Art, Christianity, and The Responsibility of Artists

An essay about art, Christianity, and the responsibility of artists in creating their art.

         

         There are several religious and moral objections to art.  The objections have

ranged anywhere from very foolish to highly sophisticated.  St. Augustine, one of the main opponents of the arts, believed art is a “detractor from the true condition of human beings” (qtd. in Thompson 297).  Audiences often shed tears over poetry but not over their own lost condition.  Evil is made sweet or beautiful by artistic productions.  Art is a provider of pleasing untruth.  Furthermore, art gives a false justification for human sinfulness.  St. Augustine accepts Plato’s objection that art transfers human sins to the gods, but he takes it further and insists that art gives divine sanction to human sin (296).  Art, in essence, justifies sin.  Additionally, he condemns pagan literature for its faulty education of youth.

            St. Augustine condemns drama and acting outright.  He totally rejects the “Aristotelian conception of catharsis” by which the individual is relieved and cleansed of some of the immature or corrupting emotions and attitudes (296).  In tragedy there is a masochistic self-enjoyment in the pain and suffering of others.  The result is the essence of the impact of theater is it creates sympathy with evil.  The Bible, which is the basis of Christianity and considered the Word of God by Christians states, “…do not imitate what is evil but what is good.  Anyone who does what is good is from God.  Anyone who does what is evil has not seen God” (John 3:11, NIV).  If one really wants to understand human suffering and real tragedy, one must contemplate and understand the divine drama of human sin and God’s endeavor to save humankind (297).  Although St. Augustine permits a limited acceptance of church and moral art, he is constantly insistent that art, as everything else, must not take the place of God in the “affections.”  Art must be “used” and only God can be “enjoyed.” 

            St. Augstine’s influence of art related to Christianity can be seen in the negative view of art that has characterized much of Christian history.  There are four main moral and religious arguments against art: the puritan objection, the proletarian objection, the objection that art is too material and sensuous in nature to be worthy of attention from genuinely spiritual persons, and the position that art contains only fantasy and illusion while Christians are concerned with reality (297).  Puritanism is a term used to identify various views and usually it appears with unpleasant meanings.  Used here, it simply means that since many works of art contain in them moral evil, it causes sympathy for evil to be aroused in a person.  Plato serves as one of the most powerful and earliest advocators of moral regulations of art (298).  The heart of the intelligent puritan objection to art in general is expressed in Plato’s arguments.  Plato says that the “artist must make contact, and the person who portrays evil must not only understand evil but must feel for it and feel it” (qtd. in Thompson 298).  Basically, in order to grasp it aesthetically one must understand it appreciatively.  But appreciative understanding in art may cultivate appreciation beyond art, for example, the person may become infected with evil, and their being may develop a habitual involvement in the evil.  Their aesthetic appreciation may result in moral or immoral action.

            Plato has very little sympathy for passive acceptance of objectionable materials, for the dramatizing of one’s emotions unless they are perfectly commendable ones.  Then the question must be asked, Is evil portrayed artistically still evil?  Plato’s answer would be a resounding yes.  “In art, evil is in a form that I may feel I need not fear; it is allegedly innocuous; thus I can meditate and feed upon it.  Such an attitude is dangerous” (298). 

            The second major objection to art is that art is a luxury, a cruel waste (298).  Many people have the bitter experience of want, and one only has to compare the laborer’s wages with the wealth that is part of objects in art, art museums, symphony halls, architectural edifices, and theaters.  This is considered the proletarian objection.  But there is an element in this objection that is deeply Christian, for the early Christians did not believe in obvious spending, but rather shared their wealth in a primitive communalism.  More recently, Christians are raising the issue as to how followers of Christ can be honest with themselves, compassionate towards those in dire poverty and innocent before God if they do not share their good fortune with the less fortunate (Sider).  “And do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased” (Hebrews 13:16, NIV). 

