Seeing God’s Grandeur: The Spiritual Power of Beauty in Scripture

In this episode of The Scripture Study Podcast, Susan Petersen and Cindy Madsen explore the theology of beauty as an objective, transcendental attribute linked to truth and goodness. Drawing from Gerard Manley Hopkins' poetry, Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, and Christian thinkers like Augustine and Aquinas, they discuss how beauty reflects divine order and harmony. The hosts also examine ancient Near Eastern and biblical perspectives, connecting beauty to holiness, covenant, and God's glory, including the significance of the tabernacle as a reflection of heavenly worship.


00:00 Introduction
01:05 The Theology of Beauty
06:09 The Hebrew Concept of "Tov"
10:59 Objective Beauty vs. Subjective Taste
14:37 Beauty as a Path to Truth and Goodness
19:37 Plato's Philosophy of Beauty
22:17 The Two Kinds of Desire
26:52 The Golden Ratio in Nature and Art
34:38 Thomas Aquinas's Three Conditions for Beauty
38:24 Beauty in the Ancient Near East
43:46 The Tabernacle as a Heavenly Pattern
47:45 Temple Worship: Connecting Heaven and Earth
52:46 Greek vs. Hebrew Views of Beauty


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The Scripture Study Podcast is your midweek Bible boost—designed to help you grow in understanding, confidence, and love for God’s word.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend!


Resources

Instagram (Susan Petersen)
https://www.instagram.com/susan.m.petersen/

Books

Theological Aesthetics: God and Imagination, Beauty and Art
https://www.routledge.com/Theological-Aesthetics-God-in-Imagination-Beauty-and-Art/Begbie/p/book/9781138232439

Beauty for Truth's Sake by Stratford Caldecott
https://www.amazon.com/Beauty-Truths-Sake-Re-Enchanting-Education/dp/1586175212

Poems

God's Grandeur by Gerard Manley Hopkins
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44395/gods-grandeur

Concepts and Philosophers

Aristotle
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aristotle

Saint Augustine
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Augustine

Join Us

The Scripture Study Podcast is your midweek Bible boost—designed to help you grow in understanding, confidence, and love for God’s word.

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a friend!

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Scripture Study Podcast. I'm Susan Peterson. And I'm Cindy Madsen. We're so glad you're here with us. The Scripture Study Podcast is designed to be your midweek Bible host. Let's dig in.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Hi, welcome back to the Scripture Study Podcast. I am your host, Susan Peterson, and I am here with Hi, I'm Cindy Manson. Cindy, how are you? I'm doing great. How are you, Susan? Good. You guys, we haven't actually recorded for a few weeks. We're a little behind, but a little ahead, and we will actually address our schedule a little more next week. We just talked about how we're going to rework it a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Um this is a work in progress.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

This is a work in progress, and we're trying to follow the spirit. We're trying to fit this into our two busy lives. And both of our intention in doing this is to share how we study scriptures and how much joy and loveliness it brings to each of our lives and how we want to share that with you and build a community around that. And so thank you for listening, even though it's not been linear. We are really grateful for you. But today we are going to jump into the theology of beauty, which I'm so excited to talk about. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

