Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder?

The Morality of Aesthetic Judgments

Taylor Drummond
Box: 260
ST 231: Christian Ethics
Dr. Carlton Wynne
December 1, 2017
Word Count: 3,244 (excluding appendix)
 Drummond |1

Beauty and goodness in a thing are identical fundamentally. – Thomas Aquinas1

Ethics and Aesthetics are one and the same. – Ludwig Wittgenstein2

Beauty is a matter of common human experience. Yet it is also a matter of common human

experience that humans differ in opinion on what is beautiful and what is not. To one,

Caravaggio’s Doubting Thomas is beautiful; to another, it is just a boring wall-hanging. To one,

the finale to Dvorak’s 9th symphony is beautiful; to another it is just background music. There

has been a variety of ways to try to make sense of this discrepancy while still providing a basis

for the act of aesthetic judgement. The purpose of this paper will be to argue that aesthetic

choices and judgments are moral because beauty is objective. In order to do that we will look at

the attempts of Hume, Kant, and Postmodernism to make sense of differing aesthetic tastes and

then set forth a biblical view of aesthetics that properly grounds it in the nature of God according

to His revelation.

David Hume

David Hume (1711-1776) articulated his views of beauty and aesthetic judgment in an essay

entitled, “The Standard of Taste.” Arguing against complete aesthetic relativism, Hume argued

that, “all the general rules of art are based purely on experience – on the observation of the

common sentiments of human nature.”3 He argued that human nature was structured so as to find

pleasure in certain qualities of objects. To Hume, beauty was a subjective experience caused by

1
Quoted in: Speigel, James S. "Aesthetics and Worship." The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, 1998: p. 41.

2
Quoted in: Paola, Marcello Di. "When Ethics and Aesthetics Are One and the Same: A Wittgensteinian
Perspective on Natural Value." Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 2015: p. 19.

3
Hume, David. "The Standard of Taste." Early Modern Texts. January 2008.
http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/hume1757essay2.pdf (accessed October 27, 2017), p. 10.
 Drummond |2

objective characteristics, “certain qualities that are in objects are fitted by nature to produce

[feelings of beauty].”4 He maintained that the disagreements among men concerning art were a

result of deficiencies in their perceptive faculties. In order to make correct aesthetic judgments,

one had to possess, “perfect serenity of mind, a gathering together of our thoughts, proper

attention to the work of art…strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice,

perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice.”5 In the agreement of such men was to be

found the true standard of taste and beauty.6

Hume freely admitted that his view was an elitist view which reserved true aesthetic

judgment to a very few. He said, “Few are qualified to give judgment on any work of art or set

up their own sentiment as the standard of beauty.”7 Therein lies the first problem to Hume’s

approach. While he claims that his view grounds beauty in human nature as a whole, it actually

relies on the judgments of a select few. Hume is unable to give any definitive way to find those

who have such qualities. His attempts to ground a view of beauty in what men have admired in

all ages may have been convincing to his audience, but in today’s society he could not make the

broad statement that, “Terence and Virgil maintain an undisputed sway over the minds of men in

general.”8 Furthermore, who is to say that the elite few and not the general populace actually

have the sensibilities to perceive beauty? Perhaps they have the defect and not the masses at

large. In the end, Hume is forced to admit that, “When the parties to the disagreement differ in

4
Op. cit., p. 11.

5
Op. cit., p. 10, 15.

6
Op. cit., p. 15.

7
Ibid.

8
Op. cit., p. 16.
 Drummond |3

their internal frame or external situation in such a way that brings no discredit on either and

provides no basis for preferring one above the other, then a certain degree of divergence in

judgment is unavoidable.”9 In other words, the elite few disagree and can form no basis for a

universal standard. While attempting to combat relativism, Hume has stumbled into the same

trap, and universality is destroyed by diversity.

