Is something vital missing from our church witness? This artist thinks so. When I wanted to understand better why I was put on this earth as an artist, I went where not many would think to go. I went to Bible school. More specifically, I acquired a master’s degree in biblical studies from Reformed Theological Seminary in New York City.
As it turned out, seminary did not give me the answers I was hoping for. But one day in class, I gained a helpful lead that would guide my search. The philosophical apologist Dr. James Anderson had been training us in the Van Tillian approach to apologetics known as presuppositionalism. The method involves a series of conversational questions designed to uncover the average person’s “presupposed” criteria about what is necessary for life to make sense, revealing the Christian God as an essential foundation. Dr. Anderson’s demonstration, as best I can reiterate it, is as follows:
We regularly judge things we hear or read as true or untrue, evaluating them by their logic. If it makes sense to us—that is, if we can follow the logical train of thought, we may express our approval by a nod of the head or say something like “that’s right” or “absolutely.” This phenomenon is regular and usually unconscious. It cannot be helped.
Does not our expectation that they will make sense to us suggest we share a common understanding of what is true? Does not our approval presume a kind of rule set by which we hold accountable not only ourselves but other people as well? If such a rule set were to exist, would it not have to stand above us? Would it not have to transcend people to be authoritative?
If this much is true, that our search for logic assumes the world has logic, would not that transcendent logic have to come from a transcendent mind? And for that mind to be truly transcendent, would it not have to stand above all time, space, cultures, eras, and ages?
Who could that judge be? Moreover, how would we as finite beings even begin to access such overarching knowledge? The judge would need to be both intelligent and immanent, both powerful and personal. Also, the authority would need to be loving enough to give knowledge. Given all these foundational criteria for rationality to make sense, the logical fulfillment of those criteria would be the Christian God, who is powerful, personal, and—because He is triune—also loving.
The class found his demonstration compelling. And what’s more, once Dr. Anderson successfully landed the rational argument, appealing to our right and wrong thinking, he simply swapped rationality for morality and made a nearly identical case for God using our right and wrong actions. Our wills, as it turns out, functioned just like our minds do. Our twin desires for truth and goodness run like parallel rivers, both finding their satisfaction in the Christian God.
And then it hit me. Could one make the same argument from the desire for beauty?
Presuppositionalism is also known as “TAG,” or the “transcendental argument for God.” While the argument can take two different starting points, either from truth or from goodness, it is really a single argument.
The name TAG alone reminded me of the transcendentals, also known as the true, the good, and the beautiful.
The transcendentals is a concept endorsed by countless thinkers over the centuries. Everyone from Aristotle to Aquinas, from Plato to Augustine, from 19th-century thinkers like psychologist Henry Rutgers Marshall to even modern writers like Karen Swallow Prior, subscribes to the idea that for a society to run well, it needs three things: the true (or logos), the good (or ethos), and the beautiful (or pathos).
I decided to lay out the case for myself. Allow me to demonstrate it now:
Much like rational judgment or moral judgment, humans exercise aesthetic judgment every day. When something pleases us aesthetically, we call it beautiful. We might say a house is beautiful, or our co-worker’s kids are beautiful, or the view from our hotel room is beautiful. Even an explanation—the writer of this article wishes you to know—can be beautiful. We might tell a stranger their outfit looks nice, get a friend’s opinion on whether a photo looks good, or celebrate a killer dance break. The best of them we evangelize about, telling the world, “Check this out! You’ve got to see this!” By endorsing a particular experience, we tacitly expect another to have the same experience that we did.
And we do not just exercise aesthetic judgment with things we find well-made. When people make bad artistic choices, it bothers or even aggravates us. We might complain that a bad movie was a waste of time, that a restaurant’s decor was all over the place, or determine that a stranger’s hairstyle makes no sense. We feel compelled to share these feelings too, looking to a friend or neighbor to affirm our assessment.
All these evaluations assume a context in which we share some common sense of what is beautiful and what is not. We assume a standard exists that most people know, so much so that we can hold them accountable to it, even if we don’t know them personally. There must be some relationship between what gives our senses pleasure and the objective world before us. When something is so beautiful that it makes our heart swell and the hairs on our arms stand on end, it does not simply feel good. It feels right.
