Beautiful is a noun!

The first hurdle to overcome in understanding the study of the Christian aesthetic and wrestling with terms such as Beauty (for Art criteria) is to understand that beauty should be thought of as a noun rather than an adjective. It may certainly be used as an adjective by changing it to “beautiful” but we need to establish the idea that beauty, as part of The Beautiful, is a noun. Our commonplace phrase of “That ____ is beautiful” magnifies the old adage, Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as truth. We’ve gotten lazy in our aesthetic judgments and though the Bible does not specifically give us instructions about a Christian’s response to art using these phrases (aesthetics, artistic judgments), the Bible is very clear about how we might and should respond to Him. Each day, I’ll try to build on this theme to sharpen our thinking on responding to God and His Beauty.