So we're going to talk a little bit about this concept, yeah, like Susan said, of the theology of beauty. And it's what's called a transcendental. We've talked about that. I'm going to start it off by reading this. It's one of my favorite poems. Okay. It's by Gerard Manley Hopkins. And I'm sure a lot of you have heard it. It's called God's Grandeur. The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out like shining from shook foil. It gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil crushed. Why do men then now not wreck his rod? Generations have trod, have trod, have trod, and all is seared with trade, bleared, smeared with the toil, and wears man's smudge and shares man's smell. The soil is bare now, nor can foot feel being shod. And for all this, nature is never spent. There lives the dearest freshness, deep down things. And though the last lights off the black west went, oh morning, at the brown brink eastward springs, because the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods with warm breast and with awe bright wings. Isn't that beautiful? Oh, it's so beautiful. I just love it. And when I say those words, the world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out like shining from shook foil. Aren't there just pictures that you can see with your mind's eye? I can see the mountains by my house that rise up, towering with the greens of the pines toward the tops and the snow just capping them, and a hawk riding the hot air currents lazily looping around and around. There's something so peaceful in the aspen trees that just shape those leaves, just shimmer and shape. And it's peaceful and beautiful. And it's shot through with the grandeur of God. Or if I sit on my front porch and I see the sun setting, or I see the sun rising, or the sky is flaming out in golds and pinks, and it's streaked with a fiery orange that fades to this bruised violet and then it's gone. And I think that we could all agree that this is beauty. And so this week, that's what I want to talk about. I want to talk about what is called the theology of beauty. Okay. Until the late Middle Ages, people looked at the world as a mystery. The word mystery, it didn't have quite the same connotations that it has for us today. It didn't refer to a puzzling situation whose secret can be uncovered by a clever investigation, like a really good mystery novel, which I will confess is my favorite thing to read. For the early Christian church fathers and for the medieval mindset, the word mystery meant something slightly but very, very significantly different. Mystery referred to the realities behind the appearances that you could observe with your senses. And so, although your hands, your eyes, ears, nose, and tongue are able to access reality, they cannot fully grasp reality. They cannot totally comprehend it. And the reason for this basic incomprehensibility of the universe was that the world was, and now here we're going to come back to Gerard Manley Hopkins, charged with the grandeur of God. Even the most basic created realities that we observe as human beings carry an extra dimension. And that's the medieval view, the medieval mindset. We lose a lot of that, of course, with the enlightenment. So in the last podcast, we talked about the transcendentals, truth and goodness. We talked about how there is objective truth, there's objective goodness. We discussed how most people recognize that truth cannot be relative, that facts actually do exist, and that there is a transcendent reality, the ideal forms, as Plato termed them, beyond the material, which brings about a knowable law and order. And this differs from subjective opinion. For the Christian, truth is more than just an abstract form, though. Truth is a person, Jesus is the truth. Similarly, a large part of the Western world still retains an ideal of moral objectivity. They retain this ideal of what is truly good. In classical Christian thought, there exists an eternal law. This law is, in its fullest sense, identical with God's own nature. God is God because He is the embodiment of the eternal law. As the Stoics understood it, there exists a divine reason behind the order and the coherence of all things rather than just arbitrary principle. There's reason, there's meaning. You can find that. They call this the Lagos, or we usually pronounce it logos, but the Lagos. For Jewish and Christian theologians, it was believed that the moral law, especially that given in the Ten Commandments, is not just an arbitrary set of commands. It provides goodness that is real because it is a reflection of God's being. And since God is the embodiment of goodness, moral goodness is identical with God. So to be in conformity with the moral law is to be good because you are like God. The Hebrew word that is used most often for good is Tov. From the opening verses of Genesis, God saw the light and it was Tov. It was good. So Tov, goodness, it underlies the creator's own assessment of his handiwork. Across the six days of creation, the refrain, and God saw that it was good, is constantly used to testify to the harmony, the beauty, and the suitability, the absolute fittingness of all that God brought into being. This foundational portrait establishes that goodness is not a human construct, it is a divine attribute that is embedded in creation itself. And because of that, goodness is not just moral, although it is moral, it is that too, but it is not only moral, it is a concrete and physical expression of the harmony and the worth of the material order of this created earth. In the Torah, Tov also regularly defines the standard for Israelite obedience. In Deuteronomy chapter 6, verse 18, you shall do what is right and good in the sight of the Lord. Goodness, then, is also covenantal. To keep the statutes is to pursue that which is good, and to deviate is to choose evil. The recurring promise that it may go well or that it may be good with you, that you see in Deuteronomy connects righteousness with flourishing, contrasting sharply with the destructive consequences of disobedience, which is death. And you'll see that in Deuteronomy chapter 30, verses 15 through 18. So goodness then is rooted in law and order.

SPEAKER_01 9:22

Well, first of all, everything goes back to Genesis 1, 2, 3, like Cindy always says. However, this reminds me of that page in the leaflet of the book in the church. What was it? Where it's like there are two paths. Oh, it's in the Diddykey. Yes, in the Diddykey. And that's what there are two ways. There are two ways. And God is God because He upholds goodness. So this is what it's reminding me of is that goodness is rooted in law and order. Yes. And then the two ways. So it all comes back to Tov. Tov. It was good. Tov. Yes. It was good.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

Yes, yes. He created something, it was beautiful and good. It was good. Yeah. Yes. Exactly. That's it. And you can always tell what God considers good because it will flourish in a beautiful way. Right. It will produce good fruit. Okay. And so there is a flourishing of goodness. Yes. That is good. If it's producing bitter fruit, you know it's bad, right? Yes. But if it is flourishing and producing good fruit, then it is.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

I've heard this a lot lately on social media, but it's kind of trendy right now to talk about the fruits of the spirit on Christian social media. Okay. And everybody knows I don't really do social media. So Susan keeps me updated on this. And the fruits of the spirit. And they're saying it in terms of like whether you know something is good or not. And that is that too, Tovid. That's it. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

And it comes back to trees again. It comes back to trees. Yes, it does. No, it does. Are these trees that are flourishing, are they producing good fruit? Yes, exactly. Yeah, there's this idea then of the transcendent, of objective truth and goodness that is self-existent, right? The transcendent is self-existent. Truth exists, like it says in Doctrine Covenants, in the sphere in which God placed it. And goodness also, it exists. It is self-existent. It isn't something that we decide what is true, that we decide what is good. There is truth and there is goodness. And God's righteousness upholds it. It does. Yes. Exactly. Yes. So it has a being outside of itself. And this idea, this concept of something being transcendent, existing, being self-existent without me involved in it, right? It exists within a sphere of itself. This was a universal idea until the modern age. And this is really important to understand because both truth and goodness are knowable through acknowledged divine forms, laws, and order. That's what they thought. It was knowable. You could know what was true, what was good through what were acknowledged as divine forms, laws, and order. And this is going to directly lead into a correct understanding of beauty as a transcendental beauty as existing in a form outside of what do I think is beautiful? Now I'm not saying, and I'll bring this up again, I'm not saying there's that people don't have individuals' taste.

