A Definition Of Beauty

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A Definition of Beauty for D.Min. Project
“…for seven weeks I’ve lived in here,
Penned up inside this ghetto.
But I have found what I love here.
The dandelions call to me
And the white chestnut branches in the court.
Only I never saw another butterfly.”1
If I am to answer the primary question postulated throughout these pages that drives this
research, ‘What pastoral care methods effectively provide a space of beauty at the end of life?’
one must first define beauty and understand its importance in ministry at the end of life if one is
to know for what to look. While this writer accepts that the definitive definition of beauty can
never be fully comprehended and that the exploration of beauty is limited and tentative at best2
,
however the hope in attempting a definition, no matter how fleeting, will provide a mosaic with
which to focus this investigation into its existence at the time of death. To do this, this writer
will look to Jonathan Edward and John O’Donohue for a simple, but poignant, definition of
Christian beauty, look to the Old Testament for a pre-Christian understanding of God’s beauty,
the need for pursuing God’s beauty, an acknowledgement of an increase of ugliness which is the
result of a loss of God consciousness, a call to the Christian community to waken and see his
beauty, and how the hospice chaplain is uniquely seated to facilitate the seeing of God’s beauty.
It would be difficult if not impossible to attempt to define and understanding beauty
without considering the work of Jonathan Edwards who was/is the most prolific writer on
beauty, with beauty being “…central and more pervasive [in his writings] than in any other text
1
Pavel Friedmann. Published in …I Never Saw Another Butterfly…: Children’s Drawings and Poems from Terezin
Concentration Camp, 1942-1944. New York: Schocken Books, 1993. 38.
2
John O’Donohue. The Invisible Embrace of Beauty: Rediscovering the True Sources of Compassion, Serenity, and
Hope. New York: Harper Perennial Publishers, 2003. 9.

2
in the history of Christian theology.”3
Further Edwards felt it was not enough just to know the
definition of beauty in some logical format; “instead, one had to have a sense of it or, we might
say, one had to experience God's beauty for oneself.”4
So our duty seems to be both articulate a
definition and grapple with a sense of this beauty exudes from God’s being. It is just such a sense
that this writer hopes to extrapolate from the musings of experience hospice chaplains.
Chaplains who have see such beauty when the Lord was/is among them and their patients, as on
Sinai, in a holy place5
. “[One] does not merely rationally believe that God is glorious, but [they]
have a sense of the gloriousness of God in his heart.”6
As simple as it may sound, John O’Donohue, a 20th
Century Celtic philosopher defined
beauty this way, “God7
is Beauty!”8
Edwards’ theology of beauty also, “…begins and ends with
God …an extraordinary vision of the divine Beauty replicating itself in all of creation.”9
Throughout Christian history theologians have built on the foundation of biblical revelation for
such a definition, which has continually sought to understand beauty as a “…sense of the divine
being and character, as well as the works of God, and to define beauty in terms of the excellence
and glory of God.”10
Therefore there is one thing that this writer desires like the Psalmist … one
3
Belden C. Lane. Ravished by Beauty: The Surprising Legacy of Reformed Spirituality. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2011. 171.
4
p161 Moore, T M. in The hope of beauty in an age of ugliness and death says this about Jonathan Edwards position
of Beauty found in, "A Divine and Supernatural Light," in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 2, ed. Edward
Hickman (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1995), 14.
5
Ps 68:17
6
Quoted of Edwards by Belden C. Lane. Ravished by Beauty: The Surprising Legacy of Reformed Spirituality.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 184.
7
While this writer makes no excuse for his open belief in God, however, he also recognizes that some who read this
research may be of the non-theist belief. Two of the ten chaplains interviewed for this research were non-theist.
This author believe that this research is valuable regardless of one’s understanding of God and that most chaplains,
theist or non-theist, recognize a part of G(g)od in the lives of all people. Regardless of how one understands or
explaings G(g)od, a piece of the Holy is there in each human life.
8
John O’Donohue. The Invisible Embrace of Beauty: Rediscovering the True Sources of Compassion, Serenity, and
Hope. New York: Harper Perennial Publishers, 2003. 217-247.
9
10
Moore, T M. in The hope of beauty in an age of ugliness and death p 162