            A third major objection to art is that the world of the aesthete is sensuous, and to be absorbed in the material is to lose reality and value of the spiritual (Thompson 299).  Art is situated in lower-level reality, and reflection, meditation, prayer, and similar activities are much higher.  Arthur Berndtson, author of Art, Expression, and Beauty, indicates that art has an emphasis on sensation that has no parallel elsewhere.  At this point, he contrasts art with mathematics, the sciences, practical action, ethics, and religion for “art steeps itself in the senses as though sensation were life, or the gateway to life: one of which it is” (Berndtson 13-14).    While Berndtson does not condemn art, his statement represents a strong religious argument against art.  Art, instead of God, becomes the “saving grace” or way of “salvation.”  Eventually, it takes the place of God and becomes a god itself.   

            The final objection is that art deals with a world of fantasy and illusion while Christ represents reality in its fullest sense (Thompson 299).  Malcolm Muggeridge, who wrote Christ and The Media, spoke in a highly negative voice about fantasy and the image of God. 

The prevailing impression I have come to have of the contemporary scene is of an ever-widening chasm between the fantasy in terms of which the media induce us to live, and the reality of our existence as made in the image of God, as sojourners in time whose true habitat is eternity.  The fantasy is all-encompassing; awareness of reality requires the seeing eye which comes to those born again in Christ.  It is like coming to after an anaesthetic; the mists life, consciousness returns, everything in the world is more beautiful than ever it was, because related to a reality beyond the world-every thought clearer, lover deeper, joy more abounding, hope more certain.  Who could hesitate confronted with this choice between an old fantasy and a newly discovered reality? (30)

Most of the concern does not arise from the deceptive character but rather from its depiction of evil that drags down the viewer.  The point is that something extremely unreal infects all participants, creator and viewer. 

            There is a sense in which the artistic world participates in and focuses on the human rebellion against God.  There is a long tradition in the arts, which assigns them ultimate autonomy and makes creativity its own law (Newport 16).  Art becomes immune, to a degree, because it is art.  It is a creative form that has been given independence from anyone or anything else.  They attempt to create their own law, have their own set of rules, their own government: to be, not government regulated, but creative regulated.  Sometimes, this autonomy can cause serious problems in the art world.  Like any other demonstration of human activity, artistic impulses can become the way of self-destruction and the corruption of other people.  In fact, artistic genius may have even greater possibilities for demonic influence than the less gifted person.  It is a danger that is inherent in the arts. 

            In art, the artist is god.  He is master of both character and continuity.  He can make villains exciting and good men dull.  He can show rakes full of compassion and make faithful husbands objects of ridicule.  The artists can mix the component elements of life in unrealistic and even irresponsible ways.  Great artists do have originality and express their personal visions, but they also keep some dialogue with common humanity and reality.  The most dangerous atheism is the claim that reality is wholly defined by my vision and subject to my manipulation (Newport 16).  Because an artist has unusual abilities, he also has the special danger of repeating the sin of the Garden of Eden.  According to the Bible, NIV version, the sin of the Garden of Eden was when Adam and Eve chose to eat fruit from the Tree of Knowledge (Genesis 3, NIV).  It was told to them that eating that fruit from that specific tree (which they were forbidden not to by God); they would gain the power and knowledge that God has.  They were led to believe that they could be gods themselves.  This is the danger the artist faces.  Elevating themselves to the position of God.  Only God can say, “I am that I am” (Muehl 4).    

            Yet, the imaginative element is critical and essential to all artistic creation and recreation.  The artist must imaginatively assemble ordinarily unrelated objects or experiences.  They must help us look the second time, to explore beneath the surface of ordinary experience.  Imagination penetrates ordinariness and things taken for granted.  It carries us to the boundaries of what we normally see and inspires us to move beyond the confined commonplace.  An example would be the artist Vincent Van Gogh.  His paintings were full of wild colors and undulating lines and immediacy, yet they were simple landscapes.  He initiated others into his world, how he saw the landscapes.  This changed people’s eyes.  They saw the landscapes that they lived with differently than how they first viewed them.  Their world was shown to them in a different light and elevated them above the commonplace to a new sight.  As a result, art is much like religion, especially in its visionary function.  Without the visionary element, religion declines into “mere politics, social action, superficial politeness, and immense ordinariness” (Thompson 302). Religion needs the visionary, the prophetic, element to lift it above the commonplace.  It needs to be mysterious so it appeals to the common people.  Otherwise, a new vision would never be achieved or illuminated to others.  However, religion’s imaginative spark produces one of the greatest challenges to humankind, both individually and in the community.  Creativity must be included along with imagination.  Imagination is more than fantasizing; it involves production, events, and emerging new realities.