SPEAKER_01 12:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:31

I am saying there is an object of beauty. So I hope I'm pronouncing this man's last name right, but Richard Valadesso, in his book, Theological Aesthetics, God in Imagination, Beauty, and Art, writes that the experience of beauty is a well-founded religious experience. To experience beauty, he says, is to experience a deep-seated yes to being. And he's saying being as existence, to being, even in its finitude and its moments of tragedy. And such an affirmation is possible only if being is grounded, born by a reality that is absolute in value and meaning. In short, the experience of finite beauty implies the affirmation of an infinite beauty, the reality that we call God. So if you think about God because He embodies truth, God because He embodies beauty. Beauty and goodness and goodness, right? So it's that same thing. God is the most beautiful, He is the complete embodiment of goodness and beauty and truth. So these days, hardly anyone speaks about the objectivity of beauty. The old adage, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, seems to be taken for granted. Beauty is nothing more than subjective taste. And this is true across political and religious lines. This is everybody kind of acknowledging this idea in our world today that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. However, for the classical tradition, beauty is anything but subjective. In fact, God is the beautiful, and the existence of beauty is therefore just as objective as he is. This doesn't mean that there is no such thing as subjective taste. Like I said, what is good taste is usually these days a matter of what is in fashion and what is not, right? Like I mean, much as we might like an avocado-colored fridge, and I understand that that may be coming back into fashion, most of us do not have avocado-colored appliances and bathroom toilets right now because that is not considered in good taste. But beauty, this concept of beauty does not have anything to do with our internal feelings. It has everything to do with the transcendent. So in classical Greek philosophy and medieval Christian thought, beauty was not treated as merely subjective taste. It was understood as a transcendental quality of reality, something that reveals being itself and points toward truth and goodness. The three were deeply interconnected. Now remember, for the classical and medieval philosophers, the transcendental were properties found in everything that exists. In other words, everything is true, good, or beautiful in some respect. Stratford Caldicott, in his book, Beauty for Truth, says Beauty is the radiance of the true and the good, and it is what attracts us to both. Who will not admit that harmony is more beautiful than dissonance? Health more beautiful than sickness. Kindness more beautiful than cruelty. If you push the postmodern relativist, you will almost certainly be able to get an admission that he would prefer to look up at a gorgeous sunset than down into a latrine. Now, why is that? Is it really just a matter of taste? Close quote. No, it's right.

SPEAKER_01 16:15

I think people have one of two healing places, and it's either the mountains or the ocean. And both have a rhythm of nature that is very healing. What are you? Probably the mountains. Probably the mountains. Yeah. I'm a mountain. Yeah. I have a lot of friends that don't really like sand. I don't love the dirt, but I will admit that there is healing in the rhythm of water. There is. So no, I do love to listen to those. Yes, I love being by water. There's something healing about it. And the summer before I got married, I was a camp counselor up in the high mountains, up in the high um Uintas. There was no cell service, there was nothing. And it was great. And we had so much downtime. And in all that downtime, I would just go hiking. And I developed this theory that I don't even know if it's true, but I don't think that it's blasphemy for me to think this. I think God created something special for each of us in nature. And I think when you see that thing, your heart sings. You cannot deny it. It is so beautiful. And I think it is a love note for you. I know that I love the mountain. I love the light in the mountains. I love the light in the trees. I love the way the wind goes. And I can remember one morning I was out on a run and I came around a corner and there were these deer in this valley, and there was sun shining on them. And it felt like God was telling me, I see you, I love you. And so I think your breath catch and yes, tears come to your eyes. It's so beautiful. It's so beautiful. And it feels nostalgic, but I've never experienced it before. And I think that nostalgia comes from before we came to this earth, we all had our personal interviews with Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ. And I'm sure there were things that were like, hey, when you see this in nature, remember how much I love you. Remember I created this just for you. And in the same way that all of us are different, I think we all had that experience. That's my beautiful thought. And whether it's true or not, I don't think God minds because it's a view, it's a beautiful thought.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

