The Classical Values
What is beauty? What are its qualities and why does it arouse such deep emotions? The early Greek philosophers wrestled with these questions and eventually came to declare beauty as one of three fundamental values, alongside goodness and truth. This incomparable triad would become one of the enduring themes in Western thought.
Plato’s Symposium is a discourse on the nature of love that very soon descants into talk of the beautiful. A number of men who are attending a banquet each offer speeches in praise of Eros, the Greek god of love, until Socrates commences his own reflections on what has been said. He points out that love involves a desire for something which a man does not possess; that is, it is a desire for the beautiful, and the beautiful, he stresses, is also the good. Love is therefore portrayed by him as a lack or absence that yearns for its own fulfillment in beauty.
Socrates then demonstrates how love can help an individual to attain to a higher, eternal realm, which lies beyond the world of the senses. He describes the way in which the soul may ascend along a kind of heavenly ladder, commencing with the lowest rung, which is the aesthetic appreciation of beautiful bodies, then continuing upward to the admiration of beautiful souls, and finally arriving at the contemplation of the ideal Form of Beauty itself: And if man’s life is ever worth living, it is when he has attained this vision of the very soul of beauty.1
According to this idealist conception, Plato recognized that deep in every human heart is an unquenchable longing for the beautiful. He understood that the beautiful things we behold with our senses must have a meaning that is larger than their temporal nature would suggest, and emerge from a transcendent world that is beyond us; or, in Platonic terms, they participate in the invisible, eternal and unchanging Form of Beauty itself. In the idealist tradition, the human soul therefore recognizes in beauty something of its true origin and destiny. We are compelled to reach out and grasp hold of this beauty, as a response to a cry of our souls for something enduring, that can never die. “Which is to say,” Plato concluded, “that Love is a longing for immortality.”2
Beauty in Greek Poetry and Myth
In other Greek writings, the connection between love and beauty became proverbial, and they were frequently linked together in poetry and in mythological stories such as the “Judgment of Paris.” He was the prince of Troy who was given the unenviable task of choosing the most beautiful among three goddesses, Aphrodite, Hera and Athena. Aphrodite, the goddess of love, lured the young prince with the promise of Helen, the most beautiful woman among mortals, and under her power Helen, wed to the King of Sparta, falls in love with Paris and flees with him: it is the trigger of the Trojan War.
The explosive power of sexual love is thus the subject of this mythical episode, which has been explored in art countless times; Rubens was so entranced by the story that he rendered it several times. Botticelli’s “Judgment of Paris” (1488) shows the fateful moment when Paris hands the golden apple “for the fairest” to white-robed Aphrodite. In this fascinating work, a multitude of common, ordinary objects are juxtaposed as a background to the immortal figures.
A famous fragment of verse from the poet Sappho, who was greatly admired throughout the ancient world, also states clearly that the most beautiful thing in the world is that which is closest to one’s heart:
Some say thronging cavalry, some say foot soldiers,
others call a fleet the most beautiful of sights
the dark earth offers, but I say
it’s whatever you love best.3
The Hebrew Conception of Beauty
Hundreds of years before the Greek philosophers of the classical period were meditating on beauty and the infinite the Hebrew poets were contemplating the same ideas. “O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness,” sang the psalmist. King David, the “sweet singer of Israel,” expressed his fervent longing for God in similar words: “One thing have I desired … to behold the beauty of the Lord, all the days of my life” (Psalms 96:9; 27:4). The Israelite ideal of beauty differed from the Greek in that it was not simply an abstraction, no matter how lofty and inspired, but focused upon a living, Divine Person.
Solomon, the son of David, was reputed to have gifts of mind and spirit that surpassed all came before him, having been granted by God “wisdom, understanding, and largeness of heart as the sand on the seashore.” He had a keen interest in and appreciation of the natural environment – “from the cedar in Lebanon to the hyssop that springs out from the wall” (1 Kings 4:29,33) – as well as the brilliance of judgment for which he became famed. He also had the gift of poetry, having written 1005 songs, and was credited with the authorship of an exquisite poem describing the passionate romance between a Shepherd-King and a Shulamite maiden. All the creative powers of his mind and the breadth of his genius must have been summoned toward the creation of this sublime work: the Song of Songs.
