Ascribe Beauty to the Lord!

Liam Mock
One thing have I asked of the LORD, 
That I will seek after:
That I may dwell in the house of the LORD
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
and to inquire in his temple.
Psalm 27:41

King David was a man’s man. His exploits were beyond famous. He had legendary notoriety as a poet, a warrior, and a king. He enjoyed unmatched wealth, unbridled authority, and the exclusive right to the crown. God even promised him unfading glory through an offspring who would inherit his throne eternally. He seemed to have it all.

Despite this, David revealed that he was lacking one thing. When he was face-down before the Lord, he did not ask for absolute power, a superabundance of riches, or for greater depths of wisdom. Instead, he pleaded with God that he might “gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple” (Ps 27:4). David’s singular request was to behold God’s beauty.

On clear-headed days, we heartily agree with David. We too desire to behold the beauty of God. However, unlike David, we have a real issue: many of us do not have the foggiest notion of what beauty really is. We may have a vague idea of beauty being related to art, the human form, or nature, but how do these perceptions relate to God?

How can we desire to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord if we do not know what we are looking for? Truly, we cannot desire, much less pursue, something about which we have a muddied knowledge. Calvin wrote that “an uncertain and confused notion of God amounts to ignorance of him.”2

Our confused perception of beauty is all the more complicated by the age in which we live. Modern parlance has equated beauty with subjective preference. We are often told that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” But can that really be true? Could beauty—and by implication the beauty of the Lord—be subject to the whims of our preference?

It appears that those who have preceded us in the faith had a firmer grasp on the topic. Jonathan Edwards wrote that “God is God, distinguished from all other beings and exalted above them, chiefly by His divine beauty…”3 Apparently, Edwards had a clear apprehension of beauty! However, the confidence with which our theological forefathers spoke about God’s beauty has largely been lost.

The degradation of our knowledge of beauty has not escaped the notice of all. John Piper sounds the alarm in his book The Supremacy of God in Preaching when he writes, “…most of our people have no one, no one in the world, to tell them, week in and week out, about the supreme beauty and majesty of God.”4 As proclaimers of the gospel, we cannot hold out the beauty of God to our people if—like them—we do not understand what beauty is.5 We need to reclaim beauty so that, like David, we may ascribe beauty to the Lord and desire it above all else.

This present work is an attempt to begin to fill that need. Therefore, in this article, I will argue that beauty is an attribute of God. I will demonstrate this by providing a definition of beauty and by giving a succinct explanation of divine attributes.

I. The Definition of Beauty

A Difficult Definition

Beauty, though it is a concept generally known to humanity in a vague sense, is extremely slippery. Junius Johnson writes that “…beauty has remained one of the most stubbornly resistant of all the grand concepts that exercise the philosophical and theological mind. It is difficult enough to characterize, much less to define.6

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy concurs by stating that “The nature of beauty is one of the most enduring and controversial themes in Western philosophy…”7 Thus, it is with a sense of trepidation—as well as joy—that this adventure is undertaken.

Definition Flashpoints

To begin, two of the fieriest flashpoints concerning the definition beauty will be considered. The first may be stated as a question: is beauty objective? In other words, is there a definitive, universal standard for that which is beautiful?

In the 21st century Western world, there is a deep ambivalence to universal principles. We often hear phrases like, “You do you”, “That’s not my truth”, and, as mentioned above, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” These sentiments reflect the common understanding that truth and beauty are fundamentally subjective. Those who hold to these presuppositions hear David’s request to behold God’s beauty as a statement of his preference. They would reason that David wants to behold God’s beauty because he, in his own subjective opinion, thinks that God is beautiful. They likely don’t believe that God is objectively beautiful in se because they do not believe in universal principles. Though this paper does not include a general theory of art, it will nonetheless argue against these presuppositions. What is articulated below, therefore, is a defense of the objectivity of beauty.

The second flashpoint regards whether or not beauty should be grouped as a fundamental, transcendental truth alongside goodness and truth. More specifically, do goodness, beauty, and truth constitute the legs of a three-legged stool of transcendental realities? If a three-legged stool were missing one leg, the stool would be unstable and fall over. In the same way, do truth, goodness, and beauty depend on one another for cogency? Many heartily affirm that they are codependent. This tripartite view of fundamental truths is increasingly commonplace among modern theologians and philosophers who suppose that the transcendental triad view of goodness, truth, and beauty has existed since the days of antiquity.