            Something is communicated in the aesthetic experience.  The artist does not always produce his intention in the work and the appreciator does not always understand what that intention is meant to be.  It is even possible that the artist is not fully aware of what they intended, at least not if what appears in one medium is made to appear in another form.  For example, what a painter “says” in his painting is not identical to what the critic’s say, illustrations of the work that appear in books, and writings by critics.  Yet, what the artist says in their particular style communicates a unique form of meaning and experience to the viewer, or appreciator.  When communication occurs, insight is achieved.  A sense of freshness appears in a flash of insight.  This does not have to be something entirely new or different to the culture, but something novel that appears to the individual. 

            Heightened sensitivity to and sympathy for others is often inspired by art.  At times, religionists may tend to be intolerant and harsh.  When religion sees itself in the role of the final authority of truth, it can become very difficult to live with.  A more caring attitude may be developed in some people through the influence of art.  Religion is often capable of forgetting that there are different aspects, dimensions and perspectives experienced and held by other people.  Sometimes, they have a tendency to think that everyone has to be, in essence, the “same.”  Religion may tend toward an oversimplification of the human situation where they have the attitude that people just need to be saved and then everything will be okay.  All you need is God and then your problems will go away.  Unfortunately, problems in life are not usually solved that easily.      In response to these possible shortcomings of religion, art provides fresh perspectives and make us all aware of the genuine complexity of the human situation.

            Religion also desperately needs beauty.  If God is regarded as the center of beauty, the source of beautiful things and the source of human creativity, then religion cannot afford to reject beauty, for if it does, then religion will be rejecting that characteristic and function of God.  God is considered the original creator, the first artist, and what he created was meant to be beautiful.  The Bible illuminates many examples of this thought, especially about Creation.  “In the beginning God created…God saw all that he had made, and it was very good….And the Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground-trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food” (Genesis 1:1, 31 and Genesis 2:9).  The real purpose of art is not to promote a certain theological perspective or a moral point of view.  It is to create an “intrinsically satisfying experience” (Thompson 305).  This is much of the basis behind art’s claim to a significant degree of independence.  Rader, an exceptional contemporary philosopher with a major portion of his work in aesthetics, defines the purpose of art in this way:

The basic criterion of art is the richness and the fineness of the value-appreciation that it yields.  I am using the word “appreciation” not in the superficial sense of amusement or entertainment, but in the deeper sense, so eloquently stated by Dewey, of a memorable and satisfying experience (qtd. in Thompson 305).

The main point of this is that genuine art reveals dimensions of life, not just dimensions of a play world, although life is revealed in a playful manner.

            There are several reasons why contemporary theologians should be interested in the arts.  The first reason is related to biblical teaching; that God reveals and carries on his redemptive purpose in the concrete reality of time and history (Newport 17).  In the Old Testament, God called his people to live in and work out his purpose in history (18).  In the New Testament, this emphasis is continued.  The world is the tangible historical environment where that which is transcendant and ultimate can be experienced.  The Christian community cannot cut itself off from the artistic vitalities of history, past and present.  The interest in the arts by the theologian is not an immoral “whoring” after what is exalted in the culture.  This interest comes from a meaningful recovery of a basic biblical emphasis.  The Bible demands that the theologian be involved with the world; “…to move out into a lover’s quarrel with the world” (18).  There is a famous saying, “To be in the world, but not of the world.”  This merely states that the theologian must be involved with the world, yet, set himself apart from it so that he does not lose sight of God.  Theology must engage in a dialogue with the arts.  They must communicate.  It must define itself and understand itself in relation to the arts as well as psychology, science, sociology, and other humanistic disciplines. 

