Beauty and Appearance

In Exod 31:1-11, we are introduced to Bezalel, Oholiab, and the other artisans who will skillfully make the tabernacle and its furnishings “for glory and for beauty” (Exod 28:2, 40). This endeavor is, of course, a unique moment in redemptive history. It is an irruption of God’s kingdom in a microcosmic, material form. As such, beauty is united in perfect harmony with truth and goodness in the tent of meeting. Thus, the tabernacle becomes a kind of voiceless speech that communicates to the observant that all that is good, true, and beautiful is to be found in God and relationship with him; it becomes an enacted apologetic for the greater affection of the love of God that expels the lesser loves that vie for first place in the hearts of people affected by sin.

That is all well and good as far as it goes, but things get complicated when we consider the tension between God’s concern to make the tabernacle beautiful and the fact that Jesus Christ, the suffering servant, “had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Isa 53:2). The first step in addressing this tension must be sorting out the matter of the cross’ relation to beauty. If it is true that craftsmanship for the purpose of making beautiful, glorious things is a good gift from God, then how do we engage with the inglorious humiliation of our Savior? A second step is to account for Paul’s words about Satan, who at times appears as an angel of light (2 Cor 11:14). “Satan in beauty, Christ shorn of all glory—is there a stronger argument conceivable for the thesis that essence and appearance of being do not go together, at least no longer?”[1] Do we need to leave beauty behind altogether after Christ’s example of humiliation?

In short, the answer is no, because, for one thing, we may rightly discern between beauty and appearance. As soon as one digs below the appearance of things, something of a unity between essence and appearance may still be discerned: “The very fact that Satan appears as an angel of light and knows to reveal himself as such, that he appears as something other than he is—even so that one would regard him as a messenger of God—that reveals his essence.”[2] The appearance of beauty (glory) is, then, accidental, and the false adoption of an appearance of beauty actually belies a total lack of beauty, insofar as beauty is inseparably connected to truth and goodness. That is to say, when Satan appears as an angel of light, this counterfeit glory is unbeautiful; when Christ is shorn of all outward glory in his estate of humiliation, this accident in no way denies his essential beauty.

With this distinction in mind, we may appreciate how beauty is inseparably connected with truth and goodness insofar as all three flow from the character of God. Herman Bavinck writes, “If truth, goodness, and beauty (glory) are originally ascribed to God, then they of course and above all bear a supersensory, spiritual character and cannot be opposed to each other in their inner nature. None of the three coincides with sensory, sense-perceptible, empirical reality; they are elevated as norms above the laws of nature, as ideas above sensible reality.”[3]

The Lord Jesus, then, subversively fulfills the ideal of beauty by offering a deep and rich expression of beauty that pushes well beyond the appearance of things to an enduringly glorious beauty. He subverts a purely superficial aesthetic by placing true beauty in perfect harmony with what is good and true. His diet was to do the will of his Father in heaven whereas the Pharisees feasted on the vain glory of self-righteousness. Thus, Jesus says to the Pharisees, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Matt 23:27-28). Jesus then fulfills the universal longing for beauty by properly rooting that beauty in the fixedness of God’s own truth and goodness. Such a kind of beauty is not actually affected by the appearance of things, which is a helpful reminder for us today in a visually saturated world. When beauty and appearance align, may we rightly give glory to God. When they are at odds, may we long for the day when even this will be made right in Christ.

[1] W. S. Sevensma, Schoonheid En Schijn: Beschouwingen Tot Den Opbouw Eener Aesthetica Naar Christelijke Beginselen (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1933), 20. Emphasis added.

[2] Sevensma, Schoonheid En Schijn, 23.

[3] Herman Bavinck, “Of Beauty and Aesthetics,” in Essays on Religion, Science, and Society, ed. John Bolt, trans. Harry Boonstra and Gerrit Sheeres (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 255.