In the Bible, divine holiness and beauty are encountered in the sanctuary; in the New Testament, in the person of the Messiah. “One thing I ask of YHWH; / that shall I seek; // to dwell in the house of YHWH / all the days of my life; // to gaze upon the beauty of YHWH, / and inquire in his temple” (Psalm 27:4). “Ascribe to YHWH, O divine beings; / ascribe to YHWH glory and strength. // Ascribe to YHWH the glory of his name; / prostrate before YHWH in the splendor of the sanctuary” (Psalm 29:1-2). “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw everyone to myself" (John 12:32).
In a day and age in which the going concept of beauty is a marketing tool of the corporate sponsors of Vanity Fair, is it possible to recover a sense of the coincidence of beauty (Schönheit), holiness (Heiligkeit), and glory (Herrlichkeit)? I believe so, because the coincidence is still to be observed in phenomena of nature1 and the visage of mortals.2
“Alle weltliche Schönheit ist für den antiken Menschen die Epiphanie göttlicher Herrlichkeit” – For the ancients, all beauty that meets the eye is an epiphany of divine splendor.” So Hans Urs von Balthasar. But also:
Beauty is the last thing which the thinking intellect dares to approach, since only it dances as an uncontained splendor around the double constellation of the true and the good and their inseparable relation to one another. Beauty is the disinterested one, without which the ancient world refused to understand itself, a word that both imperceptibly and yet unmistakably has bid farewell to our new world, a world of interests, leaving it to its own avarice and sadness.
No more loved or fostered by religion, beauty is lifted from its face as a mask, and its absence exposes features on that face, which threaten to become incomprehensible to man. We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it.
Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance.
Hans Urs von Balthasar, "The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics," Volume 1, "Seeing the Form," T&T Clark, Edinburgh 1982, p. 18). I lift this quote from an essay by Mauro Gagliardi.
Rudolf Otto (Das Heilige = The Idea [sic] of the Holy [1957]) reserved the term “numinous experience” for apperceptions of a reality “wholly other” than the perceiver, for example, a dualistic experience of God, where subject and God remain rigorously distinct; an experience, constitutive of Jewish Kabbalah, of a single supernal sefirah; and shamanistic encounters with spirits. The objects of desire produce fascination and dread in the eyes of the beholder.
Ninian Smart, a philosopher of religion, developed a two-pole theory of religious experience in which the two poles are the numinous and the contemplative. A typical quote:
While the more dramatic sensations of the numinous are frightening, and the fear of the Lord is supposedly the beginning of wisdom, the logic of the numinous is kindlier, since the one Holy is the source of holiness and so of salvation. It is easy to make the transition therefore from fear to love; you love God since God loves you – and you know she loves you because she conveys salvation to you. This being so, the connection between the numinous and devotionalism is transparent. And so religions of grace and devotion naturally abound out of holy dualisms. But without any trace of duality or of the numinous there cannot be bhakti. Yet bhakti emerges from the Great Vehicle as soon as Buddha become objects of worship. It is almost a reverse evolution. By the time we get to Tibetan deities, the fierceness is manifest. It is like this: the contemplative experience; devotion to deity-like Buddhas; numinous apprehensions of the Other. By contrast, let us consider a schematized view of Islam [the same schema might be suggested for Judaism and Christianity – JFH]: the numinous experience of the Prophet; devotion to the merciful God; the contemplative union with God (Sufism). We may note that a way of reconciling tensions between the numinous and the contemplative is to have a double-decker Divine: the impersonal ultimate, and the manifesting from it the personal Lord.
(Ninian Smart, Dimensions of the Sacred: An Anatomy of the World’s Beliefs [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996] 174).
In the Bible, the impersonal ultimate is not alluded to. Rather, revelation consists of a vision of the Lord “high and lifted up, his train filling the temple” surrounded by winged cobras who cry out, “Holy, holy, holy, YHWH of Armies; / the whole earth is full of his glory” (Isa 6:1-3). Revelation is of the beauty of the person of Jesus Christ, the way, the truth, and the life, outside of whom no one has access to the Father, ultimate but not impersonal.
Experience of the divine is typically in the flesh: “I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” (Ps 27:13; note, much later, the emphases of Luke 24:36-43).
There are many senses in which the religion of ancient Israel and that of its pagan neighbors were on the same page. This is one of them: holiness, beauty, and goodness are givens of sensate experience. They go together – and danger attaches to all three.
If you understand holiness, you understand beauty; if you understand beauty, you understand danger.
Notes
1 “All the diamonds in this world that mean anything to me / are conjured up by wind and sunlight dancing on the sea” (Bruce Cockburn).
2 Emmanuel Levinas is a master of this subject.
Session Outline
Here is the outline of a session on “The Beauty of Holiness” in a course on The Bible and Current Events.
Assigned Texts:
Exod 3:1-10; Isa 6:1-13; Ezek 1:1-3:3; Pss 27 and 29
Posts to Comment on:
Pure and Holy, Tried and True
Cleanliness is next to Godliness
What does it mean to hallow God’s name?
Background reading: The Beauty of Holiness (Jonathan Edwards)
Jerome Gellman on Mysticism
Robert Pasnau on Jerome Gellman: The Rationality of Theistic Belief
In away I think this post takes too deep of a look into beauty. Beauty isn't danger in my eyes. I believe that believing your beautiful inside and out is accepting yourself as you are and that makes you holy. I honestly cant say I understand the term holiness.
