“One thing have I desired 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 behold the beauty of the Lord…”
Ps. 27:4
“He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also He hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.”
Eccl. 3:11
“…How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace!”
Rom. 10:15
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Order of Contents
Articles 6+
Books 8+
Quotes 4+
Historical 8
Beauty of God 16+
Of Christ 4
Of Church 6+
Moral Beauty 6+
Ladies 1
Latin 10
Biblio 1
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Articles
1600’s
Downame, John – bk. 1, ch. 13, ‘That beauty is to be contemned in respect of spiritual graces, or heavenly excellencies’ in The Second Part of The Christian Warfare... (London: 1611)
“‘Beauty’ (as Augustine defines it) ‘is a proportionable congruity and fit agreement of all the parts of the body, joined with a certain sweetness of color and countenance,’ the which in its own nature is good, as being a gift of God…'” – p. 112
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1800’s
Bavinck, Herman – pp. 157-66 of ch. 7, H. ‘Conscience & the Idea of Beauty’ in Foundations of Psychology trans. Born, Kloosterman & Bolt 2nd ed. (1897; 1921)
“…beauty, because this is also a judgment of things that can arouse the desiring faculty to attraction or aversion. Beauty has its own value alongside truth and goodness.” – p. 157
“But people evaluate things also according to the standard of beauty and ugliness… But the beautiful is nevertheless essentially distinct from the pleasant. People do not argue about what is pleasant. One person finds this food and that drink enjoyable, but another does not. People are comfortable with this and do not argue about these differences. However, in connection with what is beautiful, people tend not to be satisfied with the notion that something attracts one person but not another; people attempt to account for beauty to themselves and others and attempt, as it were, to demonstrate why something is attractive. People proceed from the notion that what is genuinely beautiful should be attractive to everyone, given sufficient enlightenment and education.” – p. 163
“We do observe beautiful things through our senses, but the property by which they are beautiful is not perceivable through the senses. Animals have perceptions and representations of beautiful things, but they do not know the beautiful. They know only the useful and the pleasant. For that reason, the perception and recognition of the beautiful, also in sensory things, belongs to the higher faculty of knowing, to reason…
Beauty is something that the beholding of which delights a person. Something is good insofar as it, when it is recognized by us, is desirable to our will. But beauty is what stimulates not our desire in a narrow sense, but our pleasure.” – p. 164
“What is desired ceases to be beautiful to the extent that it is desired. The starry heaven is unspeakably beautiful, said Schopenhauer, because it is desired by no one. Beauty delights us not because it is profitable to us. Our delight in beauty is entirely disinterested. Beauty awakens the kind of movement within our faculty of desiring that creates enjoyment in pure, disinterested, beholding, whether such beholding is physical or spiritual. Truth satisfies our understanding. The good fulfills our desires and awakens our love. Beauty provides rest and delight. Materially and objectively they are one.
The true, the good, and the beautiful form one unbreakable triad. All that is, in the same measure that it is, is also true, good and beautiful. This unity can disintegrate only temporarily, in this world of disharmonies… Nonetheless, these three are materially one… The true, the good, and the beautiful differ only formally, insofar as the same thing exists in a varied relationship to the rich organization of our spirit. After all, God Himself is also the truth, the holy [good], and the glory [beautiful].” – p. 165
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1900’s
Breakey, James C. – ‘Beauty’ in The Child in the Midst: Addresses for the Young (Doubleday, 1928), pp. 165-68
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2000’s
Ching, Kenneth K. – ‘Beauty & Ugliness in Offer & Acceptance’ in 60 Wayne Law Review 469 (2014) 24 pp.
“This essay applies classical aesthetics to the contract doctrine of offer and acceptance. It argues that contract law can be understood, analyzed, and improved using three criteria of beauty: proportion, integrity, and clarity. Based on these criteria, this essay (1) argues that the traditional doctrine of offer and acceptance is beautiful, (2) argues that UCC [Uniform Commercial Code] §2-207 is ugly and fails to improve upon offer and acceptance, and (3) suggests improvements for UCC §2-207.”
Sartwell, Crispin – ‘Beauty’ at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy with a bibliography
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Books
1600’s
Buoni, Thommaso – Problems of Beauty in Problems of Beauty & All Human Affections (London, 1606), pp. 1-78 ToC
Buoni (d. 1614) was an Italian painter of the Renaissance period.
