16
C.
A Meditative Conclusion: Ugly Beauty
Augustine, before he was converted, wondered if we ever love anything that is not
beautiful.
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He decided that we love only what is beautiful. Of God he said, "Late it was
that I loved you, beauty so ancient and so new, late I loved you!"
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Augustine's insight
highlights the reason why the cross and the person on the cross are so compelling. We
love only what is beautiful but the beauty may be hidden. On the cross the Godness of
the God-man is overshadowed, like the sun's eclipse, by the frail wounded body of the
crucified man. The Light of the World is snuffed out by dark death. In identifying with
the pain, suffering, and sin of this world, the holy one becomes beaten, bruised, and
battered. But in the steely gaze under the blood-stained brow, the intent of that one
shines through. Though death be great, love is greater. And so the story does not end
there. After three days in the tomb proleptic beauty is unleashed upon the world. That
resurrected body foreshadows the eschatological reality when this physical world is
raised up into the next world, giving impetus for, apprehension of, and creations of
beauty now. The cross, once dominating the skyline in its menacing height, fades as the
beauty of the risen Lord shines brighter than the sun.
The symbol of the cross and the hope of the resurrection ought to fill our hearts
with a sense of beauty--something rich in elegance--a refined praise which the bride of
Christ can adorn herself as she meets her groom. These sources mentioned above can
offer ideas and images for contemporary Evangelicalism to use as we expand our
boundaries to recover the lost beauty that ought to characterize our theology.
attributes it adds a needed balancing element that gives symmetry to his love. See Frank Burch Brown,
"The Beauty of Hell: Anselm on God's Eternal Design," Journal of Religion 73 (1993): 329-356.
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Augustine, The Confessions of St. Augustine, trans., Rex Warner with an introduction by Nernon
J. Bourke (New York and Scarborough, Ontario: New American Library, 1963), bk. 4, ch. 13.