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant sought to get away from Hume’s system and proposed a way of making

aesthetic judgments “without needing to grope about empirically among the judgments of

others.”10 He sought to free the judgment of taste from rules and limitations defined by others,

saying, “Taste claims autonomy. To make the judgments of others the determining grounds of

his own would be heteronomy.”11 Kant put forward his view of aesthetic judgments, describing it

in four “moments.” The first moment is that one must be completely disinterested in the object in

order to make pure aesthetic judgment.12 The second is that aesthetic judgments claim to be

universal, yet not based on any reasons or concepts whereby one could prove them with a

tautology.13 In the third, Kant argues that we must perceive a subjective purposiveness in the

object without there being a definite purpose; that is, we perceive the object to have a purpose

but will have no definite purpose we could state as a reason for it being beautiful.14 Finally, in

9
Ibid.

10
Kant, Immanuel. "The Critique of Judgement." Online Library of Liberty. 2017.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/kant-the-critique-of-judgement (accessed October 27, 2017), § 31.

11
Ibid.

12
Op. cit., § 2.

13
Op. cit., § 6-9.

14
Burnham, Douglas. "Immanuel Kant: Aesthetics." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. n.d.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/kantaest/#H2 (accessed October 27, 2017).
 Drummond |4

the fourth moment, Kant argues that in order for aesthetic judgments to be universal we must

presuppose a universal “common sense” in all men by which they make that judgment.15

After a long and complex discussion of aesthetic judgments, Kant only exposes his theory to

the same criticism of his theory of epistemology, namely, he presupposes a universal a priori

category in the human mind. Concerning this presupposed category, he says, “This common

sense is assumed without relying on psychological observations, but simply as the necessary

condition of the universal communicability of our knowledge.”16 Kant assumes the linchpin of

his argument without which the rest falls apart. On his view we might rightly ask, why is it

necessary for humans to have this universal common sense? It is necessary in order to avoid

skepticism, but that does not mean that it is necessarily true. Furthermore, Kant’s theory of a

universal “common sense” which provides the basis for aesthetics does not do justice to the vast

variety of what humans find beautiful. It emphasizes the unity at the expense of the diversity, the

many is subsumed into the one of “common sense.”

The Postmodern View

Now we move to the postmodern response. In contrast to Hume who tried to ground an

objective sense of beauty in the verdicts of a qualified elite, and Kant who attempted to ground it

in an a priori common sense, the postmodern simply throws up his hands and says, “Beauty is

relative!” The truism of the postmodern view is, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”17

Confronted with all these discrepancies in what men call beautiful, the postmodern answer is that

15
Kant, § 20.

16
Op. cit., § 21.

17
Burton, Kelli Whitlock. "Why beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Science Magazine. October 1, 2015.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/10/why-beauty-eye-beholder (accessed October 27, 2017).
 Drummond |5

beauty is a part of the subject, not the object.18 To describe something as beautiful is really only

to say that you find it pleasing. Philosopher Curt Ducasse said,

‘Beautiful’ is an adjective properly predicable only of objects, but what that adjective

does predicate of an object is that the feelings of which it constitutes the aesthetic symbol

for a contemplating observer, are pleasurable. Beauty being in this definite sense

dependent upon the constitution of the individual observer, it will be as variable as that

constitution. That is to say, an object which one person properly calls beautiful will, with

equal propriety be not so judged by another, or indeed by the same person at a different

time. There is, then, no such thing as an authoritative opinion concerning the beauty of a

given object.19

This answer, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, seems to resolve the problem of conflicting

preferences for beauty. It allows us to say that neither person is right or wrong in his preference,

but all preferences are equally valid.

Hume recognized the result of this view, which he put thusly,

To look for what is really beautiful or really ugly is as pointless as trying to settle what is

really sweet and what is really bitter. A single object may be both sweet and bitter,

depending on the condition of their taste-buds; and the proverb rightly declares that it is

pointless to dispute about tastes.20

18
Munson, Paul, and Joshua Farris Drake. Art and Music: A Student's Guide. Wheaton: Crossway, 2014, p. 20.

19
Ducasse, Curt. "The Subjectivity of Aestheticl Value." In Introductory Readings in Aesthetics, edited by John
Hospers, 282-307. New York: The Free Press, 1969, p. 292-293.

