Art is "for us all; to refine us, to ennoble us, to raise us from the baser pleasures, to fill our eyes with beauty and our hearts with gladness, to show us that we are not beasts but the King's children, and that Beauty is His messenger."
The Artist Teaches Through His Art
Art, Artists, and a Theology of Beauty, Part II
A beautiful spirit may shine even through a form that has been weakened. Drawing on both old and new testaments the early church fathers developed the doctrine of "kenosis" from a Greek word meaning emptiness. In the context of a theology of beauty kenosis refers to a humiliation of form, an emptying of one's self, so that the divine beauty shines more brightly. In the Old Testament this theme is taken up in the suffering servant.