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thing will I seek after… to behold the beauty of the Lord!11
“Edwards argued that God’s
ravishing beauty is the first and most important thing to be said of God. ‘God is God, and
distinguished from all other beings and exalted above’em, chiefly by his divine beauty.’”12
Even before the Christian era, Old Testament writer related the idea of all beauty with the
beauty of God. Such beauty grounded in God fixes “…a degree of permanence and objectivity
to the very idea of beauty.13
There are at least three ways in which the Old Testament
conceptualizes God’s beauty that has influenced the understanding of beauty into the Christian
era and is apropos to this research. First, “…behold the beauty of the Lord,” the very being of
God testifies of His beauty. Second, God’s beauty is associated with His moral character; God's
excellence, honor, and majesty exude His beauty throughout all the creation, created in His
image.14
“Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined.”15
Throughout Scripture there
is no greater moral virtue coupled with beauty then God’s holiness. The psalmist David exhorted
God’s creation to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness,16
and that God would live among
those who worshiped Him in such beauty.1718
God hath made everything beautiful in His time; from the very first, “Let there be…” to
the very least of his creation today, God, with all of His creation looking on, continue to agree
about His ongoing creative work, “It is good!”19
The third idea associating God with beauty is
His continued work in creation. “The whole of creation, functioning according to its intended
11
Ps 27:4
12
New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 173.
13
Moore, T M. in The hope of beauty in an age of ugliness and death p159
14
Gen 1:26
15
Ps 50:2
16
Ps 29:2
17
ps 22:3
18
Moore, T M. in The hope of beauty in an age of ugliness and death p158-160
19
Genesis 1

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purposes, in harmony and fruitfulness, is said to be beautiful.”20
Beautiful, because the beauty of
the LORD our God is upon His creation; and has establish that His ongoing creative work is now
in the hands of His creation.21
Forever, Oh God, you are beauty, your creation created in your
image is beauty, and the beauty of your essence continues in the work of your creation.
While Edwards understood beauty as described above, primarily as a celebration of
God’s being, he also understood that contemplating God’s beauty was secondary to the
celebration of God’s being. However, humans as finite creature with a finite understanding must
transverse contemplating God’s beauty on the road to celebrating the beauty of His being.
“Thus, while secondary beauty focuses on what immediately delights, primary beauty takes us
out of ourselves into a contemplation of God’s own beautifying life and how we contribute to its
expansion in the world.”22
Conversely, refusing to delight in our immediate surrounding that is
endowed with God’s beauty will prohibit the celebration of the beauty of His being and blind us
from seeing the ongoing influence of His beauty in the lives of His creation around us. “The
conscious celebration of God’s beauty is the end toward which the whole creation is drawn.”23
Edwards felt that creation is drawn to God’s beauty and that we should be concerned with
living in the presence of such beauty more than anything else.24
Maybe not so much as being
concerned with finding beauty as in recognizing His existing beauty and the ongoing work of
beauty in His creative work, which surrounds us everyday. “The natural world … enlarges the
human capacity to sense the fullness of God’s beauty, and the appreciation of that beauty
20
Moore, T M. in The hope of beauty in an age of ugliness and death p160
21
ps 90:17
22
23
24
New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 174.

