Modes of Connecting Faith and the Arts: A Comparative Theological Assessment
by Matthew Kaemingk
When one asks a Christian artist to reflect on how their faith and their art interact, inform, and influence each other, one can expect a wide variety of responses. As a theological observer and a friend of artists, I have become fascinated by the wide pluriformity of responses and what these responses have to teach us about what it means to be a person of faith in the arts.
David Miller’s recent book God at Work charts the past one hundred years of the faith and work movement in modern America. Throughout the book Miller analyzes a diversity of ways in which Christians, in a variety of vocations, live out their faith in the workplace. Miller categorizes their particular modes of faith-work integration into four unique points of emphasis: the expression of faith at work, the ethics of faith at work, the enrichment of faith at work, and finally the experience of faith at work.1
Expression Ethics
Enrichment Experience
Matthew Kaemingk 2
What follows is an appropriation of David Miller’s quadrilateral and an experimental
“mapping” of artistic reflections on the relationship of art and faith. This method of mapping and assessment obviously has important limitations.2 However, it is believed that through Miller’s heuristic categories, a clearer understanding of the vast and often confusing terrain of art and faith discourse might come into clearer focus.
Through surveying the variety of perspectives on faith/art integration, a secondary hope would be that artists who would find themselves primarily in one category of integration would be introduced to the richness of other quadrants. Throughout this analysis I have done my best to include the voices of Christian artists across a wide span of theological traditions and mediums including sculpture, literature, painting, film, theatre, architecture, and music. In my analysis of the four quadrants I briefly examine their general historical and theological contours along with their particular conceptual strengths, weaknesses, unique points of opportunity and danger.
Implicit throughout the work will be the underlying argument that within each quadrant lay vital correctives to the weaknesses and blind spots inherent within the others. The article will close with an evaluation of the four modes of faith/art engagement and the brief proposal of, what we might call, a “binding alternative.”
Ethics
Artists and artistic observers who fall within the ethics quadrant can often be heard reflecting on the importance of artistic “integrity,” “responsibility,” “craftsmanship,”
“excellence,” “justice,” and “holiness.” This group will argue, along with Nicholas Wolterstorff, that truly Christian artists “cannot divorce art from responsibility.”3 Like it or not, they claim, Matthew Kaemingk 3
the artist is an ethical agent who is tied to irrevocable obligations to God, other people, and the world at large. The artist is daily engaged in ethical decisions about artistic priorities, financial stewardship, acceptable subjects, themes, and materials. Artists must decide whether to engage primarily in artistic acts of beautification, protest, contemplation, wonder, or simply exploration.4
The modern conviction that the artist is amoral or ethically autonomous, that she has no ethical responsibility other than to create “art for art’s sake,” certainly does not meet with a warm reception in this group.5
One could divide this group into three levels of artistic ethical discourse: personal ethics, communal ethics, and global ethics. Those who emphasize a personal level of ethics ask questions that revolve around the moral integrity of the artist’s work and the artist herself.6 Those emphasizing communal ethics are concerned with the artist’s obligations to a specific audience, a community of artists, or a particular artistic tradition.7 They see the artist as needing to be obedient to something larger than themselves. Those emphasizing a global level of artistic ethics emphasize the artist’s Christian responsibility to engage in public issues like racism, poverty, immorality, oppression, violence, sexual promiscuity, etc.8
While ethical obligations for the Christian artist cannot be denied, this category of discourse is not without its dangers. The most prominent danger is, of course, the reduction of the aesthetic life to the ethical life. An artist is indeed an ethical agent. A work of art is indeed a creation with moral consequences. However, neither the artist nor the work itself can be reduced to the ethical.9 Faith is to be obeyed in the arts, but ethics does not exhaust the call and beauty of faith within the artist’s life.
Matthew Kaemingk 4
Expression
While those in the category of ethics stress the Christian artist’s responsibility to do “the good,” those in the category of expression stress the Christian artist’s responsibility to communicate “the true.” Artists who find themselves in the expression quadrant see their work as a medium through which they can express their faith-based convictions and experiences.
While some “expressionists”10 opt for allusive and subtle modes of spiritual communication, others prefer a starker and more frontal approach.