I love that. I mean, and I don't you wonder if I don't know. I mean, I would guess maybe we were able to either watch or in some way participate in the creation. And, you know, maybe that was part of what you participated in. So there's a strong resonance for you, you know, in that. And I love it. I was on a walk the other day, and I just walked under this aspen tree, and the wind just happened to be blowing. And if you have seen the aspen trees, just the way that the stem is on these trees, it allows the leaf to vibrate, like it turns back and forth in a way that's really different from most other trees. It's like it shimmers. And I just stood there and looked at this and marveled at the beauty of it. It just really caught my breath just looking at this tree and these leaves and the way that they just moved. It was so beautiful. And yes, I think that. Yes, and if nature feels personal to you, this is why I think I do. Well, God created it for us to look at and revel in. And when He gave us dominion over creation, it wasn't to exploit creation, but it was to care for it. And I think that when we feel disconnected from nature, often it's because we are not caring for it, we're exploiting it. And so there needs to be this care and love over it. Yes, I love that. So Jordan Cooper, in his book, The True, the Good, and the Beautiful, writes that Plato intertwines intellectual growth with human desire for the beautiful. For the Platonic tradition, one must distinguish between desire as mere pleasure, guided by the passions, and well-trained desire, which is guided by proper reason and growth in virtue. Growth in virtue and wisdom takes effort and training. Similarly, the appreciation of the beautiful takes training so that we might move beyond aesthetic and enjoyment toward a true comprehension of the eternal transcendent beauty of the forms. In dialogues like the Symposium and Phaedrus, Plato describes beauty as something that awakens the soul's memory of eternal reality. Physical beauty is not the end point, it is a sign that points beyond itself toward the eternal form of beauty. So the ascent works roughly like this for Plato: attraction to a beautiful body. Then, two, recognition of beauty in many bodies, three, appreciation of beauty in souls, laws, and knowledge, and finally, contemplation of beauty itself, eternal, unchanging, divine. So beauty, therefore, for Plato reveals truth because it participates in a deeper metaphysical order, it reveals the divine, it also draws the soul upward toward the good by awakening a desire for higher realities. So for Plato, beauty has a unique persuasive power. He feels that truth convinces reason, goodness directs the will, and beauty attracts desire. Beauty becomes a kind of bridge between the visible and the invisible worlds. And I love that idea because I think that that is why when we see this true beauty in nature, when you went Out there, and you felt God in that experience, it's because you were looking at beauty and it bridged this world and the next world.

SPEAKER_01 22:10

Yeah.

unknown 22:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:12

You're getting glimpses of heaven. Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:14

Through the beauty of this world because it's patterned after. Exactly. And was directly created by God's hand. Yeah. So you can see it there. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Jordan Cooper again explains that for Plato, there are essentially two kinds of desire. First are the desires of the body, which include things like food, money, and attractive meat, and so forth. The needs of the body can be met through those physical things. And it's often the beauty of these physical objects that attracts the human person to them. When you are hungry, you will likely see a plate of delicious food as beautiful because you are anticipating that this beautiful food will satisfy your hunger. And so you will delight the eating of that meal through the sense of taste. These bodily desires are not bad. They're an essential part of how humans function. But Plato also recognizes that underneath these human desires, the desires of the body, there is the more central and important desire of the soul. The human soul ultimately longs not just for external pleasures, but for true beauty. And beauty in its fullest sense is not something material at all. And I think we can all agree on that, right? There are beautiful material objects. There really are. Yeah. That you can't achieve. It's that splendor that cannot be fully achieved in the material.

SPEAKER_01 24:09

Yeah, well, because there's also a good amount of fear in that splendor.

SPEAKER_00 24:14

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 24:15

Like beauty is beauty because it is gentle and it's soft and it's consistent, right? Like the world, but it's terrifying.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Yes, in fact, it's interesting because that was called the sublime. Got it. So just like everything else for Plato, then, beauty exists as an ideal form. There is beauty itself in its objective and universal sense, which exists apart from any particular beautiful object. So when a piece of art or a natural phenomenon is beautiful, it is beautiful because it partakes in this ideal form of beauty. In other words, when the individual comes across true beauty in, for example, a beautiful waterfall sparkling as it splashes over rocks down into a crystal clear pool. We can all imagine that. We can see that. And the value of the waterfall does not exist solely within my internal feelings of pleasure, which arise in me as I round the bend of the trail and see it. The waterfall is actually beautiful. It is objectively beautiful. We can all agree. We can all agree on this because this waterfall participates in this objective ideal of beauty. Got it. So the sensing of beauty is uncovering something real, both within the world and transcendent beyond the world. Think of it as this. I love this idea that this uncovering of the reality. Discovering. Right? Yes, there is a real beauty that you are uncovering. So for Plato, earthly, beautiful things participate in eternal, invisible, perfect forms. Earthly beauty is imperfect, but it points toward absolute beauty itself. Okay. And we can think of it as it's imperfect, but it points toward God. So other Greeks like Pythagoras and Aristotle build on Plato's concept of beauty, noting that beauty is to be found in order and symmetry. Aristotle connected beauty to intelligibility and fulfillment. He associated beauty with proportion, symmetry, and coherence. A beautiful thing expresses its form clearly and it fulfills its purpose well. Since form makes a thing intelligible, it makes form makes something able to be known. Beauty reveals truth about what a thing is. A well-ordered tragedy, for example, discloses truths about human action and moral life. So this idea of order is foundational for the Greeks. For something to be beautiful, it has to be properly proportioned. And they spent a lot of effort on covering these proportions, which were inherently most pleasing to the eye. And in doing so, to capture that which was truly beautiful. Most famous example of this is Pythagoras's The Golden Ratio. And that is a special mathematical proportion that appears in geometry, art, and nature. I think it's just so interesting because you can see this ratio throughout nature in the spiral pattern of sunflower seeds, pine cones, seashells, exactly. And even in hurricane formations. Also in your ear. Did you know? Oh, I did not know that. That's so interesting. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. It is a specific mathematical formula, which you can go and look up. It would be hard for me to describe it is it's a circular formula.