Then again, a prescriptive approach to beauty can have damaging effects. For example, the clothing brand Abercrombie & Fitch, which enjoyed massive success in the late 90’s and early 00’s, was later sued in a class-action lawsuit for racially discriminatory hiring practices in its stores and ad campaigns, impacting a diverse generation of young consumers and their self-images with its branding. When the public relies on a single creative eye to determine beauty, the consequences are often traumatic.
Therefore, for a real sense of beauty to escape the clutches of a powerful few, it would need to derive from a transcendent artistic eye; one that didn’t bias any one race, gender, class, or size, because it belonged to none of them. That force would also need to be personal. Humans would need to be in a relationship with that standard to be able to know it. The most likely candidate for this position would be the Christian God. After all, who is less partial than the creator of all things? Who is more suited to attribute value to everything than a God who loves the world? Who is more welcoming of diversity than the Triune God who is himself endlessly diverse?
The transcendentals of truth, goodness, and beauty are called the essential properties of being. Marshall collectively calls them “the real.” They are cosmic values—they transcend time, space, culture, and age. Truth gives us rationality and logic; Goodness gives us morality and ethics; and Beauty gives us spirituality and aesthetics. Each transcendental is individually important. Each one brings something unique to life that the others cannot offer. At the same time, they are deeply interconnected; what is true is often good, what is good is often beautiful, and what is beautiful is often true. One can say that the three are most themselves when they coexist. These three are essentially trinitarian.
Why these three? Why not another three? Why not more than three? The reason is they correlate directly with the three aspects of the whole person: the mind (Truth), the body (Goodness), and the spirit (Beauty). That means the way into the reality of the human condition is threefold.
Think about this for a moment. It is quite possible to be treated as a mind only and have your body neglected, such as being overworked; that is truth without goodness. It is quite possible to be so physically protected that one is never allowed any fun at all, such as with the sheltered child; that is goodness without beauty. It is quite possible that a person can become so in love with pleasure that they end up ruining their lives, such as with the addict; that is beauty without truth. But when a person has their mind fed, their body cared for, and their spirit lifted, we now have a thriving person.
From there, it is simply a matter of multiplication. Feed the minds of the people, care for their bodies, and lift their spirits, and we find a thriving society. This is why societies establish institutions dedicated to the growth and protection of these values. Schools exist to educate us on how to think well (Truth). The legal system exists to ensure we live peacefully with one another (Goodness). The arts exist to awaken us to what is most pleasing and valuable in life (Beauty). The more that society invests in these institutions, the more we invest in ourselves.
In the 1960s, Japanese-American architect Minoru Yamasaki revitalized American architecture by introducing elements like plazas, greenery, seating areas, and reflecting pools. The dominant Modernism of the time had reduced buildings to sterile boxes of glass and steel, which, although they functioned efficiently, lacked warmth and humanity. Yamasaki reinvigorated the minds and bodies of the public with his design because he incorporated spiritual elements he found abroad, such as the arches of Italian cathedrals, the ponds of Japanese gardens, and textured screens from Islamic mosques. American culture enjoyed a renewed sense of balance because it had invested in beauty.
How are we investing in Beauty as we begin 2026? How can it be that an artist such as me can finish his degree in acting, spend ten years working professionally in the arts, and still have neither a theological nor philosophical answer for what the arts are for? Most artists today share my ignorance, whether big-name actors, the artists filling our church pews, or the ones leading our church worship. If an artist were to raise the question, “What is Beauty?” more likely than not, the question would be waved away as either unanswerable or naive.
It goes without saying that Truth and Goodness are of vital importance to public health and safety. Despite postmodernism’s efforts to undermine them, we still bristle at fake news and are quick to call out acts of harm. But Beauty is left out of the equation. We still find value in beautiful things, of course. Nobody thinks that beauty in general is a bad thing. Yet it is no longer a public value. Instead, it is a personal hobby. Society, we seem to think, can run just fine without it.
But can it? If the old philosophers and theologians are right, neglecting the arts is hardly harmless. We fail to treat the whole self. We fail to nurture a crucial side of ourselves that cannot be helped by bare rationality or morality: the spiritual side. The problem with the question “What is Beauty?” is not that it poses an unresolved question. All the transcendentals are unresolvable questions we will ask until the end of time. We should be more concerned with the fact that “What is Beauty?” poses an unasked question.
