In my essay last week for Humane Pursuits, I made the statement "beauty is an end in itself." This statement needs some clarification.

It's important to point out that we don't worship beauty. Beauty is certainly not an end in itself in that sense. Beauty is a signpost: It points us to the Maker of beauty--God Himself. When we see beauty, it is an echo of the glory of God, and beauty should lead us to praise Him.

 

When I say that beauty is an end in itself, I am saying that beauty has no utilitarian function. We don't paint landscapes, compose music, write poetry, or add architectural flourishes to buildings because of the utilitarian value involved. There is none! We do these things because beauty has intrinsic value. We love beautiful things because we simply delight in beauty.

 

And our delight in beauty reflects the image of God. God has created many aspects of this glorious world not to function efficiently but to simply be beautiful. I'm reminded of these words by Luci Shaw:

When the world was created, it might have seemed to be enough to have it work. To include beauty seems unnecessary for a mechanistic universe. We have been given a sense of the beautiful which can be regarded as gratuitous. Which it is--a gift of pure grace. And our own creation of beautiful things links us with our Creator. God was the first Quilter of prairies, the primal Painter (night skies, ferns, thunderheads, snow on cedars), the archetypal metal Sculptor (mountain ranges, icebergs), the Composer who heard the whales' strange, sonorous clickings and songs in his head long before there were whales to sound them, the Playwright who plotted the sweeping drama of Creation, Incarnation, Redemption, the Poet whose Word said it all.

In addition to creation, the Bible itself shows us that God values beauty. God could have given us a book-long list of rules and moral principles. But He didn't. Instead, God has given us poems, stories, letters, parables, epigrams, and even a love poem. The moral precepts are there, but the Bible is also full of creativity and imagination. As the Preacher says in Ecclesiastes, God has given us "words of delight." The delight is unnecessary, but it is there, and that fact is significant.

More from Luci Shaw:

Think, for a moment, on the priestly garments. In Exodus 28:40, "And for Aaron's sons you shall make coats and girdles and caps; you shall make them for glory and for beauty." In other words, glory to reflect Yahweh's splendor, and beauty, and adornment, because God delighted in it and wanted his people to enjoy it too. As Gene Edward Veith has said in The Gift of Art, "Beauty is an appropriate end in itself--the garments were to be made for beauty. The inventor of color, of form, of texture, the author of all natural beauties, values the aesthetic dimension for its own sake."

Unlike Greek drama, the mystery plays did show violence--the murder of Able, the crucifixion of Christ. Biblical plays set a precedent that is abused today, but still is part of the legacy of dramatic freedom bequeathed to the culture. There is nothing morally wrong with the fencing scene in Hamlet, a battle in a war movie, or a death scene when the story calls for the character to de. The Greek perception that extreme violence can be an aesthetic distraction is still valid, although the problem is not so much the violence itself but how the violence is portrayed and what its effect is on the audience.

Gene Edward Veith, Reading Between the Lines, p. 158

[William Kirk] Kirkpatrick shows how stories have always been the most important method of moral education.The Greeks, young and old, pored over Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and shaped their ideals and behavior according to the nobility of their heroes. The Angles and Saxons of ancient England passed down their moral heritage in epic poems such as Beowulf ... The Bible, above all, offers not only abstract doctrines, but stories. When we read or hear a story that stirs us, we want to play a part in that story.

Today, our society, having drifted away from words, has abandoned the use of stories in moral education in favor of "values clarification" sessions. School children gather around and discuss how they would handle impossible moral dilemmas (whom they would exclude from a fall-out shelter, for example.) What values clarification actually teaches is that morality is inherently problematic and only a matter of personal preference. Traditional stories (such as fairy tales, national legends, and most classic novels) present evil as repulsive, and goodness as alluring, a matter of objective law and heroic struggle. The values clarification view of morality is both a symptom and a cause of the moral chaos wrecking our culture. We need, says Kirkpatrick, "stories to live by."

Life is full and rich and complex like a story, not abstract and neat like a theory. The things that happen to us--the great joys, the intense sorrows, the surging passions--are too much like drama to be accounted for by anything less than drama.... What needs to be seen is that virtue in large part is also in the realm of the imagination.  Unless the moral imagination is hooked, the other moral faculties--will, emotion, and reason--are too often over-matched by fear, laziness, and self-interest. The great mistake of modern psychology lies in ignoring this obvious fact ... That is why I believe that our ancestors, both Christian and non-Christian, were the better psychologists. They knew that you must grasp the imagination, and they knew how to do it.