However, the claims about the ancientness of the triad appear to be anachronistic. John Levi Martin writes that “the triad, although sometimes used accidentally in the renaissance, assumed a key structural place with a rise of Neo-Platonism in the eighteenth century…”8 He persuasively argues that the triad as codependent fundamental truths was invented significantly later than is commonly assumed. His research indicates that the true origin of the triad is post-Renaissance Europe where it was developed to discuss matters of taste and preference.

Further, there is scant historical evidence that the church fathers utilized the triad in their theological formulations as is commonly thought by many theologians. In fact, Martin adds that “this triad was formed only through the rejection of theism.”9 This happened as secular philosophers sought to understand localized preferences of goods and customs and deviated away from the concept of a universal taste.10

While Hans Urs Von Balthasar has argued that the triad had its origin in the early church, it seems that his arguments have utilized broad, conceptual readings of the church fathers. It is unlikely that the church fathers affirmed the triad as a codependent set of transcendental truths in their own words. This view may be read back into their writings, but it does not have its origin there. For these reasons, the present investigation will not assume the triadic formulation.

A Definition of Beauty from Jonathan King

Jonathan King, one of the primary sources for the research presented in this paper, has risen to the occasion and offered a persuasive definition of beauty. He states that,

Beauty is an intrinsic quality of things which, when perceived, pleases the mind by displaying a certain kind of fittingness. That is to say, beauty is discerned via objective properties such as proportion, unity, variety, symmetry, harmony, intricacy, delicacy, simplicity, or suggestiveness. As a quality distinguishable in a thing, therefore, beauty has objective criteria, yet the apperception of the quality of beauty depends on the percipience of the mind (the mental faculty of perceiving), since it is the mind that renders relation of aesthetic properties as something perceived.11

King’s definition has tremendous utility and is worthy of serious consideration for at least two reasons.

First, he argues that beauty is an intrinsic quality of things. Therefore, it is objective. Rather than being subjectively perceived, beauty is intrinsically possessed. In making this affirmation, King squarely puts himself in the objective camp—he does not believe that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Second, he states that the objective beauty of something, when perceived, pleases the mind. Beauty grants pleasure to the observer, it is a delight to the mind. However, he states that the “apperception of the quality of beauty”12—that is, the “mental perception”13 of beauty—is dependent upon the clarity of the observer’s mind. The clearer the lenses on the telescope; the further one will see.

Putting the two insights of this definition together, one might say that intrinsic beauty remains objective even while subjective opinions of its stative beauty vary.

A Theological Aesthetic

King’s definition is undoubtedly helpful but it leaves a vital question unanswered: what is the objective criterion for beauty? In an effort to discover the objective criterion—the very backbone—for their understanding of beauty, many philosophers turn either to the natural world or the arts.

However, instances of beauty in nature and the arts will not reveal the objective criterion of true beauty. Indeed, studying beautiful places or objects only yields vague notions of a greater form of beauty that lies just beyond our perception. Piercing the veil, Johnson provides an explanation that goes right to the source. He writes that things of beauty “have been established in their beauty by God, and their beauty is a participation in original beauty, the ground of beauty, God the beautiful.”14

One could say that good art is akin to general revelation; in some way it manifests the beauty of God but only under a veil.15 To truly comprehend beauty, one must know God the beautiful. What is needed, therefore, is a theological aesthetic.

Again, Jonathan King delivers with an insightful definition. He defines theological aesthetics as follows:

[T]heological aesthetics, is premised on the canon of Scripture being the norm that norms other norms (norma normans) over all matters pertaining to Christian doctrine and practice. Scripture’s authority as such holds preeminence in how we interpret theologically everything considered general/natural revelation as well as expressions of culture. By extension, biblical authority presides over the domain of aesthetics in its understanding of the whole of creation—the theatrum gloriae Dei, as John Calvin (1509–1564) puts it. The basic position of theological aesthetics, argued by reasonable inference from Scripture, is that beauty corresponds in some way to the attributes of God, and as such is a communicated property or phenomenon of the opera Dei ad extra.16

In this definition, King makes two statements that are critical for the argument of this paper. First, Scripture is the norm that norms all other norms. In other words, the Bible both declares and defines what is normative for all that has existence. There is no realm in which the Word of God is not supreme in governing our understanding of reality. No matter how distorted sin has made the world, the Bible is a lamp to our feet and a light to our path (Ps 119:105).