            The early Christians lived by a sense of creative power and ideology that outrivaled the Seven Wonders of the World (18).  It was in the conflict of the worldviews that Israel and Christianity drew resources of language to communicate and define themselves (18).  Today the realities of contemporary art provide challenges, provocation, and nourishment to the theological pursuit.  “Even as the apostle Paul said that God’s work among the Gentiles would provoke the Jews, so today many see God using artists to provoke and needle the Christian movement” (18). This is needed because Christians have a tendency to become stagnant in their walk of faith.  It also provokes the Christian into thinking about why they are a Christian and their reasoning and basis for their beliefs.  It allows them to form a rock to stand on about their beliefs.  It makes the Christian step outside of their insulated bubble and see what is happening in the world and how they can be a part of it all, what their responsibility is to the non-Christians.   

A second reason for the theologian to be concerned with the arts is related to the fact that the arts give an unusually direct access to the distinctive tone, concerns and feelings of the given culture (20).  The artists not only mirror their age in its subtlest hints, but they generally do it a generation ahead of more abstract and theoretical thinkers of their time.  Art has an uncanny ability to document the “time-spirit” (20).  It gives the theologians a guide to the actual world to be addressed.  Cezanne, at the beginning of the twentieth century, painted space in a new way, as a spontaneous totality. He painted the being of space rather than the actual space.  He embraced far and near in one totality.  He told us that the old way of thinking of space was gone and that we must now live in the new way of spaces. 

An illustration of this would be the contemporary people’s thinking of death.         People are no longer just concerned with a transition from one level of existence to another.  It is now a more radical concern of is there any meaning at all, now or ever.  Contemporary art forms point out that our “confrontation with nothingness no longer waits upon the moment of death” (20).  Meaninglessness, vacancy and non-being have to be dealt with now.  Rainer Maria Rilke was one of the first who, in his poetry, wrote of the idea of life as “interpenetrated with death” (21).  Eugene O’Neil, another poet, sees death as having priority over life (21).  Dylan Thomas who wrote Twenty-four Years, speaks of our being “dressed to die” already at our birth (21).  Samuel Beckett and Eugene Ionesco, play writers, contend that life itself is absurd and meaningless, which is now become the post-modern thought.  Before any thought of life beyond death becomes meaningful today, the problem of despair, chaos, absurdity and meaninglessness must be understood and addressed.

A third reason for theology to be concerned with the arts is because the arts “focalize” on the vital issues and themes that are the central concern of theology (21).  Artists are constantly probing in spirited and original ways the issues of ultimate concern which theology has always been concerned with.  An art form focuses the attention upon an issue or theme that transcends the art form itself.  Authentic art demands that we pause, however briefly, for the purpose of disclosure or disturbance.  Pablo Picasso defines art as “a lie that tells us the truth, or at least tells us so that we can understand it” (qtd. by Donnelly).  Artists work to devise “symbolic break-throughs” by which neglected or forgotten ideas and themes and realities become important again (Newport 22). 

The fourth reason is that the arts help to spell out in a dramatic way the implications of various world views (22).  They help prepare the way for a clearer representation of life’s options.  They help theology to develop its own self-knowledge and inner clarity by contrast and dialogue.  When a work of art is seen as a totality, it spells out a fundamental attitude or orientation to the world.  The artist projects a model of life by which experience may be ordered and interpreted.  The artist shows how a particular faith or life-orientation really looks under the fullness of the experience.  This spelling out of alternative views helps prepare the way for the uniqueness of the Christian view.  It also helps “men” to see the real meaning and the weakness and strengths of alternative world-views.  It helps provide the backbone to Christianity.     

According to it’s central religious content, Christianity deals with something inaccessible to art, mainly the breaking into history and human life of the eternal God (Hygen 98).  It regards this as more important than anything man can create, more important than art, science, politics, economics, more important than even life or death.  Compared to this, art is a relative value.  It belongs to human culture in its limitedness and temporality.  Christian faith leads neither to condemnation nor worship of art, but lets it be what it is, a part of human existence in the world.

Because man’s meeting with God involves the whole man, it touches also the aesthetic and artistic aspect of man.  Even the earliest Christians could not do without religious poetry, which enabled them to offer God thanksgiving and praises in worship (98-99).  An example of this would the book of Psalms in the Bible.  It is forms of poetry and songs written to praise and worship God.  To reject or even reduce art is to reject something of what it means to be human, or it is to reduce human nature.  One might say that to the extent that we reject art, is just to that extent that we reduce our own humanity and that of others.  As a result, we damage the image of God since we are made in His likeness, in His image.  Any religionist who condemns art, politics, sexuality, economics, or any other phase of what it means to be human is interpreting the whole in an impoverished manner.  The truly rich interpretation requires one to explore both religion and art from the perspective of the whole. 

