This Superior Force

To say that God has this superior force, this power of attraction, which speaks for itself, which wins and conquers, in the fact that He is beautiful, divinely beautiful …. God loves us as the One who is worthy of love as God. This is what we mean when we say that God is beautiful.

~ Karl Barth

Captivated by His Beauty

Hast thou heard Him, seen Him, known Him?

  Is not thine a captured heart?

Chief among ten thousand own Him;

  Joyful choose the better part.

Captivated by His beauty,

Worthy tribute haste to bring;

Let His peerless worth constrain thee,

  Crown Him now unrivaled King.

Idols once they won thee, charmed thee,

  Lovely things of time and sense;

Gilded thus does sin disarm thee,

  Honeyed lest thou turn thee thence.

What has stripped the seeming beauty

  From the idols of the earth?

Not a sense of right or duty,

  But the sight of peerless worth.

Not the crushing of those idols,

  With its bitter void and smart;

But the beaming of His beauty,

  The unveiling of His heart.

Who extinguishes their taper

  Till they hail the rising sun?

Who discards the garb of winter

  Till the summer has begun?

'Tis that look that melted Peter,

  'Tis that face that Stephen saw,

'Tis that heart that wept with Mary,

  Can alone from idols draw:

Draw and win and fill completely,

  Till the cup o'erflow the brim;

What have we to do with idols

  Who have companied with Him?

Source: http://www.hymnal.net/hymn.php/nt/437#ixzz2DuNPP069

Great and Amazing

And they sing  the song of Moses,  the servant  of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying,  

"Great and amazing are your deeds, 

O Lord God the Almighty! 

Just and true are your ways, 

O King of the nations! 

Who will not fear, O Lord, 

and glorify your name? 

For you alone are  holy. 

All nations will come and worship you, 

for your righteous acts have been revealed." 

(Revelation 15:3, 4 ESV)

These Lower Things

For there is an attractiveness in beautiful bodies, in gold and silver, and all things; and in bodily touch, sympathy hath much influence, and each other sense hath his proper object answerably tempered. Wordly honour hath also its grace, and the power of overcoming, and of mastery; whence springs also the thirst of revenge. But yet, to obtain all these, we may not depart from Thee, O Lord, nor decline from Thy law. The life also which here we live hath its own enchantment, through a certain proportion of its own, and a correspondence with all things beautiful here below. Human friendship also is endeared with a sweet tie, by reason of the unity formed of many souls. Upon occasion of all these, and the like, is sin committed, while through an immoderate inclination towards these goods of the lowest order, the better and higher are forsaken,—Thou, our Lord God, Thy truth, and Thy law. For these lower things have their delights, but not like my God, who made all things; for in Him doth the righteous delight, and He is the joy of the upright in heart.

~ Confessions of Saint Augustine-Chapter V

Beautiful Valley of Eden

Beautiful valley of Eden!

Sweet is thy noontide calm;

Over the heart of the weary,

Breathing thy waves of balm.

Beautiful valley of Eden,

Home of the pure and blest,

How often amid the wild billows

I dream of thy rest, sweet rest!

Over the heart of the mourner

Shineth thy golden day,

Waiting the songs of the angels

Down from the far away.

There is the home of my Savior;

There, with the blood washed throng,

Over the highlands of glory

Rolleth the great new song.

Source: http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/b/e/beautive.htm

God's Open Face

“For now we see in a mirror.” (1 Cor. 13:12) Further, because the glass sets before us the thing seen indefinitely, he added, “darkly", to show very strongly that the present knowledge is most partial. “But then face to face.”  Not as though God hath a face, but to express the notion of greater clearness and perspicuity. Seest thou how we learn all things by gradual addition?

“Now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I have been known.” Seest thou how in two ways he pulls down their pride? Both because their knowledge is in part, and because not even this have they of themselves. “For I knew Him not, but He made Himself known to me,” saith he. Wherefore, even as now He first knew me, and Himself hastened towards me, so shall I hasten towards Him then much more than now. For so he that sits in darkness, as long as he sees not the sun doth not of himself hasten to meet the beauty of its beam, which indeed shows itself as soon as it hath begun to shine: but when he perceives its brightness, then also himself at length follows after its light: This then is the meaning of the expression, “even as also I have been known.” Not that we shall so know him as He is, but that even as He hastened toward us now, so also shall we cleave unto Him then, and shall know many of the things which are now secret, and shall enjoy that most blessed society and wisdom. For if Paul who knew so much was a child, consider what those things must be. If these be “a glass” and “a riddle,” do thou hence again infer, God’s open Face, how great a thing It is.

