A Review of Brian Zahnd’s
Beauty Will Save the World
Review written by Dan McDonald
Brian Zahnd’s book Beauty will Save the World doesn’t need
my endorsement as it comes with the endorsements of Eugene Peterson and
Miroslav Volf, and I am sure countless others, but I will add my whisper to
these endorsements.
Zahnd believes Fyodor Dostoyevsky
understood something vital when he expressed through his character Prince
Myushkin in The Idiot: “Beauty will
save the world”. [i]
He borrowed the quote and made it the title of Beauty Will Save the World. In seeing the importance of beauty he
joins the Greek philosophers and centuries of the Christian tradition in seeing
beauty as one of the three primary values along with truth and goodness. But
Brian sees beauty as being lesser valued by moderns, especially by modern
American Evangelicals, of which he is one.
We are given a glimpse into the
themes he expresses in the book in the epigraph of the book. In the unnumbered
section of the book preceding the table of contents there appears three quotes
that seem to me to sum up well the themes of the book. The first comes from Psalm 50:2 which says in
the English Standard Version, “Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God
shines forth.” This is the particular beauty Brian Zahnd wants us to see. God shines forth out of Zion. How does he do
that? As a believing Christian Zahnd sees the beauty of God shining forth in
the weakness of human flesh, in the person of Jesus Christ, in the Gospel, in
the cross, in the heavenly kingdom that is ushered in through the lives of those who
follow Christ. This is the beauty Brian wishes for us to see.
The second quote comes from C.S.
Lewis in his work The Weight of Glory.
Lewis writes: “We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows even that
is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words –
to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into
ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it”. [ii] This
is the uniqueness of the beauty of Christ. It is a beauty which not only do we
behold but it is a beauty that we are joined to in faith through baptism. We
participate in the beauty of Christ come forth from Zion and this beauty ought
to transform us, and not only in our individual lives but especially in the
panoramic expression of Christ’s beauty among his people through the Living
Church.
The third quote from Zahnd’s
epigraph comes from Miguel de Cervantes classic work Don Quixote. This quote says: “It is the prerogative and charm of
beauty to win hearts”. [iii]
Beauty has the capacity to enthrall,
astonish, amaze, and invite us to give our attention to that which is
beautiful. Brian sees it is a deficiency within Evangelicalism that beauty is
underrated within many Evangelical expressions of Christ and the Gospel.
Evangelicalism argues for the truth, speaks to our need to incorporate goodness
in the form of righteousness in our lives but finds beauty as something lacking
practicality. Yet it is beauty that charms and invites and secures attention
where facts and truth and righteousness often seem to separate the Evangelical
from the world around them. Beauty is the third primary value and it is that
value which moves men and women to come closer for a second look when truth and
righteousness are ignored.
Eugene Peterson describes Zahnd’s
work as presenting a prophetic message. This is the most true when Brian Zahnd
warns us of how our tendency to mingle together allegiance to Christ and his
kingdom with patriotism to our nation has in his view tended to replace the
unique beauty of Christ and his kingdom with the pragmatism of a nation state
and global superpower. He explains that from the beginning the world order has
been built on the strength of power to coerce others. While the goals are often
good the means are mixed. He describes this process from two builders of
ancient cities. The biblical builder of a city was Cain who slew Abel his
brother and built a city east of Eden. There was also a later non-Biblical
figure who built a city. Romulus killed his brother Remus and then built a city
named Rome after himself. This is how the world’s cities and nations were built
in the chaos of a fallen world. A winner gains power over a loser and imposes
his will; a will he generally imagines is good. But such a system must be
practical over being beautiful. We Americans like to imagine we are different
but manifest destiny was accomplished over the bodies of those who stood in the
way of our dream and resorted to enslavement of others and resorted to Civil
War to maintain the dream. Innocence and beauty are lost in the building of
superpowers.
If we forget how different the
stories of America and of Christ’s kingdom are, we will choose pragmatism over
beauty as the characteristic by which the kingdom of God ought to be built. But
Christ built his kingdom on the beauty of God becoming human in weakness and
becoming weak to the point of death and by accepting death on a Roman torture
stake where one’s humanity was made to be viewed as shameful. But the Gospel
has a twist of irony that is wonderfully beautiful. The religious leaders who
opposed Christ joined the Roman rulers who opposed any king capable of vying
with Caesar’s power and together they imagined they would destroy Christ and
make him an object of shame. But instead
in the weakness of human flesh, in the weakness of death, in the shame of dying
as sinner and false king, our Savior was vindicated in the resurrection and
overthrew all the powers and principalities of this world. Instead of causing
Christ to be shamed and forgotten, Christ showed that the power and wisdom of
the rulers of this world were empty when compared to the foolishness, weakness,
and shame of Christ on the cross.
The shape of beauty for the Christian world, for the
kingdom to come, and which has been introduced in the life of every believer is
the cross. Beauty for the Christian is the cruciform. This is something unique
which no earthly kingdom can duplicate. The beauty of Christ come in weakness,
come to suffer on the cross is the beauty of weakness overcoming power, of
foolishness outsmarting wisdom, of love conquering empire builders.
Beauty will Save the
World gives us much to think about.
The final chapter shows us how to look at the Sermon on the Mount in a way many
of us have never thought about it. It is a whole sermon, its message is holistic,
and it is an invitation to humanity, not to an elite spiritual portion of
humanity but to our basic humanity. Christ in the beatitudes invites the weak;
the poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who are meek, those who hunger and
thirst for that righteousness they lack, those who want to see God, those who
are tired of war and battling for supremacy.
Jesus invites them to come to him because he is meek and will give them
rest. Jesus speaks of the options as we hear him of going on a road that leads
to destruction or taking a path that leads to life, of building a life on a
house that will destroyed by the trials of life, or taking shelter in a house
built on a rock that will withstand all things. This is a beautiful way of
seeing the Sermon on the Mount. If it had been proclaimed to invite us to
become the spiritually elite the Pharisees would have embraced it. But it was
proclaimed to offer the weak and the spiritual outcasts to see that now they
are invited to follow Christ, to obtain blessing, to walk a way that leads to
life, and to find a secure house, shelter in the storm built on a firm foundation.
This is the sort of proclamation of Christ which uses beauty to show forth an
invitation for every one of us whether from the outside of the Christian faith
or as imperfect ones within the Christian fold to find their way for such
beauty will save the world.
I must admit that I have barely touched on the numerous
implications of the beauty of Christ and his kingdom expressed in Brian Zahnd’s
book. But if you haven’t read it and have found this much worthy of your
consideration, perhaps you should go ahead and read all of Beauty will Save the World by Brian Zahnd. I highly recommend it.
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