What is Beauty? What is the purpose of the arts? What do artists actually do for society aside from provide the occasional distraction?
Broadway playwright and self-professed ex-vangelical Lucas Hnath said, “The church is a place where the invisible can become visible, if even for just a moment. I believe the theater can be that too.” Hnath recognizes that the proper posture of a theater audience resembles that of a congregation in a church service. Men and women should prepare their hearts and minds to encounter something best viewed when we look together. Before Christian readers balk at the close comparison, as I once did, let me add these words from Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper:
Is it fair to concede that, threatened with atrophy by materialism and rationalism, the human heart naturally seeks an antidote against the withering process in its artistic instinct. Unchecked, the dominating influences of money and barren intellectualism would reduce the life of the emotions to freezing point.
Notice that Kuyper separates both materialism, the belief that we are merely bodies, and rationalism, the belief in the supremacy of the mind, from the health of the heart and emotions. According to Kuyper, truth and goodness alone cannot save the heart from atrophy. In fact, they threaten to destroy it. The natural antidote is beauty, and the heart seeks out beauty in the arts. The arts liberate the emotions from their freezing point and allow them to flame once again.
The church falls short of her witness by failing to disciple the artists in her midst. As French playwright Jean Anouilh once said, “the object of art is to give life shape.” It is a matter of discernment. We need truth because it is not enough to have thoughts; we need the difference between good thoughts and bad thoughts. We need rationality to shape how we think. The same goes for our actions and behaviors; we need morality to shape how we act. It follows then that we should also have the same for our emotions. It is not enough to feel; we need to be able to discern the right way to feel about something and the wrong way to feel about it. This is most effectively and powerfully done through story.
A commonly held belief among American church members is that the arts, being primarily concerned with feeling, inevitably lead people away from God. Pastors in the Reformed tradition, especially, but also mainline and evangelical pastors too, often believe that if their members know what is true and do what is good, their hearts will be transformed. While it sometimes happens this way, it is an indirect and unreliable pathway to heart transformation.
A large portion of the Protestant church’s suspicion of the arts may be traced to the Protestant Reformation. For all the good that Calvin and the other reformers did for church worship, it forked the stream of tradition to go down a path that increasingly associated beauty with idol worship. The statues were destroyed. The stained-glass windows were shattered. Church buildings prohibited sensuality. A right, at least potentially, response to worship, but a wrong response to culture. In doing so, the Reformation threw the baby out with the bathwater—images in worship were not the problem, but images at all. Artistic pleasures were now base inventions of the deceiver rather than splendorous gifts from the heavens.
If the whole concept of the church were to start today, would the founders even consider the arts as part of the program? Would a boardroom full of executives, strategists, and shareholders even entertain the thought of singing together? And yet, church leadership in the Modern West rarely includes artists. “Better is one day in your courts,” the psalmist says, “than thousands elsewhere” (Psalm 84:10). But today we prefer our houses of worship to resemble warehouses.
If listening to one’s feelings inevitably leads one away from God, it is only because the church is mute on the matter. As Christendom in the West increasingly becomes a thing of the past, the church must reevaluate the way she engages with the culture. Beauty must be restored to its proper place on equal footing with Truth and Goodness. The ones leading that restoration can and must be the church. There is no better time than now, when quality recording studios and regional theaters are shuttering all over the country, when audiences are being force-fed cheap, fast art, when AI slop further confuses and erodes aesthetic judgment, and when the inner life of the emotions is dominated by rage and horror. Our hearts are atrophying.
Who will lead our hearts to the real? Imagine what the church’s witness would look like if she believed in the artist’s instinct to create for something bigger than maximum shareholder profit when no one else did. What if the church championed the sublime, not despite the True and the Good, but alongside them? What if the church rediscovered her pre-Enlightenment heritage, lifting the veil of this closed universe with the power of imagination? Artists are agents of Beauty, uniquely gifted to provide a means of human flourishing that only they can provide. They intuitively see themselves as called to a higher purpose. The church can, and should, get behind that.