Starting with Beauty

As moderns, we are confronted every day with temptation to begin with ourselves and our own experiences as the primary source of authority in life. The temptation is to end it there, too, as we come full circle with ourselves.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," we say glibly, and shrug it off. Sort of like your friend, when asked about their favorite show, they respond, "Well, that's my opinion, dammit!" or, "I don't know why I like it, I just like it. It's just soo good." There's no arguing with a person like that. You couldn't beat a definition of "good" out of them with a stick. "What makes it good," you ask? A useless question. They take their own opinion and the opinions of others as purely subjective, with no objective standard to measure what is good in the world.

But in our actual experience of beauty, something different is going on.

Something has captivated me.

Something has lifted my soul...and pointed me to more of... well, what, exactly?

If I begin with my subjective experience, and end with myself as the be-all and end-all of that experience, what have I gained? You might say I have put myself in the place of God. Because there was nothing outside of me an my experience to begin with.

Modernism represented a reversal of classical theology, the "exitus/reditus" of the Middle Ages, in which all things come from God and return to God. The pattern looked something like this:

Only, rather than being caught up in a divine movement, I (as a subjective self) become the beginning, middle, and end of that movement. To think of God, then, is simply to think of myself, to contemplate my reflection in the mirror, and then return to myself once again.

Ultimately this self-reflective movement is deeply unsatisfying and radically un-generative. It cannot give life, because it neglects the fact that the experience of beauty doesn't come from myself. It's not my just my opinion, dammit. No, I've been caught up in something that is beyond me, captivated by something (or someone) else that commands my senses, my mind, my emotions, and at the same time allow me to transcend the perceived limitations of my own finitude.

And this experience of beauty comes to me as a gift. Often out of nowhere, my senses are overwhelmed with something: taste, scent, touch, sight, sound, the combination of any or all of these. Mix all that with thought and emotion and... wow! A world of infinite possibility and beauty emerges and floods our whole being.

How crazy would it be to think that we are the source of all that?

That all of that is just in the eye of the beholder. Me.

The universe is a gift given, meant to be received. We ourselves are a gift given to one another. You are a gift to this universe and all of us in it.

What I'm suggesting is that our experience of beauty is actually a participation in the reality of God. But you don't have to agree with me on the God thing for this to work for you. Because I think you will agree that the experience of beauty, common to our shared humanity, is something that comes from outside ourselves, and has something to do with our connection to this universe. And that it's something we have to be open to, something we have to receive.

As a gift.

And because of this, the modern theologians (I'm talking to you, FDE Schleiermacher) weren't exactly wrong when they made subjectivity the starting point for theology. It was the zeitgeist of the times, no, the weltgeist of the times (that's a Hegel joke). But in view of our common human experience, it IS possible for us 21st century humans to take beauty as the starting point for our reflections about God.

So long as we acknowledge the gift that is given, and our own receptivity. That we are dependent on something or someone outside ourselves.

That beauty is something beyond me, that has to do with some kind of relationship or connection to its source.

Starting with beauty, as opposed to starting the theological task with an emphasis on truth, which is the counter-move fundamentalism makes against modernism. That's what I want to talk about next.

Sounds exciting, right? But we'll have to wait until next time. I know I'll be there. I hope you will, too!

Grace and peace,

Mat