Art and the Bible
by Francis Schaeffer

There is a very real sense in which the Christian life itself should be our greatest work of art.
Even for the great artist, the most crucial work of art is his l
distinct perspectives on art
francis schaeffer

All of us are engaged daily with works of art, even if we are neither professional nor amateur artists. We read books, we listen to music, we look at posters, we admire flower arrangements.

Art, as I am using the word, does not include just “high art” — that is, painting, sculpture, poetry, classical music — but also the more popular expressions — the novel, the theater, the cinema and popular music.

In fact, there is a very real sense in which the Christian life itself should be our greatest work of art. Even for the great artist, the most crucial work of art is his life. In what follows, I wish to develop a Christian perspective on art in general.

How should we as creators and enjoyers of beauty comprehend and evaluate it? There are, I believe, at least eleven distinct perspectives from which a Christian can consider and evaluate works of art. These perspectives do not exhaust the various aspects of art. The field of aesthetics is too rich for that. But they do cover a significant portion of what should be a ChristianÌs understanding in this area.

artwork as artwork

The first is the most important: a work of art has a value in itself. For some this principle may seem too obvious to mention, but for many Christians it is unthinkable. And yet if we miss this point, we miss the very essence of art.

Art is not something we merely analyze or value for its intellectual content. It is something to be enjoyed. The Bible says that the art work in the tabernacle and the temple was for beauty. How should an artist begin to do his work as an artist? I would insist that he begin his work as an artist by setting out to make a work of art. What that would mean is different in sculpture and poetry, for example, but in all cases the artist should be setting out to make a work of art.

As a Christian we know why a work of art has value. Why? First, because a work of art is a work of creativity, and creativity has value because God is the Creator. The first sentence in the Bible is the declaration that the Creator created: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. So too the first words of the prologue to the Gospel of John: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God ... . All things were made through him; and without him was not anything made that hath been made (John 1:1, 3). Therefore, the first reason that creativity has value is that God is the Creator.

Second, an art work has value as a creation because man is made in the image of God, and therefore man not only can love and think and feel emotion, but also has the capacity to create. Being in the image of the Creator, we are called upon to have creativity. In fact, it is part of the image of God to be creative, or to have creativity. We never find an animal, non-man, making a work of art. On the other hand, we never find men anywhere in the world or in any culture in the world who do not produce art. Creativity is a part of the distinction between man and non-man. All people are to some degree creative. Creativity is intrinsic to our “mannishness.”

But we must be careful not to reverse this. Not everything that man makes is good intellectually or morally. So, while creativity is a good thing in itself, it does not mean that everything that comes out of man’s creativity is good. For while man was made in the image of God, he is fallen. Furthermore, since men have various gifts and talents, everyone cannot create everything equally well. However, the main point is that creativity as creativity is a good thing as such.

When I was younger, I thought it was wrong to use the word create in reference to works of art. I thought it ought to be used solely in relation to what God can do. Later, I saw that I was desperately wrong; I am now convinced that it is important to understand that both God and man create. Both make something. The distinction is this: God, because He is infinite, can create out of nothing by His spoken word. We, because we are finite, must create from something else that has already been created. Yet the word create is appropriate, for it suggests that what man does with what is already there is to make something new. Something that was not there before, something that began as an unmannish part of reality, is transformed by the mannishness of man and now reflects that mannishness.

I am convinced that one of the reasons men spend millions in making art museums is not just so that there will be something “aesthetic,” but because the art works in them are an expression of the mannishness of man himself. When I look at the preColumbian silver or African masks or ancient Chinese bronzes, not only do I see them as works of art, but I see them as expressions of the nature and character of humanity. As a man, in a certain way they are myself, and I see there the outworking of the creativity that is inherent in the nature of man.

Many modern artists, it seems to me, have forgotten the value that art has in itself. Much modern art is far too intellectual to be great art. I am thinking, for example, of such an artist as Jasper Johns. Many modern artists do not see the distinction between man and non-man, and it is a part of the lostness of modern man that they no longer see value in the work of art as a work of art.

I am afraid, however, that as evangelicals we have largely made the same mistake. Too often we think that a work of art has value only if we reduce it to a tract. This too is to view art solely as a message for the intellect.