Reading Between the Lines: A Christian Guide to Literature, pp. 61-62

Gene Edward Veith on the cultivation of taste:

To fully recognize both excellence and mediocrity requires experience and knowledge. Mortimer Adler, writing about beauty, distinguishes between "the enjoyable" and the "admirable." The enjoyable is subjective--what one person enjoys and another might not, and there are many reasons why someone may find pleasure in a given experience. The admirable, on the other hand, refers to objective qualities, to what Adler describes as "an intrinsic excellence of perfection appropriate to that kind of thing."

Many people find slasher movies "enjoyable," but even their fans would probably not consider them "admirable," either morally or aesthetically. A movie, to be objectively "admirable," would feature among other "perfections" skillful acting, effective editing and cinematography, a well-written script, a thought-provoking theme. To recognize these "perfections" requires knowledge of the techniques and aesthetics of film-making. Once viewers attain that knowledge, they find themselves enjoying movies even more, although they are no longer satisfied by third-rate products. Similarly, people who do not enjoy classical music usually do not understand it. Once they are taught how to listen to classical music--understanding its techniques, its forms, its history, and its meaning--the enjoyment comes.

This process of learning how to enjoy (subjectively) what is admirable (objectively) is known as the cultivation of taste. . . . Obscenity is "tasteless." Preferring ugliness to beauty is "bad taste." Solomon observes that "a fool finds pleasure in evil conduct," whereas "a man of understanding delights in wisdom" (Proverbs 10:23). What we delight in has a spiritual dimension. For contemporary Christians, at sea in a mass culture, taking pleasure in excellence may be an important survival skill.

Reading Between the Lines: A Christian Guide to Literature, p. 46

Reading Between the Lines by Gene Edward Veith Jr.
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is an outstanding book. I assign this for one of my classes (Adolescent Literature) as a broad introduction to forming guidelines for literary taste and literary standards, and my students have commented on how helpful and insightful the book has been for them. I'm wearing my own copy out from underlining, starring passages, and writing in the margins.

Veith shows the importance of the word over the image, gives us an insightful synopsis of literary history, and then gives excellent guidelines for cultivating taste, with page after page of insight. He also includes a great appendix with his recommendations for good fiction, poetry, etc. This is helpful for not just people interested in literature. Pastors/theologians, artists, aspiring writers, and anyone else who likes to read will greatly benefit from reading this book slowly and carefully.

View all my reviews

"Christians can be confident that because God is the author of all truth, any flash of insight into that truth, no matter what its source, will be in full harmony with the revelation of Scripture."

--Gene Veith, Reading Between the Lines

"The best writing--whether 'realistic' or 'fantasy'--tends to involve us in life more deeply. This may be another mark of excellence in writing as opposed to the racks and racks of lurid romances, formula science fiction, predictable thrillers, and breathless fantasies of wealth, sex, and power that clutter up the drugstores and bestseller lists. Good literature may give us escape, but it also brings us back, rearmed with insight for our everyday experiences and with a new appreciation for the texture of actual life. Bad literature makes us despise our lives, wishing we could be like the fictional people we read about and causing us to regard ordinary living as boring. Good literature makes us understand and appreciate our lives, opening our eyes to the drama and significance of the story we are living."

Gene Edward Veith, Reading Between the Lines

"Most people think of the plot as the most important facet of a story. In my opinion, character is usually the key to its success or failure. This holds true even for popular commercial writing, or even for a TV show. I have found that I can predict the commercial failure or success of a new TV series simply by evaluating the effectiveness of the characters. . . . The successful TV shows--think of "I Love Lucy," "MASH," "Star Trek," "The Cosby Show"--manage to portray characters who seem unique, likeable, and engaging. . . . The success of these programs is not because of their plots, which are often minimal or predictable....

