Francis Schaeffer said, “For a Christian, redeemed by the work of Christ and living within the norms of Scripture and under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, the lordship of Christ should include an interest in the arts. A Christian should use these arts to the glory of God—not just as tracts, but as things of beauty to the praise of God.”[1] Below lie seven aphorisms concerning art, each escorted by a succinct elucidation. May you find yourself fortified, reinvigorated, and spurred to both savor and craft exquisite art, to the glory of God.
#1 “Art and the saints are the greatest apologetic for our faith.”
Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (who became Pope Benedict XVI),
Unbelief begins on a nonrational level. Beauty can bypass the rational and prick the heart. This is not the elimination of reason. It is the preparation for reason, which, when functioning rightly, orders the nonrational instincts. Defending the faith starts with presenting beauty and goodness because this reveals the God who is the source of all beauty and goodness.
#2 “If the tops of these three trees [goodness, truth, beauty] do converge, as thinkers used to claim, and if the all too obvious and the overly straight sprouts of Truth and Goodness have been crushed, cut down, or not permitted to grow, then perhaps the whimsical, unpredictable, and ever surprising shoots of Beauty will force their way through and soar up to that very spot, thereby fulfilling the task of all three.”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Theologians call the convergence of goodness, truth, and beauty, the unity of the transcendentals. We live in an age where truth is up for grabs and goodness has been redefined. Thus, if Solzhenitsyn is right, we need beauty now more than ever. Think of truth, goodness, and beauty as three perspectives on God. Truth is God’s mind, which is the standard. Goodness is God’s character, which is the procedure. Beauty is God’s glory,[2] which is the telos. When the true standard is applied with the good procedure you have a beautiful telos. When a person’s mind is filled with false standards and evil slogans, the best recourse is to show them glory.
#3 “The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.”
Michelangelo
The God of the Bible is the Infinite Creator. He created all people (Dt. 32:6), the ends of the earth (Is. 40:28), and all things (Rev. 4:11). God is not only the Original Artist but the Infinite Artist. God’s creation is art, which means that His creation reflects Himself. Trees, mountains, human beings, galaxies, and oceans are the limited picture of a God without limits.
God’s artistic purpose is to reveal himself (Rom. 1:18-23). A Christian artist’s purpose is not to reveal himself, but to reveal God. The purpose of art is to capture, communicate, and reflect the beauty of the Infinite Creator to finite creatures. Abraham Kuyper linked art to beauty. True beauty is the earthly shadow of heavenly glory and the artist must represent the majesty and perfection of God.[3]
#4 “That strangeness of things, which is the light in all poetry, and indeed in all art, is really connected with their otherness; or what is called their objectivity. What is subjective must be stale. It is exactly what is objective that is in this imaginative manner strange.”
G.K. Chesterton
Modern people celebrate modern artists only when they reject the objective standard of God. The contemplative mystic is applauded when he looks into his own soul. When art is an uninhibited combination of transgression, self-expression, and spontaneity, then the world salutes it.
In contrast to the modern art museum, Chesterton says that subjectivity is stale. Why? Because subjectivity shrinks from the world of otherness. At this point, people get confused and say that enjoying art is a matter of interpretation, preference, and taste. The art Smith enjoys is different from the art Jones enjoys. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Thus, the confused argument concludes, that appreciating and enjoying art is subjective.
The subjective turn began with David Hume. His 1757 essay, “Of the Standard of Taste,” advanced the maxim, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Hume’s famous statement is consistent with the dominant rallying cry of the Enlightenment: autonomy. Similarly, Immanuel Kant said that a person’s judgment of art is subjective in the sense that it arises from personal experience, impressions, and tastes.[4]
Here is the confusion: There is a difference between the subjective enjoyment of art and art worthy of enjoyment. The danger of playing along with the subjective turn is that you won’t exercise discipline in developing good taste. The undisciplined person doesn’t want true beauty any more than they want true love. Why not? True love comes with sacrificial demands and true beauty pulls people out of themselves. People call poop in a tin “good art” even though it destroys beauty.[5] Why? Because beauty makes them uncomfortable. They’d rather have their narcissism affirmed than transformed.
Psalm 29:2 says, “Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness.” In other words, holiness has splendor. Holiness is beautiful, objectively speaking. When people think that art appreciation is relative—different strokes for different folks—they express atheism. If beauty is relative, then that means each person decides what is beautiful. The modern artist uses art as an expression of autonomy, which is an expression of rebellion and atheism. That which accurately contains the holiness of God is beautiful. According to Scripture, idolatry is never beautiful.