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subsequently leads to ethical action. Nature teaches us God’s beauty, and God’s beauty drives us
to it continual replication in space and time.”25
Edwards loved the outdoors and spent much of
his time outside in the woods or fields around his home, because the beauties he found in nature
was really an “…emanations, or shadows, of the excellencies of the Son of God.”26
For the sake of this research it seems important to digress before progressing to a
definitive understanding of beauty and how it applies. The question that must be in the mind of
the reader as it is in the mind of the writer is, what about the ugliness that seems to permeate the
world around us? If God is beauty, if He exudes beauty in His ongoing creation and if His
creation is participants in this beauty, where is this beauty? This "…violence, oppression,
economic enslavement and social irrationality," this ugliness has given "…given despair a new
warrant."27
George Steiner, along with many others watching our world feel there is a
"…systematic turn-about towards bestialization."28
When comparing the suffering in our world
up against the God’s beauty if often seem difficult to see… or is it, as will be discussed below,
overlooked, ignored, or clouded by the distractions of a violent world?
T. M. Moore writes extensively on this point and feels that, “…the demise of beauty in
the arts is the result of the loss of regard for God, then the hope for a recovery of beauty is
somehow linked with restoration of respect for God.29
While Moore is considering the demise of
beauty in aesthetic art, it is still apropos, because he also understands beauty as defined by
Edwards and O’Donohue. God is beauty, He exudes beauty through his holy creation, and his
creation has (or can) become part of this beauty in the things that he does. Therefore the artist,
25
26
27
“George Steiner, Grammars of Creation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 5-16.
28
“George Steiner, Grammars of Creation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 5-16.
29
Moore, T M. The hope of beauty in an age of ugliness and death Theology Today 61 no 2 Jl 2004, p 155-172.
2004 ATLA: 20100825 p156

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as beauty created by a holy God who is radiant beauty, creates beauty in his work when
influenced by the God of beauty. Moore recognize that, at least statistically, there “…seems to
be no shortage of belief in God in contemporary America; yet the decline of beauty and the
ascendance of ugliness has become a daily and widespread complaint.”30
It is possible, because of a decline in contemplation of God’s beauty that the celebration
of God’s being is ignored and His beauty is hidden. Christianity has dumbed down everything
associated with God, His work, and His church. “Much of the stress and emptiness that haunts
us can be traced back to our lack of attention to beauty.”31
One has only to attend the
postmodern worship service at the church on the corner to realize the theological shallowness of
the songs, the art, and the decor. Christian theology has become a mile wide (reflecting its
modern resurgence), but only an inch deep. Moore “…insist that the hope for recovering beauty
in an age of ugliness and death rests with those who embrace this biblical and theological
perspective and heritage and who undertake the responsibility of cultivating a theologically
informed taste for beauty.32
Gerald Hopkins believed that God was/is trying to make His being
“…known through the things of this world, and he lamented the fact that people seem so dull of
hearing and blind to the beauty and glory that God is revealing all around them.33
This demise of beauty in the arts and/or in the recognizing of God’s beauty in both His
being and His creation, “…is the result of the loss of regard for God, then the hope for a recovery
30
2004 ATLA: 20100825 157
31
John O’Donohue. The Invisible Embrace of Beauty: Rediscovering the True Sources of Compassion, Serenity,
and Hope. New York: Harper Perennial Publishers, 2003. 4.
32
2004 ATLA: 20100825 157
33
Gerard Manley Hopkins work, "On the Origin of Beauty: A Platonic Dialogue," in W. H. Gardner, ed., Gerard
Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (London: Penguin, 1963) p 166

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of beauty is somehow linked with restoration of respect for God.34
If there is to be a restoration
of respect for God it will take Christian leaders (theologians, pastors, and Christian educators)
accepting the responsibility to nurture a theologically taste for beauty in the hearts and minds of
the ecclesia. “For, if cultivating taste as a spiritual gift and discipline does not begin with these,
the teachers of the Christian community, it will never be established among the hosts of the
community at large.”35
A “…persistent longing for beauty can serve as a starting-point…” or a place of
awakening “…a true sense of beauty in this age of ugliness and death.”36
The call to awaken is
a call to take one’s rightful place in God’s creative beauty and when one does they become
aware of the beauty in the world.37
“When we waken to beauty, we keep desire alive in its
freshness, passion, and creativity. Beauty in not a deadener but a quickener!38
As one awakens
in their approach to God they “enters the presence of One who is the embodiment of all things
beautiful. Being in God's presence is supremely pleasant, filled with delights, majestic and
excellent beyond description, and leads the faithful to exclaim, ‘how great is his goodness, and
how great his beauty!’39
”40
This research project is a starting point motivated by a persistent longing for seeing
God’s beauty in the work of the Hospice chaplain especially at the time of death. This project is
34
2004 ATLA: 20100825 156
35
2004 ATLA: 20100825 p172
36
2004 ATLA: 20100825 158
37
38
39
(Zech 9:17)
40
2004 ATLA: 20100825 159