~ John Chrysostom: Homilies on the Epistles of Paul to the Corinthians

Stunning in His Beauty

The stories let you in on a wonderful secret: We are not only invited guests but the blushing Bride. And our Groom is a heroic King, a mighty warrior who is good and just and stunning in His beauty. He is so full of passion and blazing emotion that He burns—and yes, smokes in the ferocity of His infinite, holy love that compelled Him to give it all away for His Bride. And He who gave it all for us is worth giving ourselves completely to. We exist not to believe, and not even so much to follow, but to love. And as Luther says somewhere, love God with all your heart and do what you will.

~ Timothy J. Stoner; The God Who Smokes: Scandalous Meditations on Faith

Summa

The best ideal is the true

  And other truth is none.

All glory be ascribed to

  The holy Three in One.

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins

A Beauty Crowned With Thorns

How could one hope to understand the least thing about Paul if one did not first acknowledge the fact that in Damascus he has seen then highest beauty, just as the prophets has seen it in the visions that called them forth? That vision then led Paul to sell all else for the sake of the one pearl - to sell all worldly and divine wisdom, all privileges within God's Holy People - in order to perform his ministry with joy as a "poor man of Yahweh". Both the person who is transported by natural beauty and the one snatched up by the beauty of Christ must appear to the world to be fools, and the world will attempt to explain their state in terms of psychological or even physiological laws (Acts 2:13). But they know what they have seen, and they care not a farthing what people may say. They suffer because of their love, and it is only the fact that they have been inflamed by the most sublime of beauties - a beauty crowned with thorns and crucified - that justifies their sharing in that suffering. 

Hans Urs Van Balthasar; The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics; Volume I: Seeing the Form; pg 33

Great Delights

There is very great delight the Christian enjoys in the sight he has of the glory and excellency of God. How many arts and contrivances have men to delight the eye of the body. Men take delight in the  beholding of great cities, splendid buildings and stately palaces. And what delight is often taken in the beholding of a beautiful face. May we not well conclude that great delights may also be taken in pleasing the eye of the mind in seeing the most beautiful, the most glorious, the most wonderful Being in the world? 

~ Sam Storms; Pleasures Evermore: The Life-Changing Power of Enjoying God (Experiencing God)

His Beauty Covers My Deformities

Thou Eternal God

Thine is surpassing greatness, unspeakable

goodness, super-abundant grace;

I can as soon count the sands of ocean’s ‘lip’

as number thy favours towards me; I know but a part, but that part exceeds all praise.

I thank thee for personal mercies,

a measure of health, preservation of body,

comforts of house and home, sufficiency of food

and clothing,

continuance of mental powers,

my family, their mutual help and support,

the delights of domestic harmony and peace,

the seats now filled that might have been vacant,

my country, church, Bible, faith.

But, O, how I mourn my sin, ingratitude, vileness,

the days that add to my guilt,

the scenes that witness my offending tongue;

All things in heaven, earth, around, within, without,

condemn me—

the sun which sees my misdeeds,

the darkness which is light to thee,

the cruel accuser who justly charges me,

the good angels who have been provoked to leave me,

thy countenance which scans my secret sins,

thy righteous law, thy holy Word,

my sin-soiled conscience, my private and public life,

my neighbours, myself—

all write dark things against me.

I deny them not, frame no excuse, but confess,

‘Father, I have sinned’;

Yet still I live, and fly repenting to thy outstretched arms;

thou wilt not cast me off, for Jesus brings me near,

thou wilt not condemn me, for he died in my stead,

thou wilt not mark my mountains of sin,

for he leveled all,

and his beauty covers my deformities.

O my God, I bid farewell to sin

by clinging to his cross,

hiding in his wounds,

and sheltering in his side.

~ The Valley of Vision

We Shall Behold the King in His Beauty

Heaven will largely consist of expanded views of King Jesus and closer views of the Glory which follows upon His sacrificial grief. Ah, Brothers and Sisters, how little do we know His Glory! We scarcely know who He is that has befriended us! We hold the doctrine of His Deity tenaciously—but in Heaven we shall perceive His Godhead in its Truth so far as the finite can apprehend the infinite! We have known His friendship to us, but when we shall behold the King in His beauty in His own halls and our eyes shall look into His royal countenance and His face, which outshines the sun, shall beam ineffable affection upon each one of us, then shall we find our Heaven in His Glory! We ask no thrones—His Throne is ours! The enthroned Lamb Himself is all the Heaven we desire!