Second, King asserts that theological aesthetics corresponds to the attributes of God. This is in accord with Johnson’s statement above about beautiful things having a participation in God the Beautiful.17 The Triune God, therefore, is the fountainhead of beauty. With these two important affirmations in mind—first, that Scripture is the norm that norms all others and, second, that theological aesthetics corresponds to the attributes of God—we will proceed.

Summary

In summary, beauty is a difficult concept to define. However, following King, this paper will argue that beauty is objective and corresponds to the attributes of God.

II. The Divine Attributes

Definition

Next, a succinct definition of what constitutes a divine attribute will be given. MacArthur and Mayhue in their work Biblical Doctrine define the attributes, or perfections, of God as follows:

God’s perfections are the essential characteristics of his nature. Because these characteristics are necessary to his nature, all his attributes are absolutely perfect and thus rightly called perfections. Further, since these perfections are essential to God’s nature, if any one of them were denied God would no longer be God.18

Divine Simplicity      

In asserting that the “perfections are essential to God’s nature”19, MacArthur and Mayhue are maintaining the theological position that “God’s essence is identical to his perfections… That is to say, God is what he has. He does not merely possess love, justice, and goodness; he is love and justice, eternally, fully, and completely. God is eternally all-powerful, all-holy, and all-loving.”20

The perfections, or attributes, of God must be identified with his essence in order to maintain the doctrine of divine simplicity.21 Else, the unity of God and coinherence of his being and essential characteristics would be destroyed. Louis Berkhof defines divine simplicity as: “the state or quality of being simple, the condition of being free from division into parts, and therefore from compositeness. It means that God is not composite and is not susceptible of division in any sense of the word.”22

If the attributes, or perfections of God, could be separated from his essence, then “the perfections themselves would not be divine but only parts that make up the divine.”23 This, they assert, would be out of step with Scripture and therefore unacceptable.24 In short, the attributes of God are the essential characteristics of his nature. God does not possess his attributes; he is his attributes.

A Listing of God’s Attributes

Theologians have offered different lists of God’s attributes. MacArthur and Mayhue choose to schedule God’s attributes in two categories: incommunicable and communicable. They write that “incommunicable perfections are those characteristics unique to God…, whereas the communicable perfections are those characteristics transferable in part to humans”.25

As such, they list God’s incommunicable attributes as independency (aseity), immutability, infinity, eternity, immensity and omnipresence, unity (numerical oneness), unity (simplicity), omniscience, omnipotence, and perfection.26

They list God’s communicable attributes as spirituality and invisibility, wisdom, truth and faithfulness, goodness, love, grace, mercy, longsuffering, holiness, righteousness (justice), jealousy, will, blessedness, and glory.27

Arriving at an Understanding of God’s Attributes

Upon seeing lists like these of God’s attributes, one may wonder how such information is derived. MacArthur and Mayhue argue that:

Since these perfections characterize God, they cannot be discovered and defined by man, especially in his depravity, for man by himself cannot know God completely. Rather, God must reveal himself for man to assuredly know anything about God, including his perfections. God has revealed himself in nature, but humanity corrupts that knowledge. Only the Bible gives accurate information about God and his perfections.28

The Bible is the only infallible source for determining God’s attributes. It is the prerogative of the triune God alone to reveal his attributes. Through his Word, he has done just that and left us with a record of his acts in history.

Summary

In summary, the attributes of God are the essential characteristics of his nature; God does not possess his attributes, he is his attributes. Further, his attributes may be grouped into the categories of incommunicable and communicable, and his attributes are derived exclusively from the Bible.

III. Beauty as a Divine Attribute

Finally, it is time to construct the argument that beauty is a divine attribute. First, the scriptural evidence will be given, then an argument will be presented from biblical theology, and, lastly, historical viewpoints will be brought in to testify.