Members of this quadrant will often argue that the church needs “poetic” communicators like artists because the faith cannot be fully articulated with the wooden prose of pastors and theologians.11 These artists see their work as a medium through which previously inexpressible beliefs, convictions, and experiences can be made manifest.12
Jeremy Begbie’s exploration of Paul Tillich is instructive on this point. For, according to
Tillich, “Art is truly religious not when it employs traditional religious subjects… but when it probes beneath the surface of the finite and brings to light the ultimate meaning which lies beyond and beneath all things.”13 Tillich “maintains that every artist’s work will to some degree display his ultimate concern and that of his culture.”14 Tillich even went so far as to argue that there could be “more of a quality of sacredness to a still-life by Cezanne or a tree by Van Gogh than to a picture of Jesus by Uhde” if in the colors and shapes of trees and fruit the artist’s soul finds itself more honestly and authentically depicted.15
In our contemporary age of irony, sarcasm, and cynicism, this group’s willingness to openly and publically express their most intimate spiritual experiences, emotions, and commitments is laudable indeed. Moreover, when one considers that the heart of the Christian Matthew Kaemingk 5
faith has consistently been marked by one of open and public witness, this group’s emphasis on the communication of the faith is certainly a compelling one.16
That said, expressivists find themselves running into a number of problems. The first is the danger that their art becomes didactic. The painter Edward Knippers notes that “Propositional theology usually makes a poor subject.”17 According to Knippers, art that can be reduced to a didactic message is none other than propaganda. For, in the case of propaganda, “I can look at the art object, get the idea, and then retain the idea with no further reference to the art object.18
Adrienne Chaplin and Hilary Brand warn that when artists are on “an urgent quest to present a message, the tendency can be to dive immediately for a specific symbol, metaphor or allegory as a vehicle for literal meaning… [they] end up trying to cram into art form something [that] cannot ever quite fit comfortably into the frame.”19 When an artwork is reduced to mere theological content, Adrian Plass laments, “complexity and creativity are sucked out of the message… leaving it so thin and pale, and yet so dogmatically assertive, that those who are exhorted to let it revolutionize their lives end up more annoyed than anything else.”20
Gregory Wolfe forwards Wim Wenders’s films and his more allusive expressivism as a helpful antidote for this didactic tendency. Wolfe explains that with,
[S]omeone like Wenders, the frontal approach is doomed to failure: better to refract the ancient story in oblique ways through contemporary narratives that give us situations and characters to which we can relate. The invisible reality of faith is something best made visible when it haunts the edges of our consciousness and memory.21
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Enrichment
Those in this quadrant emphasize one of two sides of an enriching relationship between faith and art—either their faith enriches their art or their art enriches their faith. We will begin by exploring the second. Those who report that their art-making enriches their faith can often be found speaking about how art functions for them as a medium of knowing, interpreting, and living in the world.22 The arts, they claim, can function as a form of spiritual revelation in which the artist comes to a greater understanding of God, life, and the world as a whole. Beyond revelation, they might also report that art making functions as a form of spiritual discipline or even sanctification.
Madeleine L’Engle provides numerous examples of this understanding of “art enriching faith.” She reports that a great work of art not only interprets but also “enlarges our sense of reality.”23 Moreover, in the act of art-making and viewing, L’Engle argues that human beings are enabled, “to do all the things we have forgotten… to walk on water… [and] move, unfettered, among the stars.”24 Finally, she reports that “I have often been asked if my Christianity affects my stories, and surely it is the other way around; my stories affect my Christianity… [they] restore me, shake me by the scruff of the neck, and pull this straying sinner into an awed faith.”25
For artists in this group the material and the works themselves are not inanimate or passive—they actually “talk back.” These artists are embodying what Nicholas Wolterstorff calls a “conversation” with their materials.26 In this dialogue a genuine give and take is experienced.
The artist is not a sovereign power but a conversation partner with the material.27 This enrichment group expects God to teach them in and through their material. They appreciate the famous line of D.H. Lawrence that great writers will “hang around words listening to what they Matthew Kaemingk 7
have to say.”
