We have a society that says we have truths but no truth.

We have beauties, but no beauty.

Purposes, but no purpose, which creates quite a bit of confusion when we come to this question of the nature of beauty.

Music question of the nature of beauty.

What is beauty? Can we know if something is beautiful? Can someone objectively know if something is a beautiful piece of music or a beautiful painting? To put it another way, today on renewing your mind, R. C. Spro

Will answer the question, is beauty in the eye of the beholder? We live in a subjective age,

truth and goodness being redefined or left up to the individual, and the same is true

for beauty. Today's message is from Dr. Sproul's series titled

Rediscovering the Beauty of the Arts. And today is also the final day to request lifetime

streaming access to this nine-part series for your donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org.

So are there principles, normative standards that can help a Christian recognize a beautiful

painting or sculpture, a beautiful piece of literature or dance?

Well, here's Dr. Sprold to answer.

We continue now with our study of the Christian and the arts.

We're going to turn our attention today to the age-old debate over the nature of aesthetics,

which is this, is beauty something that is discerned purely subjectively, or are there, in fact, external objective standards or criteria by which something may be judged to be beautiful.

Now, we are living in a period in Western history where the dominant motif tends to be

in favor of subjectivism. You've heard the cliche so often that makes it a cliche, that beauty is in the

eye of the beholder. And more and more, we have people arguing that there are no ultimate standards

for beauty. But this is not something that should surprise us, because at the

same time, in contemporary culture and in contemporary philosophy, we've seen a denial of objectivity

across the boards. We've seen a denial of objective truth, of objective goodness, and philosophies that have

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