Within its small compass of eight chapters, the Song is replete with images that evoke all that is lovely in nature, everything capable of ravishing the senses. The gardens and palaces, fields and valleys where the king and his bride play out their romance seem an enchanted springtime realm, abounding with all manner of fruitful trees, including vines, figs, and an orchard of pomegranates, and watered with a myriad of fountains and streams. On every side there is a profusion of flowers and lilies, amongst which the songs of turtle doves can be heard, and the intoxicating fragrance of spices is wafted on the breeze. It is the perfect setting for two lovers who possess everything beautiful and graceful in the human form, and sweeps the reader into the deep heart communications that take place between them. But in this intensely imagined world, with its echoes of Eden, there are also elements that are disturbing and dangerous.
A Myriad of Interpretations
Over the past two thousand years, Jews and Christians have united in perceiving the Song, not as portraying a love between two merely human individuals, but rather as a poetic representation of the spiritual relationship between the Lord and His people. For Christians, beginning with Origen in the third century, it suggested the love between the church and God, while in medieval Europe more personal readings began to emerge, as Bernard of Clairvaux and others produced interpretations of the Song as a dialogue between the individual soul and Jesus. In the rabbinic understanding the Song represented the relationship between Israel and Yahweh, while another line of interpretation saw the Song as tracing the history of Israel, with the Beloved as the longed-for Messiah, who would bring salvation to God’s people. Thus, Rashi’s commentary on the final verse reads as follows:
Flee, my beloved from this exile and redeem us from among them. And liken yourself to a gazelle: to hasten the redemption and to cause your shekhinah to rest on the spice mountains. This is Mount Moriah and the Temple, may it be built speedily and in our days, Amen.4
Since the nineteenth century another reading has gained popularity, taking the Song as a collection of entirely human love poetry. Yet, in a telling comment, St. Bernard observes that the phrase “thou whom my soul lovest” (Song 1:7) demonstrates that the love between the couple is spiritual rather than earthly, indicating that the Song is not concerned primarily with a sexual and physical relationship but with a “spiritual-corporeal being together”5 of man and woman. This in turn is the mystery that foreshadows the union of Yahweh and Israel, which is so prominently portrayed throughout the scriptures as a marriage covenant, and finally fulfilled in the relationship between Christ and the church.
It is for this reason, then, that this is the Song of Songs. The name is a superlative in Hebrew and suggests that this composition is beyond measure the most beautiful poetry to be found in the scriptures, its very “holy of holies.”6 According to Spurgeon, the book stands “like the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and no one will ever be able to pluck its fruit and eat of it until he has been brought by Christ past the sword of the cherubim and led to rejoice in the love that has delivered him from death.”7
The Song is then supreme among the thousand and five songs that Solomon wrote, the unsurpassed composition to which the lover of God will turn again and again, “until the day break and the shadows flee away.” In this allegory Christ is portrayed as the King, as Solomon, the Prince of Peace, and the Beloved, the One whose name is as ointment poured forth, the literal meaning of “Christ.” It uses the language of physical beauty to express the mutual delight that Christ and the believer have one in the other, and aims to reveal the heavenly origin and significance of true love, drawing souls to the divine Bridegroom and causing them to yearn for His second coming in glory.
Nevertheless, adds Spurgeon, “It is a book of deep mystery, not to be understood except by the initiated.” Like the maiden herself, the book is “a spring shut up, a fountain sealed,” and I would suggest there are three great mysteries it presents to us.
First Mystery: How can two unequals become equal?
The first of these was explicated by nineteenth century philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, in his “Parable of the King and the Maiden,” a retelling of the old fable of King Cophetua. This was an African king who one day, while looking out a palace window, witnessed a young gray-clad beggar maiden, Penelophon. Smitten with love at first sight, Cophetua swept her up to become his queen and raised her to his royal estate. Kierkegaard gazed into “that little looking-glass from the fairy-tales,”8 and for him it raised a profound question that relates to the Song of Songs: How is it that two unequals can become equal?
