Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty

British Romantic poet John Keats had his epitaph engraved with the following lines from his poem Ode on a Grecian Urn:

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Keats’ entire body of work has been described by some as “a quest for transcendent truth; for him, this truth could be expressed only in terms of an intense, imaginative engagement with sensuous beauty.” Beauty and truth, in Keats’ eyes, were inextricably linked.

Despite rejecting Christianity, Keats’ idea about beauty and truth being tied together is one that Scripture affirms. In his letter to the Philippian church, Paul wrote the following as a closing note:

"Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things."

While not exactly equating beauty and truth like Keats did or even directly mentioning beauty, Paul does list truth alongside attributes of purity, loveliness, and excellence, among others. In this encouragement to the congregation in the early church, Paul affirms the connection between truth and beauty: those things that line up with a right view of the world; of shalom -- that sense of peace that comes with rightness.

Paul even lists truth first, indicating that nothing can be beautiful without first being true. After all, if beauty is measured by the amount of “rightness” it conveys, how could “false beauty” ever exist except in superficial contexts?

In this view of beauty as all that is right in the world, the best example of beauty is redemption; a process of beautification, of going from wrongness and ugliness to being made right and whole. That would make the Cross, then, the single most beautiful moment in history, eclipsing all others in the blinding light of radiant Truth and Beauty becoming one and the same; ultimate redemption of the likes the world has never experienced before or since.

Keats, in his final days, reportedly experienced a great amount of dissonance because of his lack of faith. His epitaph encapsulates the striving of all souls in this world, to see and experience real, genuine Beauty and Truth. The Christian, through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, has uninhibited and free access to this Beauty, and as Paul reminds us even today, it should be the constant meditation of our hearts and minds.

Ode on a Grecian Urn, 1819, John Keats

https://crossref-it.info/textguide/john-keats-selected-poems/40/2935

Phillipians 4:8, NIV