#5 Artists should be free to “re-imagine and re-express the beauty of God, to lift our sights and change our vision of reality.”
N.T. Wright
The goal of creating art is to imitate God, God’s Word, and God’s world. The Christian artist wishes not to express himself, but to express something true of God, God’s Word, and God’s world. The artist participates in the re-creative work of the Creator God. Why? Because to be authentically human is to behave creaturely, which requires imaging forth God, God’s Word, and God’s World. To be creaturely is not just to be a reflection, but also to make art that is reflective.
The fundamental difference between the Christian artist and the non-Christian artist is that one embraces his creatureliness while the other denies it. The Christian artist does not ask, “Is it mine?” The Christian artist asks, “Is it good?” The bad artist is interested in expressing herself and drawing attention to herself. To create good art, C.S. Lewis says that the artist “should never conceive himself as bringing into existence beauty or wisdom which did not exist before, but simply and solely as trying to embody in terms of his own art some reflection of eternal Beauty and Wisdom.”[6]
#6 “All distinctly Christian art must be, in some sense, about the agonizing struggle between sin and grace.”
Gene Veith
Human life is a beautiful and terrible mystery. This is a mystery that Darwinism and psychology can’t solve. People need to be constantly reminded of the mystery, for only in this mystery do we get the Gospel. The murder of The Innocent Man is salvation for the sinful people (1 Cor. 15:22). What looks like a disaster leads to grace. What looks hope-less becomes hope-full. Psalm 149:4 says the Lord “adorns the humble with salvation.” That is, God makes people beautiful by giving them salvation, which must mean all themes accurately contained in salvation coalesce into a beautiful story.
Christ’s murder and our salvation happen in one moment. The Gospel establishes that in this fallen world, God works within a beautiful and terrible mystery. Christ’s death is beautiful and terrible. And our life in this fallen world is beautiful and terrible. Anytime the beautiful and terrible are combined without Christ’s death and resurrection, whether in art, academics, or anthropology, it fails every time. The co-existence of these two things only makes sense when grounded in the gospel of Jesus Christ.
#7 “You must change your life.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
This quote comes from the last line of Rilke’s poem, “Archaic Torso of Apollo.” Good art changes a person by pushing them to, rather than away from, virtue. The move to virtue happens only because of the beauty of the glory of the grace of God, which establishes the work of his people (Ps. 90:17). Good art makes God, God’s Word, and God’s world attractive. It awakens people to the invisible world and supplies a meaning that is, at first, ineffable. The power of art is to communicate desire and emotions, to organize life into meaningful patterns, and to apprehend universal truths through the artists’ reflection of God, God’s Word, and God’s world.
Good art produces certain fruit in the one who consumes it because it tunes up the soul with reality, life, and nature. When art doesn’t express something true (i.e. when it is cacotechny, meaning degenerate, hurtful, or mischievous art) it is bad because it kindles anger, resentment, self-pity, and self-importance. Any art that resents and scorns life, nature, work, reason, order, virtue, sacrifice, or authority, is not honest. It tunes down the soul with ugly lies.[7]
So, if you are an artist, set lofty goals for your work. The purpose of art is to change lives. Ask yourself, “How can my re-creation awaken an accurate sense of Transcendence for those who consume it? Does it contain more than it can communicate? Does it give a hint that The Beyond is there? Does it make you aware of the totality of something? Does it make a claim on the person who enters its presence? Does it demand reverence, wonder, and gratitude? Does it move people to love? Does it give them a sense that they must change their life?”[8]
Another Article
[1] Francis A. Schaeffer, Art and the Bible (Downers Grove, ILL: InterVarsity Press, 1973), 17.
[2] The Scripture describes God as beautiful (Ps. 27:4, 96:6; Mt. 17:1-8; 2 Pt. 1:16f). And so it is that beauty is predicated on God.
[3] James D. Bratt, Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinists, Christian Democrat (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013), 242.
[4] Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgement, (1790)
[5] https://www.theamericanconservative.com/the-passing-of-a-giant/
[6] C.S. Lewis, Christian Reflections (Grand Rapids, MI.: Eerdmans, 1967), 1-12.
[7] Peter Kreeft, The Best Things in Life: A Contemporary Socrates Looks at Power, Pleasure, Truth, and the Good Life (Downers Grove, ILL: InterVarsity Press, 1984), 99 – 107.
[8] See Marilynne Robinson, When I was a Child I Read Books (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,, 2012), 8-9.
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