While this group clearly has much to offer in terms of exposing the revelatory and spiritual power of the arts, they are not without their own challenges. Jeremy Begbie labels one of these challenges “theological aestheticism.” In its most extreme form, he notes, we can be
“told that we must learn to lay aside our Christian presuppositions and, before anything else, listen… [because the arts] can help us ‘reconstruct’ Christian doctrine from scratch.”28
While this group is certainly correct that materials and works can speak, shape, and challenge the faithful disciple of Christ, it is certainly problematic to view the arts as an autonomous form of spiritual revelation capable of replacing or superseding the revelation of scripture or the church.29
Turning to the opposite side of the enrichment category, we consider those who report that their faith enriches their art. Some members of this category report that their faith inspires and empowers them to conceive and create with freedom, playfulness, and creativity.30 Others in this group find that their faith enriches their art by revealing unique insights into the human condition, the world, and the true purpose of the arts.31 These insights, they argue, may not be available to those without faith. Still others in this group will report that their faith provides their artistic calling with an enduring sense of hope and confidence in the power of art. This faith- filled encouragement can sustain the artist in a culture that can be sarcastic, dismissive, or cynical about the power and potential of the arts.32
This group, like the others, also flirts with a number of dangers and pitfalls. While
“enrichers” on the other side struggle with “theological aestheticism,” artists in this category can fall off the opposite side into “theological imperialism.” Here, Jeremy Begbie explains, it is Matthew Kaemingk 8
possible that one’s theology “swells its chest” and stifles the rich witness of the arts. The novelist
Flannery O’Connor has harsh words for such a perspective:
The sorry religious novel comes about when the writer supposes that because of his belief, he is somehow dispensed from the obligation to penetrate concrete reality. He will think that the eyes of the Church or the Bible or of his particular theology have already done the seeing for him, and that his business is to arrange this initial vision into satisfying patterns, getting himself as little dirty as possible in the process.”33
Faith may indeed teach the artist about the reality of the world, but it is no replacement for practicing scales, rhymes, and brush strokes.
Experience
This final group stresses that faith is not something that the artist simply obeys, expresses, or is enriched by. Instead, this final group argues that faith is actually something experienced, lived out, and embodied within the act of art-making itself.
The language of “calling” and “vocation” is particularly prominent in this category.
According to this group, “Christian art” does not need to contribute to Christian worship, ethics, theology, education, emotional health, or political engagement in order to achieve the title
“Christian.” For this group, artists may serve God simply by making great works of art within the medium to which they have been called. Faith and art are not two separate things that need to be fit together. They are, rather, inseparable.34
Jeremy Begbie articulates this “experience” group well when he argues that the “calling” of artists is to serve as the “priests of creation.” Artists are the ones who give voice to creation’s praise. For it is God’s will that “through the human creature, the inarticulate (though never silent) creation becomes articulate.”35 Artists are called, “to enable creation to be more fully what Matthew Kaemingk 9
it was created to be, a theatre of divine glory, anticipating that final day when all things will fully resound to the Creator’s honor.”36
According to Edward Knippers, “Once our calling is settled there is an unexplainable freedom in which we live and do our work.”37 Nick Park, the creator of the Wallace and
Grommet claymation series, experienced this freedom when he realized he was called by God to create art that genuinely entertained people. Nothing more and nothing less. He reports that:
“[W]hat I’m merely interested in is giving people a good laugh, and doing things that are entertaining…. I have come to believe that this can be pleasing to God…. When you are at art school there is always such a pressure to be radical and make statements with your art. If you link that to being a Christian it gets really exaggerated… I have had to calm down and learn.”38
The artist in the “experience” group finds an existential peace and freedom in understanding that they are called to serve in only one corner of the store. They need not address all the theological questions, social injustices, and experiences that cross their path.
While this group certainly has a compelling vision for the Christian artist, they have not escaped a list of dangers unique to their quadrant. The first of which is the heavy weight that the language of calling and vocation can lay on an artist who fails. If one’s faith is literally experienced in the act of creation, what happens when nothing is created? Has the artist not only failed as an artist but as a Christian as well? When faith, art, and identity are so tightly intertwined in the language of calling, professional failure can inspire a deep crisis of faith and identity.39
A second danger is not failure but success. An artist’s belief that they have been “called by God” and “set apart” to develop and create culture is a dangerous road for a species known Matthew Kaemingk 10
for its pride. It may be wiser to speak of the arts simply as one ordinary vocation among many, one small part of the much larger task of cultivating and developing creation. As Calvin Seerveld writes, for the artist to claim exclusive right to the title “creator” certainly “puts an unlawful burden on the back of any serious, young Christian who wants to be an artist.”40
The third and final danger for the experience group is that their “calling” to the arts may so consume them that they either forget or reject the other callings God has placed in their lives.