Scriptural Witness

Jonathan King grants a piece of guidance to those who would desire to undertake this journey of beauty through the Scripture. He writes that, “Although explicit biblical references to the “beauty” of God (or otherwise identifying God specifically in terms of his beauty) are few, verses such as Psalm 27:4; 96:6; 145:5, 12 and Isaiah 28:5 and 33:17 link directly images of a crown, a diadem, kingdom, and the sanctuary of the Lord to God’s beauty.”29 With this path in mind, a majority of these passages will be considered below.

Psalm 27:4: “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.”

This passage captures David’s earnest request “to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord in his temple.”  In this clause, the word for beauty is in the construct state with respect to the Lord’s name. From this, it is rightly understood that YHWH possesses beauty. It belongs to him.

Further, the word translated “beauty” in the ESV is the Hebrew word נֹ֫עַם (no-am). The Enhanced Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (BDB) provides the glosses “delightfulness” and “pleasantness” for this word.30 This understanding is in accord with King’s definition of beauty as something which “pleases the mind by displaying a certain kind of fittingness.”

From this it may be understood that David desired to look upon the Lord’s beauty; that is, the beauty which God possesses in himself. Therefore, David recognizes beauty as one of YHWH’s attributes.

Psalm 96:6: “Splendor and majesty are before him; strength and beauty are in his sanctuary.”

This passage attributes splendor, majesty, strength, and beauty to God. The word rendered in English as “beauty” in this passage is the Hebrew word תִּפְאָרָה (toph-a-rah). BDB’s primary glosses of this word are “beauty” and “glory”.31 This passage places beauty in God’s immediate presence. If one correlates this passage with Psalm 27:4, it is evident that the beauty in view is that which belongs to God himself. Strength and beauty are essential to God and may be found in his presence.

Isaiah 28:5: “In that day the Lord of hosts will be a crown of glory, and a diadem of beauty, to the remnant of his people…”

Here, Isaiah compares the Lord of hosts to a diadem of beauty. Again, the Hebrew word which has been translated as “beauty” is תִּפְאָרָה (toph-a-rah). Although Isaiah appears to be employing a metaphor in describing God as a crown and a beautiful diadem, there is nonetheless a clear ascription of God as being intrinsically beautiful. What the Israelites lacked prior was the clarity of perception to see him as such (Isa 6:9-10). Therefore, this prophecy points to a time when the veil will be removed and the remnant will see their God for who he really is: “mighty and strong” (Isa 28:2), as one who brings justice (Isa 28:6), and as one who is beautiful (Isa 28:5).

Isaiah 33:17: “Your eyes will behold the king in his beauty; they will see a land that stretches afar.”

The king in this passage is God himself, specifically the “Messiah-King”.32 Isaiah prophecies that God’s people will see the beauty of their messianic king who will be Christ Jesus, God the Son. The word translated “beauty” in this text is the Hebrew word יֳפִי (ye-phe). The BDB’s singular gloss for this word is beauty.33 Again, this word (ye-phe) is in the construct state with respect to the Lord’s name, denoting that the beauty of the King belongs to him.

The possessive grammatical construction of ye-phe in tandem with its narrow lexical range is the capstone for the Scriptural argument that beauty is an attribute of God.

Objection—Glory and Beauty are Synonymous

However, one might raise an objection to this assertion by asserting that beauty is a term synonymous with glory, and, therefore, it should not have its own status as an attribute. For example, consider MacArthur and Mayhue’s definition of glory:

God’s glory refers to the consummate beauty of the totality of his perfections. It is his supreme significance and splendor. This definition reflects the Hebrew word for “glory,” kabod, hod, and hadar. The word kabod has the sense of “weight” and, in figurative extension, “significance.” The words hod and hadar have the sense of “splendor.” The Greek word for “glory,” doxa, also has the primary meaning of “splendor” or “brightness.”34

At first glance, this may seem to be a robust objection. However, it falls short in at least two respects.

First, the Hebrew words that MacArthur and Mayhue identify with glory do not overlap with the Hebrew words to denote beauty in the passages above. It would appear that the word groups themselves are drawing a distinction between glory and beauty.

