a response does not nullify aesthetic beauty as the most desired; rather, it reasserts it, but then excuses the lack.
Also in the secular world, and closely linked to the above, is a sense of morality attached to aesthetic beauty. Because aesthetic beauty is desired, it is therefore “good.” The next logical step is that things which are beautiful are good, and things which are not beautiful are not good. Thus we give ourselves over to our lusts in the belief that if it is beautiful, it is good.
Among Christians, it seems, the aesthetic is vigorously ignored or explained away or normalized. One notion is that “if God created it, it is beautiful.” Though, since God created all things, everything is beautiful; which makes beauty – at least aesthetic beauty – the common denominator, something to be canceled out. Or Christians turn to functional beauty and say since aesthetic beauty should not be valued above non-beauty, it is meaningless and only functional beauty should be contemplated. As Eugene Peterson puts it, in The Jesus Way: “[Beauty] is evidence of and witness to the inherent wholeness and goodness of who God is and the way God works.” Thus, much may be perceived as “functional beauty;” the wings of a dragonfly, a dog’s nose – any part of Creation which reflects the glory of God – and so much, yes, almost everything, attests to His glory – that beauty may be found anywhere, if one only contemplates it long and hard enough.
First, I protest this marginalization of aesthetic beauty. If we appreciate aesthetic beauty for what it is, there is no need to demonize or marginalize it. Aesthetic beauty, in my mind, is defined by harmony of lines, shapes, planes, angles, colors, sounds, and smells. I further define harmony simply as working together; contrasting colors may still be in harmony, if by contrasting they illuminate one another. Perpendicular lines may be in harmony if their juxtaposition illuminates and reveals the greater whole. A person is not to be credited if the lineaments of their face or body work in greater harmony than a person whose lineaments to not; thus I protest the timidity in complimenting aesthetic beauty of person, if by so doing the person is not valued above others, or the beauty is not more valued than non-beauty. Yet this is what so often happens; to which I ask, should green be valued above red? Perhaps if your favorite color is green, and you are valuing it for yourself; and aesthetic beauty, often, falls into the same personal-style of preference.
When we demonize those who appreciate aesthetic beauty, we assign to them a shallowness of perception. But we miss a very large part of creation if we focus so much on inner workings that we deny and ignore common, superficial beauty. Of course, we do not want to stop at superficial beauty. But there should be nothing inherently wrong with admitting – non-begrudgingly – that something or someone is aesthetically beautiful. Too often, I think, we assume aesthetic beauty is synonymous with lust; or, often, we act as if they were. But if we have been set free from sin, as the apostle Paul tells us indeed we have, then we are also free to appreciate beauty without simultaneously lusting after it. It is a pitfall – a very common and dangerous pitfall – but to assign that to someone without being in their mind is an identical pitfall, one that often we jump right into just as we condemn the other person for falling into a separate pit.
To set off another example, there are those who call themselves “Goth” who paint their faces white, everything else black, and pierce every part of their body imaginable. They may say of one another that they are “beautiful;” but is this a product of true harmony of pieces, or the feeding of an aberrant lust? Thus, to clarify the above paragraph, “beauty” is not “satisfaction of lust” as seems to be so often the case of aesthetic beauty. Furthermore, aesthetic beauty should not be taught to another as “the” definition of aesthetic beauty, and therefore should carry no valuative quality. It is often the height of narcissism to define something arbitrarily for ourselves, and then demand conformity of everyone else to that standard.
Now, too, functional beauty is harmony of function. In this, I take something of a pragmatic view; the motions themselves may appear incongruent and “ugly,” but if the movements work together brilliantly to bring about the whole, it may be beautiful. This is when creation is beautiful despite absence of aesthetic beauty. This is the beauty in which the reality of God resides. When functional beauty is graceful, it shares a realm with aesthetic beauty, in that it is beauty which pleases the senses. When functional beauty is efficient, often it falls into the realm of contextual beauty. Though he does not make the distinction, this is what I feel Eugene Peterson speaks of, again from his work The Jesus Way, when he cites the verse from Isaiah 52:7: “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings,” (RSV). What is the prophet saying here? Are the feet of the messenger somehow changed, aesthetically, by the bringing of good tidings? But if we speak about function only, are the functioning of the messenger’s feet altered by the bringing of good tidings? If there is no change to the messenger’s feet whatsoever, aesthetically or functionally, then why must this statement be made? It is because it is in context that beauty can be applied to something -- beauty if normally ugly, and especial beauty even if already beautiful. Many things and situations in this world are ugly; but through God’s redemptive power, beauty may be extracted. It does not change the ugliness of the situation itself; only that beauty can come forth from the ugliness. As in the old gardening adage “even beautiful roses need manure,” the manure is not beautiful, even though the results of its application are. We transgress true beauty when we apply it to manure simply because manure can aid in the revelation of beauty. If there is beauty in a thunderstorm, it is from the harmony of elements of God’s creation at work (functional) or in the watering of His earth and the clearing of debris (contextual). Slate-gray skies and fog and damp are not beautiful in themselves; but how they act in concert and effect the Creation may bring forth beauty. But a sunset is both aesthetic and functional: it is not beautiful because of harmony of lines, planes, angles, and the like that I have associated with aesthetic beauty; it is pleasing to the eye, and also a result of the working harmony of God’s Creation; of sun, and clouds, and slanting, refracted rays.
There is much more I could write on this right now, but a more nuanced definition will certainly emerge as I continue to write; so, let me finish with this. If one sentence or word may try to define beauty, then, it should be harmony. But not all that is harmonious is beautiful; and all that is beautiful may not be easily defined as harmonious. But it is a start. Furthermore, beauty should not attempt to value, but simply to describe; though it is a more profound and complex description than other simple adjectives may give.
But we shall see, as time progresses and knowledge increases, how this definition continues to stand.
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