Artists are never simply artists. They are also called to be parents, spouses, citizens, friends, neighbors, and church members. As Francis Schaeffer reminds us, “No work of art is more important than an artist’s own life.”41 One’s discipleship may indeed be experienced and embodied in the artistic act but it is not exhausted in it. The artist may not use the language of calling to shut out the rest of their lives.42
Conclusion
As I stand back and survey the rich resources offered by these four prominent modes of faith/art engagement, I am encouraged and enriched by the variety of reflections and insights to be gleaned. That said; I am also left feeling unfulfilled. Are we no closer to a more holistic and comprehensive approach to faith and the arts? Can we not say with any clarity what it means to connect one’s faith and artistic practice? Are we left with continued fragmentation and disagreement? While each of the four modes seem to have strengths, they also struggle with overly narrow visions of the manifold purposes, practices, and experiences of Christians in the arts.
While I will not presume to “solve” or end this discussion, I would like to offer a single Matthew Kaemingk 11
point that should inform any “integration” discourse in the future. If it is true that the person, teachings, and work of Jesus Christ have always laid at the heart of what it means to be a
Christian, then it would seem that a Christological focus should be integral to any discussion of what it means to be a Christian artist.43
My brief and closing argument is that the life, teachings, death, and resurrection of Jesus
Christ offer a word of encouragement and warning for each of these four modes of “integration.”
(1) For ethics, Christ did not simply give his followers a long list of ethical obligations and responsibilities. Rather, he declared that he came so that we might have life and have it to the full. He himself functioned as a gift a grace, community, and love. Artists who follow Christ must indeed behave ethically. However, they do so, not out of obligation, but out of an experience of grace and with knowledge of beauty and joy.
(2) For expression, Christ did indeed care about the expression and communication of certain beliefs, convictions, and experiences. However, Christ was also a storyteller who often allusively invited people to imagine, to “come and see” an alternative way of looking at and living in the world. His parables did not bludgeon people with didactic or wooden messages.
Instead, his parables welcomed them into an imaginative, mysterious, and allusive mystery of faith.
(3) For enrichment, Christ in his incarnation affirms that the material creation is something that can address, shape us, and enrich us. It reveals the fingerprints of the creator.
That said, while we can know, experience, and be enriched by Christ in and through his creation, we still see him through a glass darkly. We still cannot quite hold on to him, nor can we control him. He will come when he will come. Matthew Kaemingk 12
In the same way, it is true that faith in Christ enriches our understanding of the arts and the world those arts engage. Christ is the key to the world, the cornerstone, the logos in and behind everything. Knowing Christ does enrich the artist with insight, hope, and strength. That said; Christian artists must not simply wait for their faith to enrich their art. They must practice, prepare, and cultivate their craft. Christ the creator did not simply make human beings to “have faith;” he created them to create. They must honor Christ’s creation by taking it seriously, studying it, practicing with it, and hanging around it in order to listen for what it has to say.
(4) For experience, some of us truly experience Christ in a deep way in and through our callings in the arts. That said; Christ does not call his people into singular, static, or predictable vocations. One day you are fishing or collecting taxes and the next you are healing the sick and handing out extra bread and fish. Christ calls and empowers disciples to responsibly follow his call wherever he leads. Moreover, Christ calls disciples to many vocations, not simply one. In the same way, artists can experience in their parenting, neighboring, worshipping, protesting, and learning as well. While we may very well experience a deep sense of call to the arts for a time,
Christ might eventually call us elsewhere.
What does it mean to be a Christian artist? I feel in many ways no closer to an answer.
Does it involve ethics, expression, enrichment, and experience? Yes, I think it does. But, what holds these things together? What adjudicates between them? It appears that I have argued that the proper question is not "What is the answer?" but rather "Who is the answer?"