Second, glory does not necessarily contain an aesthetic dimension, whereas beauty does. As a result, glory and beauty describe God in two legitimately distinguishable ways. The former as an expression of the summation of his attributes, the latter as the aesthetic fittingness of God and his works (ad intra and ad extra).

King helpfully clarifies how glory and beauty correlated to one another in God’s works and in his being. He writes,

“To be clear, beauty is not identical or does not simply equate to glory or the objective forms that God’s glory takes—beauty is not a synonym for glory… The theological relation between God’s glory and beauty translates as follows: the beauty of God manifested economically (pulchritudo Dei ad extra) is expressed and perceivable as a quality of the glory of God inherent in his work of creation, redemption, and consummation. The display of God’s glory is thus always beautiful, always fitting, always entails an aesthetic dimension to it… What I am proposing, then, is that the countless forms of the glory of God ad extra, down to their most infinitesimal features, are inherently imbued with the full compass of his communicable attributes, one of which is beauty with the untold array of aesthetic characteristics it entails.”35

Therefore, it may be rightly argued that glory and beauty are not synonyms. Rather, they are two terms with intelligible differences that both may be used to describe God.

Summary of Scriptural Witness

From the passages above, it may be understood that beauty is ascribed to God as one of his essential characteristics. Additionally, it may be profitably noted that beauty is often applied to God in parallel with other attributes such as glory and power. Since, glory and power (omnipotence) are attributes of God, it is right to say that beauty is also an attribute of God. Since the Scriptures unabashedly claim that God possesses beauty, it is right for us to likewise ascribe beauty to him as an attribute.

Argument from Biblical Theology

Second, King argues that “the Son’s fittingness as incarnate Redeemer is the critical lens for seeing God’s beauty, serving as well to display the Son’s glory in every stage of the theodrama.”36

In other words, from beginning to end the grand story of the Bible unveils the beauty of Jesus Christ. This facet of the jewel of Christ’s beauty will be introduced from Luke 24 and elaborated upon by Hebrews. Volumes upon volumes could be written on the beauty of Christ from the whole of Scripture (Jn 21:25), but the brief description below will suffice for the present argument.

On the road to Emmaus Jesus told his disciples that the whole Bible pointed to him. Luke records that “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Lk 24:27). The effect on the disciples of hearing Jesus’s exposition of his own glory was that their hearts burned within them (Lk 24:32). Christ set aflame their affections for himself with a sermon about his perfect fittingness as their long-awaited Messiah. In other words, he set their hearts aflame with his beauty.

This is also the persistent drive of the author of Hebrews. It is evident that for him too, the purpose in his preaching was to present Christ as the Savior perfectly fitted for their every need (Heb 9:11-14; 4:14-16).

Indeed, he demonstrated that Christ is more fitting to redeem them than angels (Heb 1:1-14); more fitting than Abraham, Moses, or Joshua (Heb 6:13-20; 3:1-6; 4:5-10, respectively); more fitting than Melchizedek (Heb 7); more fitting than the priesthood (Heb 4:14-5:10; 7:11-10:25); more fitting than the Old Covenant (Heb 8:6-13); more fitting than the tabernacle (Heb 9:1-14); more fitting than the sacrifices of the Jews (Heb 9:13-15) ; and more fitting than the Old Covenant (Heb 9:15).

The author of Hebrews desired for his people to be overwhelmed by the absolute supremacy and all-sufficiency of Christ. This exalted picture of Christ and his redeeming work is a glorious portrait of the King in his beauty. Every stroke of the author’s brush draws us in; every detail reveals the beautiful contours of “the unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph 3:9).

Objection—Why Then is Beauty not Universally Recognized?

One may object by asking the following: “if the beauty of the Lord is objective and is manifest in all that he does, why is it that people do not universally recognize the beauty of God?” Though this question seems formidable, the answer is simple. Just as all creation has been affected by the taint of sin, so the human perception of beauty has also been warped by sin. King writes,

The beauty of God manifested economically does not change from being a quality of his glory inherent in his work of creation. But such glory is reflected now in a created order and a humanity operating under the effects of God’s judgment curse, and thus in indeterminable ways the created order itself is tainted/corrupted, and humanity’s ability to rightly perceive the attributes of God reflected in creation is obscured/distorted.37

In short, God’s beauty is objectively expressed in all that he does but it is subjectively experienced by the observer.38 The ability to perceive God’s beauty is granted anew at regeneration because it is only then that dead sinners are alive to behold Christ as he really is. Sinners see and receive Christ as their perfectly fitting Savior and they rejoice at the sight of his beauty.