It is made clear from the very outset of the Song that the two lovers do not share an equal status. In the midst of the depiction of idyllic pastoral beauty, a jarring note is struck when the maiden, speaking of herself, makes the confession:“I am black, but comely, O ye daughters of Jerusalem” (Song, 1:3). She is convinced that, in the eyes of the world and in her own eyes, her beauty has been stained and marred. There is the clear impression of her lowly circumstances, that she has been afflicted and impoverished, made to labor in the vineyards of others, and under the sun’s scorching rays she has burning instead of beauty. Yet the king, who appears to her as a shepherd and seems to embrace her low estate, speaks immediately to assure her. “Thou art all fair my love, there is no spot in thee” (Song 4:7) is the reply of the divine bridegroom.
In his parable, Kierkegaard imagines that Christ is a lofty and awe-inspiring king like Cophetua in the fable, while human beings are like the poor, dirty, but beautiful Penelophon who has, surprisingly, captured the king’s heart. His retelling begins: “Suppose there was a king who loved a humble maiden. The king was like no other king. Every statesman trembled before his power. No one dared breathe a word against him, for he had the strength to crush all opponents. And yet this mighty king was melted by love for a humble maiden.”9
Kierkegaard then asks whether this not create a huge dilemma for both parties. He portrays the king as truly grieved by the possibility that the gap between himself and the maiden was too great to be bridged even by love, and finally realizing there were only two options available to him, that would enable her to truly become intimate with him.
First, he could elevate the maiden to royal status, bring her to the palace, crown her head with jewels and clothe her in royal robes. She would surely not resist—no one dared resist him. But – and here a doubt crept into the king’s heart – would she love him? She would say she loved him, of course, but would she truly? Or would she live with him in fear, nursing a private grief for the life she had left behind? The king wanted her to forget his royal status, and that she was a humble maiden. He did not want a cringing subject but a lover, an equal. Would she be able to summon confidence enough never to remember what the king wished only to forget, that he was a king and she had been a humble maiden? “For this is the unfathomable nature of love, that it desires equality with the beloved, not in jest merely, but in earnest and truth.”
Convinced he could not elevate the maiden without crushing her freedom, the king resolved to descend, and appear to her in the likeness of the humblest. But the humblest is one who must serve others, and he will therefore appear in the form of a servant. The king clothed himself as a beggar and approached the maiden’s cottage incognito, with a worn cloak fluttering loosely about him. It was his true form and figure … it was no mere disguise, but a new identity he took on.
This then, asserts Kierkegaard, is the mystery and wonder of divine love. Just as the king risked all for the sake of an inexplicable love, so it was also with God when he chose to reveal himself: He had no choice but to become man’s equal and take on human flesh, in truth and in reality, though he could never undo his eternal divine nature. And this servant-form he took on was no mere outer garment, like the king’s beggar-cloak, which fluttered loosely about him and betrayed the king. Rather, in this lowly estate he must suffer all things, endure all things, and finally be forsaken in death … and the cause of all this suffering was love.10
This is the central truth of the Christian faith, according to which Christ made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:7-8), so that he might draw near to his human subjects and raise them to his own royal dignity.
“For love is exultant when it unites equals,” concluded Kierkegaard, “but it is triumphant when it makes that which was unequal equal in love.”
Second Mystery: Will the maiden return the King’s love?
In Kierkegaard’s parable, the story is unfinished. Now the king has gone to such great lengths, has sacrificed and suffered so much to establish equality, will the maiden return his love? Will her heart be captured by this altogether incomparable display of devotion? Yet we aren’t told how the maiden responded, and we don’t know if they lived happily ever after – which the philosopher surely intended. His point was that the king loved in this extreme fashion, even while not knowing if his love would be reciprocated.
The tale of King Cophetua provided inspiration to another 19th century figure: Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones, who created an intriguing painting based upon the story, which suggests something of the same mystery.
His 1884 painting King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid captures the moment when the lowly maiden has been brought into the king’s palace. Gazing at the picture, we seem to have stepped into a beautiful romantic dream. In the unusual vertical composition, the lovely young woman sits in the middle of the picture, as the central focus. She is dressed in a simple gray garment that leaves her shoulders and feet bare; her skin is pale and she has an ethereal quality. Above her two youths lean against a railing, reading what appears to be a musical score, while through the open door or window the sun is setting, so that a golden radiance spills into the richly furnished room.