Maynard, John – The Beauty & Order of the Creation… (London: 1668) 213 pp. ToC
Maynard was a Westminster divine.
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1700’s
Hutcheson, Francis – An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty & Virtue… 4th ed. (1724; London, 1738) 325 pp. ToC
Hutcheson (1694–1746) was an Irish philosopher born in Ulster to a family of Scottish Presbyterians; he became known as one of the founding fathers of the Scottish Enlightenment. He was Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University.
“What we call beautiful in objects, to speak in the mathematical style, seems to be in a compound ratio of uniformity and variety; so that where the uniformity of bodies is equal, the beauty is as the variety; and where the variety is equal, the beauty is as the uniformity.” – p. 17
Burke, Edmund – A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime & Beautiful 6th ed. (1756; London, 1770) 355 pp. ToC
Burke (1729–1797) was an Anglo-Irish statesman and philosopher who spent most of his career in Great Britain. Born in Dublin, Burke served as a member of Parliament (MP) between 1766 and 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain with the Whig Party. In the 20th century, he became widely regarded, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom, as the philosophical founder of conservatism.
Sartwell: “A very compelling series of refutations of and counter-examples to the idea that beauty can be a matter of any specific proportions between parts [such as in Hutcheson], and hence to the classical conception, is given by Edmund Burke…
‘Turning our eyes to the vegetable kingdom we find nothing there so beautiful as flowers; but flowers are of every sort of shape, and every sort of disposition; they are turned and fashioned into an infinite variety of forms… The rose is a large flower, yet it grows upon a small shrub; the flower of the apple is very small, and it grows upon a large tree; yet the rose and the apple blossom are both beautiful…
The swan, confessedly a beautiful bird, has a neck longer than the rest of its body, and but a very short tail; is this a beautiful proportion? we must allow that it is. But what shall we say of the peacock, who has comparatively but a short neck, with a tail longer than the neck and the rest of the body taken together?…
There are some parts of the human body, that are observed to hold certain proportions to each other; but before it can be proved that the efficient cause of beauty lies in these, it must be shown that wherever these are found exact, the person to whom they belong is beautiful…
For my part, I have at several times very carefully examined many of these proportions, and found them to hold very nearly, or altogether alike in many subjects which were not only very different from one another, but where one has been very beautiful and the other very remote from beauty… You may assign any proportions you please to every part of the human body and I undertake that a painter shall observe them all and notwithstanding produce, if he pleases, a very ugly figure.’ (Burke 1757, 84–89)”
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2000’s
Gilson, Etienne – The Arts of the Beautiful (Charles Scribner’s, 1965) 180 pp. ToC
Gilson (1884–1978) was a French philosopher and historian of philosophy. According to Wikipedia, he: “philosophized in the tradition of Thomas Aquinas, although he did not consider himself a neo-Thomist philosopher.”
Jaroszyński, Piotr – Beauty & Being: Thomistic Perspectives Ref (Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2011) 269 pp.
Scruton, Roger – Beauty: a Very Short Introduction Pre (Oxford University Press, 2011) 180 pp. ToC
“In this book I suggest that such sceptical thoughts about beauty are unjustified. Beauty, I argue, is a real and universal value, one anchored in our rational nature, and the sense of beauty has an indispensable part to play in shaping the human world. My approach to the topic is not historical, neither am I concerned to give a psychological, still less an evolutionary, explanation of the sense of beauty. My approach is philosophical, and the principal sources for my argument are the works of philosophers.” – Preface
“We discern beauty in concrete objects and abstract ideas, in works of nature and works of art, in things, animals and people, in objects, qualities and actions. As the list expands to take in just about every ontological category (there are beautiful propositions as well as beautiful worlds, beautiful proofs as well as beautiful snails, even beautiful diseases and beautiful deaths), it becomes obvious that we are not describing a property like shape, size or colour, uncontroversially present to all who can find their way around the physical world. For one thing: how could there be a single property exhibited by so many disparate types of thing?” – p. 1
“But in none of its normal uses is ‘beautiful’ a metaphor, even if, like many a metaphor, it ranges over indefinitely many categories of object. So why do we call things beautiful? What point are we making, and what state of mind does our judgement express?