Summary of Argument from Biblical Theology

For our deadness, he is the resurrection and the life; 
For our sinfulness, he is our righteousness;
For our darkness, he is the light of the world;
For our lies; he is the truth;
For our confusion; he is the way;
For our weakness, he is our strength;
For our sickness, he is the cure;
For our wounds, he is the Great Physician
For our humanity, he is the God-man; 
For our bondage, he is our freedom;
For our penalty, he is the sacrifice;
For our rebellion, he is the reconciler;
For our every need, he is all-sufficient;
He is perfectly fitted for our redemption.

The beauty of Christ is designed to stir our hearts with family affections and direct our praise to the triune God. It is unequivocally good for the children of God to look upon the beauty of their Savior and take great pleasure in him. Truly, by considering the exalted Christ we experience what it means to “gaze upon the beauty of the Lord” (Ps 27:4).

Affirmation from Voices of the Past

Lastly, church fathers and theologians have noted the connection between beauty and the attributes of God for centuries. Consider the following citations from Basil of Caesarea and Jonathan Edwards.

Basil of Caesarea in his homily titled on the “Creation of the Heavens and the Earth” exhorts his listeners saying,

Let us glorify the Master Craftsman for all that has been done wisely and skillfully; and from the beauty of the visible things let us form an idea of Him who is more than beautiful; and from the greatness of these perceptible and circumscribed bodies let us conceive of Him who is infinite and immense and who surpasses all understanding in the plenitude of His power.39

Basil states that God, the Master Craftsman, is more than beautiful; he is the one who is infinite, immense, and who surpasses all understanding. He is more than beautiful because he is the source of beauty. Basil saw that beauty’s existence coinheres with God’s essence. There is beauty in the world because it was made by God the beautiful.

Jonathan Edwards, commenting on the divinity and beauty of the gospels, writes the following:

God is God, distinguished from all other beings and exalted above them, chiefly by his divine beauty, which is infinitely diverse from all other beauty. They therefore see that stamp of his glory in divine things, they see divinity in them, they see God in them, and see them to be divine; because they see that in them wherein the truest idea of divinity does consist.40

It is clear that Edwards understood God’s infinitely diverse beauty to be related to both his glory and his divinity. For Edwards, beauty was not something that God did, nor was it something he had made, rather beauty was what God is. He, like King, Johnson, and Basil, believed that God is the fountainhead of all beauty:

For as God is infinitely the greatest Being, so he is allowed to be infinitely the most beautiful and excellent: and all the beauty to be found throughout the whole creation, is but the reflection of the diffused beams of that Being who hath an infinite fulness of brightness and glory… Because God is not only infinitely greater and more excellent than all other being, but he is the head of the universal system of existence; the foundation and fountain of all being and all beauty; from whom all is perfectly derived, and on whom all is most absolutely and perfectly dependent; of whom, and through whom, and to whom is all being and all perfection; and whose being and beauty are, as it were, the sum and comprehension of all existence and excellence: much more than the sun is the fountain and summary comprehension of all the light and brightness of the day.41

He believed that God is the source of beauty and that all he does is beautiful; God’s being and beauty are the sum and comprehension of all things. Thus, his conclusions are in accord with the assertions of this paper.

Summary of Argument from Voices of the Past

The purpose of this section is to demonstrate that ascribing beauty to God as an attribute is not a fleeting, heterodox position. Rather, it is grounded in the Scripture, attested to by biblical theology, and affirmed by saints of the past. Therefore, we are in good company to praise God for the essential characteristic of his beauty.

The Importance of Recognizing God’s Beauty

It is vital that we follow the well-worn path of saints who have preceded us and imitate their love for the beauty of God for several reasons.

First, having a working knowledge of what the beauty of God is allows us to address God with doxological specificity. It grants us the opportunity to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord with David and understand the meaning of his words. We too may join with David long to “gaze upon the beauty of the Lord” (Ps 27:4).