There are, I believe, three basic possibilities concerning the nature of a work of art. The first view is the relatively recent theory of art for art’s sake. This is the notion that art is just there and that is all there is to it. You can’t talk about a message in it, you can’t analyze it, it doesn’t say anything. This view is, I think, quite misguided. For one thing, no great artist functions on the level of art for art’s sake alone. Think, for example, of the high Renaissance, beginning with Cimabue (c. 1240-1302) and leading through Giotto (1267-1337), Masaccio (1401-28), and all the way up to Michelangelo (1475-1564) and Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). All of these artists worked from one of two viewpoints, and sometimes there was a confusion between the two. They worked either from their notion of Christianity (which to us who hold a biblical viewpoint was often deficient) or from a Renaissance form of humanism. Florence, for example, where so many excellent works of art were produced, was a center for the study of Neoplatonism. Some of the artists studied under Ficino (1433-99), perhaps the greatest of the Neoplatonists and influential throughout Europe. These artists showed their viewpoint in their art.

It is true that the great modern artists such as Picasso never worked for only art for art’s sake either. Picasso had a philosophy which showed through in his paintings. It is true that many lesser artists now work, or try to work, in the milieu of art for art’s sake, but the great masters did not.

The second view, which I spoke of above, is that art is only an embodiment of a message, a vehicle for the propagation of a particular message about the world or the artist or man or whatever. This view has been held by Christians as well as non-Christians, the difference between these two versions being the nature of the message which the art embodies. But, as I have said, this view, Christian or non-Christian, reduces art to an intellectual statement, and the work of art as a work of art disappears. The third basic notion of the nature of art — the one I think is right, the one that really produces great art and the possibility of great art — is that the artist makes a work of art, and that then the body of his work shows his world-view. No one, for example, who understands Michelangelo or Leonardo can look at their work without understanding something of their respective worldviews. Nonetheless, these artists began by making works of art, and then their world-views showed through the body of their work. I emphasize the body of an artist’s work because it is impossible ible for any single painting, for example, to reflect the totality of an artist’s view of reality. But when we see a collection of an artist’s paintings or a series of a poet’s poems or a number of a novelist’s novels, both the outline and some of the details of the artistØs conception of life shine through. How then should an artist begin to do his work? I would insist that he begin by setting out to make a work of art. He should say to himself, “I am going to make a work of art.” Perspective number one is that a work Of art is first of all a work of art.

art forms add strength to the world-view

Art forms add strength to the world-view which shows through, no matter what the world-view is or whether the world-view is true or false. Think, for example, of a side of beef hanging in a butcher shop. It just hangs there. But if you go to the Louvre and look at Rembrandt’s painting, Side of Beef Hanging in a Butcher Shop, it’s very different. It’s startling to come upon this particular work because it says a lot more than its title. Rembrandt’s art causes us to see the side of beef in a concentrated way, and, speaking for myself, after looking and looking at his picture I have never been able to look at a side of beef in a butcher shop with the superficiality I did before. How much stronger is Rembrandt’s painting than merely the label, A Side of Beef.

In literature, there is a parallel. Good prose as an art form has something bad prose does not. Further, poetry has something good prose does not. We may have long discussions on what is added, but the fact that there are distinct differences is clear. Even in the Bible, the poetry adds a dimension not present in the prose. In fact, the effect of any proposition, whether true or false, can be heightened if it is expressed in poetry or in artistic Prose rather than in bald, formulaic statement.
normal definitions, normal syntax

In all forms of writing, both poetry and prose, it makes a tremendous difference whether there is a continuity or a discontinuity with the normal definitions of words in normal syntax. Many modern writers make a concerted effort to disassociate the language of their works from the normal use of language in which there is a normal definition of words and a normal use of syntax. If there is no continuity with the way in which language is normally used, then there is no way for a reader or an audience to know what the author is saying.

An artist can, of course, use language with great richness, fill his writing with figures of speech and hyperbole or play games with the syntax. The great artist often does this, going far beyond a merely rudimentary use of normal grammar and normal definition of words. And in doing so, he adds depth and dimension.