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a call for chaplains to waken to the beauty in God’s creation and to the beauty in the lives (work)
of His creation. The beauty that is already there, but often missed in the business of paperwork,
travel, and scheduling. The mentally and physically exhausting work of the chaplain is
especially suited for seeing God’s beauty; “Edwards found the reality of God’s beauty was most
obvious during a time of ‘sensory overload’.”41
No one recognizes the decline of, and the
recognition of God’s beauty then chaplains who live in daily ugliness of death. Patients, as most
people today, rarely, if ever, understand God in the beauty of His being, His character, or His
work, therefore “…it makes sense for us to believe that, if there is to be any recovery of beauty
in this age of ugliness and death, it must arise from within the community of those who know
God today.”42
The chaplain must become the mirror in which both patients and family can see
God’s beauty in their life and their own creative work.
Surrounded by pain and suffering each and every day, it seem for most uninitiated, it
would seem difficult to discern beauty, however “…the ‘new sense’ imparted by God’s spirit
that makes this discernment possible. The new capacity for perceiving God’s beauty makes one
simultaneously more sensitive to deformity, more attentive to the distortion of God’s mirrored
loveliness.”43
Only those who have been there understand the ability for something strange and
beautiful to happened when a patient is at the end of life. The face relaxes as all fear, horror,
pain, and suffering seemed to fade away and disappear. “‘I have often watched a look of happy
41
University Press, 2011. York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 188.
42
2004 ATLA: 20100825 p169

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wonder dawn in his eyes when he realized what was happening,” writes a veteran [caregiver].
‘He seemed to come alive in a new form.’”44
No symbol greater epitomizes suffering then the gospels rendition of Christ’s suffering
on the cross, and yet, no greater picture of beauty has ever been recorded. There was never
another time with God’s “…divine glory and majesty covered with so thick and dark a veil …yet
never was his divine glory so manifested by any act of His, as in yielding Himself up to these
sufferings.”45
Edwards love for beauty caused him to look for God’s beauty in places that
astonished some, he “…knew that God’s most astonishing beauty lies hidden in the earth’s
suffering, because the anguish of nature points to the agony of the cross.”46
There was/is no
limit to which God would go to right the full brokenness of creation that it might be in harmony
with His beauty; the ugliness of the cross was that symbol to all of this ongoing creative work.47
“The experience of finite beauty is …grounded in the transcendent beauty that belongs to all
being …persists regardless of the destructive forces of ugliness or evil.”48
So the job of the chaplain would basically be one of holding up a mirror so the world can
see his or her own inherent beauty as one created by God. When one sees this beauty, there is a
sense of homecoming, a sense of belonging to something greater than this temporary life.49
Not
everyone hears/sees [G]god the same way as everyone else,50
yet however one sees God, there is
beauty in the seeing! This become especially poignant for the chaplain, because when one loses
44
Glen Davidson, Living With Dying. Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1975. 95.
45
46
47
48
Deal W. Hudson. An American Conversion: One Man’s Discovery of Beauty and Truth in Times of Crisis. New
York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2003. 125.
49
50
Diana Bass, Christianity for the rest of us, pg205

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“..sight of beauty [the] struggle becomes tired and functional.”51
Therefore the joint search for
beauty, the dance between patient and chaplain seems to obligate them in two directions: “First,
to seek this gift, and to desire it earnestly; and, second, to practice this gift as part of one's
everyday spiritual discipline.”52
Throughout this section one can seen how beauty and God are inseparable ideologues;
God is beauty and/or beauty is God. This is supported by both the pre and post New Testament
writers calling communities everywhere, in spite of the increase in ugliness, to awaken, pursue,
and see God’s beauty. Finally, hospice chaplains are uniquely situated to holding up a mirror so
the world can see his or her own inherent beauty as one created by God. When the communities
looking for beauty “…respond with joy to the call of beauty because in an instant it can awaken
under the layers of the heart a forgotten brightness.”53
God’s beauty will not lay dormant, but is
sure to spread when lifted up in joy, for “God’s beauty within the world is infectious.”54
51
52
2004 ATLA: 20100825 p172
53
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