SPEAKER_01 28:05

And so if you think of a seashell, particularly like a shell that a snail will use, that is a Pythagoran theorem right there. Yeah. It's a spiraling.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Yes, it's A plus B is to, I mean, I can't remember it exactly. A, I think as A is to be. We're beauty girls. Yeah. But it is a formula, and there is a number that it is the exact number. I think it's like 1.68, something like that. But anyway, I was going to write it down. And then I thought this would be really hard for me to explain it without a blackboard in front of me because you guys are all looking at it. And you'll figure it out. Yeah, that's a good idea. Class chat. So anyway, for the Pythagoreans, then this mathematical order of the universe. And now remember the word cosmos or cosmos, as we would say, but cosmos in Greek, which we talk about as universe, that word cosmos means order. And it was identical with the essence of beauty itself. Beauty comes from meaningful inner order. It was used intentionally to achieve aesthetic balance in ancient Greek structures like the Parthenon. And you can see it if you guys remember the Renaissance painter Leonardo da Vinci, his Vitruvian man, where you've got the man with the outstretched arms, outstretched legs, and then there's it looks like there's circles and mathematical formulas around it. That all has to do with the golden ratio. So for the Pythagoreans, mathematics was the underlying unifying principle of the universe. It was a sort of first cause. But they don't look at this in an entirely abstract way. In the view of the ancients, intelligent actions presupposed that there was an intelligence that created them. And then with the advent of Christianity, you'll have St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas who take this one step further and they connect the mathematics of the universe with the mind of the creator. In the beginning, God created God Himself is the great artist in whom all works of art, the beauty of the universe, have their origin. So in this classical world, ratio and proportion are very important in identifying what was beautiful. Another example of this is in the standardizing of human proportions in Greek sculpture. So the face would be divided into thirds, with the bottom third, including the mouth and the chin, the middle third, you've got the eyes and the nose, and the upper third, the brow to the top of the head. So their statues did not portray simply individual people with all of their particularities. But they are an idealized version of humanity. For the Greeks, one should strive for such a standard, and beauty could be measured insofar as it aligned with these qualities. There was this emphasis on ratio, proportion, and symmetry, and that continues to impact the visual arts today. For me, what's really interesting is that as I talk about these Greek ideals of beauty, I think a lot of you will resonate to this. You will recognize truth in this because we in the West are very influenced by this classical idea of beauty. And to a large extent, this directly comes from the medieval thinkers who inherited Greek philosophy and integrated it with Christian theology. Beauty for them became closely linked with the transcendentals. There was unum meaning one or unity, right? They saw unity in the Trinity, or as we would say it as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There is a unity in the Godhead. So there's one, and that is a transcendental. It's a truth that exists. There is God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Ghost. They exist in a Godhead or a Trinity, if you're not LDS. Wirum, which means the good. It's spelled V-E-R-U-M. So you would recognize it as veritas, right? We would, you know, meaning verity, truth. And then there's bonum, means which means the good. And then often in these transcendentals, they would say pulkrum, which is the beautiful. So again, a transcendental was understood as a property which was exchangeable with being with itself. Wherever something truly exists, it possesses unity, truth, goodness, and beauty in some way. And Saint Augustine thought of beauty as divine order. He saw beauty in terms of harmony, proportion, and order established by God. Created things are beautiful because they reflect divine wisdom. And even things that appear imperfect contribute to the beauty of the whole cosmos, much like dark notes in music can contribute to a larger harmony. Therefore, beauty reveals truth because creation reflects divine intelligence. It reveals goodness because existence itself is a gift from God. For Pseudodionys, the Areopagite, that's a title of a person that lived in ancient Greece. Okay, beauty was divine radiance. This gave beauty especially this supernatural role. He describes God as beauty itself, the source of all harmony and splendor. Beautiful things draw creatures back toward God. Beauty is therefore, he says it's attractive and ecstatic. Now that comes from the Greek word ecstasis, which literally means to stand outside oneself or stepping out of place. Beauty is not internal, it is calling us beyond itself, beyond us, beyond whatever a thing is, toward its original thing. And so this strongly shaped medieval aesthetics because it shaped their whole concept of light in cathedral or iconography or sacred music or cosmic symbolism. So beauty was not decoration, it was revelation in these architectural forms of, for example, the cathedral. Thomas Aquinas believed that beauty reveals the true and the good. And he gave one of the clearest formulations. He defined beauty through three conditions. First of all, it had to have integritas or wholeness or completeness. Secondly, proportio, which meant proportion or harmony. And thirdly, claritas, which means radiance or intelligibility. Beauty pleases when it is seen because the form of a thing shines forth clearly. For Aquinas, truth relates to our intellect. Goodness relates to our desire and appetite. In other words, controlling the appetite. The will controls it. Beauty relates to cognitive delight in apprehending or understanding form. Beauty, therefore, reveals truth by making form intelligible. It reveals goodness because what is fully realized and ordered is desirable. The medieval synthesis often treated beauty as the splendor of the true. And I love that. Beauty is the splendor of the true. If something is beautiful, it's because it is in some way articulating truth. Yeah, there's some truth in there that you can either uncover or see.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