~ Charles Spurgeon; Sermon - Heaven Above and Heaven Below

What a Word This Is

If, then, on account of some great building a human design receives praise, do you wish to see what a design of God is the Lord Jesus Christ, that is, the Word of God? Mark this fabric of the world. View what was made by the Word, and then thou wilt understand what is the nature of the world. Mark these two bodies of the world, the heavens and the earth. Who will unfold in words the beauty of the heavens? Who will unfold in words the fruitfulness of the earth? Who will worthily extol the changes of the seasons? Who will worthily extol the power of seeds? You see what things I do not mention, lest in giving a long list I should perhaps tell of less than you can call up to your own minds. From this fabric, then, judge the nature of the Word by which it was made: and not it alone; for all these things are seen, because they have to do with the bodily sense. By that Word angels also were made; by that Word archangels were made, powers, thrones, dominions, principalities; by that Word were made all things. Hence, judge what a Word this is.

~ Augustine: Homilies on the Gospel of John

The Great Artificer

That no flesh should glory in the presence of God.” (1 Cor. 1:29) For God doeth all things to this end, to repress vainglory and pride, to pull down boasting.” “Do you, too,” saith he, “employ yourselves in that work.” He doth all, that we may put nothing to our own account; that we may ascribe all unto God. And have ye given yourselves over unto this person or to that? And what pardon will ye obtain?”

For God Himself hath shown that it is not possible we should be saved only by ourselves: and this He did from the beginning. For neither then could men be saved by themselves; but it required their compassing the beauty of the heaven, and the extent of the earth, and the mass of creation besides; if so they might be led by the hand to the great artificer of all the works.

~ John Chrysostom: Homilies on the Epistles of Paul to the Corinthians; Homily V

Prismatic Beauty

Child of God! If you could see your sorrows and troubles from the other side; if instead of looking up at them from earth, you would look down on them from the heavenly places where you sit with Christ; if you knew how they are reflecting in prismatic beauty before the gaze of heaven, the bright light of Christ's face — you would be content that they should cast their deep shadows over the mountain slopes of existence. Only remember that clouds are always moving, and passing before God's cleansing wind.

"Green pastures are before me, which yet I have not seen;

Bright skies will soon be o'er me, where the dark clouds have been:

My hope I cannot measure, my path of life is free;

My Saviour hath my treasure, and He will walk with me."

~ F.B. Meyer; Our Daily Homily - Men see not the bright light which is in the clouds. Job xxxvii. 21.

The Art Inspiration of an Eternal Beautiful

There is no unity in your thinking save by a well-ordered philosophical system, and there is no system of philosophy which does not ascend to the issues of the Infinite. In the same way there is no unity in your moral existence save by the union of your inner existence with the moral world-order, and there is no moral world-order conceivable but for the impression of an infinite Power that has ordained order in this moral world. Thus also no unity in the revelation of art is conceivable, except by the art inspiration of an eternal Beautiful, which flows from the fountain of the Infinite. Hence no characteristic all-embracing art style can arise except as a consequence of the peculiar impulse from the Infinite that operates in our inmost being. And since this is the very privilege of religion, over intellect, morality, and art, that she alone effects the communion with the Infinite, in our self-consciousness, the call for a secular, all-embracing art style, independent of any religious principle, is simply absurd.

From Abraham Kuyper, Lectures On Calvinism, 1st Hendrickson ed. (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008), 135-136.

His Image Impressed Upon Us

Certainly holiness is the beauty of God, for it is his image impressed upon us.

~ Thomas Manton

That Ultimate End

God made all things, in the beginning, good, exceeding good. The whole of his work was disposed into a perfect harmony, beauty, and order, suited unto that manifestation of his own glory which he designed therein. And as all things had their own individual existence, and operations suited unto their being, and capable of an end, a rest, or a blessedness, congruous unto their natures and operations — so, in the various respects which they had each to other, in their mutual supplies, assistances, and co-operation, they all tended unto that ultimate end — his eternal glory

~ John Owen; Christologia; Chapter IV; The Person of Christ the Foundation of all the Counsels of God.

Tree of Beauty

Faithful Cross! above all other,

One and only noble tree!

None in foliage, none in blossom,

None in fruit thy peer may be;

Sweetest wood and sweetest iron!

Sweetest weight is hung on thee.

Bend thy boughs, O Tree of Glory!

Thy relaxing sinews bend;

For awhile the ancient rigor

That thy birth bestowed, suspend;

And the King of heavenly beauty

On thy bosom gently tend!

Thou alone wast counted worthy

This world’s Ransom to uphold;

For a shipwrecked race preparing

Harbor, like the Ark of old;

With the sacred blood anointed

From the smitten Lamb that rolled.

