Biblical Vision of Beauty
Decani horos, sacred dance of light during the polyeleon psalm.
Paul Evdokimov, the great poet of Orthodoxy, in his Art of the Icon: A Theology of Beauty approaches the subject of Divine Beauty in the following way:
(...) As the fathers note, the first day of creation is not proti but mia, that is, it is not first but rather one, unique, not one of the series. It is the alpha which already carries within itself and calls forth its omega, the eighth day of the final harmony, the pleroma.
This first day is the joyous hymn of the Song of Songs sung by God Himself, the flashing eruption of “Let there be Light”. This Light is not an optical phenomenon; such light will appear only on the fourth day with the creation of the astronomical sun. The primal Light of “in the beginning,” according to the absolute meaning in principio, is the most shattering revelation of the face of God. For the world just beginning its development, “Let there be Light” means “Let the revelation be” and “Let the One Who reveals, let the Holy Spirit come!” The Father pronounces His Word, and the Spirit shows Him forth; the Spirit is the Light of the Word. This Light reveals God as the absolute Thou and immediately calls forth the one who listens to Him and contemplates Him: a second light having arisen from the Light, like its alter ego and mirror in the light-revelation-communion.
Even after the Fall “a light... shines in the dark.” The light does not shine just to illuminate but to transform the night into the day without end: “...your light will rise in the darkness, and your shadows will become like noon” (Is 58:10). “The lamp of the body is the eye. It follows that if your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light” (Mt 6:22). The Hesychastic tradition teaches the method of silent meditation and the science of the light: “The perfect ones study the divine not only by the word (the Word) but also by the light of the word (the Holy Spirit), mysteriously...”
At the ultimate heights of holiness, the human person “becomes in a certain sense light” (Gregory Palamas, Homilies on the Presentation of the Holy Virgin in the Temple). Seraphim of Sarov was thus able to clothe himself in the sun and shine. Being himself called “a striking likeness,” St. Seraphim was the living icon of the God of Light. St. Gregory of Nyssa described the elevation of the soul of him who hears in the following way: “You have become beautiful by coming close to my Light.” Man is drawn upward; we might even say “falls up” and attains the level of divine beauty. To be in the Light is to be in an illuminating communion which reveals the icons of persons and things. This communion allows us to grasp their logoi as contained in divine thought and thus initiates these persons and things into their perfect wholeness: in other words, persons and things are initiated into the beauty that God willed for them.
The Book of Revelation is the end, but it is also the beginning. The Light of the first day is the object of the vision and it is also the organ of vision. Just like the first moment of creation, “the future age is but one single day, the Great Day,” in the words of St. Gregory of Nyssa. The Book of Revelation says that “it will never be night again, and they will not need lamplight or sunlight because the Lord God will be shining on them” (Rv 22:5).
“I am the alpha and the omega... the beginning and the end.” The circle of the Revelation hinges both on the differentiation and on the perfect identity of all its elements. The first word of the Bible “Let there be light” is also the last word: “Let there be beauty.” Man's only choice is to become a complete and living doxology: “Glory to You Who has shown us the Light.” “One thing I ask of the Lord, the one thing I seek is to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life and to contemplate the Beauty of the Lord.” As the Spirit of Beauty, the Spirit's proper work is a “poetry without contemplation of the divine Beauty which extends over all eternity...”