Why Beauty Matters for Christian Education (Part 1)

God is the source; the universe is the mirror.

The Conversion of St. Augustine, by Fra Angelico (ca. 1400) - Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)

“You were with me [Lord], but I was not with you. The beautiful things of this world kept me far from you and yet, if they had not been in you, they would have had no being at all.”

—St. Augustine

We all know that teaching should be more than just the delivery of information to students for them to memorize. Teachers want to engage the whole person of each student — their heart as well as their mind — to help them grow spiritually and intellectually. But that is a lot more difficult than it sounds, for a variety of reasons.¹

One reason is that our most cherished teaching formats — lecture, discussion, reading, group problem solving, even the Socratic Method — all primarily engage the analytical side of our students. This is good and well, since a primary goal of education should be to train students how to think critically. But it still doesn’t necessarily engage the students’ hearts — their loves and desires — and help to shape them toward God’s goodness. For that to occur, something more is needed: we must wisely incorporate the appreciation of beauty into our curriculums.

Beauty Affects Our Desires

In his book Desiring the Kingdom, philosopher James K.A. Smith explains:

“Our desires are not necessarily the same as our beliefs or thoughts; they are more visceral, more bodily. And these desires are shaped and directed by the beauty we encounter in the world and in worship. This is why liturgies — whether sacred or secular — are so formative: they are pedagogies of desire. They don’t just train us to think a certain way; they train us to love a certain way.” (Desiring the Kingdom, Chapter 1)

Smith’s point is true to human experience. Listening to a lecture or sermon about what we ought to love, for example, often has less of a persuasive effect on our desires than, say, a beautiful film, story, or song does (it might even have an opposite effect in some cases). And our practices and routines — our “liturgies” — can shape our desires subtly over time without us even realizing it.

The Apostle Paul seems to imply a similar viewpoint in his letter to the Philippians when he urged them to meditate on “whatever is true, pure, lovely, and excellent,” and to follow what he showed them in order to receive God’s peace (Philippians 4:8-9). The common idea here is that memorizing information does not affect our hearts as much as the contemplation of beauty does.

This should lead Christian educators to reexamine our classroom “liturgies” — the methods, routines, and formats we use in teaching — to see how we can thoughtfully incorporate experiences of beauty into our subject areas. This is not just a pedagogical matter, though, it’s a theological one. From a biblical perspective, there are at least five reasons why Christian educators should implement the appreciation of beauty into their lessons when possible:

• God is the source of all beauty

• Enjoyment of beauty is enjoyment of God

• Beauty enlightens us to truth

• Beauty inspires awe and humility

• Beauty deepens our understanding of Scripture

In this essay, I will address the first two reasons and then explain the others in subsequent articles.

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God Is the Source of All Beauty

The biblical writers describe God as beautiful in himself, and the beauty we encounter throughout creation as a reflection of him. The psalmists declare, “Oh Lord my God, you are magnificent. You are robed in splendor and majesty,” (Psalm 104:1) and, “I have asked one thing from the Lord; it is what I desire: to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, gazing on the beauty of the Lord and seeking him in his temple” (Psalm 27:4).

In Psalm 19, David sings, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the expanse proclaims the work of his hands (v. 1). And in his letter to the Romans, Paul explains that, “Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature — have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” (v. 1:20). These passages show that biblical writers viewed God as the source of all beauty and the universe as the mirror of his glory.

We can trace this biblical understanding of beauty up through the Christian tradition (both Catholic and Protestant) in thinkers like Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Edwards, and many others. For example, John Calvin wrote:

“[O]n each of his works his glory is engraven in characters so bright, so distinct, and so illustrious, that none, however dull and illiterate, can plead ignorance as their excuse….[W]herever you turn your eyes, there is no portion of the world, however minute, that does not exhibit at least some sparks of beauty….[T]he elegant structure of the world serv[es] us as a kind of mirror, in which we may behold God, though otherwise invisible.” (Institutes, Book 1, 5.1)

Similarly, Jonathan Edwards claimed:

“All the beauty to be found throughout the whole creation is but the reflection of the diffused beams of the Being who hath an infinite fullness of brightness and glory… [God] is the head of the universal system of existence; the foundation and fountain of all being and all beauty.” (The Nature of True Virtue, Chapter 1)

Enjoyment of Beauty Is Enjoyment of God

If it is true that God is the source from which all beauty flows, then, in a sense, the enjoyment of any form of beauty is really a small enjoyment of God. Augustine expressed this very idea in his Confessions:

“What do I love when I love my God? Not the beauty of bodies nor the harmony of time, not the brightness of the light which is so dear to our eyes, not the sweet melodies of songs, nor the fragrance of flowers… None of these do I love when I love my God. And yet, I do love a kind of light, a kind of voice, a kind of fragrance, a kind of food, a kind of embrace when I love my God, the light, voice, fragrance, food, embrace of my inner self, where my soul is floodlit by a light that space cannot contain, where there is sound that time cannot seize, where there is perfume which no breeze disperses, where there is a taste for food no amount of eating can lessen, and where there is a bond of union that no satiety can part. That is what I love when I love my God.” (Confessions, Book X, Chapter 6)

Augustine recognized that the physical sights, sounds, tastes, and smells that enrapture us in this world are not God himself, but they point to God, their source, where their beauty is found in infinite measure.