There is an appealing idea about beauty which goes back to Plato and Plotinus, and which became incorporated by various routes into Christian theological thinking. According to this idea beauty is an ultimate value—something that we pursue for its own sake, and for the pursuit of which no further reason need be given. Beauty should therefore be compared to truth and goodness, one member of a trio of ultimate values which justify our rational inclinations. Why believe p? Because it is true. Why want x? Because it is good. Why look at y? Because it is beautiful.
In some way, philosophers have argued, those answers are on a par: each brings a state of mind into the ambit of reason, by connecting it to something that it is in our nature, as rational beings, to pursue.” – p. 2
King, Jonathan – The Beauty of the Lord: Theology as Aesthetics in Studies in Historical and Systematic Theology Pre (Lexham Press, 2018) 424 pp. ToC
“King focuses on the beauty of the plan of God, the unified history of redemption recounted in the Scriptures and enacted in the history of Jesus Christ.” – p. xi
“The lapidary statement by Etienne Gilson… ‘The pleasure experienced in knowing the beautiful does not constitute beauty itself, but it betrays its presence.’ – p. 12
“My working hypothesis is twofold: first, beauty corresponds in some way to the attributes of God; second the theodrama of God’s eternal plan in creation, redemption, and consummation entails a consistent and fitting expression and outworking of this divine beauty” – p. 23
Here is a review by William Edgar in Themelios 44.1. Here is an interview with King at Desiring God.
Fentiman’s paraphrasing of King on p. 59:
“The beauty in creation all around us, the work of God, causing us great delight and marvel, this being an end in its own right, reveals that perfection of blessedness, beauty and delight that is supremely and absolutely in God Himself, the ultimate and last end.”
Miravalle, John-Mark – Beauty: What it is & Why it Matters Pre (2019) ToC
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Quotes
1200’s
Thomas Aquinas
Summa
pt. 1, q. 39, art. 8, “I answer that”
“Species or beauty has a likeness to the property of the Son. For beauty includes three conditions, integrity or perfection, since those things which are impaired are by the very fact ugly; due proportion or harmony; and lastly, brightness or clarity, whence things are called beautiful which have a bright color.”
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pt. 1 of pt. 2, q. 27, art. 1, reply to obj. 3
“The beautiful is the same as the good, and they differ in aspect only. For since good is what all seek, the notion of good is that which calms the desire; while the notion of the beautiful is that which calms the desire, by being seen or known.
Consequently those senses chiefly regard the beautiful, which are the most cognitive, viz., sight and hearing, as ministering to reason; for we speak of beautiful sights and beautiful sounds. But in reference to the other objects of the other senses, we do not use the expression beautiful, for we do not speak of beautiful tastes, and beautiful odors. Thus it is evident that beauty adds to goodness a relation to the cognitive faculty: so that good means that which simply pleases the appetite; while the beautiful is something pleasant to apprehend.”
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pt. 1, q. 5, art. 4, reply to obj. 1
“Beauty and goodness in a thing are identical fundamentally; for they are based upon the same thing, namely, the form; and consequently goodness is praised as beauty. But they differ logically, for goodness properly relates to the appetite (goodness being what all things desire); and therefore it has the aspect of an end (the appetite being a kind of movement towards a thing).
On the other hand, beauty relates to the cognitive faculty; for beautiful things are those which please when seen. Hence beauty consists in due proportion; for the senses delight in things duly proportioned, as in what is after their own kind—because even sense is a sort of reason, just as is every cognitive faculty. Now since knowledge is by assimilation, and similarity relates to form, beauty properly belongs to the nature of a formal cause.”
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1600’s
Thomas Watson
The Beatitudes, p. 125
“The plainest truth has its beauty.”
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2000’s
Roger Scruton
Beauty: a Very Short Introduction Pre (Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 27-28
“And one thing is surely right in Kant’s argument, which is that the experience of beauty, like the judgement in which it issues, is the prerogative of rational beings. Only creatures like us—with language, self-consciousness, practical reason, and moral judgement—can look on the world in this alert and disinterested way, so as to seize on the presented object and take pleasure in it.”
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Norman Geisler
God & Creation.
p. 238
“The essence of beauty is: ‘that which is being perceived pleases.’”
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p. 239
“Being, insofar as it is knowable, is true. Being, insofar as it is desirable, is good. And Being, insofar as it is pleasurable, is beauty.”