Matthew Kaemingk 13
Matthew Kaemingk, PhD, is the Executive Director of Fuller Institute for Theology and
Northwest Culture and the [Trans]formation Initiative for Worship and the Arts in Seattle, WA.
Matthew is also an affiliate professor of Theology and Culture at Fuller Theological Seminary offering courses in worship, theology, arts, and culture. He is particularly interested in the vocation and responsibilities of Christian artists within the church and larger society. Matthew earned an MDiv at Princeton Theological Seminary along with doctoral degrees in Christian
Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary and Systematic Theology from the Vrije Universiteit of
Amsterdam.
1 David Miller, God at Work: A History of the Faith at Work Movement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). My own appropriation of Miller’s paradigm for the arts forced me to adapt his model. The most significant development on his paradigm can be found in my articulation of the enrichment category. 2 From the outset, it is important to note that these four categories are in no way meant to be exact or exclusive. Nor are they meant to be an exhaustive account of all of the diverse ways in which Christian connect their faith with their work. Rather, these categories form, what we might call, “ideal types." 3 Nicholas Wolterstorff, Art in Action: Toward a Christian Aesthetic (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1980), 194. 4 These decisions all have inevitable ethical implications. As Ned Bustard notes, these artists understand that “goodness is not merely something to strive for in their morality, it is also something that should permeate their aesthetic efforts.” Ned Bustard “Introduction” in It was Good, (Baltimore: Square Halo Books, 2007), 17. 5 One could trace the historic roots of these sentiments not only to scripture (Amos’ harsh words to musicians who distracted Israelites from the cries of the poor is just one example) but also to the aesthetic reflections of Plato. It was Plato who famously argued that if the arts had any value at all it was the moral improvement of the polis itself. 6 Can one take part in a play with sexually explicit content? What does God have to say about creative laziness? Should the artist allow outside economic, religious, or political forces to influence or constrain the integrity of their own personal work? What does God think about an artist that is not “true to themselves?” The contemporary painter Mary McCleary evinces this desire for integrity and excellence when she writes on the importance of a Christian commitment to craftsmanship. She argues that “good craftsmanship reflects the maker’s respect for himself, the materials of creation, as well as a high regard for the user or viewer.” Mary McCleary, “Craftsmanship” in Ned Bustard ed., It was Good, 127. Making her case she quotes Lewis Mumford who wrote with much regret on the modern demise of craftsmanship. He argued “the overemphasis on the creative moments in art, the tendency to picture aesthetic creation as one long, fervent spontaneous, activity, without severe toil and painful effort, without constant mastery of techniques, is one of the sure indications of the amateur or the outsider.” Lewis Mumford, Art and Technics (New York: Columbia University Press 1960), 48. For McCleary, an artist’s diligence and commitment to excellence and craftsmanship is a reflection on the integrity of their faith. The artist is obligated, under God, to do good. 7 For these “community-oriented” artists the primary danger is a hyper-individualistic approach to art. For, with the avant-garde, the “struggle to create in freedom must ever be renewed. Each artist must do it over again. Each must begin at the beginning… Each must free himself from the residue of his predecessor’s efforts. Each must pursue Matthew Kaemingk 14
novelty, originality, innovation.” Wolterstorff, 52. According to Prescott and other Christians who emphasize the importance of community such a model “is solipsistic.” Prescott, “Identity” in Ned Bustard ed., It was Good, 318- 319. For communalists like these, an artist’s concept of self and ethical “vocation, is found in relationship to God and other selves.”Ibid. Communal artists reject the notion that an ethic of commitment to community or tradition are necessarily restrictive and argue that living and working within them allows for more freedom and originality not less. Wolterstorff here points to the witness of Bach whose now praised artistic work “belonged to the art of the tribe; for, as aesthetically glorious as it is, it was then a humble servant of the Lutheran liturgy.” Wolterstorff, 189. Here, one’s art is understood as a communal endeavor standing on the shoulders of those who came before 8 As one can quickly see, artistic discussions of social responsibility take many forms and yet the common conviction is that the artist is an integral