Excluding everything but God from one’s consciousness as a method of concentration does have its benefits.  The distractions of the human existence are so plentiful that some focusing is essential to survive and stay with God, and without focusing, total “disjointedness” would occur (Thompson 309).  But to insist on a certain limited conception of God and to fail to have a great enough God to have created the world of which we are a part is to engage in concentration upon a fantasy, not reality.  No study is more akin to religion than is art itself.  The Bible is literature.  The language of the Bible is more like poetry than science.  Religious experience, with its ritual, its frequently vague pronouncements (i.e. the often misinterpreted statements of the prophets), its richness due to multiple interpretations, it’s ecstasies, is much more like aesthetic experience than political, scientific, or business experiences. 

Since God created the whole world, matter is no less holy than spirit.  There may be interesting problems that arise from the nature of the universe, but none of these concerns should eliminate art from the life of a spiritual person.  There is no desire to encourage the excesses of art for art’s sake in a way that accepts anything, however degraded or immoral, in order to lift up art.  The quest for insight, or truth, is not absolute, and some levels of pollution may just be too great, even though the insight that would be gained from wading through it would be enormous.  In general, it is the whole of life that Christianity wants to embrace.  Therefore its relationship with art is not restricted to sacred or religious art in the narrow sense.  But just as churchgoing is not the only thing that Christianity expects of its faithful, so sacred art is not the only Christian kind, let alone the only acceptable kind.  God’s thoughts are not to enter the church only, but also the world. 

Christianity also reminds art that the world is God’s world and that man is created in the image of God.  Ornulf Ranheimsaeter, quoted by Thompson in his essay Art and Christianity, says, “In a work of art man offers up his high worthiness as God’s image; we offer up our inner universe redeemed through the created things.  In art the free creature pays homage to his Creator through his own creation.   In art, we offer him his world, mirrored in our own soul” (107).  The artist is to form matter in his own image because he himself is created in God’s image.  This is the “calling of the artist” (108).  When the artist understands his vocation right, the artist works on orders from God and under obligation to him.  He is a co-laborer in the work of creation.  A famous sculptor once said, “If man cannot see my work, God can” (Thompson 108).  It is not unimportant that men see the artist’s work, enjoy it, and praise it.  But that God sees it, rejoices over it, and praises it means much more.  It is important that a work stands up before the judgment of the critics.  But it is much more important that it stand up before a higher criticism, namely God.  “To give his work back to God who gave him the artistic ability, to give man’s image back to the God who created man in his image, to give the world back to the God who placed it in the hands of men, this, in the Christian view, is the “calling” of the artist” (108).      

           

 

 

                    

 

References

 

Berndtson, Arthur.  Art, Expressions, and Beauty.  New York:  Holt, Rinehart and

Winston, Inc., 1969.

Donnelly, John.  Professor of the Art Department at Mount Vernon Nazarene College.

Quoted December 1999 in Art History II class at Mount Vernon Nazarene

College.

Hygen, Johan B.  Morality and the Muses.  Minneapolis:  Augsburg Publishing House,

1965.

Muehl, E. William.  “The Aesthetic Heresy.”  Reflection.  November, 1968, p.1.

Muggeridge, Malcolm.  Christ and the Media.  Grand Rapids:  William B. Eerdmans

Publishing Company, 1977.

Newport, John P.  Christianity and Contemporary Art Forms.  Waco:  Word Books, 1971.

Sider, Cf. Ronald J.  Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger:  A Biblical Study.  Downers

Grove:  Inter-Varsity Press, 1977.

The Quest Study Bible.  New International Version.  Grand Rapids:  Zondervan

Publishing House, 1994.

Thompson, R. Duane.  “A Christian View of the Arts.”  An Inquiry into Christian Ethics

From a Biblical Theological Perspective.  Anderson:  Warner Press, Inc., 1983,

pp. 295-313.

Author's Note

Say what you will. This was something I was asked to write.