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The Future of Theology Amid the Arts: Some Reformed Reflections1

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The Future of Theology Amid the Arts: Some Reformed Reflections1 This is a pre-publication version for consultation only. Please do not cite this. © Jeremy S. Begbie 2011 The Future of Theology amid the Arts: Some Reformed Reflections1 Jeremy S. Begbie The ferment of “theology and the arts” shows no signs of waning. It burgeons in colleges, universities and churches. Theological internet-watchers observe its fast-expanding presence, and publishers are beginning to see it as a serious niche market. In this essay, I want to home in on just one feature of this encouraging groundswell of interest, especially noticeable in recent years – what appears to be a distinct unease or awkwardness about Protestantism, and especially of the Reformed variety. Undoubtedly it would be easy to exaggerate this, but I doubt if I am the only one to have had the sense at many discussions that although Christians of this ilk are usually welcome at the table, the best they can do is catch up with the profounder and unquestionably more fruitful wisdom of others – which by and large means those of a Roman Catholic, Anglo- Catholic or Eastern Orthodox persuasion. The reasons are not hard to see. The weaknesses of the Reformed tradition have been regularly rehearsed: an exaggerated fear of idolatry, an excessive suspicion of the arts (a “frigid Philistinism”2), a tendency to distrust all images, a paucity of reflection on beauty, a frequent inability to take physicality seriously, and so on – the territory is familiar to any who explore the field. To be sure, much scholarship has questioned the caricatures and sought to provide more balanced perspectives.3 But this has not prevented many in the Reformed stream, not least evangelicals, assuming that the theological grass will be greener elsewhere – especially in modern Roman Catholic writing, or in the pre-Reformation wisdom of Aquinas, Dionysius or Augustine. This eagerness to move outside one’s camp is in many ways surely healthy. When I first put my toe in the Christianity and arts river in the early 1980s, I recall three main currents of writing available: the Roman Catholic (drawing on Maritain, Rahner and others), the liberal Protestant (looking especially to Tillich), and the Dutch Neo-Calvinist (Rookmaaker, Seerveld, with Nicholas Wolterstorff sitting a little to one side). Serious dialogue between these seemed 1 I am very grateful to Tanner Capps, David Taylor, Bo Helmich, Suzanne McDonald, Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin, Kevin Vanhoozer and James K. A. Smith for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper. 2 I borrow the phrase from Trevor Hart; Trevor A. Hart, “Protestantism and Art,” in The Blackwell Companion to Protestantism, eds. Alister E. Mcgrath and Darren C. Marks (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), pp. 268-86, p. 268. 3 See e.g. Paul Corby Finney, ed., Seeing Beyond the Word: Visual Arts and the Calvinist Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999); William A. Dyrness, Visual Faith: Art, Theology, and Worship in Dialogue (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2001); Randall C. Zachman, Image and Word in the Theology of John Calvin (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007); Christopher R. Joby, Calvinism and the Arts: A Re-Assessment (Leuven, MA: Peeters, 2007); David Vandrunen, “Iconoclasm, Incarnation and Eschatology: Toward a Catholic Understanding of the Reformed Doctrine of the ‘Second’ Commandment,” International Journal of Systematic Theology Vol. 6, Iss. 2 (April 2004): 130-47. Belden C. Lane, Ravished by Beauty: The Surprising Legacy of Reformed Spirituality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). This is a pre-publication version for consultation only. 2 Please do not cite this. © Jeremy S. Begbie 2011 relatively rare. Today, the currents converse and mingle freely, often pulling others into the mix: nowadays artistic Reformed evangelicals are as likely to get their inspiration from Hans Urs von Balthasar and Henri de Lubac as they are from Rookmaaker or Seerveld.4 This criss-crossing of perspectives has undoubtedly borne immense fruit. However, amid the ecumenical conviviality I am inclined to think that shame about parts of the Reformed inheritance has been overplayed, and that the riches that this tradition can hold before the wider Church with regard to the arts are too easily overlooked. Indeed, I believe that in some respects the tradition is sorely needed in the present conversations. This is not of course to imply that the critical wisdom in this area belongs solely to the Reformed Churches, or that its traits and concerns are wholly absent elsewhere. In any case, the tradition itself is hugely complex and varied. I harbour no assumptions about being able to identify a single monolithic Reformed theology, and have no interest in defending all that has emerged within the tradition. (It is perhaps worth adding that I have never been a member of