“In God beauty exists without limit,” says Thomas Dubay, “not as with the beauty of things, all of which have a particularized beauty and nature.” He continues:

“The splendor of a duck is limited to ‘duckness’ and that of an oak tree to ‘oakness.’ But the divine fountain of them both is radiant in a supreme and unlimited manner. [God] contains all the loveliness of all lovely things and persons—and that with no end at all.” (The Evidential Power of Beauty, Chapter 2)

Dubay’s point is that God is the creative source of each particular form, pattern, or blueprint that gives shape and character to things in the world; he’s the Mind behind it all.

As the Logos of the universe — the “Word” in John 1 — God the Son is the creator and sustainer of all things (Col. 1:15-17). He gives structure, coherence, and form to the cosmos and its creatures, making them intelligible to our minds. He is the invisible force that bestows rational order, proportion, and unity to the material world — from the subatomic to the galactic — like an artist who takes specks of paint and forms them into vivid characters, each with an identity and presence. The beauty and form that gave life to the paint came from the artist’s mind.

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This would mean that there is an objective reality to beauty that our intellects are grasping when we have aesthetic experiences; it’s not all just a matter of personal taste. The Dutch Reformed theologian Abraham Kuyper argued that “the beautiful is not the product of our own fantasy, nor of our subjective perception, but has an objective existence, being itself the expression of a Divine perfection” (Lectures on Calvinism, Lecture V: “Calvinism and Art”). If true, it would also mean that our ability to grasp objective beauty can grow with practice (more on that in Part 2), and therefore, so can our enjoyment of God.

Perhaps contemporary philosopher James Spiegel sums it up most concisely:

“Just as God is primordial being, the ontological ground of all that is, and just as he is the foundation of ethics, the axiological ground of all values, so [too] is he the foundation of aesthetics, the ground of all beauty. As all being is either God or is derived from God, so [too] all that is beautiful either is him or comes from him. Consequently, any aesthetic satisfaction, whether from objects, animals, or other humans, and however seemingly remote from the divine, is ultimately an enjoyment of God.” (“Aesthetics and Worship,” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, Winter, 1998)

The Christian view of beauty described above both elevates the importance of aesthetic experiences while also demoting them to their proper place. To view God as the source and all other beauty as merely a reflection of him, allows us to value, enjoy, and give thanks for the beautiful art and aesthetic experiences of this world without being deluded by their power. It helps us to avoid the two-sided error of either devaluing beauty as superfluous, or overvaluing it as something to be worshiped.

As C.S. Lewis pointed out, if it’s true that God is the source of all beauty, then “I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be ungrateful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage” (Mere Christianity, Book III, Chapter 10).

Beauty In the Classroom

By now it should be clear that there is great theological support — from both the Bible and Christian tradition — for prioritizing the appreciation of beauty in a classroom setting. But exactly how one implements this approach matters, too.

Apart from important concerns like age-appropriateness, context, etc., simply adding experiences of beauty into our lessons with no explanation as to why we’re doing it may not be as spiritually helpful as we’d think. It’s important that everyone is on the same page in understanding the biblical purpose behind it, including the students. After all, as David I. and James K.A. Smith caution:

“If a group of students imagines that they are fulfilling a boring but necessary task to complete a program requirement, while the professor imagines that the group is engaged in a passionate pursuit of truth, frustrations will emerge.” (Teaching and Christian Practices, Introduction)

Teachers, students, admin, parents, and pastors all need to be in agreement on the theological Why — that all beauty comes from God, and so the contemplation of beauty points our hearts toward him. Once that shared understanding is in place, then there are many ways to go about implementing this approach.²

Now that the theological foundation is laid, my next article in this series will begin to address some of the additional reasons why teachers should incorporate the appreciation of beauty into their classrooms.

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1. The school a child attends has less of an affect on their spiritual formation than their parents or church will, but it is still worthwhile for teachers to improve their craft to engage the whole student as much as possible.

2. One example: I know a high school history teacher who turns the classroom into a mini art gallery once per year, displaying high quality poster prints of classic works of art from the time period they’re studying, allowing students to mingle, observe, and discuss how the art reflects the culture of that era.