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Historical
All or Most of History
Tatarkiewics, Wladyslaw – History of Aesthetics, 2 vols. (NY: Continuum, 1995, 2000)
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Middle Ages
Article
Spicher, Michael – ‘Medieval Theories of Aesthetics’ (2010) in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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Books
Eco, Umberto – Art & Beauty in the Middle Ages (Yale Univ. Press, 1986) 140 pp. ToC
Carruthers, Mary – The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages in Warburg Studies Pre (Oxford Univ. Press, 2013) 230 pp. ToC
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On Aquinas
PDF Summary Slideshow
Doc Shock – ‘An Introduction to Aesthetics of St. Thomas Aquinas’ 20 pp.
This is a very helpful summary overview.
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Books
Sevier, Christopher S. – Aquinas on Beauty Pre (London: Lexington Books, 2015) 225 pp. ToC
Here is a review: Robert E. Wood, ‘Aquinas on Beauty’ in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews.
Rubin, Michael J. – The Meaning of “Beauty” & its Transcendental Status in the Metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas PhD diss. (Catholic Univ. of America, 2016) 490 pp. Abstract
Abstract: “This dissertation investigates whether ‘beauty’ is a transcendental in the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas. For Thomas, a transcendental is a term that expresses a distinct attribute of every being insofar as it exists, and which therefore reveals something unique about the nature of all reality…
The Introduction… [introduces the question] “What is the meaning of ‘beauty’ in Thomas’s thought?” Chapter One examines the historical question… whether Thomas himself considered beauty a transcendental. The chapter proceeds by extracting from his writings the characteristics that distinguish the transcendentals from all other terms, and then determining whether he attributes these marks to beauty. Chapter Two begins our investigation… whether Thomas’s metaphysics implies or entails that beauty is a transcendental. The chapter examines the attempts of certain contemporary Thomists to prove either that beauty is a transcendental or that it is not. Our examination of the systematic question concerning beauty’s transcendental status continues with an analysis of Thomas’s opinions on both the subjective factors of aesthetic experience, i.e. a person’s perception of and delight in beauty, and the objective factors of that experience, i.e. the ontological conditions for beauty in a being… we investigate the nature of aesthetic perception [in Thomas] in Chapter Three, the nature of aesthetic pleasure in Chapter Four, and the nature of beauty’s conditions in Chapter Five. The sixth and final chapter uses these findings to formulate a conclusion regarding the meaning of beauty and its transcendental status in Thomas’s metaphysics.”
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Quote
Roger Scruton
Beauty: a Very Short Introduction Pre (Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 3-4
“Aquinas’s own view of the matter is worth noting, however, since it touches on a deep difficulty in the philosophy of beauty. Aquinas regarded truth, goodness and unity as ‘transcendentals’—features of reality possessed by all things, since they are aspects of being, ways in which the supreme gift of being is made manifest to the understanding.
His views on beauty are more implied than stated; nevertheless he wrote as though beauty too is such a transcendental (which is one way of explaining the point already made, that beauty belongs to every category). He also thought that beauty and goodness are, in the end, identical, being separate ways in which a single positive reality is rationally apprehended.”
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On the Beauty of God
“One thing have I desired 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 behold the beauty of the Lord…”
Ps. 27:4
“Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children. And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us”
Ps. 90:16-17
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Order of Contents
Articles 12+
Book 1
Quotes 4
Historical 1
Latin 3
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Articles
1500’s
Calvin, John – ‘The Third Sermon, wherein the Faithful are Admonished how Greatly they ought to Esteem it to Live in the Church of God…’ on Ps. 27:4 in Four Godly Sermons Against the Pollution of Idolatries… (London, 1561)
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1600’s
Abbot, Robert – pp. 16-25 of ‘David’s Desires’ on Ps. 27:4 in A Hand of Fellowship, to Help Keep Out Sin & Antichrist, in certain sermons preached…. (London, 1623)
Sibbes, Richard – ‘A Breathing After God’ on Ps. 27:4 in Works, vol. 2, pp. 213-48
Vincent, Thomas – 33. ‘The Most Beautiful’ on Ps. 27:4 in Day by Day with the English Puritans (Hendrickson, 2004)
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1700’s
Wilcox, Daniel – Sermon 5, ‘The Good Man’s Desires after the House of God’ on Ps. 27:4 in Practical Sermons (London: 1744), vol. 3, pp. 55-74
Wilcox was a preacher in London.
