The Beautiful and the Sublime

Our PhD in World Arts is in its second year! Last year we welcomed a cohort of six students, and this year the second cohort began its journey together. Over the past year, I’ve been working at designing three of the doctoral courses and teaching them, which is quite challenging. This fall I am teaching one of those courses, called “World Arts and Religious Expression.” During the semester, we will be connecting with other scholars all over the world to learn more about religious communities and their uses of the arts. One of the purposes of the class is to connect our students with people outside of their typical networks, to foster interfaith dialogue and understanding. These are critical skills for ministering cross-culturally, and I’m enjoying the discussions that have been happening so far. 

 

In the first week of the course, we looked together at some of the big concepts and questions in arts and religion. One of those areas was the idea of the beautiful and the sublime. In everyday speaking, we tend to use these terms interchangeably. But historically they have covered different areas of perception. “Beautiful” is an objective evaluation of something we experience. We hear a piece of music, or we see a painting, and as we compare it to other parts of our experience, we recognize it as beautiful. But “sublime” is different. It’s an overwhelming experience of something that is beyond our ability to process and evaluate. A Sunday morning worship service might often be beautiful, and we can still feel in control of it. But an experience of the sublime is rarer and brings us closer to God by pulling the rug out from under us, taking us out of our usual analytical frame of mind, and reminding us of our smallness and God’s greatness. The sublime can be frightening. We emerge from an encounter with the sublime changed, ready to return to life but seeing things differently.

Photo by Andreas F. Borchert

At the same time that I was teaching these class sessions, I was also reading through the Gospels. Thinking about that distinction between beautiful and sublime has helped me see some episodes in the Gospels differently. In Matthew 17, for example, Peter, James, and John witness the transfiguration of Jesus. A voice from the cloud says, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him” (v. 5; ESV). Then notice the disciples’ response, in v. 6: “When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified.” I see this as an example of the disciples being confronted with the sublime. What they have seen is not just “beautiful”—it is something far beyond their ability to analyze and understand. Jesus tells them to “Rise, and have no fear,” and he leads them back from the sublime to everyday life. But we assume that this experience has now altered what everyday life will be like for them in important ways. 

 

What other moments in the Bible do you think are experiences of the sublime? What do the people learn from each of those encounters?