This brief sketch of biblical and theological foundations is in need of application. What bearing does this all have on the arts? It is common knowledge that art and artists are often marginalized in faith communities. We hope to be able to show just how important our theological thinking is as we pick up on some of these themes in relation to the arts.
Art and redemption
We begin with the doctrine of redemption, as it is there that we find the
key to how many have responded to art, particularly in the latter part of
the 20th century. More than anything else, so it has been argued, being a
Christian is about being saved and doing what one can to see that others may
be saved as well. Our vocations are often judged by whether they serve the
cause of redemption or not. We speak of “full time service” as
the highest calling, missing the point that we are all in “full-time”
service wherever God has placed us. Believing that the biblical call to salvation
is essentially addressed to the need to have the soul reconciled to God has
led to a neglect of both the bodily side of life and human responsibility
toward the created order and the culture that we have created. This in turn
has brought about a spiritual practice that diminishes the value of many aspects
of ordinary life, including the arts, and for all intents and purposes sees
both nature and culture as irredeemable.
Setting up redemption as the measuring stick by which we judge the value of things has led many to think of the arts exclusively in terms of their usefulness to the work of evangelism and worship. To put the matter succinctly, redemption has become the end and all else the means. We want to suggest that this way of thinking about redemption and salvation is too narrow and has served to distort our understanding of Christian responsibility in the world.
Two correctives are in order. First we must bring the understanding of redemption into balance and harmony with other significant doctrines of the Christian faith. Redemption has dominated Christian thinking in some theological circles, and has resulted in the neglect and devaluing of other doctrines such as creation, trinity and incarnation. We need to recover a full-orbed theological understanding. The second corrective is to see that redemption is about more than the salvation of individual souls. Scripture makes it clear that the redemptive work of Christ is a work of cosmic proportions. The whole creation is in need of redemption and we wait for the day when “all things will be made new.” Once we see redemption in this broader context, we can understand how the arts can be pursued in a way that resonates with the activity of God in the world.
Our group title given for the Lausanne Forum was Redeeming the Arts. There was significant discussion about whether this title conveys what we want to affirm. Two views emerged. First, the call to redeem the arts may suggest that art itself falls short and is in need of redemption. Yet if creativity is a gift from God, it is not art that needs redeeming but the people who do art. No one wished to support the idea that there is something wrong with art. A second perspective was proposed. While art itself is amoral—and in its original state needs no redemption—the distortion, misuse and abuse to which art has been subjected does need redemption. Likewise the associations art has had when employed for the sake of worldliness, immorality, the occult or other evil practices call for redemption.
In this case the redemptive process should include filtration, so that meanings and ideas that are contrary to biblical teaching can be set aside and new meanings can be shaped for the art form. Various cultures around the world have engaged music, dance, drama and the visual arts for cultural and religious purposes that are in some cases incompatible with Christian faith. This situation does not call for an abandoning of the art forms and instruments, but calls for a redeeming of those forms and instruments into the Christian story. Christians in each culture will need to discern how this can best be accomplished.
Art and creation
The narrow perspective on redemption that we have described has resulted in
the neglect of the arts, for art is seen as a merely human endeavour tied
to this world alone. However when we see clearly that the work of redemption
is done for the whole of creation, we are then able to ask the question about
redemptive artistry.
The biblical narrative recorded in the early part of Genesis calls upon us to nurture and develop the creation that God has affirmed as good. If we are to be consistent with the cultural mandate, this will include both the natural order around us and the cultural order that we create. Cultivation of that cultural order involves creativity, imagination and most certainly the arts. Affirming creation opens the way for embracing all that God has made as “good,” including human creativity. And we are to take seriously not only what God has made, but also human making. The creative arts are but one expression of the divine image within us as well as one component of the social and cultural life of the human community. Art is able to reflect and allude (suggest, point) to something of the order and meaning that God has given to the world—which speaks to us of design and a master designer.
We might also consider the sustaining work of Christ in “holding all things together” (Col: 1:17). This speaks of God’s ongoing engagement with the created order. Typically we think of the act of creating the world as a gesture of divine power. However, another model has been suggested1 in which the creation of the world is understood as an exercise of divine artistry. God lovingly brought into being a vast cosmic order that continues to enjoy the sustaining care of the creator. Those who bear the image of God are also “makers,” able to engage imagination in order to be agents of newness. Metaphor and imagination, so common in the biblical text, are each valuable in the work of enabling us to see and hear anew. Art is deeply dependent on human imagination—something that needs to be recovered in our Christian understanding. And as we mentioned earlier, imagination includes that capacity to see what is possible, and the narrative of scripture that shapes our faith invites us to see fresh possibilities both within and beyond our world of time and space.
If we take the doctrine of creation in its fullness as laid out in scripture,
we will accept that work with human hands is sacred work, that holy places
are not limited to those places devoted to worship, that sacred and profane
may be a false division, and that the ordinary things of life are gifts of
common grace from the one who made all things and who saw that it was good.
Doing the work of an artist should be seen as a sacred calling. Like all other
work, it is to be shaped by the great narrative of scripture and through the
one into whose image we are to be conformed (Romans 8:29).
Art and incarnation
At the heart of Christian faith is the majestic declaration that “the
Word became flesh and dwelt among us—and we beheld his glory…
full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). The divine becomes human and enters
into the darkness and pain of ordinary life, experiencing its joys and sorrows.
With incarnation so central to the Christian story, it is surprising that
so many within the Christian community have given so little attention to the
body. Embodiment involves sensuality and we have resisted the sensual side
of life. We need a fresh reminder that God has taken on flesh and with it
all that is entailed in being human. The incarnation—God taking on human
flesh—makes it clear that there is no room for negative talk about the
physical side of life in the Christian story.
That the invisible God becomes visible in Christ is a movement whose structure
is paralleled in creative activity. Art is sometimes said to be about making
the invisible visible. Theologian Trevor Hart refers to “the poetry
of the incarnation.”2 Here he is suggesting that we cannot fully grasp
who Jesus is through His humanity alone. There is more to be known about Jesus
than can be found in the merely human. Likewise, poetry communicates well
beyond the words on the page, visual art beyond the paint on the canvas, and
dance and drama well beyond the words and movements of the performers. Hart
goes on to say, “He takes our flesh with all of its limiting factors
and inherent flaws, and through a work of supremely inspired (Spirit-filled)
artistry, transfigures it, before handing it back to us in the glorious state
which its original maker always intended it to bear. At this level creation,
redemption and re-creation are shown to be interwoven as activities of the
same divine Poet.” Incarnation is the embodiment of both judgment and
hope. It manifests judgment in revealing our lust for autonomy instead of
a relationship with the Creator, and hope in its affirmation of the possibility
of re-creation.
TO: Act 1 Scene 4