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1800’s
Chalmers, Thomas – Sermon XI: ‘The Affection of Moral Esteem Towards God’ on Ps. 27:4 in Sermons Preached in the Tron Church, Glasgow, pp. 279-310 Chalmers was an evangelical minister in the Church of Scotland at this time.
Emmons, Nathanael – ‘Saints Desire to See the Beauty of the Lord’ in The Works of Nathanael Emmons in (Boston: Crocker & Brewster, 1842), vol. 6, pp. 313-24
Baugher, Henry L. – “The Beauty of the Lord: a Discourse delivered to the Graduating Class of Pennsylvania College…” (Gettysburg: Neinstedt, 1856) on Ps. 90:17
This is really good. Baugher (1804–1868) was an American Lutheran clergyman and academic. He was the President of Gettysburg College from 1850 until 1868.
McDougall, James – ‘The Beauty of the Lord’ in Sermons (London: Williams & Norgate, 1871), pp. 175-193
Spurgeon, Susannah – ‘God’s Beauty upon His People’ in Free Grace & Dying Love: Morning Devotions (Banner of Truth Trust, 2006), pp. 42-45
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1900’s
Miller, J.R. – ‘The Beauty of the Lord’ on Ps. 90:17 (d. 1912) at Grace Gems
Drukker, Douwe R. – ‘The Beauty of the Lord’ in The Beauty of the Lord & Other Sermons (Eerdmans, 1927), pp. 23-32
Drukker was a Christian Reformed Church minister in NJ.
Jones, John D. – 19. ‘The Beauty of the Lord’ on Ps. 90:17 in The Hope of the Gospel (Hodder & Stoughton, 1911), pp. 245-57
Jones (1865–1942) was a Welsh congregational minister.
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Books
1600’s
Hall, Thomas – The Beauty of Holiness, or a Description of the Excellency, Amiablenes, Comfort & Content which is to be found in ways of purity and holiness where you have that glorious attribute of God’s holiness exactly set forth: together with the absolute necessity of our resembling Him therein (London: 1655) 205 pp. ToC
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2000’s
Douma, Jos – Beholding the Glory of the Lord: being Changed by his Beauty tr. Dick Moes (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse, 2011) 180 pp. ToC
This book, orignally written in Dutch, is themed on 2 Cor. 3:18, “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord,” which has been the author’s favorite verse in the Bible.
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Quotes
Order of
Watson
Spurgeon
Scruton
King
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1600’s
Thomas Watson
The Beatitudes
p. 198
“In the heavenly horizon we behold beauty in its first magnitude and highest elevation.”
p. 199
“Majesty shall appear in God to preserve reverence, but withal majesty clothed with beauty and tempered with sweetness to excite joy in the saints.”
p. 202
“For what is the blessedness of God but the contemplating his own infinite beauty!”
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1800’s
Charles H. Spurgeon
‘Gladness for Sadness’ on Ps. 90:15-17 (Jan. 14, 1883) in Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol. 29
“The third consolation which Moses here describes is gladness at beauty bestowed — ‘Let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us.’ Sorrow mars the countenance and clothes the body with sackcloth; but if the Lord will come to us and adorn us with his beauty, then the stains of mourning will speedily disappear. Brethren, what a beauty is this which the Lord giveth— ‘the beauty of the Lord our God!’ This comeliness is the beauty of his grace; for our covenant God is the God of all grace. If the Lord makes us to know that we are his our faces shine. If He fills us with his life and love, then brightness flashes from the eyes, and there is a grace about every movement.
This ‘beauty’ means holiness; for holiness is the beauty of God. If the Holy Spirit works in you the beauty of holiness, you will rise superior to your afflictions. If this church shall be made the holier by its bereavements, we shall gain much by our losses.
This beauty of the Lord must surely mean his presence with us. As the sun beautifies all things, so does God’s presence. When we know that Jesus is with us, when we feel that he is our helper, when we bask in his love, when he abides with us in power, this is the beauty of the saints. If we have Christ in us, Christ with us, we can bear any amount of trouble.
‘I can do all things, or can bear
All suffering if my Lord be there.’
