The Role of Art in the Christian Life

When we look at the role of art in the Christian life and community, we find that there are simple, foundational principles about the nature of beauty. If you were to look up every reference to “beauty” or “the beautiful” in the Bible, you would see that the word “beauty” in one form or another occurs frequently in the pages of sacred Scripture, particularly in the Old Testament. To set a framework for our investigation, let’s begin by looking at a psalm written by David, which we find in 1 Chronicles:

Ascribe to the Lord, O families of the peoples,
ascribe to the Lord glory and strength!
Ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name;
bring an offering and come before him!
Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness;
tremble before him, all the earth;
yes, the world is established; it shall never be moved. (1 Chron. 16:28–30)

Two words in this psalm stand out. One is “glory.” The idea of the glory of God is pervasive throughout Scripture. It refers to His majesty, His heaviness, His weightiness, His worth, His significance. Closely connected with His glory is the concept of “holiness.” The psalm enjoins the people of God to worship God in the “splendor of holiness”; the holiness of God and the glory of God are conjoined here with respect to this idea of splendor or beauty. We are called to come into the presence of God and to worship that which is beautiful about God.

Psalm 27 and Psalm 29 also tell us about this idea of the beauty of God. Psalm 27:4 states:

One thing have I asked of the Lord,
that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord
and to inquire in his temple.

In Psalm 29, David reiterates what he said in his psalm in 1 Chronicles: we are to worship the Lord in the “splendor of holiness.”

I’m afraid that the idea of the beauty of God has been all but eclipsed in our contemporary culture, both in the secular community and in the church. The Scriptures are concerned about three dimensions of the Christian life: the good, the true, and the beautiful. But we have cut off the third from the other two. In fact, sometimes Christians reduce their concern of the things of God purely to the ethical realm, to a discussion of righteousness or goodness. Others are so concerned about purity of doctrine that they’re preoccupied with truth at the expense of behavior or of the holy. But in fact, the biblical concern is for all three. Scripture tells us that God is the ground or fountain of all goodness. All goodness finds its definition in His being and in His character. What God is determines what goodness is. The Scriptures speak about God as the author, the source, and the foundation of all truth. They say that God Himself is true. In the same way and in the same dimension, the Scriptures speak about the beauty of God; all things beautiful find their source and foundation in the character of God. Ultimately, God is the norm of the good, the norm of the true, and the norm of the beautiful.