20
Hume, p. 9.
 Drummond |6

He recognizes that if “Beauty is not a quality in things themselves; it exists merely in the mind

that contemplates them”21 i.e. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Hume recognizes that this

view of beauty separates the subject and object to such a degree that the subject cannot make any

claims about the object, “Sentiment doesn’t refer to anything beyond itself.”22 Every statement

made about the object becomes merely a statement about the state of the subject. C. S. Lewis

notes in The Abolition of Man, “On this view, the world of facts, without one trace of value, and

the world of feelings, without one trace of truth or falsehood, justice or injustice, confront one

another, and no rapprochement is possible.”23 Furthermore, “If beauty is subjective, then only

the subject is left as an object of enjoyment.”24

Under this view it is easy to see why aesthetic judgments and choices are non-moral. They

simply describe the emotional state of the subject. Lewis says, “To disagree with This is pretty if

those words simply described the lady’s feelings, would be absurd: if she had said I feel sick

Coleridge would hardly have replied No; I feel quite well.”25 Therefore, what we judge as

beautiful or ugly has no correspondence to the way things actually are. This is a non-moral

judgment. Two men may look at the same sunset and one deem it beautiful and the other ugly

and both be right.

Let us briefly come to the practical effects of this view. While those who argue for the

subjectivity of beauty are often well meaning, what they actually achieve is to destroy any

21
Ibid.

22
Op. cit., p. 8.

23
Lewis, C. S. The Abolition of Man. New York: HarperCollins, 1974, p. 20.

24
Munson and Drake, p. 35.

25
Op. cit. p. 15.
 Drummond |7

concept of beauty at all. Saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is no true comfort to the

little girl who has been called ugly at school by bullies. While the parent may mean it to be a

comfort when they repeat this adage to her and tell her that to them she is beautiful, what they

have actually conveyed to her is that her beauty is defined by others because beauty (or

ugliness) is only their subjective response to her. The effect achieved is opposite of the purpose

intended.

What shall we say, then? Is beauty subjective? Can we make no statements about the external

world beyond what our own subjective responses are? Like all good answers to good questions,

we must start at the beginning, for after all, it is a very good place to start.

The Christian View

When we look to the opening pages of Genesis, what we find is that all things have their

form and function from God; He is the creator of all things. Throughout Genesis 1 there is a

repeated phrase, “And God saw that it was good” (1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25).26 Taken together with

the 1:4, “And God saw that the light was good,” and with the culminating phrase, “And God saw

that it was very good” (1:31),27 it is as if God is a master artist, and after completing each piece

of His masterpiece, He steps back and judges that He has done well. God does not declare

creation to be good when it is not nor does He make it good by another divine fiat, but rather, He

perceives what He has already made and pronounces His divine judgment. 28 T. David Gordon

notes the fourfold progression in God’s creative process, God naming-creating-perceiving-

26
Unless otherwise noted, all quotations are from the English Standard Bible.

27
It is worth noting that Moses uses ‫ ראה‬and ‫ טוב‬seven times in Genesis 1.

28
Interestingly, if you ask the average Christian to fill in the blank, “and God ____ that it was good,” many times he
will answer with “said” instead of “saw.”
 Drummond |8

naming.29 Similarly, Adam, as God’s image, imitates God in an analogous way by perceiving the

created animals and naming them (Genesis 2:18-20).

When we come to the second portrait of creation in Genesis 2, we find that God creates every

kind of tree that “is pleasant to the sight and good for food” (2:9).30 Here we find in Genesis a

concern for both what is beautiful and what is practical. This gives us a more definite way in

which we can speak of how the created order is “good.” It is both good to see and good to eat,

that is, it is pleasing to see and pleasing to eat. God created the natural order in such a way that it

functions to both nourish our physical bodies and delight our senses. It would be wrong for

Adam and Eve to have not delighted in the taste and nutrition as well as the appearance of the

food in the Garden.