This beauty gives to the believer an attractiveness in the eyes of men: they perceive that we have been with Jesus, and they behold our faces shining like the faces of angels. It is a great thing when a Christian is so happy, so holy, and so heavenly that he attracts others to Christ, and people seek his company because they perceive that he has been in the company of the blessed Lord. God give you this, and if you have it, dear friend, you may forget your sorrows: they are transfigured into joy.”
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2000’s
Roger Scruton
Beauty: a Very Short Introduction Pre (Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 3
“…an assumption, made explicit already in the Enneads of Plotinus [d. 270], that truth, beauty and goodness are attributes of the deity, ways in which the divine unity makes itself known to the human soul. That theological vision was edited for Christian use by St Thomas Aquinas, and embedded in the subtle and comprehensive reasoning for which that philosopher is justly famous.”
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Jonathan King
‘How can I see the Beauty of God?: Interview with Jonathan King’ (2019) at Desiring God
“The beauty of God ad extra [outwardly] as it is perceived and experienced by human beings is what most clearly evinces [or displays] that perfection of beatitude and sense of delight that belongs to the Trinity ad intra [inwardly]. (p. 59)”
“1. The beatitude of God is the eternal condition in himself of absolute satisfaction and delight. That’s bound up with God’s fullness of glory as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Now that’s a traditional understanding of God’s beatitude. This is not something that I’m just coming up with myself. We may not hear a lot about the attribute of God’s beatitude, but it is a tradition throughout church history.
2. The outward beauty of God is expressed and perceivable as an aesthetic quality of his glory in his work of creation, redemption, and consummation. It’s important here to call attention to the distinctive characteristic of beauty. Beauty as beauty is not desired as a means to another end. Pleasure or delight associated with beholding the beautiful is its own end.
3. That characteristic to communicate the delight as its own end is correlative to that absolute self that characterizes God’s own eternal, internal life as Father, Son, and Spirit. The uniqueness of beauty, as opposed to goodness or truth (we just talked about the transcendentals there), is that beauty evokes a delight, but you don’t use that delight to then do something more. It is its own end.
4. We talk about God’s beatitude. It is its own end. It is itself delight. He’s self-satisfied. Where I draw this all together is with a postulation that the beauty of God in his outward works as it is perceived and experienced by human beings is what most clearly can be traced to that perfection of beatitude and sense of delight that belongs to God in himself as Father, Son, and Spirit.”
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Historical
On Aquinas
Book
Sammon, Brendon T. – The God Who Is Beauty: Beauty as a Divine Name in Thomas Aquinas & Dionysius the Areopagite Pre (James Clarke, 2014) 370 pp. ToC
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Latin
Articles
1500’s
Marathonius, Herennius Celius Modestus – ‘A Small Platonic Commentary on the Beauty of God & the Universe’ in A Small Commentary on the Beauty of God & the Universe; A Disputation on the Eternal Generation of the Word… (1525), pp. 1-10
Marathonius was a professor of theology.
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1600’s
Chalvet, Hyacinthe – bk. 13, ‘Divine Beauty, the First Radius of the Divine Goodness’ ToC in Church Theology, vol. 1, of the One God (Toulouse, 1653), pp. 410-17 in 3 questions
Chalvet (1605-1683) was a Dominican professor of theology in Toulouse, France.
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Book
1900’s
Krug, Henry – On the Divine Beauty, in Three Books (Freiburg, 1902) 250 pp. ToC
Krug, a doctor of theology, appears to have been a Romanist.
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On the Beauty of Christ
Articles
1600’s
Halyburton, Thomas – Sermon 5, ‘Christ the Beauty & Safety of Believers’ in Works, (Glasgow: Blackie & Son, 1833), pp. 615-33
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1800’s
Spurgeon, C.H. – ‘The King in His Beauty’ on Isa. 33:17 #752, MTP 13.289-300
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Quotes
1600’s
Thomas Watson
The Beatitudes
p. 247
“The adopted [children of God] see their own sins, Satan’s snares, and Christ’s beauty which they whom the god of the world has blinded cannot discern.”
p. 285
“But true love is when we love Christ for his loveliness, namely, that infinite and superlative beauty which shines in Him, as Augustine says, ‘We love Jesus on account of Jesus’; that is, as a man loves sweet wine for itself.”
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On the Beauty of the Church
Articles
1600’s
Hickes, Gaspar – The Glory & Beauty of God’s Portion: set forth in a Sermon preached before the House of Commons at the Public Fast, June 26, 1644 on Isa. 28:5,6 Buy (London: 1644)
Hickes was a Westminster divine. This is mainly about God gracing his Church with beauty.
Goodwin, Thomas – ‘A Glimpse of Zion’s Glory, or the Church’s Beauty Specified’ on Rev. 19:6 in Works, vol. 12, pp. 65-79
Owen, John
Sermons 3-4, ‘The Nature & Beauty of Gospel Worship, 2 Sermons’ on Eph. 2:18 in Works, vol. 9, pp. 53-84
Sermon 25, ‘The Beauty & Strength of Zion’ on Ps. 48:12-14 in Works, vol. 9, pp. 307-20
Owen was an English, congregationalist puritan. This is on the beaty of the Church.
Sermon 6, ‘The Branch of the Lord, the Beauty of Zion, or the Glory of the Church in its Relation unto Christ’ on Isa. 56:7 in Works, vol. 8, pp. 281-309
Strong, William – ‘Gospel Order, a Church’s Beauty’ (1650) on Col. 2:5 in 31 Select Sermons (d. 1654), pp. 91-108
Strong was an Independent Westminster divine.
Reynolds, Edward – ‘The Staves of Beauty & Bands: opened in a Sermon’ (1663) on Zech. 11:7 in Works, vol. 5, pp. 408-47
“And I took unto me two staves; the one I called Beauty and the other I called Bands; and I fed the flock.” – Zech. 11:7
Christ “feeds and rules his poor flock with his staff called Beauty, his Word, ordinances and government— being as glorious things in themselves, so the special beauty and honour of the church that enjoy them. Thus among the people of the Jews, the ark and the tabernacle are called their glory…” – p. 409
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1800’s
Spurgeon, Charles – ‘Beauty for Ashes’ on Isa. 61:3 #1016, MTP 17.577-588
This is on the Lord giving to his despondent people beauty for their ashes.
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On Moral Beauty
Articles
1600’s
Downame, John – bk. 1, ch. 13, ‘That beauty is to be contemned in respect of spiritual graces, or heavenly excellencies’ in The Second Part of The Christian Warfare... (London: 1611)
Hopkins, Ezekiel – Miscellaneous Sermon 7, ‘A Discourse on the Beauty of Holiness’ on Prov. 3:17 in Works, vol. 3, pp. 476-94
Bunyan, John – ‘A Holy Life the Beauty of Christianity, or an Exhortation to Christians to be Holy’ On Ps. 93:5 in Works, vol. 2, pp. 503-47
Watson, Thomas – ‘The Beauty of Grace’ on 1 Pet. 1:2 in Select Works (NY: Robert Carter, 1855) and in The Sermons of Thomas Watson, vol. 2, pp 79-96
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1700’s
Edwards, Jonathan – ‘The Beauty of Piety in Youth’ on Ps. 144:12 in Sermons & Discourses, 1743-1758 being WJE Online, vol. 25, pp. 103-11
Jennings, David – The Beauty & Benefit of Early Piety: Represented in Several Sermons preached to Young People… 4th ed. (London, 1752) 171 ToC
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2000’s
Ramos, Alice – pt. 3 in Dynamic Transcendentals: Truth, Goodness & Beauty from a Thomistic Perspective Pre (Catholic University of America Press, 2012), pp. 147-227
ch. 9, ‘The Good & the Beautiful: Why the Nonvirtuous Person can see the Beauty of a Good Act’
ch. 10, ‘Moral Beauty & Affective Knowledge in Aquinas’
ch. 11, ‘Art, Truth & Morality: Aesthetic Self-Forgetfulness versus Recognition’
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Book
1600’s
Hall, Thomas – The Beauty of Holiness, or a Description of the Excellency, Amiablenes, Comfort & Content which is to be found in ways of purity and holiness where you have that glorious attribute of God’s holiness exactly set forth: together with the absolute necessity of our resembling Him therein (London: 1655) 205 pp. ToC
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Quote
Thomas Watson
The Beatitudes
p. 133
“The beauty of holiness, never fades (Ps. 110:3).”
p. 174
“See here what is the beauty that sets off a soul in God’s eye, namely, purity of heart.”
p. 226
“As the seal stamps its print and likeness upon the wax, so does God stamp the print and effigy of his own beauty upon his children.”
p. 299
“Thus a gracious heart sees a beauty and equity in the commands of heaven that draws forth consent, and this consent makes them that they are not grievous.”
