Many of us would remember the scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where—in an attempt to save the life of his father, Henry—Indiana Jones must find the holy grail, the chalice held to be the one from which Christ drank at the Last Supper.
He is told by a grail knight that only the true grail would bring life; all others would send anyone who drank from it to certain death. Entering a cave with an array of golden and jewel-encrusted chalices, Jones saves his father by correctly ignoring the gold and choosing a humble, clay cup.
This cinematic classic is sometimes cited as a reason why the church should not spend its money on nice things. “Don’t worry about gold chalices, beautiful vestments and grand cathedrals,” we are told. “Sell what you already have and give the money away.”
In other words, any insistence the church has on beauty is a dereliction of our duty of charity towards others.
It is an attractive argument, but is it true? Should the church dispense with beauty and just stick to serving the poor?
Along with goodness and truth, beauty is one of the three transcendentals, universal attributes that ultimately reflect the nature of God. Humans desire goodness, truth and beauty because it is through these that they imitate and encounter the God who is the source of each of them.
If this is true, then shouldn’t the church ensure that not only truth (by way of teaching) and goodness (by way of charitable outreach) but also beauty be available to all?
If the church was to divest itself of its beautiful art and architecture, then would beauty become accessible to only the privileged few who might be able to afford it? Moreover, does beauty not have a value in and of itself, or is its only value the amount for which it can be sold?
A compelling defence of the importance of beauty occurred last week in the strangest of places, the floor of NSW Parliament House.
Chris Rath MLC used an adjournment speech to record his thoughts on the re-opening of the Notre Dame Cathedral and, as part of that, make the case for beauty for its own sake.
“Beauty and religion do not matter in today’s postmodern world—or so the relativists would have us believe—so it was with some astonishment that I saw how the modern world reacted to the re-opening of Notre Dame cathedral,” Rath said.
“Unlike a train line, a hospital or a shopping mall, this building serves no utilitarian or functional purpose and yet all the world’s eyes were fixated on it.”
Rath articulated inherent value of beauty and its transcendental nature perfectly.
“For what is the price of beauty, truth, goodness or love? They are absolutely worthless and yet also absolutely priceless,” he continued.
“Humans have a deep-down need for the thing that is not just desired but valued, the unconsumable thing wanted not as a means but for its own sake. We do not ask, “What is the point of beauty, truth, goodness or love?” because they are sufficient in themselves. Almost everything worthwhile is.”
What a beautiful thing to say—almost everything worthwhile is sufficient in itself, rather than for its utility.
Rath went on to suggest there may also be a correlation between the increasing mental health epidemic amongst the young and those who consider their life “as meaningless and without purpose” and the rise of “atheism and relativism.” He said that iPhones and TikTok are not to blame, but rather, that “we created this epidemic when we jettisoned faith, beauty and love.”
I think that’s true, in part. I would add that the modern-day rejection of faith is also the rejection of the idea that there are things that can be valuable just because they exist.
For this reason, in every age, it is important that the church insists on beauty for its own sake as a reminder to those who are tempted to believe the lie that they are not valued—that not everything needs to have a measurable utility in order to be valuable.
Indeed, every human being is of infinite value, even and perhaps especially when we are too young or too old or too frail or too broken or too confused to be “useful” at all.
