A Beauty That Beckons to Us

“Where is the beauty in my professional life?” seems a precious and inauthentic question. We are skeptical of beauty, as it is often a tool for marketers and hucksters to divert attention from a lack of substance and taste. Moreover, we are aware that beauty is indifferent to morality. So beauty might seem an offbeat topic for discussion among legal theorists and practitioners. This should concern Christians, since one of the most distinctively Christian claims is that there is beauty to Christ, and therefore, whatever beauty means in this sense, it is a goal of Christian life. If we are cynical about this claim, then we are skeptical about the very core of Christian belief and practice. For Christians, to speak of the beauty of Christ is to make reference to something more than a psychological state. Beauty in the divine dimension crosses boundaries and will not be constrained by concepts. It cannot be reduced or entirely grasped by the mind. Beauty speaks with authority. It demands attention and a response to it. Finally, persons are beautiful. The dignity of the person is tied to our ability to see the true beauty of the person. This is an essential claim: the image of God (imago Dei) is experienced as beauty — as an unfathomable reality that exceeds comprehension. Modern thought that seeks to reduce the person to some definable essence does not escape the ontology of violence. Where then might one look for this sort of beauty in the day-to-day life of the lawyer?