“The beautiful is that which is pleasing when seen.”
—Thomas Aquinas
In 1970, as he considered a world still reeling from the carnage of the two wars, and as he remembered his own life, ravaged by the brutality of the USSR, Alexander Solzhenitsyn mused upon the “enigmatic remark” of Dostoevsky’s idiot: “beauty will save the world.” “What sort of a statement is that?” Solzhenitsyn asked. “When in bloodthirsty history did beauty ever save anyone from anything?” And yet, giving it some more thought, Solzhenitsyn realized that there is something peculiar about the power of beauty. Beauty, by its very nature, is “irrefutable,” and possesses the power to move “even an opposing heart to surrender.” Perhaps, then, beauty will save the world, he surmised. Perhaps in an age when truth is so controverted and goodness so sparse, beauty will rise up and do the job of all three.
We are now more than a half century beyond Sozhenitsyn’s Nobel Prize lecture. And though our cultural scene is different from his, I’m not inclined to think it any less ugly. The question this has raised for me is this: How should Christians respond to this situation? Or, in other words, what is an appropriate Christian apologetic here and now? In the more professionalized apologetics of our time, a defense of the Christian faith usually involves brigading around “the truth” and “goodness.” Insofar as it is these that are under attack, such a strategy is understandable. But this was not always the way of Christian “apologetics.”
In some of the oldest writings of Christians defending the faith, one common strategy was to appeal to the common lives of Christians. Take the Epistle to Diognetus, for example. He says that Christians are not different from other humans on account of their ethnicity, language, or even cultural practices. Christians live in all countries and cultures, and they partake in the customs of those cultures (so far as those customs don’t violate the law of God). What distinguishes Christians, he says, is the way they live in those cultures, and particularly, the way they give their lives: “They love all [people], and are persecuted by all… they are poor, yet make [others] rich…they are slandered, and yet are justified; they are reviled and bless; they are insulted and repay insult with honor; they do good, yet are punished as evil-doers…” For this reason, he poetically calls Christians “the soul of the world.” Just as the soul enlivens the body, allowing its various parts to work in unison and toward good goals, so too Christians in their communities enliven them and direct them toward the ultimate good.
Or, take Justin Martyr. He could plead with the Roman emperor that Christians were promoters of peace and civility, responsible, patient, and kind, and they were these things “more than all other men.” Again, Tertullian could argue that amidst the wanton and licentious Roman culture, Christians remained unspoiled and virtuous, and thus were the best kind of citizens.
The Apostle Peter makes a similar connection between the beauty of a holy life and a defense of the Christian faith in his first epistle. He admonishes Christians, “always be ready to make a defense to anyone who asks for an account of the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3:15). This defense, Peter makes clear, is not so much a set of arguments as it is a life that is characterized by “unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind” (3:8). This kind of Christ-like life then enables a defense of the faith as a verbal testimony: “when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame” (3:16).
And this brings us to Percy Bysshe Shelley. In “The Defence of Poetry” (1821), he claims that “Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.” What he meant is that humans are persuaded to believe certain things and to act in certain ways not by working rationally through the various arguments and options (though we like to imagine that is how our belief system works). Humans are persuaded at the level of what he called “imagination.” In imagination we encounter things sensibly and holistically, and take in the meaning of things and their value. At this level of encounter, the person is either moved toward something by attraction or away from it by repulsion. Only after this encounter does reason step in. Using our reason, we may at that point take things apart, analyze them, and wade through arguments concerning them. But we have already been attracted or repulsed. Reason only justifies the attraction or repulsion to ourselves. Imagination moves the heart; the reasoning mind follows in its wake.
Now, whether or not that is how persuasion ought to work in a human (and I am persuaded that it is not ideal, or at least the process needs some serious tuning), Shelley is right in that this is the way persuasion actually works for most people. Our attractions and repulsions come first, and often play a directing role in how we come consciously and rationally to think about things.
To a culture so used to the bleak scenes of division, animosity, tribalism, cruelty, and self-importance, will a life characterized by unity of mind, sympathy, neighborly care, a tender heart, and a humble mind be anything other than beautiful—and thus utterly persuasive? Could Christians become again the soul of the world? Perhaps then Solzhenitsyn was on to something, on to hope: in an age when truth is so controverted and goodness so sparse, beauty—precisely the beauty of Christ in the lives of his saints—will rise up and do the job of all three.