The reason creation is beautiful (i.e. pleasing to the sight and other senses) is because it is

made by a beautiful creator. This is the foundation for objective beauty, the fact that God is

Himself beautiful. David says in Psalm 27:4, “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.” (emphasis added). John Frame has noted that

God Himself is the standard for beauty.31 Creational beauty, then, is derivative from God’s

beauty; “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1) not of itself. Jonathan Edwards

made divine beauty the distinctive feature of God against everything else, saying, “God is God,

and distinguished from all other beings, and exalted above them, chiefly by his divine beauty,

29
Gordon, T. David. "Finding Beauty Where God Finds Beauty: A Biblical Foundation of Aesthetics." The Artistic
Theologian, 2012, p. 18.

30
It is interesting how, in the account of the Fall in Genesis 3, Eve reverses this order and adds to it, “the woman
saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make
one wise” (3:6).

31
Frame, John. The Doctrine of God. Phillipsburg: P&R, 2002, p. 443.
 Drummond |9

which is infinitely diverse from all other beauty.”32 Created things, therefore, are only beautiful

to the extent in which they reflect the beauty of their creator.

Nevertheless, creational beauty is real and objective. When God commanded Moses to make

holy garments for Aaron and his sons, “for glory and for beauty” (Exodus 28:2, 40) they were

objectively beautiful. Up until now, we have avoided giving a definition for beauty, for the

debate itself is over how to define it. We have seen how Hume, Kant, and Postmodernism all

give differing definitions and they all fail. The definition of beauty we adopt, according to the

Christian worldview, is the forms through which we recognize the nature and ways of God.33

How then can human beings recognize beauty? We ask with Tolkien, “Whence came the

wish, and whence the power to dream, / or some things fair and others ugly deem?”34 The answer

is that man is made in the imago dei, the image of God. God made man uniquely to perceive

beauty and pronounce it as such. Meredith Kline has shown that the image of God includes

man’s participation in the “judicial functions of the divine Glory.”35 Therefore, man as the imago

dei is to imitate God, including His aesthetic pronouncements.36 That aesthetic sensibilities are

part of the imago dei is born out by the fact that human beings alone are able to make aesthetic

judgments and to create beautiful things. We find no animal art galleries. Therefore, when God

32
Edwards, Jonathan. "Religious Affections." Christian Classics Ethereal Library. n.d.
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/edwards/affections.pdf (accessed October 27, 2017), p. 168.

33
Munson and Drake, p. 25.

34
Tolkien, J. R. R. "Mythopoeia." In Tree and Leaf. HarperCollins, 2001, stanza 6.

35
Kline, Meredith. "Creation in the Image of the Glory Spirit." Meredith G Kline. 2006.
http://www.meredithkline.com/klines-works/articles-and-essays/creation-in-the-image-of-the-glory-spirit/ (accessed
October 27, 2017).

36
Frame, John. The Doctrine of the Christians Life. Phillipsburg: P&R, 2008, p. 134.
 D r u m m o n d | 10

created trees pleasing to the eye and saw that they were good, Adam was not morally free to find

them displeasing to the eye. T. David Gordon put it this way,

For the creature made in God’s image, then, the goal of all human perceiving and naming

is to approximate, as closely as is humanly possible, the divine perceiving and naming of

what is actually there. That is, we are not free to misconstrue God’s creation, to perceive

it differently than God does, or to name it differently than God does. We are not morally

free, for instance, to perceive the darkness as light, or to call it “light.” If God the Creator

orders his creation in certain ways, for instance, it is our duty to perceive and label that

order as correctly as we can.37

Therefore, since God is beautiful and has created a universe that reveals His beauty, including

His image bearers who are to imitate Him in perceiving and judging beauty, then aesthetic

judgment is intrinsically moral.

The Christian view of beauty does full justice to both the universality and diversity of human

aesthetic experience. On the one hand beauty is objective and universal because it is grounded in

the nature of God, who is transcendent and a se. On the other hand beauty is truly diverse and

various because it is the form through which we recognize the nature and ways of God which are

not uniform. Because God’s full range of perfections are on display in the things He has made,

we should expect to find great variety in what is beautiful because each thing may reflect a

different aspect of His infinite glory.

