The A-Z of Believing: B is for beauty

Written and presented by Dr Ed Kessler MBE, founder and director of the Cambridge-based Woolf Institute, this compelling guide to religious belief and scepticism is a must-read for believers and nonbelievers alike.

Founded in 1998 to explore the relationship between religion and society, the Woolf Institute uses research and education to foster understanding between people of all beliefs with the aim of reducing prejudice and intolerance.

Says Dr Kessler: “Latest surveys suggest that 85 per cent of the world’s population identify themselves as belonging to a specific religion, and in many parts of the world the most powerful actors in civil society are religious. Understanding religion and belief, the role they play and their impact on behaviour and decision-making is, therefore, vital.”

Dr Kessler – who was awarded an MBE for services to interfaith relations in 2011 – is an affiliated lecturer with the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University, a principal of the Cambridge Theological Federation and additionally teaches at the Cambridge Muslim College.

He says: “This A-Z of Believing aims to show how the encounter between religions has influenced and been influenced by the evolution of civilisation and culture, both for good and for ill. I hope that a better understanding of believing will lead people to realise that while each religion is separate, they are also profoundly connected.”

B is for Beauty

Is that which is beautiful loved by the gods because it is beautiful, or is it beautiful because it is loved by the gods? – Plato

Nine hundred years after Plato, the fifth-century church father Augustine of Hippo asked a similar question: “Who made these beautiful changeable things, if not one who is beautiful and unchangeable?”

Although Richard Dawkins doesn’t think much of this argument, I do sympathise with those who find fragments of divinity in beauty. Who, listening to their favourite piece of music being performed in a concert hall, hasn’t felt carried away from the mundane by a feeling of transcendence, religious in intensity?

For those of us who have spent time in Cambridge, beauty can be found when seated in King’s College Chapel, built 1,000 years after Augustine and probably the most beautiful example of Christian architecture in the country. Looking up at the stunning gothic vaults and listening to the angelic voices of the choristers, as a bustling Cambridge winds down for Christmas, are the sights and sounds of beauty.

Music is central to worship and the Bible, especially the Psalms, frequently mentioned the use of musical instruments and songs in praise of God. In biblical times, music was performed at coronations, in religious ceremonies, and in warfare. David was the most famous Israelite musician and poet of all and it’s not wholly surprising to learn that, according to an ancient Assyrian bas-relief, Sennacherib, king of Assyria who built the ancient city of Nineveh, asked for a tribute of musicians from king Hezekiah of Israel.

Centuries later the Church would foster western music with its cantatas, masses and oratorios, translating the sounds of transcendence into musical composition.

In the east too, music is viewed as a channel to the divine and the classical Indian musician is depicted as being on a journey, seeking connection with the source and destiny of all Life. For Hindus, Om is not only the first note of creation but the sound with which all ancient Vedic prayers start and end, as if emulating the sacred process of creation.

As well as listening out for beauty, it can also be seen in a painting or building where experience of the sacred transcends the particularities of the artist or architect by visually connecting the human and divine realms.

While religious artists have created beauty so religion has also been the justification for its deliberate destruction. Remember the commandment (Exodus 20:3), “You shall not make for yourself a graven image and you shall not bow down to them or serve them”?

Some have interpreted this to mean than images could lead to the sin of idolatry and iconoclasm emerged out of a complex web of religious, cultural and political circumstances, justified by theology. The first famous, widespread and systematic icon-smashing began in the eighth century, when the Byzantine Emperor Leo III ordered the destruction of all icons, arguing that they inhibited the conversion of Jews and Muslims to Christianity, since these two groups would have found icons to be essentially idolatrous.

Although the command in Exodus has been interpreted to mean that Jews and Christians would oppose figurative visual representation, many rabbinic and patristic passages make reference to the widespread existence of figurative art in everyday life, demonstrated by the discovery of an amazing third-century town called Dura-Europos in 1932.

The city itself was founded by Seleucus I in approximately 300BCE and remained a Seleucid outpost until the mid-second century when it was captured by the Parthians. For the next three hundred years it flourished as a centre for east-west trade but in the second century CE, it was captured by the Romans until it was destroyed by the Persians in 256 and never resettled.

An example of ancient pluralism, archaeologists were astonished to discover that Dura-Europos contained 16 temples catering to the needs of an eclectic pantheon of Roman, Greek and Persian gods. It also contained a Christian chapel and a synagogue – with interior wall decorations that were second to none. In the synagogue alone, there were more than 30 biblical scenes covering the four walls of a 40-foot room.

On the border of present day Iraq and Jordan, Dura-Europos shows that beautiful figurative art was as common in churches and synagogues as it was in pagan buildings. Indeed, it was so popular that the church father Gregory of Nyssa wrote the following about the numerous artistic representations of the story in Genesis of the sacrifice of Isaac:

“I have seen many times” he wrote, “the likeness of this suffering in painting and not without tears have I come upon this sight, when art clearly led the story”.

You may not agree with Plato that human-created beauty is a glimpse of God, but even the most fervent of nonbelievers would find it difficult to build a case that religious tradition has not contributed massively to artistic and musical endeavour.

Or to put it more positively in the words of Dostoevsky, “Beauty will save the world”.

Next week: C is for Conversion

Listen to each episode of An A-Z of Believing: from Atheism to Zealotry on the Woolf Institute podcast site or wherever you get your podcasts