Shakespeare is the great example. We understand Shakespeare’s dramas because he uses enough normal syntax and normal definitions of words so that there is a running story and a continuity between the running story and all of the artistic devices he uses. We know what Shakespeare is saying not because of the far-flung metaphors and beautiful verbal twists, but because of the continuity they have with the story on the level of normal definition and normal syntax. There is a firm core of straightforward propositions. What is true in literature is also true in painting and sculpture. The common symbolic vocabulary that belongs to all men (the artists and the viewers) is the world around us — namely, God’s world. That symbolic vocabulary in the representational arts stands parallel to normal grammar and normal syntax in the literary arts. When, therefore, there is no attempt on the part of an artist to use this symbolic vocabulary at all, then communication breaks down. There is then no way for anyone to know what the artist is saying. My point is not that making this sort of art is immoral or anti-Christian, but rather that a dimension is lost.

Totally abstract art stands in an undefined relationship with the viewer, for the viewer is completely alienated from the painter. There is a huge wall between them. The painter and the viewer stand separated from each other in total alienation, a greater alienation than Giacometti could ever show in his alienated figures.

When Giacometti pictures the awful alienation of man, he makes figures which are alienated, but he is still living in God’s world and is still using the common symbolic forms, no matter how he distorts them. He plays with the vocabulary, but the vocabulary is still there. So there is a communication between Giacometti and me, a titanic communication. I can understand what he is saying and I cry.

In contrast to this, there is a distinct limitation to totally abstract art. Like prose or poetry which has no contact with normal syntax and the normal definitions of words, it is a quarry out of which the observer or the hearer has a personal emotional response.

art and the sacred

The fact that something is a work of art does not make it sacred. Martin Heidegger in What Is Philosophy? came finally to the view that there are small beings (namely, people) who verbalize, and therefore we can hope that Being has some meaning. His great cry at the end of this book is to listen to the poet. Heidegger is not saying that we should listen to the content of what the poets say, because one can find two different poets who give absolutely opposite content and this doesn’t matter. Rather, the poet as a poet became Heidegger’s upper-story optimistic hope.

As Christians, we must see that just because an artist —even a great artist —portrays a world-view in writing or on canvas, it does not mean that we should automatically accept that worldview. Art may heighten the impact of the world-view —in fact, we can count on this — but it does not make something true. The truth of a world-view presented by an artist must be judged on grounds other than artistic greatness.

four standards of judgment

What kind of judgment does one apply, then, to a work of art? I believe that there are four basic standards:

(1) technical excellence; (2) validity; (3) intellectual content, the world-view which comes through; and (4) the integration of content and vehicle.

I will discuss technical excellence in relationship to painting because it is easy to point out through this medium what I mean. Here one considers the use of color, form, the texture of the paint, the handling of lines, the balance, composition and unity of the painting, and so forth. In each of these, there can be varying degrees of technical excellence. By recognizing technical excellence as an aspect of an art work, we are often able to say that while we do not agree with such and such an artist’s world-view, he is nonetheless a great artist.

We are not being true to the artist as a man if we consider his art work junk simply because we differ with his outlook on life. Christian schools, Christian parents, and Christian pastors often have turned off young people at just this point. Because the schools, the pastors and the parents did not make a distinction between technical excellence and content, the whole of much great art has been rejected with scorn or ridicule. Instead, if the artist’s technical excellence is high, he is to be praised for this, even if we differ with his world-view. Man must be treated fairly as man. Creative ability and technical excellence are therefore important criteria. Validity is the second criterion. By validity I mean whether an artist is honest to himself and to his world-view, or whether he makes his art only for money or for the sake of being accepted. If an artist makes an art work solely for a patron — whether that patron is the ancient noble, or the modern art gallery to which the artist wants access, or the modern art critics of the moment — his work does not have validity. The modern forms of ²the patronÓ are more destructive than even that of the old noble.

