Teaching the Perfections of God’s Beauty

In the midst of a psalm that emphasizes God’s judgment and his desire for genuine worship, Asaph sings this beautiful line—“Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth” (Ps 50:2). He imagines the glory of God shining forth into the world from Zion, the holy hill where God is worshiped. I am unsure whether Asaph intended the phrase “the perfection of beauty” to describe Zion or to describe God directly, but perhaps the issue is meaningless because, whatever beauty Zion possesses, it is obviously derived from God’s shining forth from it. In The Treasury of David, Spurgeon makes this point: “She [Zion] is made perfect in beauty by his indwelling.”

So, clearly God is the source of perfect beauty. Beauty is emotional, intoxicating, and exhilarating. Beauty is not something to be coldly studied. We must experience beauty. Whether it is the beauty of a breathtaking natural wonder or the beauty of your spouse, beauty is wasted if it is not enjoyed.

When I go to Greece in a couple of months, I will be teaching a course on the attributes of God. I think our traditional term “attributes” tends to be too scientific. In the past, when learning the attributes of God, I have approached them somewhat coldly.  I treated God’s attributes as specimens to be categorized, defined, and examined. Perhaps the older theological term, the perfections of God, or a term derived from this psalm, the beauties of God, would more accurately prepare us for the task. We study the perfection of God’s beauty in order to enjoy God, in order to marvel at him, in order to be speechless before him.

As I teach in January, I pray the God will shine forth from me in the perfection of his beauty. Will you pray with me? Will you pray that God will let us glimpse his glory as the Romanian-speaking leaders and I study God’s word in Athens?