The Ethics of Beauty is a multidisciplinary work. Interestingly, the book does not begin with an analysis of beauty per se. [1] Instead, it starts by examining how the ethics of beauty can clarify certain occurrences in post-traumatic stress situations, with particular emphasis on the psychological damage caused by war. The author, now a professor of ethics, also assisted soldiers in recovering from war trauma.

In a way, this blog serves as a bridge to the next week, which will discuss the application of the ethics of beauty to our constitutional system and its moral underpinnings. This week, however, I want to focus on the specifics of why beauty and the ethics of beauty are relevant for those recovering from PTSD. It begins with a difference in how Orthodoxy and Western theology traditionally view war. In the West, we’ve developed a doctrine of “just war.” This doctrine outlines when a government may resort to war (Jus ad Bellum) and how war must be conducted (Jus in Bello).

The Least Unjust War

Under just war theory, for a war to be just, there must be a just cause for war and just intentions in commencing hostilities. A legitimate authority must be involved. The extent of the war must be proportional to its reasons, and resorting to war should be the final option in a series of steps to prevent conflict. Conducting a war justly requires discrimination on the part of combatants, avoiding injury to non-combatants, and proportionality, using force proportional to the strategic benefits sought.

In the East, they’ve adopted a slightly different approach. In Eastern Orthodoxy, there has been a tendency to start with the belief that war is inherently evil. In other words, the destructiveness of war, no matter how necessary it may be, is itself evil. Consequently, those who participate in war are engaging in something fundamentally evil. Since it is inherently evil, the more violent the conflict and the more deeply involved the actor becomes, the more likely it is that significant spiritual and psychological damage will occur to the warrior. War is inevitably damaging to the human soul. [2] One might say that, as opposed to a just war, there’s a notion of the least unjust war in the East. Both recognize that war is a feature of human history.

The Ugliness of War

If war is somehow inherently ugly, and if the fact that war is being fought means that the harmony intended for creation is being broken, then recovering from psychological injury due to war involves more than just learning to cope with prior trauma. As opposed to developing coping mechanisms, the soldier needs to be healed of the spiritual injury done to them by the mere fact that they were required to engage in an inherently destructive activity. This means, among other things, that the person involved must accept their responsibility for the damage done to them by the battle. Trauma is connected to the human feeling that a moral order has been violated. [3]

In connection with my years as a pastor, I’ve had to counsel soldiers suffering from PTSD more than once. In many cases, they felt guilty about things they had done due to combat. On more than one occasion, I’ve had the opportunity to talk with soldiers who were responsible for firing munitions at an enemy facility in which civilians happened to be present.

Let’s take a bridge, for example. When the weapon was fired, no one was on the bridge. But a group of children arrived on the bridge before the munition hit. They were all killed. A soldier may feel that they should not have fired under such circumstances. A special forces officer may be ordered to enter a village and remove a perceived enemy, only to learn later that the person killed was not an enemy combatant. We might call this combat guilt. Whether they were morally culpable or not, the fact is, they killed someone, and they feel some degree of guilt.

There were also circumstances in which soldiers may feel guilty for things beyond their control. For example, a soldier ordered to report to headquarters, whose entire combat unit is killed while he is absent, is not responsible for the deaths of his friends. He received a legitimate order that had to be obeyed. On the other hand, it’s been my experience that soldiers feel guilt for not having been with their unit in such a situation, even though it is almost certain that they would have died had they been present; we might call this false survivor’s guilt.

Shame and Guilt

Psychologists sometimes distinguish between shame and guilt. Shame is a sense of unworthiness; it makes a person feel they lack integrity, are unattractive, and so on. They feel that as a person, they are flawed and inadequate. Conversely, guilt is the sense of responsibility for a specific action or inaction that a person perceives as sinful or wrong. Shame attaches to the person who feels shame. Guilt attaches to the action the person is guilty of taking or not taking.

In all cases, there can be appropriate and inappropriate feelings of shame and guilt. I may feel ashamed of a particular aspect of my personality, but that’s really nothing to be ashamed of. I might feel guilty for something I’ve done, even when I bear no real responsibility. Modern psychology, however, doesn’t necessarily clarify things by suggesting that people shouldn’t feel shame or guilt. The reality is that they do.

The feeling of shame or guilt itself indicates that a person feels somehow responsible for their circumstances. Telling them they are not accountable or helping them see that they are part of a larger machine does not alleviate the guilt. This is where Grace comes into play. God can remove guilt through the operation of Grace, and that removal can restore a portion of the lost harmony. The mediated forgiveness of Christ is the best way to heal the trauma war inflicts. [4]

To expand on a prior example, soldiers who survive combat in which their closest comrades are killed often feel what is called “survivor’s guilt or shame.” In some cases, a person may have nothing to feel guilty about. On the other hand, if one deserted a unit and was the cause of the deaths, then perhaps that person does have something to feel guilty about. If one was ordered to a different location and thus escaped the incident, one has nothing to be ashamed of. A character flaw did not cause the deaths of comrades. Conversely, if I knew of the danger and took action to ensure that I was exempt from that danger, then perhaps I should feel shame.