The networks often miss this point. After they canceled "Star Trek," they decided to do an even bigger science fiction series. They gave the show a much bigger budget and the latest technology in special effects. The result? "Battlestar Galactica." The special effects were much better than "Star Trek's," the conception much more grandiose--and yet the characters simply did not work. ... The secret of "Star Trek" was not its special effects nor its science-fiction premise but the chemistry between the characters (the ultra-rational Spock, the folksy Dr. McCoy, and the shrewd pragmatist Captain Kirk), aided by some imaginatively written scripts.

Special effects, car chases, explosions, murders, and suspense can never salvage a story when nobody cares about the characters."

--Gene Veith, Reading Between the Lines

"Stories are often better teachers than abstract discourses or straightforward exhortations. . .

"Stories instill moral values by giving models for concrete ethical behavior. ... Stories teach, not by being preachy or by tacking on a moral at the end,  but by being good, gripping stories."

--Gene Veith,Reading Between the Lines

"Fiction is related to truth, as in the manner of the parables, "allegorically and figuratively." The truth of a novel is in its meaning, not its facts."

--Gene Veith,Reading Between the Lines

"Some Christians simply do not understand how to read fiction. I have heard C. S. Lewis ... criticized for believing that people in Hell can take bus trips to Heaven where they might get a second chance (a failure to interpret the allegory and the symbolism of The Great Divorce). Those who seek to ban The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe because of the witch in the title exhibit a similar problem. Such Christians may know how to read words, but they do not know you to read fiction, how to interpret its figurative and parable-like way of exploring reality."

--Gene Veith, Reading Between the Lines

"Aesthetic principles, no less than scientific principles, are grounded in the created order and are a manifestation of God's design."

--Gene Veith, Reading Between the Lines

"Misunderstanding literary form can result in misunderstanding Scripture."

 --Gene Veith,Reading Between the Lines

What goes on in our minds when we are daydreaming, making plans, or "just thinking" is imagination--an extraordinary gift of God, which we usually take completely for granted. --Gene Veith, Reading Between the Lines

The habit of reading is absolutely critical today, particularly for Christians. As television turns our society into an increasingly image-dominated culture, Christians must be people of the Word. When we read, we cultivate a sustained attention span, an active imagination, a capacity for logical analysis and critical thinking, and a rich inner life. Each of these qualities, which have proven themselves essential to a free people, is under assault. . . . Christians, to maintain their Word-centered perspective in an image-driven world, must become readers. --Gene Veith, Reading Between the Lines

I resist treating a poem or novel like a puzzle that has to be figured out. Once the meaning is deciphered, under this view, we can put aside the book, perhaps wondering why its author did not just come out and tell us the idea in the first place. I contend that the imaginative activity that takes place as the eyes scan the page provides both the pleasure and the intellectual value of reading. Interpretation is important, but appreciation and enjoyment must come first. --Gene Veith, Reading Between the Lines

Milton and Shakespeare don’t make concessions to our impoverished vocabularies. You may have to read them with a dictionary at first. And they don’t pause every twelve minutes for a word from their sponsors. They go their own way and we have to catch up. But it is worth it when we do. The very subjective pleasure, if you want to reduce everything to this, is so much greater and deeper and more intense with these writers than with the lesser entertainment we content ourselves with (for one thing because we don’t always want to involve ourselves so much or work so hard–which is fine sometimes, as long as we don’t reduce our aesthetic standards to our own lazy pleasures and exclude what is really objectively good).

Gene Veith, "Apprehending Beauty"
http://www.geneveith.com/2008/03/26/apprehending-beauty/

As Gene Edward Veith has said in The Gift of Art, "Beauty is an appropriate end in itself--the garments [for the tabernacle] were to be made for beauty. The inventor of color, of form, of texture, the author of all natural beauties, values the aesthetic dimension for its own sake. According to the clear statements of Scripture, art has its place in the will of God." . . .

The tragedy is that so many Christians, in their revulsion at the perverse aspects of such art, shun all art, even that which may spring from a God-honoring imagination. . . . The other "Christian" alternative is a conservatism that responds only to kitsch, a sentimental art of the Hallmark greeting card variety that cheapens true sentiment, turning it into sweetness and light or mere moralistic propaganda--no teeth, no guts, no muscle, no reality. No real Christianity, either, if we consider the Creator's work as our powerful, radical model.

Luci Shaw, "Beauty and the Creative Impulse"