Exactly. I also feel like when something's beautiful, it teaches me a lesson for so long. I go back to it, I learn again and again and again. Like nature. You learn so much from nature and the rhythms and the seasons and all of the things. Yes, there's parables and millions of stories in there.

SPEAKER_00 36:29

You can see it also if there is a beautiful piece of art. You can look at it and learn from it. Yeah. The art itself reveals truth. Yeah. And it exists outside of you. It's not your truth, it's the truth that is revealed within the art. Or music, beautiful music, it will reveal a truth to you. Or a good story. Yeah. Right? It's not a didactic story. It's a story that you read it, and in itself, truth is revealed. So why beauty was so important, why it mattered to the Greeks and the medieval is because human beings are not moved by abstract propositions alone, right? Like it's not simply giving the abstract proposition of a commandment, thou shalt do this. The reason the law becomes beautiful, right? The law is a light, the law is a delight. If you read throughout the Psalms, they talk about the beauty of the law. The reason that it's beautiful is because it reveals truth. It reveals the lawgiver. Right? Yes. And then it reveals the lawgiver. So it's not necessarily the abstract law that reveals, it's that when you act on the law, then there is beauty, then there is truth, right? Okay, so for the Greeks, for the medievals, they said that beauty attracts before the argument. In other words, if there is a beautiful work of art, for example, the novel Limis Grabla, if you read that novel, that is going to reveal truth to you within the novel, right? Your whole attention is going to be captured by the beauty of this novel. Then the truth will be revealed to you. So the beauty will capture your attention, then it allows truth to be revealed. Beauty discloses meaning through experience. Beauty awakens love for reality. Beauty draws the soul toward truth and moral transformation. And that's why art, music, architecture, poetry, and liturgy were philosophically serious matters for the Greeks and then the medievals. Beauty was considered a mode of access to reality, to the divine itself. For the Greeks and the medievalists, beauty was not separate from truth and goodness. Beauty was their visible splendor and attractive power. Well, the ancient Near East also had an ideal of beauty, which often involved harmony, order, radiance, symmetry. That's all very Greek. But then it's going to shift to include fullness or wholeness. What we would say, the word that's often translated as perfect for us, fertility, and divine power. Ancient Near Eastern cultures usually did not think in terms of a separate, abstract, perfect form existing beyond the material world, the way Plato later would. Instead, beauty was typically understood as the visible expression of life, order, blessing, and divine presence. So a beautiful king, temple, priest, or garden, think the Garden of Eden, was beautiful because it embodied cosmic order and vitality. Many ancient Near Eastern cultures saw the universe as threatened by chaos, barrenness, darkness, disorder, and death. Beauty signaled that order had been established. Now remember when we talked about Genesis 1, in the beginning, God created. But remember we talked about chaos, and the chaos was represented by these primordial waters. The spirit of God broods over the waters. That goes back to the poem that Gerard Manley Hopkins that we read in the beginning. But you've got the spirit brooding over the waters, and then he organizes these waters and creates life, right? He separates them, he organizes, he gives form and function. And then things become tove or they become good. So some examples then that of beauty and the order's been established might be a well-watered garden, a healthy bodies, abundant harvest, strong city. And these all go back to the Jewish feast, too. Yes, you'll see that in there. Richly woven garments, right? Precious stones, shining gold, symmetrical temples. These are beautiful because they show flourishing, which shows divine favor. Yeah. So in ancient Egypt, beauty was closely connected to Ma'at, which means truth, order, balance, and cosmic harmony. A beautiful object or person reflected proper alignment with cosmic order. Pharaohs were depicted in idealized forms that were youthful, symmetrical, calm, and powerful. But it was less about an abstract, metaphysical perfect form like you have in the Greeks, right? This is more about manifesting eternal kingship and stability. Now, if you look at those ancient Greek statues or the paintings of them, they're kind of at this awkward stance, but it is a very stable stance. They're very stable. And that is projecting this idea of order, stability within this chaotic cosmos. So obviously, this ideal of beauty is going to have an influence on ancient Israel, right? Like you're always influenced by your surrounding culture. Yes. So to summarize, in the ancient Near East, beauty was generally symbolic, liturgical, that means it had to do with religion. Political has to do with kingship, usually, cosmic, embodied, and functional. Beauty belonged to the ordered world itself rather than to a separate transcendent form, realm of ideal forms. You can see how the Greek concept of beauty emerged from this. It's not this sudden invention, right? I mean, the Greeks exist within this world. So it becomes this philosophical transformation of a much older Near Eastern ideas about sacred order, radiance, harmony, and divine presence. Now, I would say then that the ancient Israelites, in