To bring it down to earth, let’s see what happens in the art form of preaching. There is many a pastor who does not have validity. Some preach for material gain and others in order to be accepted by their congregation. It is so easy to play to the audience, to adjust what one says or the way one says it to produce the kind of effect which will be most beneficial to the preacher himself. And when one sees the issue in relationship to the gospel, the force of the dishonesty is especially obvious. We can think of the contemporary dramatists whose future is in the hands of the critics of the passing moment. In drama, art, music and cinema, we have a set of New York and London critics who can make or break the artist. How easy it is to play to the critic and not to take one’s art as a serious expression of what the artist himself wants to say and do.
The third criterion for the judgment of a work of art is its content, that which reflects the world-view of the artist. As far as a Christian is concerned, the world-view that is shown through a body of art must be seen ultimately in terms of the Scripture. The artist’s world-view is not to be free from the judgment of the Word of God. In this the artist is like a scientist. The scientist may wear a white coat and be considered an “authority” by society, but where his statements impinge upon what God has given us in Scripture, they come under the ultimate authority of His Word. An artist may wear a painterØs smock and be considered almost a holy man; yet where his work shows his world-view, the content must be judged by its relationship to the Christian world-view.

I think we can now see how it is possible to make such judgments concerning the work of art. If we stand as Christians before a manØs canvas and say that he is a great artist in technical excellence and validity — if in fact he is — if we have been fair with him as a man and as an artist, then we can say that his world-view is wrong. We can judge his view on the same basis as we judge the views of anybody else — philosopher, common man, laborer, businessman or whatever.
Let’s be more specific. The notion of Bohemian freedom which Jean-Jacques Rousseau promulgated and which has been so prevalent in modern society has no place in Christian thinking. Rousseau was seeking a kind of autonomous freedom, and from him stemmed a group of “supermen” whose lives were lived above reason, as it were, and above the norms of society. For a long time this Bohemian life was taken to be the ideal for the artist, and it has come in the last few decades to be considered an ideal for more than the artist. From a Christian point of view, however, this sort of life is not allowed. God’s Word binds the great man and the small, the scientist and the simple, the king and the artist.

Some artists may not know that they are consciously showing forth a world-view. Nonetheless, a world-view usually does show through from the body of their work. Even those works which were constructed under the principle of art for art’s sake often imply a world-view — even the world-view that there is no meaning is a message. In any case, whether the artist is conscious of the world-view or not, to the extent that it is there it must come under the judgment of the Word of God

There is a corollary to this third criterion. We should realize that if something untrue or immoral is stated in great art, it can be far more destructive and devastating than if it is expressed in poor art or prosaic statement. Much of the crude art, the common product of counterculture communities and the underground press, is laden with destructive messages, but the art is so poor that it does not have much force. But the greater the artistic expression, the more important it is to consciously bring it and its world-view under the judgment of Christ and the Bible. The common reaction among many, however, is just the opposite. Many seem to feel that the greater the art, the less we ought to be critical of its world-view. This we must reverse.

An example of the devastating effect of great art with nonChristian content occurs in Zen. In Zen, the world is nothing, man is nothing, everything is nothing; but Zen poetry says it beautifully, so much more beautifully than the counterculture press. Swearing in four-letter words, the counterculture press often declares that man is nothing, the world is nothing, nothing is nothing. And one thinks to himself, “Ah, but if it were said with some beauty, maybe there would be something.” And then Zen comes along as a high art form and gives this message with beauty. And now you’re dead twice. There is a second corollary related to judging the content of an art work. It is possible for a non-Christian writer or painter to write and paint according to a Christian world-view even though he himself is not a Christian. To understand this, we must distinguish between two meanings of the word Christian. The first and essential meaning is that a Christian is a person who has accepted Christ as his Savior and has thus passed from death to life, from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of God, by being born again. But if a number of people really are Christians, then they bring forth a kind of consensus that exists apart from themselves and sometimes non-Christians paint and write within the framework of that consensus even though they as individuals are not Christians.

There are, therefore, four kinds of people in the realm of art. The first is the born-again man who writes or paints within the Christian total world-view. The second is the non-Christian who expresses his own non-Christian world-view. The third is the man who is personally a non-Christian, but nevertheless writes or paints on the basis of the Christian consensus by which he has been influenced. For example, in another area, if one were to ask whether Benjamin Franklin or Thomas Jefferson personally were Christians, the answer, as best we can judge from what they have said, is no. Nonetheless, they produced something that had some sort of Christian framework because they were producing it out of the Christian consensus of Samuel Rutherford’s Lex Rex. Thus, from a Christian framework Jefferson and Franklin were able to write that men have certain inalienable rights, a notion derived from a specifically Christian world-view. The fourth person is the born-again Christian who does not understand what the total Christian world-view should be and therefore produces art which embodies a non-Christian worldview. In other words, just as it is possible for a non-Christian to be inconsistent and to paint God’s world in spite of his personal philosophy, it is possible for a Christian to be inconsistent and embody in his paintings a non-Christian world-view. And it is this latter which is perhaps the most sad.