member of the larger community. I want to focus on one issue that is particularly prominent in this group: The responsibility of artists to address issues of injustice in their work. John de Gruchy’s magisterial Christianity, Art and Transformation: Theological Aesthetics in the Struggle for Justice, which was constructed in post-Apartheid South Africa, is the most comprehensive case for the social role and responsibility of the Christian artist in a broken world available. In this work he argues “artists are an essential element within civil society.” John W. de Gruchy, Christianity, Art, and Transformation: Theological Aesthetics in the Struggle for Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 200. He points a critical finger at Kant and other modern aesthetes who engineered the destructive philosophical wall between artists and their immediate communities. De Gruchy argues that the “separation of aesthetics and ethics… [has] had frightful social and political consequences” throughout the west.Ibid., 66. For, “in pursuing independence, art, especially bourgeois visual art, forfeited its social role.”Ibid., 67. If Christians are “to recover that role aesthetics has to be reconnected with truth and morality without becoming subject to ideological control.” Ibid. 9 Jeremy Begbie rightly complains of a dangerous tendency to reduce all aesthetic and theological discussions “to questions of moral adjudication.” Jeremy Begbie, Resounding Truth,(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2007), 24. Prescott adds that a singular “assumption that art should be ethically formative does not acknowledge the diverse ways in which “art is actually made, nor how art works in our cultural landscape.” Prescott, “Identity” in Ned Bustard ed., It was Good, 324. Moreover, Timothy Gorringe, reflecting on Christian architecture, argues that faithful design requires more than “sustainability, justice, empowerment, situatedness, and diversity,” it demands “enchantment” as well. Timothy Gorringe, A Theology of the Built Environment: Justice, Empowerment, Redemption (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 250. 10 Note, “Expressionism” is, of course, the name of an early 20th century movement in painting and poetry which originated in modern Germany. While related, our discussion of expressing one’s faith through one’s art obviously goes well beyond this particular historical movement. 11 Emil Nolde wrote: “I had followed an irresistible desire to represent profound spirituality, religion, tenderness…Christ, his face transfigured, sanctified and withdrawn, encircled by his disciples who are profoundly moved.” Herschel Chipp, Theories of Modern Art, (Berkeley, University of California, 1968), 146, 147. 12 It is therefore easy to understand why, according to John de Gruchy, modern expressivism “struck deep chords in the hearts of many [artists] who felt constricted by the rationalism of the Enlightenment, the moralism of Kant, and the dogmatism of Orthodoxy.” de Gruchy, Christianity, Art, and Transformation, 63. 13 Jeremy Begbie, Voicing Creation’s Praise: Towards a Theology of the Arts (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 1991), 20. 14 Begbie, Voicing Creation’s Praise, 48. 15 Paul Tillich quoted in Begbie, Voicing Creation’s Praise, 29 16 See George Steiner, Real Presences (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 178. 17 Edward Knippers, “Presence” in Ned Bustard ed., It was Good, 81. 18 Knippers, “Presence” in Ned Bustard ed., It was Good, 74 Matthew Kaemingk 15
19 Hilary Brand and Adrienne Chaplin, 128. These authors also argue that artists should invite their audience to enter into smaller and more intimate stories of suffering, wonder, self-deception, grace, and redemption. For “grand stories may be treated with the utmost suspicion, but people will listen to any number of stories on a human scale, especially those that come from the depths of experience.” Ibid, 15. In other words, Christian artists should not “seek to tell the whole story but give plenty of hints.”Ibid., 61. 20 Adrian Plass, “Artyfact” (London: Arts Centre Group, Winter 1995), 5. 21 Gregory Wolfe, “Picturing the Passion” Image: A Journal of Arts and Religion, #41, 4. 22 According to Leland Ryken these people understand the arts as “one of the chief means by which the human race grapples with and interprets reality.” Leland Ryken, The Christian Imagination: The Practice of Faith in Literature and Writing (Shaw Books: Colorado Springs, CO, 2002), 31. 23 L’Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and the Arts (Colorado Springs, CO: Shaw Books, 2001), 85. 24 Madeleine L’Engle, 57. 25 L’Engle, 119. 