The Disconnect: Why Evangelicals Make Bad Art, Part 22
We’ve been exploring in this series answers as to why millions of Evangelical Americans have produced so few examples of quality art in any artistic category, seeing that this is largely due to limited (and/or distorted) views of Biblical teaching (or a failure to act on the implications of its teachings), despite the fact that Holy Writ instructs Christians in “every good work” (2 Tim 3: 16-17), which works of necessity includes the making of art.
We looked at the negative effects of such theologically deficient perspectives on the doctrines of Creation and Eschatology, which result in denigrations of the physical world and time as appropriate theaters of God’s Purposes, encouraging pessimism concerning history, and viewing the world as Satan’s realm, which needs only to be escaped from rather than redeemed and fulfilled.
We saw also that sub-Biblical views on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity led to a destruction of Scriptural justification of symbol as simultaneously showing forth both multiple meanings and unified meaning. Such views lead as well to the reduction of men from the mysterious bearers of God’s Image to simplistic machines amenable to quick-fix formulae.
We then turned to look at the implications of the Incarnation of Christ, in which God, in the Second Person of the Trinity, joined Himself to a fully Human Nature and Body so that He could be the Perfect Sacrifice to atone for the sins of mankind by dying in fallen humanity’s place. This Eternal Joining of God to Man in Christ Jesus is summed up by the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451) when it wrote that He is “at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood. Truly God and truly Man…”
Jesus is both fully God and fully Man at the same time, which is an eternal refutation of all views which hold that matter and spirit are at odds with each other, and shows that physical things are the proper arena for spirituality (Rom 12:1-2), including things like the arts.
We also saw that Evangelicals, influenced by the demonic doctrine of Pietism’s belief that the spirit is superior to, and incompatible with, the physical, emphasize only “spiritual” aspects of life (defined as prayer, worship, evangelism, etc.) and de-emphasize as “unspiritual” and “secular” things like work, politics, economics, and art.
The arts are reduced to glorified gospel tracts, with music privileged, since worship requires song. However, dance, architecture, acting, etc., are ignored and distrusted as sub-spiritual.
The Incarnation, though, gives the lie to such suppositions. To be a Perfect Human Sacrifice for the sins of men, Jesus had to be fully Human, in every category of human life: body, mind, will, and spirit. His Incarnation involved every aspect of human life: physical, emotional, imaginative, and so forth.
St. Gregory Nazianzus (329-389 A.D.) recognized this when he wrote, “… what has not been assumed (e.g., taken up by Christ in His Humanity) has not been redeemed; it is what is united to His Divinity that is saved.” Jesus has assumed our full humanity, both in its nature and potential, and by so doing has shown that every part of human existence (except for sin, which is a twisting of God’s Good Created Human Categories) is meant to be a carrier of God’s Intended Holiness and Spirituality for humanity. This means that human physicality, emotion, imagination, sensuality, and artifice (the natural extension of human creativity; remember that Jesus was a carpenter, Who created artifacts and architecture) are all intended to be exercised to reflect and please their Creator.
Thus, even sensual, physical, imaginative, and creative aspects of human artistry, including dance, painting, photography, architecture, film-making, computer and graphic art, jewelry-making, etc., are not only fit practices for a Christian, but are necessary to the vocation of humanity before God.
We Christians must take seriously our Lord’s Incarnation and cast off the devilish idea that the body, the senses, and the arts are not proper and necessary mediums for man’s part in the task of the glorification of God. A refusal to see this truth and act upon it will keep the Church reduced to its current failure to fulfill its artistic task of glorification in our time.
For additional teaching on the relationship of the spiritual and physical realm, go to Patreon for the “Windows To Glory” series.
A helpful book on The Incarnation:
