Editor's Note: What is Beauty?

The divine essence lies beyond the confines of human understanding and certainly beyond the confines of sensory experience, which is the locus of beauty. This is the context that illuminates the prohibition against worshipping a graven image of any kind: if God is an expression of perfection that lies beyond our senses, then it is impossible to represent him in an image. If we assume that God is perfect, then any image can only detract from that divine quality.

The complexity of the relation between theology and aesthetics stems from the fact that beauty is visible, while God is fundamentally invisible. In monotheistic religious thought, God differs fundamentally from Man and the world, since God is an expression of perfection, while Man is transient and incomplete. The divine essence lies beyond the confines of human understanding and certainly beyond the confines of sensory experience, which is the locus of beauty. This is the context that illuminates the prohibition against worshipping a graven image of any kind: if God is an expression of perfection that lies beyond our senses, then it is impossible to represent him in an image. If we assume that God is perfect, then any image can only detract from that divine quality.

However, beauty and its admiration in nature and art are part of the fabric of religious life. Although beauty appears within the confines of a limited world, it reveals that, in these confines, we may be surprised. And if beauty is a surprise, then there is no way to foretell the source from which it will arise. The question – "What is beauty?" – does not inquire as to the source that awakens aesthetic feeling, but rather asks – what is the nature of that feeling?

The nature of aesthetic feeling is not essentially different from the nature of religious experience – in both cases, a totally unexpected variable enters the system of our "usual" considerations. Its role is to connect the world of man with that extraordinary event – a spiritual plane where familiar boundaries are upset. Thus, even religions that reject any graven image and oppose, as a matter of principle, any visible embodiment of God, acknowledge the major role beauty fulfils in spiritual life.

When a Jew sees in his mind's eye the astonishing episode of God's revelation on Mount Sinai, he encounters the aesthetic beauty of theology. When a Christian imaginatively recreates the Passion of Christ as he gazes at an icon, he is turning towards the beauty of God. And when a Muslim draws inspiration for his daily prayer from the geometric precision of the mosque's tiles, he is indicating the importance of visible space for the worship of God.

When a Jew sees in his mind's eye the astonishing episode of God's revelation on Mount Sinai, he encounters the aesthetic beauty of theology. When a Christian imaginatively recreates the Passion of Christ as he gazes at an icon, he is turning towards the beauty of God. And when a Muslim draws inspiration for his daily prayer from the geometric precision of the mosque's tiles, he is indicating the importance of visible space for the worship of God.

The relation between the aesthetic and the theological confronts the faithful with the complexity of the connection between God and Man, as well as with the question of whether, and how, this complexity can be overcome. This question lies at the bottom of the first series of articles published by the magazine Well of Faith, called "Beauty from a Theological Perspective." This is a journey to the seam between the aesthetic and the theological, between the visible world and the invisible God.

Each article will present, in its own way, beauty as an element that embodies divine perfection. The acknowledgement of the wide scope and different aspects of these questions shapes the series' inter-religious and inter-disciplinary character. We sought to initiate a candid discourse on the subject, in which different points of view can coexist.

Beauty is our point of departure, since in order to tackle the question of beauty, we must first consider the relation between God and Man and examine in what ways are we, as individuals, connected to God? And how is our life connected to religious experience?