Here is a point that is sometimes overlooked in contemporary psychology: In any of the four cases, the harmony and beauty God desires for the human personality have been defaced. The person involved feels shame and/or guilt. Telling them they should not feel this shame or guilt does not solve the problem. In some cases, they are troubled by the sense that they might have done something to save their comrades. The goal of an “ethics of beauty” or a “psychology of beauty” is to restore the integrity of the individual. However, what needs to be done to restore that integrity may differ from case to case.

The Beauty of Christ and Our Beauty

At this point, it’s helpful to introduce a common motif in The Ethics of Beauty: the sheer beauty of Christ, the Cross, and the Resurrection. For Christians, Christ embodies the divinely intended beauty of the human person. The Cross and Resurrection symbolize God’s decisive action to undo the effects of evil and distortion, restoring humanity to its originally intended state. When considering the disciples recognizing the resurrected Christ, one must realize their initial thought was probably not, “It’s true!” but something like, “Oh my gosh.” Witnessing the resurrected Christ, a complete restoration of his disfigured body, must have filled them with awe—the awe one feels when experiencing a powerful, transcendent beauty.

This notion that we are restoring the beauty intended by God in the human person has profound consequences. Each person with PTSD, and indeed every victim of any sin or distortion, is meant to be a subject of Christ’s redeeming power. The primary goal of the doctor, psychologist, or pastor is to restore the image of God within the person before them. This restoration is not primarily an act of “getting them to see the truth,” but rather of resurrection, by the power of the Holy Spirit, an inherently beautiful person.

True and False Liturgy

When attending an Orthodox liturgy, I’m always struck by the sanctuary’s beauty, the chanting, the physical participation of the congregation, and the sacraments. It is as if the liturgy is an attempt once a week to restore the initial harmony of the human soul, not so much by what it says, but what it says primarily comes from scripture, but through the entire experience of being drawn into the mystery of Christ.

As Pattisas sees war as the opposite of the orthodox liturgy. If the orthodox liturgy is all about restoring the harmony of the human soul, war is all about destroying any form of harmony, physical, mental, moral, or spiritual. In a sense, it’s “an anti-liturgy.” To use the thoughts of C.S. Lewis and Walter Wink, if the Christian story is the “true myth” of God’s love for the world and the human race and desire for its restoration, then the “myth of redemptive violence” that war creates is a “false myth,” “anti-myth” in which human beings can find wholeness in the destruction of the wholeness of others. [5]

Lewis puts it this way in his letter:

Now the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with this tremendous difference that it really happened: and one must be content to accept it in the same way, remembering that it is God’s myth where the others are men’s myths: i.e. the Pagan stories are God expressing Himself through the minds of poets, using such images as He found there, while Christianity is God expressing Himself through what we call ‘real things’. Therefore, it is true, not in the sense of being a ‘description’ of God (that no finite mind could take in) but in the sense of being how God chooses to (or can) appear to our faculties. The ‘doctrines’ we get out of the true myth are of course less true: they are the translations into our concepts and ideas of that which God has already expressed in a language more adequate, namely the actual incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection. [6]

I think it’s interesting to note that for Lewis, the literary images contained in the biblical narrative (the thing of beauty) come before church doctrine and are, in some sense, more important than church doctrine. In other words, for Lewis, Beauty comes before Truth. [7]

Conclusion

The discussion of trauma and PTSD in the ethics of beauty has an application far beyond victims of war. To some degree or another, all trauma of whatever type causes a wounding and defacing of the human soul. Therefore, all counseling, Christian or otherwise, must be concerned with the restoration of the beauty of that soul.[8] That which is true of soldiers is also true of neglected children, of those who have committed crimes, for those who have been victims of crimes, and every other victim of trauma.

Copyright 2025, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Tomothy Pattisis, The Ethics of Beauty (Maryville, MO: St. Nicholas Press, 2020).

[2] Id, 3.

[3] Id, 16.

[4] Id, at v.

[5] C. S. Lewis, Letter to Arthur Greeves (1931) and Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992).

[6] Id.

[7] This very weekend, I talked to an Orthodox priest about the fact that Lewis is constantly found in Orthodox bookstores and that Orthodox children are encouraged to read him. His approach is profoundly Orthodox and “Merely Christian.”.

[8] Id, 19-20.