The king himself is in the lower part of the picture, sitting on the steps below the maiden and gazing up at her, a visible reminder of the elevation in her social status. He is wearing ornate armor and a flowing, dark blue cape, and holds his crown as if he were doffing it in her presence. But the maiden does not look at him; she is gazing directly out of the painting at the viewer, and her mien appears sad and somber, as if she is unable to take in the sudden change in her circumstances. There is no expression of love for the king, nor of joy at leaving her life of poverty behind, and this adds a new layer of complexity to the work. Was it wise for the king to thrust her into this new life? Will she adjust in time and learn to love him? We are left with these questions, and a sense of wonder and enigma.11
Both the Parable and the painting provide a profound reminder of the condescension of the God-Man, who stooped to us from heaven, and came incognito, clothed in garments of flesh and blood, to win the love of his people, who was aware that this ultimate gesture might be refused or rejected, and yet made himself so vulnerable in his love.
Third Mystery: Why does the King love so greatly?
We return to the Song.
When the Shepherd-King came to ransom the Bride, she had lost the early privileges of her Father’s house, and her loveliness had been marred by labor and affliction. Yet in a rapturous burst of praise he enumerates all the exquisite attractions he found in her, in a song that describes seven distinct physical features, uniting perfection of number with perfection of beauty. Her eyes, hair, lips, teeth, temples, neck and breasts are compared by him in turn to different emblems from the world of nature: doves, a flock of goats, a flock of sheep, a thread of scarlet, a piece of pomegranate, the tower of David, and young roe twins (Song 4:1-5). Her beauty is made perfect through the comeliness that he puts upon her.
That leads to reflection on the deepest mystery of all: why does the King love so completely and perfectly the one who is so far beneath him? That is something for which we have no answer, and it is a question which can only provoke eternal wonder.
- Symposium 210a–211d
- Symposium 206e–207a
- Sappho, Fragment 16
- Rashi, Song of Songs 8:14, quoted in Kozodoy, M. in “Messianic Interpretation of the Song of Songs in Late-Medieval Iberia” in The Hebrew Bible in Fifteenth Century Spain, 2012, Brill, Leiden.
- Bernard, On the Song of Songs, Translated and Edited by A Religious of C.S.M.V. New York: Morehouse-Gorham Co., 1952, 235. The phrase “spiritual-corporeal” belongs to Barth from his Church Dogmatics. He shows how neither Genesis 2 nor the Song are concerned primarily with sexual relations and the begetting of children, but with the “being-for-one-another” of man and woman; just as the relationship between Christ and the church is inseparably spiritual and corporeal.
- Rabbi Akiva: “All of the writings in the Bible are holy and the Song of Songs is the holiest of holies.” Mishna, Tractate Yadayim 3:5.
- Spurgeon, C. quoted in Alastair Begg, CSB Spurgeon Study Bible, 2017, Holman Bible Publishers, Tennessee, p 874.
- From Solzhenitsyn’s Nobel acceptance speech: “Through art we are sometimes visited – dimly, briefly – by revelations such as cannot be produced by rational thinking. Like that little looking-glass from the fairy-tales: look into it and you will see – not yourself – but for one second, the Inaccessible, whither no man can ride ….”
- This and the following paraphrases are taken from Kierkegaard, Philosophical Fragments ch. 2.
- Kierkegaard adds: “When the seed of the oak is planted in earthen vessels, they break asunder; when new wine is poured in old leathern bottles, they burst; what must happen when the God implants himself in human weakness, unless man becomes a new vessel and a new creature! But this becoming, what labors will attend the change, how convulsed with birth-pangs! And how rapt in fear; for it is indeed less terrible to fall to the ground when the mountains tremble at the voice of the God, than to sit at table with him as an equal; and yet it is the God’s concern precisely to have it so.”
- Burne-Jones said of his pictures that they are “a beautiful romantic dream of something that never was, never will be – in a light better than any light that ever shone – in a land no one can define, or remember, only desire…”. When this picture was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1884 it was received with rapturous reviews. The Times thought that it was “not only the finest work that Mr Burne-Jones has ever painted, but one of the finest ever painted by an Englishman.”