26For this group, “the work of art emerges from a dialogue between artist and material. The printmaker has in mind certain ideas and images for what she wants her print to be like... But it doesn’t turn out exactly as she wanted… So she revises her intent ever so slightly and when gouging the next line makes it somewhat different from what she had anticipated. And so it goes. No sovereign godlike freedom! Rather a conversation between herself and the material, leading her along….” Wolterstorff, 94-95. 27 In this same vein, Jeremy Begbie reports that Johann Sebastian Bach’s musical compositions did not emerge from “a strict pre-musical idea; their logic arises from the musical material itself, the character, and motion of the tones.” In other words, Bach did not know what he was going to write until he engaged the music itself. Begbie, Resounding Truth, 136. 28Ibid.,, 21-22. 29 Furthermore, it is important to remember that artists are not pristine priests, nor should they pretend or even wish to carry such a heavy title. It is hazardous indeed to rest one’s eternal hopes on the artistic act or its material as some sort of pure and unfiltered conduit through which religious truths and insights flow. Brand and Chaplin argue that, “Christians who think they have a direct inspirational line from God for their songs or poems should read Genesis 3 and think again.” Brand and Chaplin, 163. “The idea of the artist squirreled away in his or her studio, communing with the gods and then descending from the mountain to deliver the tablets,” according to William Dyrness, “is gone.” Dyrness, 123. Theodore Prescott reminds us that artists in his field of sculpture and elsewhere may freely wish to “conceal, exaggerate, distort, or fabricate” Prescott, “Identity” in Ned Bustard ed., It was Good, 314. their witness in the creative moment itself. Beyond these problems, the language of enrichment itself does not appear capable of holding within it the vast experiences of Christian artists or the diverse works and purposes of the arts themselves. Surely not every piece of art or experience of artistic creation is meant to be spiritually formative or equally revelatory. Some pieces are simply meant to entertain bored travelers, brighten rooms, fill awkward silences, or get a laugh. Sometimes the paint and clay simply doesn’t talk back to us at all. Sometimes the artist doesn’t feel like they are “walking on water.” To restrict the Christian value of a piece or a creative act to its spiritual import risks narrowing and missing out on the rich array of benefits a life spent in the arts have to offer. 30Timothy Gorringe’s Theology and the Built Environment is a prolonged argument that a culture’s worldview will inevitably be reflected in its architecture. Gorringe makes the case that “profound, creative, grace filled spiritualities produce grace filled environments” and that “banal, impoverished, alienated spiritualities produce alienating environments.” Gorringe, 24. He goes on to argue that if “that is the case, and I believe it is undeniable, then theology is anything but incidental to the debate about the built environment.” Ibid. In other words, if the Christian faith is is vibrant, rich, humane, and beautiful, it will inspire and allow the artist to produce works that reflect that richness and freedom. It is therefore important, according to Ned Bustard, for Christian artists in to “soak” in the faith’s life-giving “depths.” Ned Bustard “Introduction” from Ned Bustard ed., It was Good, 22. If artists choose not Matthew Kaemingk 16
to find rest in the waters of religion, which have, in the words of William Dyrness, “animated all living cultures throughout history” they will be left “as spiritual orphans.” Dyrness, 134. 31 In this spirit, Makoto Fujimura argues that it was none other than his encounter with the reality of Christ’s incarnation that breathed new life into his grappling with the age-old artistic tension of form versus content. Reflecting on the incarnational invasion of Bethlehem, Fujimura argues that, “In Christ, God became flesh, and his historical presence points to a world where hope is assured to be [one of] substance. With this gospel of incarnation, then, and only then, it is possible to speak of fusing spirit and body, content and form.” Makoto Fujimura, “Essence” in Ned Bustard ed., It was Good, 296. In a fascinating exploration of the incarnation and its implications for the arts, Fujimura goes on to argue that his faith in Christ’s gracious entrance into our world allows him to enter in to the artistic dance between form and content, spirit and material in a new and fruitful ways unavailable before. Ibid., 306.Moreover, if the world is indeed created, fallen, and in the process of being redeemed a Christian artist’s recognition of this reality will give her a unique insight into reality and the creative process itself. A mature faith will not allow the artist to create works that either deny the goodness of creation, the reality of sin, or the assurance of hope. For Fujimura, an artist cognizant of Christ’s grace can descend in to the depth’s of hellish human experience and yet still come out the other side with a thoughtful and chastened hope. Likewise, their gritty understanding the grace and hope will allow them to explore life’s joys without denying its tensions, trials, and real human cost. If an artist truly understands and owns these biblical realities Fujimura cannot help but ask, “Who can better depict a hell, heaven, or garden vision than Christians who are cognizant of Christ’s grace?”Ibid., 303. This group would submit that, if artists not only understand but live Christ’s story of redemption their artwork cannot help but be enriched. 