Beauty and Goodness
Friday, June 20th, 2008
The topic of the theology of beauty came up in a recent conversation. I never did explain my theological understanding of beauty and I am not going to here, at least not today. I realized that there was another question I needed to grapple with first.
Since God created creation and said “it is good,” do I not place myself as judge over God if I judge what is good and what is not? Who am I to presume to judge God?
Consider the narrative of the temptation in the garden Genesis.
But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3:4-5, esv).
God said not to eat of a particular tree, yet we read in the next verse,
So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate (Gen. 3:6, esv).
Did Eve judge what was good? Did Eve place herself in the position of judging God? God said no, but she judged the fruit to be good to eat.
If God is creator of all, then is He not the creator and definer of what is good and beautiful? Can we as created humans judge the beauty of the creative work of God? Is this not the same problem as in the garden?
So how do we recognize beauty? What is beauty? I’ll come back to this in a second post (maybe more). For now I will suggest that beauty can be understood, at least in part, in harmony with God’s intent for creation. More specifically, in submitting to God’s judgment of what is good.