Practical Implications

This view has both individual and corporate practicality, which we shall address in that order.

First, the individual. The Christian ought to recognize that creating and perceiving beauty is part

37
Gordon, p. 17-18.
 D r u m m o n d | 11

of what it means to be made in the image of God. It is at the very core of his nature. Therefore,

when he is presented with the opportunity of deciding how to spend his leisure time, he ought to

consciously seek recreations which will cultivate his ability to perceive and create beauty. The

Christian view of beauty is distinctly linked to the use of leisure time, and combats both the

wasting of that time with inane activities or the use of that time to continue work.38 Activities

that dull his ability to see God’s beauty in the created order are morally wrong, for they inhibit

him from imitating God. It is beyond the scope of this essay to give lists of such activities, but

one may ask himself these questions (and others like them) to aid his decision making:

 Does this thing action/display the beauty of God? If so, how?

 Will it increase or decrease my ability to see the beauty of God displayed elsewhere?

This view also forces the Christian to reflect on his aesthetic judgments and see if they are

true judgments. This does not only refer to what he makes of a painting in an art gallery, but his

judgments on whatever he finds pleasing. Do we take pleasure in our TV shows, movies, books,

and music because of how they display God’s beauty? Or do we take pleasure in them for

another reason?

For Christian artists this view has large implications. The artist is not free to make art as a

form of autonomous self-expression. Nor is the content of art inconsequential. Rather, the artist

must create self-consciously in order to express something of the nature and ways of God. This

does not mean that God needs to be the subject of every painting – but rather that every painting

needs to be done with excellence to refract a beam of God’s glory to its viewers. Banality is the

enemy of the artist. Although it is easier and (arguably) more economical to create banal art, it

38
Ryken, Leland. Redeeming the Time. Grand Rapids: BakerBooks, 1995, p. 181.
 D r u m m o n d | 12

dulls the sensibilities of its viewers and trains them to have a small view of God’s reflected

beauty.39

Corporately this view has implications for the church. The church is commanded to include

at least two art forms into her worship, music and poetry. She must ask herself whether her

music and poetry (combined in congregational singing) is appropriately beautiful and reflective

of God’s beauty. To consciously use ugly music and poetry would be to contradict the very

message which ought to be proclaimed in them. Additionally, the church should encourage those

Christians in her midst who choose to go into the arts. Too often the church views the arts as

purely a secular field or simply a waste of time, but it is instead one of the ways the Christian

images God.

In conclusion, we have seen that only the Christian theistic worldview can account for both

the universality and diversity of beauty. Only it can provide a basis for an objective standard for

beauty as well as for great variety in what is beautiful. God Himself is the norm for aesthetics,

and therefore aesthetic judgments are necessarily moral; every judgment either succeeds or fails

to conform to what is truly beautiful.