their building of the tabernacle and then the temple, in many ways are going to bridge these two views. And I say that understanding that the Greek and medieval philosophies of beauty did not exist at the time. I do understand that. But the Greek concept of beauty did not emerge in isolation, right? It developed out of that much older cultural and religious world that they shared with the civilizations of the ancient Near East, especially Mesopotamia, Egypt, Phoenicia, and the wider Eastern Mediterranean world. And what makes the Greeks distinctive is not that they invented beauty, but that they gradually transformed older sacred and royal notions of beauty into a philosophical and metaphysical category. But I would contend that this idea of replicating a form that exists in a supernatural world, in heaven, so to speak, onto the earth is very much present in the Ancient Hebrews. I think that we find it most explicitly in God's pattern of the temple and the priestly clothing. So a little background before we get into the tabernacle, in ancient Israel, beauty became strongly tied to holiness. So for example, Psalm 29, verse 2, give thanks unto the Lord, sing unto him, sing psalms unto him, seek his face continually, worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Beauty in ancient Israel was also strongly tied to covenant. In an extra-biblical book, Sirach chapter 43, verses 11 and 12, it praises the beauty of what's called the Noahic covenant, or the covenant that God makes with Noah at the time of the flood. And this is what it says: look at the rainbow and praise him who made it. It is exceedingly beautiful in its brightness. It encircles the sky with a glorious circle. The hands of the Most High have stretched it out. And finally, in ancient Israel, beauty became tied to divine glory. In Psalm 50, verse 2, it says, Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth. So God's radiance, God's glory is shining from the seed of perfect beauty. In ancient Israel, beauty is often radiant but morally ordered. So you can see this ancient Near Eastern influence. Beauty is not merely sensual attractiveness, it reveals God's glory. And there, in God's glory, we have, and in God Himself, we have the revelation of the perfect form. So this beauty being reflected, being a reflection of God, is found in their concept of the tabernacle, the priestly garments, and temple worship. So let's talk about the temple. In Exodus 25, God commands the construction of the tabernacle, and he tells Moses to build it according to a divinely revealed pattern. This is the scripture. Exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle and all of its furniture, so shall you make it. And then in verse 40, God reiterates this charge to Moses. See that you make them after the pattern for them, which is being shown you on the mountain. And remember, mountain is a temple. So the implication is that the earthly sanctuary is not invented by humans. It's not something Moses comes up with. It reflects a heavenly archetype revealed by God. In the New Testament, in the book of Hebrews, this idea is made explicit. Hebrews chapter 8, verse 5 says, They serve as a copy and a shadow of heavenly things. For when Moses was about to erect the tent, he was instructed by God, saying, See that you make everything according to this pattern that was shown you on the mountain. The author of Hebrews is arguing that the earthly priesthood and sanctuary are temporary symbolic realities, while God the Father and Jesus Christ and minister in the true heavenly sanctuary. In Hebrews 9:11, it says Christ appeared as a high priest, then through the greater and more perfect tent, not made with hands. So he's talking about the tent in heaven, the tabernacle in heaven that is not made with hands. In verse 24, for Christ has entered not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself. The earthly holy of holies is presented as an image of the heavenly dwelling of God. So the earthly holy of holies, it's copying the ideal form that exists, that truly exists in heaven. In Revelation 11, verse 19, it says, Then God's temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple. This suggests that the earthly temple worship participates in a larger heavenly liturgy. In other words, what is sealed on earth is sealed in heaven. This is exactly what we do in the temple, right? What Revelation is saying is that there's this heavenly worship, temple worship that's going on at the same time that there was temple worship going on here on earth. And that's what we believe too. The worship that we do in the temple, the ordinances that we perform, are also being performed in heaven for that actual person that we are doing the ordinance for on earth. Yeah. Does that make sense what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_01 49:07

Yes. So what you're saying is as we're sitting proxy for this person on earth, Jane Doe. Yes, that person is at the same time going through the temple in heaven. Right. Right.

SPEAKER_00 49:20

Wow. It's a pattern. And what exists on earth is a copy of the true pattern, the true form that exists in heaven. So when Joseph Smith said the relationships that we have here on earth, he says that same sociality which exists here on earth will exist in heaven. He says, only coupled with greater glory, right? And understanding. Right. So that's the same pattern that we got. The temple worship that we have here on earth, it's the same thing going on in heaven. Only in heaven, obviously, it's coupled with greater glory. Yeah. It's God's glory. It's right there in all its fullness there.

