Art is a form of practical wisdom. In the beauty of his artistic works, man expresses the truth of his relationship with God, the Creator of all being. In art, knowledge and skill are united to give form to the inner truth of reality in a language accessible to sight and hearing. In this way art attempts to manifest God's plenitude of being and show how this plenitude becomes present in the work of art.(10)
This theological interpretation is most suited to lead us to the very essence of art and beauty-an essence standing above all tentative definitions-since, as the highest interpretation of this essence, the theological interpretation contains deductively all other characteristics of art. Hence this theological interpretation can count as criterion for the truth of every philosophical aesthetics (freely quoting Plato, "Beauty guides the way to the good").
Ultimately, it is God himself in his perfect "goodness" and "beauty" who is the origin and end of all art. All his works bear a reflection of his being, and it is in these works of his that we find the framework of our artistic activity. Such theological perspective is further justified by the fact that true art is of cultic origin: In many cultures art had its beginning in the worship of some supreme being. In the hierarchy of artistic forms, those which belong to the spiritual or liturgical realm ought to be put first, since they are closely connected with the vocation of man, with his "final end."