a Presbyterian or centrally Reformed Church or denomination.) Still less am I interested in shoring up what some would say is a waning Protestantism in our culture. I am concerned rather with certain casts of mind – conceptual concerns and strategies, especially insofar as they arise from close attention to the theological dimensions of biblical texts – that are more typical of the Reformed tradition than any other, and that I believe deserve to be heard in the current debates. If, as some think, we are witnessing a modest resurgence of interest in “Calvinism” (in the United States at least),5 perhaps that can provoke us to ask whether some of these casts of mind might have rather more to offer the current conversations about faith and art than has often been supposed. In this connection, a remark of Trevor Hart’s about the relevance of strands of Reformation thinking is worth quoting: [I]n an age where, for many, aesthetic experience has effectively substituted itself for religious faith as a perceived window onto “spiritual” realities…we may find that Reformation perspectives possess a curious freshness, reminding us of things which some theological approaches to art (not least some in the Protestant tradition) appear to have forgotten or broken faith with.6 I want to explore this “curious freshness” with respect to some key elements of the Reformed heritage. To structure the discussion, I will focus on just three areas of interest I find prominent in much contemporary writing about theology and the arts, at popular, semi-popular and academic levels – beauty, sacrament and language. 4 For one account of the “state of play” in theology and the arts (as in 2007), see William A. Dyrness, “The Arts,” in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology, eds. John B. Webster, Kathryn Tanner, and Iain R. Torrance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 561-79. 5 Time magazine spoke of New Calvinism as one of “10 Ideas Changing the World Right Now.” David Van Biema, “The New Calvinism,” Time Magazine Online (March 12, 2009): <http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1884779_1884782_1884760,00.html>, accessed July 28, 2011. See also Collin Hansen, Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2008). Whether this does represent a major shift or movement is a moot point. James K. A. Smith, “Barna Report on the ‘New Calvinism,’” blog entry on flors clavigera (2010): <http://forsclavigera.blogspot.com/2010/11/barna-report-on-new-calvinism.html>, accessed July 28, 2011. 6 Hart, “Protestantism and Art,” p. 270. This is a pre-publication version for consultation only. 3 Please do not cite this. © Jeremy S. Begbie 2011 The Allure of Beauty After seasons of exile, the theme of beauty seems to be enjoying something of a comeback. In artistic circles there are signs of an energetic interest, and the philosophical world has seen a steady stream of studies.7 Among theologians it is proving ever more popular. Impatient with what Edward Farley calls “the new problematic of beauty” engendered in particular by the eighteenth century’s “relocation of beauty from an external property to a human sensibility,”8 many want to reinstate beauty by speaking of it as integral to the created world, and perhaps to the identity of God.9 Hence the appeal of von Balthasar’s theological aesthetics, of Augustine and Aquinas on beauty,10 and the increasing fascination with Jacques Maritain.11 Along with this often goes an almost immediate association of the arts with beauty – to care about the arts, it is assumed, is to care about beauty, and vice versa. To call any of this into question might seem very odd, even bizarre – especially in a culture so obviously in need of beauty, and when Protestant Christians habitually neglect beauty in favor of the other two “transcendentals,” truth and goodness. Nevertheless, I believe it is worth sending some friendly warning shots across the bow of this fashionable theological steamer. The first is a formal point about the assumed mutual entailment of beauty and the arts. It may well be that beauty (variously defined) can and should be considered a desirable quality in the arts. But to suppose that the presence of, or aspiration towards beauty is a necessary condition for something 7 See e.g. Elaine Scarry, On Beauty and Being Just (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999); Bill Beckley and David Shapiro, Uncontrollable Beauty: Toward a New Aesthetics (New York, NY: Allworth Press, 1998); Arthur C. Danto, The Abuse of Beauty: Aesthetics and the Concept of Art (Chicago, IL: Open Court, 2003); Glenn Parsons and Allen Carlson, eds., Functional Beauty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); Roger Scruton, Beauty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Brett Ashley Kaplan, Unwanted Beauty: Aesthetic Pleasure in Holocaust Representation (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2007); Alexander Nehamas, “The Return of the Beautiful: Morality, Pleasure, and the Value of Uncertainty,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism Vol.
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