39
Speigel, p. 47-48.
 D r u m m o n d | 13

Bibliography
Burnham, Douglas. "Immanuel Kant: Aesthetics." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. n.d.
http://www.iep.utm.edu/kantaest/#H2 (accessed October 27, 2017).
Burton, Kelli Whitlock. "Why beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Science Magazine. October
1, 2015. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/10/why-beauty-eye-beholder (accessed
October 27, 2017).
Ducasse, Curt. "The Subjectivity of Aestheticl Value." In Introductory Readings in Aesthetics,
edited by John Hospers, 282-307. New York: The Free Press, 1969.
Edwards, Jonathan. "Religious Affections." Christian Classics Ethereal Library. n.d.
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/edwards/affections.pdf (accessed October 27, 2017).
Frame, John. The Doctrine of God. Phillipsburg: P&R, 2002.
—. The Doctrine of the Christians Life. Phillipsburg: P&R, 2008.
Gordon, T. David. "Finding Beauty Where God Finds Beauty: A Biblical Foundation of
Aesthetics." The Artistic Theologian, 2012: 16-24.
Hume, David. "The Standard of Taste." Early Modern Texts. January 2008.
http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/hume1757essay2.pdf (accessed October
27, 2017).
Kant, Immanuel. "The Critique of Judgement." Online Library of Liberty. 2017.
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/kant-the-critique-of-judgement (accessed October 27,
2017).
Kline, Meredith. "Creation in the Image of the Glory Spirit." Meredith G Kline. 2006.
http://www.meredithkline.com/klines-works/articles-and-essays/creation-in-the-image-
of-the-glory-spirit/ (accessed October 27, 2017).
Lewis, C. S. The Abolition of Man. New York: HarperCollins, 1974.
Munson, Paul, and Joshua Farris Drake. Art and Music: A Student's Guide. Wheaton: Crossway,
2014.
Paola, Marcello Di. "When Ethics and Aesthetics Are One and the Same: A Wittgensteinian
Perspective on Natural Value." Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture,
2015: 19-41.
Ryken, Leland. Redeeming the Time. Grand Rapids: BakerBooks, 1995.
Speigel, James S. "Aesthetics and Worship." The Southern Baptist Journal of Theology, 1998:
40-56.
Tolkien, J. R. R. "Mythopoeia." In Tree and Leaf. HarperCollins, 2001.

I understand and have not violated the seminary’s statement on plagiarism.

Taylor Drummond
 D r u m m o n d | 14

Appendix
*I warned you Dr. Wynne, this isn’t included in my word count! If the rest of my paper
convinced you it would be worth your time reading the appendix (which is doubtful), rip off
these pages and read them when you have time after grading is done*

What if I don’t enjoy the taste of something, e.g. pears, is that sinful?

The answer to this questions depends on what is meant by the questioner. If he means
that although he knows that some aspect of the beauty and glory of God is shown through
the pear and he self-consciously rejects that, then yes, it is sinful. But if he means that
although he knows that the pear displays some aspect of the beauty and glory of God, but
that he cannot appreciate it yet – then no, that is not a sinful judgement on his part, but it
is a result of sin’s effects.

Paul Munson, in his lecture on Beauty at Grove City College, told the story of how he
hates the taste of broccoli. Yet every time it is served to him he tries it, hoping that he can
come to enjoy the beauty of God on display in it. The reason he gave is that it happened
for him with cauliflower. We should never expect that just because we cannot appreciate
the beauty of God in some area that we never will be able to.

What about when parents tell their child that something they drew is beautiful? Are they lying? If
not, should that drawing be included in an art museum?

Drake and Munson answer this question well in their book, Art and Music,
Five-year-old Billy carefully draws a picture for his mother. When he brings it to
her, what will she say? “Oh, Billy, it’s beautiful.” But if the curator of an art
museum walks by, he will take no notice of Billy’s drawing. Since you and I
would condone both of these responses, the postmodern says, “Aha, gotcha. If the
drawing is beautiful to Billy’s mom and ugly to the curator, its beauty depends on
the one who is perceiving it.” But let’s consider what it would look like to apply
consistently each of the main doctrines of beauty in this situation. To the
classicist, either the mother is being dishonest with Billy, or she is deluding
herself. The postmodern, meanwhile, will commend both the mother and the
curator for being true to themselves and for finding beauty and ugliness wherever
they are so inclined. However, on the same grounds, the postmodern would also
have to commend the mother if she said, “Billy, this is the ugliest thing I’ve ever
seen.” Likewise, the postmodern would have to commend the curator if he had
chosen to discard a Rembrandt to make room for the “Billy.” Only the Christian
view accords with what we know to be right. The mother is right to see how the
form of Billy’s drawing reveals objectively good things: his love for her, his
imagination, and the development of his fine motor skills. If any of us made the
effort to look – really look – at Billy’s drawing, we would see these things, too.
The mother does not project beauty unto the drawing. It’s there. But the curator
has a different purpose for drawings. His job is to find and to display those images
that will most reward aesthetic contemplation, a purpose for which Billy’s
 D r u m m o n d | 15

drawing is ill-suited. So both are right, without making the beauty and the
ugliness which they saw subjective.40

Doesn’t the fact that various cultures disagree on what is beautiful mean that beauty is
subjective? For example, classical Asian music is different from classical western music, who
are we to say that one is beautiful and the other is not?

