Beauty and Divine Revelation

Divine revelation can be defined as what God has revealed about God’s very existence himself, as mediated through scripture and tradition together. This allows one to understand the meaning of the word of God. Divine revelation is said to be connected to a will of God that cannot be perceived or known through reason, and further divine revelation is revealed through the word becoming flesh that is now conveyed to us through scripture and in the light of the church. However, within the discussion of the relationship between revelation and beauty, the traditional idea of beauty must be discarded to make way for the religious idea. As per Balthasar, “The great thinkers who at various times discussed the relationship between revelation and the beautiful always began by depreciating the latter, as if it had to be discarded in order to make way for the religious idea.” This is seen in the viewing of art depicting the Crucifixion of Jesus, as these works are often horrifying and solemn, and something that would not be considered beautiful. But, we must challenge the traditional thinking of beauty and embrace a new meaning to beauty if we want to find understanding and meaning in God’s greatest work of art, Christ, and in an effort to enter into a time that is not time in order to contemplate the meaning and beauty of divine revelation. We have learned that divine revelation is not conceptual. Per the example given by Professor Timothy O’Malley, listening to Mozart, Symphony no. 41 in C Major (“Jupiter”) requires one to enter into the symphony. Entering into the symphony allows one to delight in what Mozart was doing. It is only in the immersion into the event that one can experience the full aesthetic condition and through this aesthetic condition the symphony makes sense. Again, divine revelation is not conceptual. It can only be purely experienced in the images, in the particularity, and in the immersing of oneself entirely into it. Beauty works to lead us to a deeper contemplation which further allows us to reach divine revelation. Another example of beauty is described by Garcia Rivera as he explains Our Lady of Guadalupe as a beautiful difference in her revelation. By the beauty of what was revealed in divine revelation, all the particular dimensions (i.e. the natural and anthropological dimensions of this encounter) make known the love of God made clear to the people of Mexico and now to all people who seek to see in her image such beauty.

The aesthetics of art are already religious due to what they do to creation. Through art, we are expected to enter into its stunning particularity and we must pay close attention to it. Looking at art is to receive it as a gift. There is an aesthetic disposition necessary in Christianity. While the human person in Christianity is made for another world, this world is not outside of the present world. We must enter into the totality of living and existence, in which art presents us with a world that is meant to be experienced, along with all of its distinctiveness. While the world gives itself to us in an unfinished sense, we are required to complete the world as beauty is a symbol. Creation is ordered. The created part of God’s gift to the human person is ordered towards the beautiful act of revelation, and wholeheartedly what we find in it is what one finds in the particularity of beauty. Further, creation is an aesthetic that is already an act of revelation of Jesus Christ. There is a beauty and an attunement of ourselves into the totality of love. Beauty is changed through the way it is revealed through Christ. Again, the traditional ideas of beauty and of aesthetics must be rejected in order for the beholder to experience the true meaning put forth through each work. For example, slaves embraced their suffering as beautiful as their spirituals contained beauty even through the horrors of enslavement. For James H. Cone, “The slaves’ view of God embraced the whole of life — their joys and hopes, their sorrows and disappointments; and their basic belief was that God had not left them alone, and that God would set them free from human bondage. That is the central theological idea in black slave religion as reflected in the spirituals.” Further, as an additional example, per Garcia-Rivera, Our Lady of Guadalupe appeared as an Indian and her beauty included the Spanish. Her beauty, then, was not pure and absolute. Yet, Our Lady of Guadalupe taps into the aesthetics of popular Catholicism. As we can see, beauty often changes through how it is revealed through Christ.

Related to divine revelation and the beauty revealed to us through Jesus Christ, the senses are formed to recognize beauty. According to Origen, the spiritual senses are something interior to us that is healed in salvation and that enables the flourishing of our exterior senses. For Bonaventure, we have a hearing and a sight inside of us, we have a sensibility that allows us to see the world properly. We hear to receive the word of Christ which we can then receive in our hearts. Sight views the splendor of that light in such a moment of contemplation. For Balthasar, to be human is to have an encounter where the eye is not just looking upon things, but the eye is encountering a material world because of the unity of the human person. The act of gazing upon is spiritual, meaning that to see the other is already to engage in an act that is spiritual, to recognize communion, a personhood, and an existence that does not transcend but it actually mediated through the act of seeing. It is then through the spiritual senses in which we encounter God. Per Balthasar, “Seeing is an encounter with reality, and the eye is simply man himself as he can be confronted by reality in its forms which are related to the light.” Like tearing up during Mozart’s Symphony no. 41 in C Major (“Jupiter”), or viewing a field full of colorful flowers, the experience of contemplation is a simultaneous process that attunes our senses.

Lastly, community is called to become beautiful. There is a feeling of communion we experience through the act of gazing, of love, of delight, of admiration, and of what is seen. Praxis, the living of life, is not just exclusively about getting something done, it is about living the fullness of life unto itself, and a union in empathetic love that leads to communion. So, praxis can be defined as an interpersonal union, in which the contemplation with beauty brings us into communication with others. However, our actions also bring community to beauty. As per Robert Goizueta, the person is defined more by what he or she does than by what he or she thinks. Our actions are the most accurate reflection of one’s identity. Through the act of community being called to become beautiful, beauty can save the world, as the contemplation of beauty and the actions through beauty bring us into a communion with others.

Information provided for this blog by:

• Professor Timothy O’Malley, Lecture on January 7th, 2021: Beauty and Divine Revelation
• Hans Urs Von Balthasar, “The Word Made Flesh”
• Alejandro Garcia-Rivera, “The Community of the Beautiful: A Theological Aesthetics”
• James H. Cone, “The Spirituals and The Blues”
• Roberto S. Goizueta, “Caminemos Con Jesús: Toward a Hispanic/Latino Theology of Accompaniment”