King David, the eloquent Psalmist, writes in the Psalm 19, “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork” (Ps. 19:1 NRSV). The ancient Hebrew understanding of cosmology does not necessarily align with modern scientific theory today, but the equity David was trying to portray is still significant. He believed that all of God’s creations proclaimed God’s glory and that this is evident by all of those who live within God’s creations. For, “Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge… In the heavens he has set a tent for the sun, which comes out like a bridegroom from his wedding canopy, and like a strong man runs its course with joy. Its rising is from the end of them; and nothing is hid from its heat” (Ps. 19:2, 4­b-6).

The Christian God is of beauty, perfection, and eloquence. Many beautiful feats in artistic forms and architectural methods have been attributed to the Christian Church; that is because God is a being of beauty. This aspect of God’s divine nature is imprinted throughout the world, where we experience intricate miracles, such as the anatomy of the tiniest insect to the planets’ revolving around the sun. God is a transcendental painter—the world is His canvas.

Raushenbusch writes, “God’s country is the home of beauty. God is not only the all-wise and all-powerful, but the all-beautiful. The connection between religion and beauty, between morality and art, is of the closest. The sense of beauty is the morning portal of the temple of God by which the young best love to enter for worship. Ruskin has taught us that art has its roots in the moral life, and that permanent ugliness is a product of sin and a producer of brutality.”[i]

In Psalm 27, the psalmist expresses an earnest desire to “live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, [and] to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple” (Ps. 27:4 NRSV). The symbolism in the words of King David in this passage is a divine foreshadowing of the earth as God’s temple and the beauty of Christ contained therein. In this narrative, God is specifically called beautiful.

This offers the Christian a remarkable point of understanding that the gospel directs him not only towards the love, goodness, and holiness of God, but also to the beauty of God. Paul argues that God’s “invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made” (Rom. 1:20 ESV, emphasis added). The fact that God’s power and nature have been revealed through His creations suggests that every aspect of God’s nature is absolutely beautiful, and that it is because of this divine beauty that the world around us is filled with unparalleled beauty.

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What does it mean to know that the beauty of nature simply reflects the beauty of God?