Second, knowing the beauty of God provides fuel for our walk with him. There is no greater aim than to glorify God.42 When we are able to behold the beauty of God, and love him for himself—simply for who he is—it makes our obedience all the sweeter. John writes in his first epistle “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome” (1 Jn 5:3).

Third, by merit of our union with Christ, we not only see the beauty of God but we participate in it. We, Christ’s bride, are adorned with the beauty of our husband. His most fitting and perfect righteousness is presently applied to us and soon he will make all things new—including ourselves—according to his own beauty (Rev 21:5).

As a result, the war between the old-man and the new that rages within us will be ended. Then there will be no doubt about what beauty is for we shall see him as he is (1 Jn 3:2). Christ will rise triumphant in our hearts and his beauty will radiate through us to the praise of God the Father (1 Cor 15:28).

  1. The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016). All citations in this paper will be from the English Standard Version. ↩︎
  2. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Transl. from the first French edition of 1541 by Robert White (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 2014), 7. ↩︎
  3. Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2001; 1746), 224.  ↩︎
  4. John Piper, The Supremacy of God in Preaching, Revised and Expanded Edition. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2015), 17–18. ↩︎
  5. Scottish pastor James Stewart writes that it is one of the chief aims of preaching “to purge the imagination by the beauty of God.” We cannot be mediators of this facet of grace if we do not know the beauty of God. From James Stewart, Heralds of God (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1972), 73. Cited in John Piper, The Supremacy of God in Preaching, Revised and Expanded Edition. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2015), 25. ↩︎
  6. Junius Johnson, The Father of Lights: A Theology of Beauty, Theology for the Life of the Word (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2020), 1. ↩︎
  7. Crispin, Sartwell, “Beauty”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2024 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2024/entries/beauty/. ↩︎
  8. John Levi Martin, The Birth of the True, The Good, and the Beautiful: Toward an Investigation of the Structures of Social Thought (Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2017), 3. ↩︎
  9. Martin, 5. ↩︎
  10. Martin, 5. ↩︎
  11. Jonathan King, The Beauty of the Lord: Theology as Aesthetics, Studies in Historical and Systematic Theology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018), 9. ↩︎
  12. King, 9. ↩︎
  13. “Apperception Definition & Meaning,” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, n.d. Accessed November 4, 2024, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/apperception. ↩︎
  14. Johnson, 2. ↩︎
  15. Johnson, 45. ↩︎
  16. King, 4-5. ↩︎
  17. Johnson, 2. ↩︎
  18. John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue, Biblical Doctrine: A Systematic Summary of Biblical Truth (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2017), 161. Emphasis original. ↩︎
  19. MacArthur and Mayhue, 161. ↩︎
  20. MacArthur and Mayhue, 164. ↩︎
  21. MacArthur and Mayhue, 164. ↩︎
  22. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans publishing co., 1938), 62. ↩︎
  23. MacArthur and Mayhue, 164. ↩︎
  24. MacArthur and Mayhue, 164. ↩︎
  25. MacArthur and Mayhue, 167. ↩︎
  26. MacArthur and Mayhue, 168-179. ↩︎
  27. MacArthur and Mayhue, 179-188. ↩︎
  28. MacArthur and Mayhue, 161. ↩︎
  29. King, 39. ↩︎
  30. Francis Brown, Samuel Rolles Driver, and Charles Augustus Briggs, Enhanced Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 653. ↩︎
  31. Brown, Driver, and Briggs, 802. ↩︎
  32. English Standard Version Study Bible, ed. Raymond Ortlund Jr. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2008), 1299. ↩︎
  33. Brown, Driver, and Briggs, 421. ↩︎
  34. MacArthur and Mayhue, 188. ↩︎
  35. King, 51. ↩︎
  36. King, 141. ↩︎
  37. King, 52. ↩︎
  38. King, 50. ↩︎
  39. Basil of Caesarea, Exegetical Homilies, Homily 1: Creation of the Heavens and the Earth (On the Hexaemeron). Emphasis mine. ↩︎
  40. Jonathan Edwards, The Religious Affections (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 2001; 1746), 224-25. ↩︎
  41. Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 1 (Banner of Truth Trust, 1974), 125. ↩︎
  42. Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 1 (Banner of Truth Trust, 1974), 98. ↩︎

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