The fourth criterion for judging a work of art involves how well the artist has suited the vehicle to the message. For those art works which are truly great, there is a correlation between the style and the content. The greatest art fits the vehicle that is being used to the world-view that is being presented.

A clear example is found in T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. When Eliot published this in 1922, he became a hero to the modern poets, because for the first time he dared to make the form of his poetry fit the nature of the world as he saw it — namely, broken, unrelated, ruptured. What was that form? A collection of shattered fragments of language and images, and allusions drawn seemingly haphazardly from all manner of literature, philosophy and religious writings from the ancients to the present. But modern poets were pleased, for they now had a poetic form to fit the modern world-view of unrelatedness.

The breakthrough in painting came in Picasso’s Demoiselles d’Avignon (1907), a painting which takes its name from a house of prostitution in Barcelona. Picasso began this work in the vein of other paintings of the period; but as one critic describes it, Picasso ended it as “a semi-abstract composition in which the forms of the nudes and their accessories are broken up into planes compressed into a shallow space.” More specifically, Picasso began on the left by painting the forms rather naturally, toward the middle he painted more like Spanish primitives, and finally on the right, as he finished his work, he painted the women as only abstract forms and symbols or masks, and thus succeeded in making monsters of his human subjects. Picasso knew what he was doing, and for a moment the world stood still. It was in fact so strong an expression that for a long time even his friends would not accept it. They didn’t even want to look at it. Thus, in his painting of the women Picasso pictured the fractured nature of modern man. What T. S. Eliot did in his poetry, Picasso had already done in painting. Both men deserve high scores for suiting the vehicle to the message.

No art should be judged on the basis of this criterion alone, however. We should ultimately see all art works in the light of their technique, validity, world-view, and suiting of form to content.

art can be used for any type of message

Art forms can be used for any type of message, from pure fantasy to detailed history. That a work of art is in the form of fantasy or epic or painting does not mean that there is no propositional content. just as one can have propositional statements in prose, there can be propositional statements in poetry, in painting, in virtually any art form.

Some years ago a theologian at Princeton commented that he did not mind saying the Creeds, providing that he could sing them. What he meant was that so long as he could make them a work of art, he didn’t feel that he had to worry about the content. But this is both poor theology and poor aesthetics. A lyric can contain considerable iderable theological content. An epic can be as emphatically (and accurately) historic as a straight piece of prose. Paradise Lost, for example, contains many statements which while artistically expressed are almost straight theology. just because something takes the form of a work of art does not mean that it cannot be factual.

changing styles

Many Christians, especially those unused to viewing the arts and thinking about them, reject contemporary painting and contemporary poetry not because of their world-view, but simply because they feel threatened by a new art form. It is perfectly legitimate for a Christian to reject a particular work of art intellectually — that is, because he knows what is being said by it. But it is another thing to reject the work of art simply because the style is different from that which we are used to. In short: Styles of art form change, and there is nothing wrong with this. This sort of change is not only true of art forms; it is true of whole word systems. Chaucer wrote English, and I write English. But surely there is quite a difference between them. Is it wrong for me to speak my kind of English rather than Chaucer’s? Would you read what I wrote if I were writing in Chaucerian English?

As a matter of fact, change is one difference between life and death. There is no living language which does not undergo constant change. The languages which do not change — Latin, for example — are dead. As long as one has a living art, its forms will change. The past art forms, therefore, are not necessarily the right ones for today or tomorrow. To demand the art forms of yesterday in either word systems or art is a bourgeois failure. It cannot be assumed that if a Christian painter becomes “more Christian,” he will necessarily paint more and more like Rembrandt. This would be like saying that if the preacher really makes it next Sunday morning, he will preach to us in Chaucerian English. Then we’ll really listen!