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For Ladies
“And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us.”
Ps. 90:17
“While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear. Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.”
1 Pet. 3:2-4
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Devotional
2000’s
Christ to All – Reflecting the Beauty of the Lord: 25 Devotions for Women (CTA, 2012) 62 pp.
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Quotes
Thomas Watson
The Beatitudes
p. 106
“Meekness has a divine beauty and sweetness in it.”
p. 204
“This peaceableness of spirit is the beauty of a saint.”
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Latin
Articles
1600’s
Keckermann, Bartholomaus – 4. ‘Perfection & Beauty’ in A Compendious System of the Science [Scientia] of Metaphysics, Furnished in Public Lectures… (Hanau, 1609), bk. 1, On Substance, pp. 36-38
Alsted, Johann Heinrich
12. ‘Of Beauty’ in Metaphysics Drawn out in Three Books through Methodical Precepts, Select Theorems & Clear, Short Commentaries… (Herborne, 1613), bk. 1, Of Transcendentals, pp. 115-17
“Beauty is a mode of being, through which the being is understood to please. The academics do not distinguish beauty from good. They err…”
12. ‘On Beauty’ in Encyclopedia, Propounding Metaphysics in The Encyclopedia in Seven Distinct Tomes… (Herborne, 1630), bk. 11, pp. 588-89
“Precepts: Beauty is a mode of being, by which that being is understood to participate in comeliness. It is uncreated or created. Uncreated beauty is only of God; created is the work of God and of artificial things, so far as they agree with his causal intellect and will.”
Rules:
“1. Beauty arises out of harmony [convenientia].”
“2. The knowledge of beauty is magnetic and affective.”
“3. Nothing in created things is beautiful that does not refer to God.”
“4. The affection of beauty is pleasing [gratia].”
Schmidt, Johann Andrea – A Physics Dissertation on the Beauty of Man (Jena, 1680) 10 pp.
This was published with the consent of the Lutheran philosophical faculty at Jena, Germany.
Baxter, Richard – p. 299 (top-mid) of Method of Christian Theology (London: M. White, 1681), pt. 1, ch. 14
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1700’s
Hase, Johann Mathias – A Mathematical Dissertation on the First Architectonic Beauty (Wittenburg, 1727) 33 pp.
Hase was a mathematics professor at Wittenburg. The dissertation opens with a section on architectonic principles of beauty.
Zihn, Christian B. – On Architectonic Beauty, a Dissertation Following (Wittenburg, 1728) 13 pp.
Bock, Joannes G.
The First Academic Dissertation on the Beauty of Songs [or Poetry] (Konigsburg, 1733) 27 pp.
A Solemn Dissertation Following on the Beauty of Songs [or Poetry] (Konigsburg, 1733) 57 pp.
Bock was a professor of poetry in Berlin.
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Books
1500’s
Niph, Augustine – Books on Beauty & Love (1549; Leiden, 1641) 160 pp. ToC
Niphus (c. 1473 – 1538 or 1545) was an Italian philosopher and commentator in the Renaissance. He was deputed by Leo X to defend the doctrine of immortality. In his early thought he followed Averroes, but afterwards modified his views so far as to make himself acceptable to the Catholicism. His numerous commentaries on Aristotle were widely read and frequently reprinted.
Antonius, Marc – On Beauty in Six Books (Pavia, 1553) 148 pp. no ToC
Marcantonius Majoragio (1514–1555) was a writer and philosopher, active in Northern Italy during the Renaissance period. He was a professor for a time at Milan and maintained a certain Platonic Christianity.
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1600’s
Vaenius, Ernest – A Physiological Tract on Beauty, Mystically Propounded according to the Beauty of the Bride in the Songs of the Songs (Bruxelles, 1662) 60 pp. with pictures
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Bibliography
Article
2000’s
Sartwell, Crispin – ‘Bibliography’ in ‘Beauty’ at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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“But in all Israel there was none to be so much praised as Absalom for his beauty: from the sole of his foot even to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him.”
2 Sam. 14:25
“Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.”
Mt. 23:37
“Give unto the Lord the glory due unto his name… come before Him: worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.”
1 Chron. 16:29
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Related Pages
Of God, the Knowledge of God & of his Attributes
Communicable Attributes & Participation