Beauty as a Calling
The word poet we get from the Greek more precisely translated as “maker” or “creator”. How much more profound then are God’s first words spoken for us into the void and recorded by Moses in his primordial account. That first poetic utterance, “Let there be light,” did more than just paint an image with figurative language; it overran the void taking shape and substance: the idea became word, the word became reality. On that first day with that first poem He founded all poetry (and art, too) that would issue forth from His greatest poem: man. For so man is called in the New Testament, and so is man called to express God’s poetry.
Thus Adam & Eve’s thoughts were like God’s envisioning a reality to bring it into existence, to order the chaos, to extend the dominion of God through an artful, creative, ordering process. They were called to extend the confines of the garden; they were called to extend its order over the rest of the untamed world. They were called to apprenticeship in poetry to continue the work, the making, the creation (the very poetry) of God. Their inspiration, their motivation, their vision would come from participating fully in God’s revealed beauty—daily walking with Him in all His splendor. It’s presence would produce wisdom to act for God as God’s functioning hands and imagination.
Alas, the folly of our first parents! His unspoiled, undiminished beauty was hidden from us behind the many walls and curtains and veils of the tabernacle lest our sin and His holiness come into fatal contact. So, too, was Moses, his faithful servant, denied his great desire to see God face-to-face lest he too be killed, but His wake God allowed Moses to see. The wake of God’s beauty and nothing else, yet this wake was transformative! He was transformed such that the divine glory remained on his face for all to see and themselves to also become transformed by it—transformed by the wake of a wake of God’s celestial glory. So is God’s wake amongst us now: in creation and in the artist’s vision who see as Wordsworth describes “more acutely the absence of things:” an Eden that should be, God behind the mask.
It is participation with God in His full portion of glory, which was lost with Eden and shall be regained at our teleological end, that offers one hope. Beauty in its wake offers a morsel—an amuse bouche—to tantalize the soul to the feast yet to come. Beauty in its wake offers an invitation to the banquet and as such makes one deftly aware of the hunger that consumes his own belly and the poverty and famine that exists so plainly—and everywhere—around them. God has enlisted the artist to write these invitations and to prepare these morsels that generation to generation does not become inured to its own deprivation. God enlists the artist to remind constantly each of us the form of goodness and truth, their necessity, and their value. Moses cried out to God on Sinai, “Show me your glory.” And then the law: Truth and Goodness, but first the reason to abide them—His beauty in the portion that could be endured.
We see this played out again in Isaiah. In chapter 6 the prophet is confronted by the beauty of God in all of “His majestic splendor” which results in an awareness to the reality of his own condition: his unclean lips. From this encounter with beauty he knows instantly the sin of his own people, too. The outcome of these truths was missional action as an emissary of the Holy one. The artist is charged likewise to present the truth and inspire good amongst men that there be no lack of prophets—no lack of God’s messengers on earth. Plato describes the artist himself as having prophetic purpose when he wrote:
There is a divinity moving him, like that contained in the stone which Euripides calls a magnet. This stone not only attracts iron rings, but also imparts to them a similar power of attracting other rings; and sometimes you may see a number of pieces of iron and rings suspended from one another so as to form quite a long chain: and all of them derive their power of suspension from the original stone. In like manner the Muse first of all inspires men herself; and from these inspired persons a chain of other persons is suspended. (Plato, Ion)
The artist in his craft imitates God in his creative acts, fulfills his primal calling through it, prophesizes, motivates, inspires, and demonstrates to us reality. Without the artist, God’s ordained messenger of his glory, the mask which hides God’s beauty from us might be too impenetrable to prevent despair. The artist’s calling is immense, deep, profound and essential as he discloses to his brethren his personal encounters with the splendor of God. The artist reminds constantly of forgotten glory.