Morality, Beauty and Mahler's 2nd Symphony
by Timothy Bootsveld
You’ll need headphones for this. Good ones.
A year and a half ago, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra took on the monumental task of playing Mahler's 2nd Symphony. It is a colossus of a masterwork with a finale amongst the greatest ever written. I count it one of my most precious memories to have been there to feel it.
“Perhaps Christians don’t talk about it apologetically because we have bought the lie that beauty is simply a matter of taste. ”
As a poor second to having been there, I give you a link to The Finale to Mahler's 2nd Symphony. If you can spare 90 minutes, listen to the whole thing, but I’ve set the link to play from the beginning of the finale. You’ll have a slight case of tinnitus if you’ve listened to it at the proper volume. The scale and tempo of Claudio Abbado’s version is the second best I’ve heard. Absolutely beautiful.
Beauty. It’s a topic that doesn’t seem to come up much in apologetics, which is odd because beauty is all around us, at every turn. I’m amazed that our world, sin-sick and cursed as it is, has any at all. But God has designed to allow our world to still burst full with music and sunshine. Perhaps Christians don’t talk about it apologetically because we have bought the lie that beauty is simply a matter of taste. As the erroneous saying goes, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. False. Totally wrong.
Parents, consider your children: those delicate wisps of hair and bone. The unfettered laughter, the unburdened imagination. Unsteady steps and sloppy kisses. You are a liar if you tell me that you believe your child is anything other than objectively beautiful. Their beauty is not in the eye of the beholder - if someone finds them ugly, then that person is simply misinterpreting the world! Your child’s beauty, the beauty of your beloved son or daughter, is in them.
This is the point of renowned Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga’s theistic proof from beauty. He once gave a lecture that gave by his count two dozen theistic arguments. One of the theistic arguments (bullet point (U), “The Mozart Argument”) was the argument from beauty, which stated:
God recognizes beauty; indeed, Beauty is deeply involved in His very nature. To grasp the beauty of, for example, Mozart’s D Minor piano concerto is to grasp something that is objectively there; it is to appreciate what is objectively worthy of appreciation.
This short statement was preceded by a much longer discussion on the theistic proofs from morality, which argue that objective morality is dependent on God. And just as there could be no objective moral facts unless there exists God to legislate them, there could also be no objective beauty unless there similarly exists God to give a standard for beauty. The nature of morality and beauty are inextricably tied together in this sense: If and only if God exists, then objectivity of both morality and beauty obtains.
“And just as there could be no objective moral facts unless there exists God to legislate them, there could also be no objective beauty unless there is similarly exists God to give a standard for beauty. ”
And just as with morality, beauty is not arbitrary. It is not as though, by fiat, God could make cruelty good, or beauty ugly. When God said that the light He created on the first day of creation was good, against what was He comparing it to make this judgement‽ What standard was He using‽ He was comparing His creation against Himself. God is the measure of goodness, just as God is the measure of beauty. The first chapter of Douglas Kelly’s Systematic Theology Vol II, shows that Saint Hilary, Saint Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Jonathan Edwards, and many others all root both objective morality and objective beauty in the Triune nature of the God; the God who is One being, and Three persons, eternally joined in infinite love. And neither God’s goodness nor beauty are things eternally abstract or obscure, but rather they are on full display to us: the inner goodness and beauty of the Trinity is manifest to us in Christ - God who takes to Himself a human nature.
Christ’s coming down to us in the flesh is an aspect of the internal beauty of God; each person of the Trinity giving Himself to the others, and receiving the returns of love from each one. We have some grasp of this in the Father giving himself to the Son and Spirit, the Son giving himself back to the Father and Spirit, and the Spirit proceeding from both, and uniting both in the ineffable ties of love, as He continually returns to them within the perichoretic Being.
Douglas Kelly, The Beauty of Christ: A Trinitarian Vision, p 17
“neither God’s goodness nor beauty are things eternally abstract or obscure, but rather they are on full display to us”
The Son, in obedience to the Father, enters into his own creation and pours his life out unto death for the redemption of His rebel creatures. This redemption, the redemption of mankind out of the death of sin is the greatest work of great beauty that the world will know, the greatest work of beauty that will ever be performed. But it is only a shade of a reflection of the totality of God who is the criterion of beauty.
After Pavarotti’s performance in the Donizetti opera “L’elisir d’amore“ at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, there were one hundred and sixty five curtain calls. One hundred and sixty five! The audience applauded him for over an hour! In comparison, Christ’s audience will applaud Him into eternity. His audience will continually burn brighter in their appreciation of the beauty of their saviour.
Yes, the beauty of God is inexhaustible. And we are not called to simply observe this beauty, but to join it. God bids we put away our rebellion, purge our darkness, and join Him without cost, in His eternally joy.
“The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price.”
Revelation 22:17
So as you go, commend Christ to your neighbours as not only the source of objective morality, but also of objective beauty. Without the Trinity, we are floating without any up or down, straying through an infinite nothing, with darkness and void as our beginning and end. But when we come to our senses and acknowledge the God who is there, the Trinitarian God, the world explodes open in music and light, in sweetness, and in a beauty that has an unshakable foundation.