32 The third provision the Christian faith provides artists in this group is confidence in the ability to communicate and find a point of contact in their audience. To the common observer the ability to dialogue may seem to be a rather humble claim. Yet in a postmodern age in which the true content of language and interpretation are radically being called into question the sustained belief in a point of connection is a powerful resource for the Christian artist. George Steiner, an accomplished novelist and literary scholar, passionately argues in his work Real Presences that every act of artistic expression and communication with another ultimately rests on a faith in a third party who makes the exchange of meaning possible. While the artist’s faith in the ability to communicate nearly always goes unexamined the fact that we are assuming a viable point of connection between creator and audience is unavoidable. Steiner argues that even postmodern nihilists have come to realize that every use of language, every stroke of the brush, and every pluck of the string contains within it an inherent belief that communication between souls is not only possible but desirable. For Steiner “the embarrassment we feel in bearing witness to the poetic, to the entrance into our lives of the mystery of otherness in art and music, is of a metaphysical-religious kind.” Steiner, Real Presences, 178. For the artist, to “compose and listen is to engage in presence. To wager on relationship. To believe that world and word touch.”Ibid., 216. For, “Where God’s presence is no longer a tenable supposition… certain dimensions of thought and creativity are no longer attainable.” Ibid., 229. 33 Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, ed. S. and R. Fitzgerald, (London: Faber and Faber, 1972), 176. 34 Following Christ means making art and making art means following Christ. Were they to abandon their calling in the arts they would be abandoning the call of Christ in their lives. An artist’s discipleship is experienced and lived out in the act of artistic creation. According to this framework, the Christian artist does not need to mechanically add Christian content to their work. It is there already. It is “Christian” because a Christian made it and offered it to God as a worthy sacrifice. Every play written, every building designed, and face carved can be, in and of itself, a faithful act of worship for this group regardless of its “religious content.” Fujimura articulates this beautifully when he writes, “my approach to art resembles the paradigm set by a woman in the gospel who broke her jar of nard upon Christ’s feet.” Fujimura, “Essence” in It was Good, 306. 35 Begbie, Voicing Creation’s Praise, 177. 36 Begbie, Resounding Truth, 238. 37 Knippers, “Presence” in Ned Bustard ed., It was Good, 82. Matthew Kaemingk 17
38 David Brighton, “A Close Shave with Nick Park” Articulate (London: London Arts Centre Group 1998) 15. 39 In view of this, the language of vocation must be applied with great care. Painter and Sculptor Roger Feldman argues that while many of us “may not have our work displayed in prominent museums or galleries… we can participate in the body of Christ” through the arts without making our work into a “career.” Roger Feldman, “Substance” in Ned Bustard ed., It was Good, 66. Emphasis mine. Feldman recalls that, “I remember a friend in college who took figure skating lessons even though she would never be great at it… I recall asking her… why she continued with the lessons. Her response was simple and profound. ‘Because it makes me whole.’”Ibid., 66. For Feldman, the value and contribution of the artist’s vocation is determined by God alone and not the market public opinion. 40 Calvin Seerveld, Rainbows, 26. 41 Francis Shaeffer quoted in Brand and Chaplin, 173. 42 “It is therefore absolutely necessary for the artist,” according to Jacques Maritain, that he “work for something other than his work, something better beloved.” Johnson and Savidge, 128. And for Maritain it is certainly true that “God is infinitely more lovable than Art.” Ibid. The love of God, in the words of Augustine, must be trusted to rightly order all other loves. 43 Let it be noted that if there were more space in this paper, I would rightly consider the import of the other two members of the Trinity as well. But, for now, I will focus on God the Son.