(The following is extracted from a research paper entitled “The Argument From Beauty” submitted on Jun 20, 2022 at Southern Seminary.)

We often hear that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Does that mean that beauty is subjective and not objective? Is beauty objective or subjective?

The ancient philosophers viewed beauty, truth, and goodness as transcendentals meaning timeless, universal realities that exist beyond the space-time cosmos. The Swiss theologian Hans Urs Von Balthasar warned in a penetrating analysis in 1982 that “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.”¹ From the perspective of a progressively tumultuous culture forty years later, he was indeed prophetic as beauty, truth and goodness are increasingly scarce commodities.

But what exactly is beauty? Why does beauty exist? The importance and mystery surrounding beauty is highlighted in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

The nature of beauty is one of the most enduring and controversial themes in Western philosophy, and is—with the nature of art—one of the two fundamental issues in the history of philosophical aesthetics. Beauty has traditionally been counted among the ultimate values, with goodness, truth, and justice. It is a primary theme among ancient Greek, Hellenistic, and medieval philosophers, and was central to eighteenth and nineteenth-century thought.

The enigma of beauty probably explains its minimal use in contemporary apologetic arguments. Hans Balthasar opines on the difficulty of theologizing on beauty, “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.” Philip Tallon points out that beauty “has rarely been the main theme of any major modern theologian’s or philosopher’s thought.” He encourages us to “scale the walls and at least briefly visit the gilded ghetto into which beauty and her daughters have been quarantined.” Also known as the Argument From Aesthetics, the Argument From Beauty is not part of the classical arguments per se although it is sometimes classified under the teleological argument. While not currently prevalent, the Argument From Beauty is a sleeping giant, that once awakened and properly unleashed, gleams powerful truth.

Douglas Groothuis (PhD and a BS from the University of Oregon, and an MA in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin–Madison) is a well-known, respected Christian philosopher and apologist at Denver Seminary and visiting instructor in apologetics for Westminster Theological Seminary. In 2022, he published the Second Edition of his massive Christian Apologetics adding a new chapter entitled “The Argument From Beauty”. That short chapter (eleven pages) serves as an good introduction to the Argument From Beauty. Groothuis asserts that (1) beauty is objective, (2) beauty is evidence of the existence of God, and (3) beauty is a gift from an omnibenevolent God.

Is beauty subjective or objective? The answer to that question is regarded by some philosophers as the “single most-prosecuted disagreement in the literature”. The popular conception of course is that beauty is subjective and “in the eye of the beholder.” However, philosopher Arlyn Culwick argued in 2019 that the ancient transcendentals are objectively real and not just mind-dependent.

Groothuis presents some arguments for the objectivity of beauty. He uses the example of a room at the objective temperature of 71 degrees Farenheit where one person feels hot and another feels cold; that each person has a different reaction does not negate the fact the room has an objective temperature. He cites C.S. Lewis’ argument for objective value in The Abolition Of Man. His best argument is his reference to God as the “archetype of beauty”. For Groothuis, “the beauty we find is explained by God himself, the ultimate artist.” He remarks that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the divine Beholder: God.”

Scripture declares that beauty is an attribute of the Triune God, “One thing I have asked from the Lord, that I shall seek: That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, To behold the beauty of the Lord” (Ps 27:4). As an attribute of God, beauty is therefore necessarily objective. It is God himself who defines beauty and graciously endows humans with their own capacity to appreciate what is aesthetically pleasing.

While the Christian worldview understands beauty is objective because it is ultimately grounded in the Triune God, naturalism has no transcendent ground for beauty. Beauty therefore becomes not only necessarily subjective, but is ultimately a meaningless concept. How does one account for beauty that has no evolutionary benefit? Groothuis rightly observes, “But objective beauty, like objective morality, ill fits a naturalistic account of reality.”

But how then do we account for the differences of opinion if beauty is truly objective? Virtually all would agree that the rings of Saturn, a rainbow, a total solar eclipse, a delicate rose, the Himalayas, and a spectacular sunset are all objectively beautiful. But what about something like the Johnny Cash song “Folsom Prison Blues”? Some would proclaim it beautiful, others are ambivalent and still others are repulsed by it. How do we explain that? We must be careful to distinguish between personal preference and the objective value inherent in something. Think of a salad bar, where different preferences do not invalidate the objective nutritional value of each item on the bar. A very young child may think a cheap toy doll is more beautiful than a solid gold necklace, but that does not affect the objective inherent beauty of each item. Years later, as an adult, the same person will undoubtedly regard the necklace as more beautiful. Our taste for beauty changes as we mature and are exposed to various facets of God’s marvelously beautiful creation.

The answer to differences of opinion on beauty is the incredible diversity with which God gifts creation and his moral creatures. Evan Minton helps us here by emphasizing we need to distinguish between musical taste and objectively good music; i.e., we can recognize when music that we may not care for is poorly executed. Groothuis reminds us that “While it is real, beauty is not completely analyzable according to materialistic categories – that is in the language of natural science.” In other words, there is something other-worldly (transcendent) about beauty that defies logical deductive analysis.

When Christ frees someone from their bondage to sin and they subsequently walk in the renewing and regenerating power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, there is a growing awareness of transcendent beauty. The norm for a Christian is growing appreciation and awe for the beauty of creation. Our aesthetic discernment sharpens as we mature in Christ.

Groothuis argues that beauty is unquestionably evidence for the existence of God. In its simplest form, his argument is “all that needs to be claimed for the argument for God from beauty is that beauty exists objectively, mind-independently, and cannot be reduced to physical properties.” He relates the experience of a Russian PhD student in the 1980s in the atheistic USSR who was so moved “with the beauty of some mathematical equations about the universe that he was moved from atheism to theism” and ultimately believed in the Triune God.

Beauty is an objective and indispensable part of general revelation. God gifted the appreciation of aesthetic values to humans; the enormous variety of “tastes” for beauty speaks to the incredible diversity God implanted in creation and his moral creatures. Sin however, can mar one’s awareness of and appreciation for beauty. In contrast, the redeemed in Christ experience a growing sense of awe and appreciation for the virtue of beauty.

While I suspect the Argument From Beauty will be minimally useful in convincing unbelievers (although its impact on some atheists is noteworthy), I think it can be used to good effect to unmask their willful suppression of truth (Rom 1:18). Hans Balthasar warns, “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.” Miravalle sounds a clarion call to action writing, “the pursuit and promotion of beauty is a crucial aspect of the Christian moral life.” May we heed him.

¹Hans Urs Von Balthasar, The Glory Of The Lord, A Theological Aesthetics, Vol 1: Seeing The Form, (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1982), 180, Kindle