SPEAKER_01 49:59

But for some reason, that requires a body, which is why we're performing. That's why we're doing it here. Why we're doing it here. Yes. And then that also, I've said this before, but that also brings some levity to why proxy requires purity.

SPEAKER_00 50:15

Yes, there's clarity there. We have proxy requires purity. Yes. Because we have to be pure on earth. Yes. It is pure.

SPEAKER_01 50:30

The temple is not the end point. The end point for all of this is that we are acting as proxy for someone who cannot do it for themselves. And so we thank goodness don't have to do animal sacrifices, but they understood it a little bit more. Like you commit a sin, you have to take this animal, kill it at the temple, right? There's a proxy there. The sacrifice that we're doing, we're not asked to kill ourselves. However, we are sacrificing our time and our talents and our energy to go and sit in the temple for someone else who cannot do it for themselves. And that is why it requires purity.

SPEAKER_00 51:03

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:05

So you can go to the temple. It's so you can perform.

SPEAKER_00 51:07

What you are is a reflection. You are supposed to be a reflection of the purity that is in that heavenly temple of Jesus. So when you are on earth, you are supposed to be reflecting the greater purity that is in heaven. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. You are a physical form, hopefully, of the true form. Yes. And the true form is Jesus Christ. Yes. So your purity hopefully is a reflection of the purity of Jesus Christ. Now, obviously, we are far beyond. I mean, far below.

SPEAKER_01 51:45

Are there blessings that come from that? And do you get like a measure of the grace of God and gifts as you leave the temple for doing that? Yes. And I think that's what people say they want, is that. However, in order to receive that, you need to set proxy for someone. And to do that, you need to be pure.

SPEAKER_00 52:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:00

And the purity is not for your relationship with God, although it helps. So you can be proxy in the temple. Sit proxy. Exactly. Is there is a term for it in the scriptures, and it is lowercase savior on Mount Zion. Yes. Yes. And some of you might recognize that phrase from your patriarchal blessing is in mine. And mine says there are millions of people waiting for someone to become their savior, lowercase s, savior on Mount Zion. And that is acting proxy in the temple for someone else. Exactly. That's what that means. It's a type of the proxy Jesus sat for us in the temple or in the garden, but it is not on that scale. He was our savior on Gethsemane. It mimics it. However, it's not the same.

SPEAKER_02 52:43

Right.

SPEAKER_01 52:43

But we can only participate that through purity. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 52:46

Yeah. So in the book of Ezekiel, chapters 40 through 48, Ezekiel receives a visionary temple revealed from God with precise heavenly measurements and symbolism. And this reinforces the idea that sacred architecture reflects divine order rather than mere human creativity, which is going back to what you were saying, right? Like the way we dress, for example, all in white reflects the purity that exists in heaven. Yes. So the overall biblical pattern is that heaven is God's true dwelling place. However, consecrated earthly sanctuaries do provide a dwelling place for God on earth. They are where heaven and earth meet. Within the temple, the rituals are symbolic participations in a heavenly reality. Let me say that again. Within the temple, the rituals are a symbolic participation in heavenly reality. So the tabernacle and the temple make heavenly worship visible on earth. And we do that too, right? Our temple is making heavenly worship visible on earth. So we do have this almost Greek idea of divine form, the heavenly pattern being made visible on earth. But although there is a similarity, there is also a fundamental clash of philosophy in the Hebrew view of beauty and the classical Greek view. While both cultures appreciated aesthetic form, they differed radically on what made something genuinely beautiful, how it related to morality and to its ultimate purpose. And the primary divergence is summarized by an ancient saying, the Greeks believed that what was beautiful was good, whereas the Hebrews believed that what was good was beautiful. For many Greeks, especially from the classical period onward, beauty increasingly came to be to seem self-authenticating. In other words, a beautiful form could be taken as evidence of inner excellence, truth, or nobility. For the Greeks, a beautiful object or body carried its own intrinsic justification. If it looked perfect, it was considered true and noble. A beautiful body reflected a beautiful mind or soul. The Greek word was kalokagathos, which meant beautiful and good. Physical attractiveness was linked to virtue, nobility, and excellence. You can see where this might be a problem. There's going to be a problem with that. For the Hebrews, beauty was not usually not autonomous in that way. Beauty derived its meaning from participation in righteousness and holiness. Beauty pointed beyond itself to stability, fertility, the divine presence, and eternal order. The emphasis was less this is beautiful, therefore true, but more this is true because it properly participates in God's cosmic order and therefore appears beautiful. And that's going to be the end of part one of our discussion on the theology of beauty. Yes. And we'll meet you back with part two. Yes. See you guys.

SPEAKER_01 56:09

Thank you for listening to the Scripture Study Podcast, Your Midweek Bible Boost. Everything we mentioned on this podcast, if we said there would be a link to it, it is in the show notes wherever you find your podcast. Cindy Madsen currently does not believe in or participate in social media. However, if you would like to follow along with Susan Peterson, she can be found on Instagram at susan.m.peterson. Have a good week.