The Arts and Theological Education
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Theological Education Sacred Imagination: The Arts and Theological Education Volume XXXI Number 1 Autumn 1994 ISSN 0040-5620 Theological Education Sacred Imagination: The Arts and Theological Education Volume XXXI Number 1 Autumn 1994 ISSN 0040-5620 THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION Volume XXXI, Number 1 JAMES L. WAITS, Executive Editor WILSON YATES, Contributing Editor NANCY MERRILL, Managing Editor Theological Education is published semiannually by The Association of Theological Schools IN THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 10 Summit Park Drive Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15275-1103 Subscription Rates Per Year (U>S> address) $7.00 Per Year (non-U.S. address) $8.00 10 or more to the same address $5.00 per copy Single Copy $5.00* *Plus Postage and Handling Indexed with abstracts in Religion Index One: Periodicals, American Theological Library Association, Chicago, Illinois. Available on-line through BRS (Bibliographic Retrieval Services) in Latham, New York, and DIALOG in Palo Alto, California. Contents Introduction 1 Wilson Yates THE ARTS AND THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION Characteristics of Art 5 and the Character of Theological Education Frank Burch Brown Theology, the Arts, and Theological Education 13 Gordon D. Kaufman Theological Education and the Arts: Four Comments 23 Edward Farley Arguments and Allies: The Yale Consultations 29 and Recent Writings about Theological Education Barbara G. Wheeler Art and Multiculturalism: 37 Competitors or Allies in Theological Education? William A. Dyrness Theology and the Arts Dialogue: 47 Tasks for Theological Education Wilson Yates THE VISUAL ARTS IN THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION A Willem de Kooning Triptych 59 John W. Cook The Revelatory Body: 75 Signorelli's Resurrection of the Flesh at Orvieto Margaret R. Miles Sharpening Our Vision 91 as a Mode of Theological Education William A. Dyrness Three Functions of Arts in Theological Education 97 Nicholas Wolterstorff THE LITERARY ARTS IN THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION "What is Truth?" 101 The Question of Art and Theological Education Peter S. Hawkins "Writing for God After All"— 113 Scripture, Poetry, and Proclamation Richard B. Hays Literature and Theological Education: 121 Notes on a Resurrected Romance James H. Evans, Jr. The Place of Poetics in Theological Education: 133 A Heuristic Inquiry Edward Farley MUSIC IN THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION Ethical Vision and Musical Imagination 149 Max L. Stackhouse An Exploration of Music as Theology 165 Victoria R. Sirota Music and Human Existence: A Response 175 Edward Farley Reflections on Music and Theology 183 Paul Westermeyer Introduction Wilson Yates United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities ver the past 15 years, more attention has been given to the place and role O of the arts in North American theological education than at any previous time in its history. This is a cause for celebration for those who seek an integration of the arts within the theological curriculum, but it is also a cause for sober reflection regarding how far we have yet to go. For a careful assessment of where we are indicates that while a serious dialogue between theology and the arts has begun and a movement toward integration of the arts within theological education is underway, the road we must travel remains long and full of theological. political, and, no doubt, budgetary detours of the first order. This double-sided experience of recognizing the strides that we have made while seeing the major task before us is important to keep in mind. On the positive side, we have seen more than a dozen schools launch programs in the arts in which the schools have not only developed course work but engaged the larger question of why the arts should be a part of the theological enterprise and what the implications of their inclusion are for the theological curriculum as a whole We have also seen a rather large number of schools institute courses in religion and the arts and, more generally, entertain and experiment with what the integration of the arts in traditional course work and the theological disciplines would look like.1 The Association of Theological Schools has also been involved in this effort, including the arts in theological education as one of its themes for the 1988 Biennial Meeting in San Francisco. Its growing interest in this area, under the leadership of executive director James L. Waits, has led also to the selection of theology and the arts as one of the areas of research of the new Henry Luce III Fellows in Theology program as well as the publication of these essays in Theological Education. Beyond specific programmatic efforts of individual schools and the supportive work of ATS, publications such as ARTS—the Arts in Religious and Theological Studies and the recently created journal, Images, have further high- lighted the religion and arts conversation and, in the ease of ARTS the discussion has had a specific focus on theological education. International, national, and local conferences have also made their contributions. In l985 Lilly Theological Education, Volume XXXI, Number 1 (1994): 1-4 1 Endowment sponsored a conference at Candler School of Theology that focused on two Endowment-funded reports, later published as books: John Dillenberger’s A Theology of Aesthetic Sensibilities and Wilson Yates’s The Arts in Theological Education. With the Candler conference as a foundational gathering, a series of important events have occurred since, often, again, with Lilly Endowment support. The Arts and Christianity Enquiry group, created in 1990 and made up of persons working in the field from several different countries, has held meetings in London and Dresden with a summer meeting and large interna- tional conference scheduled for Berkeley, California, in 1995. (The conference will be the largest and most ambitious public event that has yet been held for theology and the arts.) Various symposia and forums have occurred for national and local audiences including the 1993 Image Conference in Berkeley and the yearly symposium of the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, Worship, and the Arts. Of all the ventures in this field, the 1991-93 Lilly Endowment-sponsored Consultations of the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, Worship, and the Arts provided the most intensive and far-reaching discussion of the arts and theo- logical education. The collection of essays that make up this volume came out of the consultations and is presented here as a source for continuing discussion for the schools of ATS. A word about the Yale project, therefore, is in order before turning to the papers themselves.2 In 1986 John Cook, Director of the Institute of Sacred Music, working with Robert Lynn of Lilly Endowment, received a grant from the Endowment to undertake a major investigation of the relationship of the arts and theological education. The grant funded two national conferences. The first in 1988 in- volved both seminary faculty and administrators and was focused on raising major issues for theological schools to consider in approaching the arts. The second conference in 1989 was smaller and involved mostly seminary faculty charged with the exploration of certain of those issues together with their implications for teaching. In 1990 Lilly Endowment enabled Yale to continue its work by providing funding for smaller consultations on the visual arts, litera- ture, and music. A final consultation focused on the findings of the previous meetings and their implications for the nature and role of the arts within theological education. The approach for this investigation was: (1) topical, organized by artistic medium; (2) pedagogical, with presenters giving lectures just as they do in their seminary classes; and (3) analytical, with participants observing and assessing the particular mode and substance of “classroom” presentations. The guiding question that informed all of the sessions was: What is theological about 2 the inclusion of the arts in the curricula and programs of seminaries and divinity schools? The consultations were made up of persons primarily from theological schools who were working with the arts. They came from schools of different theological orientations, so that their assessment of what the future of the arts in a theological setting should be was of necessity varied. The presentations that have been chosen for this volume were selected in light of their insights for ongoing debate and conversation regarding the theological significance, place, and purpose of the arts within theological schools. Certain of the essays w ere edited so as to focus the issues for the larger conversation that needs to take place among theological faculty and administra- tors who make up the ATS community. But the essays also reflect the specific discussions that took place in the Yale consultations; accordingly, they invite the reader to see the unfolding development and interplay of ideas and issues that became the central concerns of the participants in those settings. Overall, I think we can say that the essays provide a good case study of what a relatively small but representative group of theological educators raised as issues that must be dealt with by us all if we are to define in a significant and lasting way the role and place of the arts for the theological enterprise. The format for this collection draws on the general format of the consultations with a division of the material into four sets of essays. The first set treats in broad stroke the role and place of the arts in theological schools by considering a range of larger questions of concern including: Why should