Posted by: Pulp Fiction 1 | May 11, 2011 at 08:42 PM
The dictionary definition of holy is, “specially recognized as sacred by religious use or authority, dedicated or devoted to the service of god, the church, or religion, and saintly; godly; devout.” I agree with the first and second definition, but I have a few thoughts on the third one. I agree that holy can mean saintly or devout, but I don’t think the same about godly. Personally, I don’t think anyone or anything can be godly, except, of course, God. In a way, I think it’s insulting to the Lord for anything to be called this. This reminds me of the first two commandments, the first stating, “You shall have no other gods before me” and the other says, “You shall not make for yourself any carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them. For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate me, but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” If you refer to something as godly, it could be taken that you worship another god before the Lord and possibly bow down and serve them. Obviously this is not usually what people mean when they say that, but that’s just my opinion.
Today’s American media concept of beauty is, to be honest, pretty disgusting. We are constantly bombarded by ads featuring scantily clad women with large (possibly fake) breasts, luscious hair, “flawless” skin, and lots of makeup. These pictures are all edited by computers to make the women appear absolutely perfect, but in real life, nobody looks that great without a lot plastic surgery and Botox. Though it’s true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, true beauty is a person themselves. God, the Holy one, created every single one of us and we are all different, unique in our own ways. Honestly, we should be celebrating in God’s glory that fact that we are alive, not changing the bodies he gave us. People who know me who laugh out loud if they read that I wrote this because I usually won’t go out without mascara and eyeliner and I constantly complain about my figure. That is true, but the important thing is that I still love my eyes without makeup and still love and appreciate my body. I think I complain about it because maybe if I hear myself say it, it’ll motivate me to eat healthier and work out more. I am grateful for the body I have and know that I am beautiful because God made me.
Posted by: shawshank redemption 5 | May 12, 2011 at 12:19 PM
Literature and life are full of examples in which something very beautiful has a bewitching effect on the beholder.
God, too, not just a beautiful human being, male or female, can become a "magnificent obsession" in the life of someone else. The result can be dangerous in the extreme; co-dependency is an example of love (eros) which has become toxic.
The great outdoors, the thrill of being in shape, of going very fast, are further examples of things which sometimes consume, literally, those who give themselves body and soul to their beauty.
Posted by: JohnFH | May 12, 2011 at 05:03 PM
So, if the Seraphim are cobras, then I suppose the third pair of wings covers their... well, "feet" is a euphemism in that case, isn't it?
Posted by: Gary Simmons | May 14, 2011 at 05:49 PM
That's the usual understanding: a euphemism.
Posted by: JohnFH | May 14, 2011 at 06:08 PM
Otherwise, we'd be dealing with dragons! By the way, do you know of anywhere I could find pictures of Seraphim that look more authentic than Precious Moments collectables?
Posted by: Gary Simmons | May 15, 2011 at 06:32 PM
Hi Gary,
For further discussion, I would draw your attention to page 273 of Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel By Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger (available via Google Books online). The book contains drawings of the seals mentioned, and other important iconographical parallels, See for example p. 275.
Posted by: JohnFH | May 15, 2011 at 07:44 PM
"Some would have moral virtue to be holiness, which (as they suppose) they can understand by their own reason and practice in their own strength...Gospel truth is the only root wherein Gospel holiness will grown." -- John Owen
"Holiness hath in it a natural tendency to life and peace." -- Elisha Coles
"There is a beauty in holiness as well as beauty of holiness." -- George Swinnock
"Here is the Christian's way and his end...His way is holiness, his end happiness." -- John Whitlock
"Say not that thou hast royal blood in thy veins, and art born of God, except thou cants prove thy pedigree by daring to be holy." -- William Gurnall
"Perfect holiness is the aim of the saints on earth, and it is the reward of the saints in Heaven." -- Joseph Caryl
Posted by: Church Construction | May 18, 2011 at 03:15 AM
I feel so much happier now I undesrtand all this. Thanks!
Posted by: Woods | June 09, 2011 at 02:51 PM
When I think of beauty,
I think of You.
So awesome,
So majestic,
So perfect,
So new.
God you are beauty,
In all your might ways.
Your mountains,
Your valleys,
I marvel every day.
Man has struggled,
To understand You.
Your power,
Your Grace,
Your Love,
Your truth.
Yet day after day,
We misinterpret beauty.
It is in your grace,
Through our faith,
That are souls are now safe.
By: Danilo P. Artez
Posted by: Shawshank Redemption 1 | November 06, 2011 at 01:09 PM
This post is wonderful, it describes the beauty of the lord.. Most people don’t always think of Holiness when they think of beauty and rarely think of God as beauty. People in this world think of beauty as an image. Beauty is God, it is knowing God so well and loving him that to others you are just beautiful! I greatly enjoyed your post ShawshankRedemption1. It was Beautiful!
Posted by: Shawshank Redemption3 | December 07, 2011 at 06:51 PM
I also really enjoyed this post. It makes you think that there is beauty in everything because God created it all. I also agree that people think of beauty based on an image. In reality, it is not. Nothing would be the way it looks without God. We only know beauty by what society tells us, when really God would know what it looks like being the one that created us. In his eyes everyone and thing is beautiful. Shawshank Redemptions 1's post was really great too.
Posted by: Chariots of Fire 2 | December 10, 2011 at 11:02 PM
From the essay, “divine holiness and beauty are encountered in the sanctuary”, only the obvious beauty is found in the sanctuary. The temple, church and sanctuary are all forms of man made beauty. The real beauty is found in nature, through and within the creatures God has mad. God is an artist, he molded the world and created everything within it. The sanctuary is more shabby than the people who worship in it realize. At my church we hold an out door service one a month just to able to worship in God’s own sort of decorating. I am not one to bash on any ones particular traditions or places of worship, I am only conveying the fact that I believe that God’s own natural place of worship is in nature.
Posted by: The Truman Show 5 | December 15, 2011 at 09:56 PM