The first thing that needs to be addressed when answering this question is that it makes
the assumption that objectivity implies consensus. Or, to put it negatively, that
disagreement implies subjectivity. But this is simply not true. Imagine if we were to
apply this standard to morality – because one culture sees nothing wrong with fornication
or adultery does not imply that there is no standard of sexual morality. Furthermore, no
one actually believes that objectivity implies consensus, for then there would be nothing
objective at all, for there is nothing that every single human being who has ever lived has
agreed upon!

But that is not all we can say. The question assumes that various forms of cultural beauty
are both contradictory and valid. That is to say, it assumes that western music and Asian
music cannot both be beautiful, but each have equal and valid claims to beauty. Setting
the validity of their claims aside for now, it is not at all clear that they are contradictory
claims to beauty, in fact many people of come to appreciate the beauty in both of them.
This is just to say that various cultures have strengths in appreciating and creating various
forms of beauty. The Egyptian pyramids portray a particular beauty. The Greek temples
portray a particular beauty. Japanese pagodas portray a particular beauty. The fact that
Egyptian pyramids are beautiful does not negate the fact that Japanese pagodas are
beautiful. To say, “How can pyramids be beautiful if pagodas are beautiful?” is akin to
saying, “How can 2+2=4 if strawberries are fruit?” There is no necessary contradiction
between the two.41

In order to try to prove that beauty was objective, it would have to be shown that
pyramids and pagodas were beautiful in contradictory ways, and that each had an equally
valid and sound case for beauty. That is, if both were ugly or if one were beautiful and
the other ugly it wouldn’t disprove the existence of objective beauty.

It is only the Christian aesthetic which views beauty as the forms through which we
recognize the nature and ways of God, which can make sense of the diversity of beauty.
God has created a diverse universe which displays His glory (Psalm 19) and there is no
contradiction between the beauty of the deep vastness of the night sky and the intricate
patterns of the eye’s iris – both display the glory of their Creator.

Doesn’t the Christian view just make everything beautiful?

In a word, yes. But that is not to say that everything is beautiful in the same degree.
Existence itself is beautiful for it is a result of God’s condescending goodness.

40
Munson and Drake, p. 27-28.
41
This, along with much of my answer has been drawn from a discussion between Munson and Drake found here:
http://iismedia7.gcc.edu/events/2014/022614_Beauty_Christianity_audio.mp3
 D r u m m o n d | 16

Furthermore, any given object may be beautiful in some senses and ugly in others. So
when we say that everything is beautiful, we do not say that every aspect of everything is
beautiful, but rather that every created thing, to some extent, shows some part of its
creator.

If beauty is the forms through which we recognize the nature and ways of God, then are
unbelievers unable to perceive beauty at all?

No. Because of common grace unbelievers are able to perceive beauty. In fact, Romans 1
tells us that they perceive God clearly through the things that have been made. Yet they
suppress the truth in unrighteousness. To the extent that they do perceive and appreciate
true beauty, the suppression of the truth is not complete. Yet they do not perceive beauty
truly, for they don’t perceive it as revealing the nature and ways of God. It is possible to
acknowledge the beauty of a sunset or the collision of a two neutron stars without
recognizing that those things are showing the beauty of their creator.

Even if God is beautiful and creation is beautiful, how can we know that we perceive beauty
truly because we have minds affected by sin?

“Mythopoeia” by J. R. R. Tolkien

The heart of man is not compound of lies,

but draws some wisdom from the only Wise,
and still recalls him. Though now long estranged,
man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed.
Disgraced he may be, yet is not dethroned,
and keeps the rags of lordship one he owned,
his world-dominion by creative act:
not his to worship the great Artefact,
man, sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with elves and goblins, though we dared to build
gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sow the seed of dragons, 'twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we're made.