O Tree of beauty, Tree of Light!

O Tree with royal purple dight!

Elect on whose triumphal breast

Those holy limbs should find their rest:

On whose dear arms, so widely flung,

The weight of this world’s Ransom hung:

The price of humankind to pay,

And spoil the spoiler of his prey.

~ Venantius Fortunatus

Another Force Intervenes

Think of the honor and the glory Christ’s righteousness brings even to our bodies! How can this poor, sinful, miserable, filthy, polluted body become like unto that of the Son of God, the Lord of Glory? What are you—your powers and abilities, or those of all men, to effect this glorious thing? But Paul says human righteousness, merit, glory and power have nothing to do with it. They are mere filth and pollution, and condemned as well. Another force intervenes, the power of Christ the Lord, who is able to bring all things into subjection to himself. Now, if he has power to subject all things unto himself at will, he is also able to glorify the pollution and filth of this wretched body, even when it has become worms and dust. In his hands it is as clay in the hands of the potter, and from the polluted lump of clay he can make a vessel that shall be a beautiful, new, pure, glorious body, surpassing the sun in its brilliance and beauty.

~ Martin Luther; Sermon- The Glorified Body of the Christian 

Luring Us Back

Our unending delight is found in the beauty of God, in His presence to our souls. Yet beauty is also part of the journey, not just the destination. Hans Urs von Balthasar devoted his life’s work to showing how God’s revelation to us has an aesthetic character that cannot be ignored. Through revelation, God made Himself known to us in His Son and in His Church.

Von Balthasar writes,

If God wishes to reveal the love that he harbors for the world, this love has to be something that the world can recognize, in spite of, or in fact in, its being wholly other.

In other words, God had to make His beauty visible to the material eye in order to draw that eye back to the spiritual. God literally lured us back to Himself with the beauty of Christ — a beauty unlike any of the ancient world; a beauty whose chief symbol is the cross. Von Balthasar wrote volume after volume tracing this “Christ-form” of beauty through history, culture, Scripture, and the spiritual life.

~ On Beauty: A Message to Its Religious Despisers by Deal W. Hudson

You're Beautiful

I see your face in every sunrise

The colors of the morning are inside your eyes

The world awakens in the light of the day

I look up to the sky and say... You’re Beautiful

I see your pow’r in the moonlit night

Where planets are in motion and galaxies are bright

We are amazed in the light of the stars

Its all proclaiming who you are... You’re beautiful

I see you there hanging on a tree

You bled and then you died and then you rose again for me

Now you are setting on your heavenly throne

Soon you will be coming home... You’re Beautiful

When we arrive at eternity’s shore

Where death is just a memory and tears are no more

We’ll enter in as the wedding bells ring

Your bride will come together and we’ll sing... You’re Beautiful

~ Phil Wickham; You're Beautiful

Paradiso

And as I gaz’d, I kindled at the sight;

No Mortal from the glorious view could turn,

Paradiso. (Canto XXXIII)

~ Dante; Paradiso

The Fairest Of Them All

So what is God’s kind of beauty? Remember, like a yardstick is a yard and measures a yard, God is beauty and measures all beauty. The degree to which human beauty expresses God’s beauty is the degree to which God delights in it (and so should we). This is why God the Father rejoices over Jesus with “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” Jesus is the exact representation of God’s being, the perfect mirror eternally showing who is the fairest of them all. God’s kind of beauty is His beauty. The world, the Word, and His Son are the only perfect reflections. 

~ Steve Dewitt; Eyes Wide Open

Painting the Portrait

It is true, indeed, that the Divine beauty is not adorned with any shape or endowment of form, by any beauty of colour, but is contemplated as excellence in unspeakable bliss. As then painters transfer human forms to their pictures by the means of certain colours, laying on their copy the proper and corresponding tints, so that the beauty of the original may be accurately transferred to the likeness, so I would have you understand that our Maker also, painting the portrait to resemble His own beauty, by the addition of virtues, as it were with colours, shows in us His own sovereignty: and manifold and varied are the tints, so to say, by which His true form is portrayed: not red, or white, or the blending of these, whatever it may be called, nor a touch of black that paints the eyebrow and the eye, and shades, by some combination, the depressions in the figure, and all such arts which the hands of painters contrive, but instead of these, purity, freedom from passion, blessedness, alienation from all evil, and all those attributes of the like kind which help to form in men the likeness of God: with such hues as these did the Maker of His own image mark our nature.

~ Gregory of Nyssa: Dogmatic Treatises, Etc.