Now, some may say, “Well, I don’t want Chaucerian English, but I would certainly like King James English.” I personally love King James English. It is still my language because I was educated in a day when it was one of the marks of the educated man to read it and the language of Shakespeare with facility. Reading it endlessly, I made it my own. But must I preach in King James English or be considered a failure? Must I always pray using King James English, the thee’s and thou’s, for example? To think so is a mark of a bourgeois mind. Christians must absolutely and consciously separate themselves from such thinking.

Not only will there be a change in art forms and language as time progresses, but there will be a difference in art forms coming from various geographical locations and from different cultures. Take, for example, Hebrew poetry. It has alliteration and parallelism and other such rhetorical forms, but it hardly ever rhymes. Does this mean it is not poetry? Or does it mean that most English poetry is wrong because it rhymes? Must all poetry be frozen into the form of Hebrew poetry? Surely not. Rather, each art form in each culture must find its own proper relationship between worldview and style.

For example, I may walk into a museum I have never been in before and enter a room without seeing its identifying plaque, and I may immediately say to myself, “Ah, this is Japanese art.” How can I tell? From the style. The crucial question is, of course, should it show its Japaneseness? The answer is obviously yes.

Then what about the Christian’s art? Here three things should be stressed. First, Christian art today should be twentieth-century art. Art changes. Language changes. The preacher’s preaching today must be twentieth-century language communication, or there will be an obstacle to being understood. And if a Christian’s art is not twentieth-century art, it is an obstacle to his being heard. It makes him different in a way in which there is no necessity for difference. A Christian should not, therefore, strive to copy Rembrandt or Browning.

Second, Christian art should differ from country to country. Why did we ever force the Africans to use Gothic architecture? It’s a meaningless exercise. All we succeeded in doing was making Christianity foreign to the African. If a Christian artist is Japanese, his paintings should be Japanese; if Indian, Indian.

Third, the body of a Christian artist’s work should reflect the Christian world-view. In short, if you are a young Christian artist, you should be working in the art forms of the twentieth century, showing the marks of the culture out of which you have come, reflecting your own country and your own contemporariness, and embodying something of the nature of the world as seen from a Christian standpoint.

modern art forms and the Christian message

While a Christian artist should be modern in his art, he does face certain difficulties. First, we must distinguish carefully between style and message. Let me say firmly that there is no such thing as a godly style or an ungodly style. The more one tries to make such a distinction, the more confusing it becomes.

I remember being in Cambridge once at a symposium of Christians who were addressing themselves to the nature of Christian art and art forms. One of the Christian artists — a very fine organist — insisted that there was a Christian style in music. We discussed this at some length, forcing him to say just what the criterion for Christian style would be. He finally replied, “Christian music is music that you can tap your foot to.” This is meaningless.

Yet, while there is no such thing as a godly or ungodly style, we must not be misled or naive in thinking that various styles have no relation whatsoever to the content of the message of the work of art. Styles themselves are developed as symbol systems or vehicles for certain world-views or messages. In the Renaissance, for example, one finds distinctively different styles from those which characterize art in the Middle Ages. It does not take much education in the history of art to recognize that what Filippo Lippi was saying about the nature of the Virgin Mary is different from what was being said in paintings done before the Renaissance. Art in the Renaissance became more natural and less iconographic. In our own day, men like Picasso and T. S. Eliot developed new styles in order to speak a new message.

There is a parallel in language itself. Sanskrit, I am told, developed as a perfect vehicle for Hindu philosophy. And I am told it is a very poor vehicle for the Christian message. As a matter of fact, I have heard some Sanskrit scholars say that they don’t think Christianity could ever be preached in Sanskrit. I am no authority on this, but they may be right. It is interesting, for example, that both English and German were codified in their modern forms around the Christian message. The German language was made up of various dialectical forms when Luther translated the Bible. At that point, the German language was set down in a form which became standard. Luther’s German became the literary German. In England, the early translations of the Bible, summed up supremely in the King James Version, did the same thing for the English language. This meant that Christianity could be easily taught as long as the generally accepted meaning of the words were the Christian meaning of the words. In Japan, on the other hand, it is very difficult to use the word guilt without a long explanation, because in Japan the word guilt grew up as a vehicle for the Japanese concept of ceremonial uncleanliness. Now if we have a word that means ceremonial uncleanliness as a vehicle and we try to explain true moral guilt in the presence of a holy, personal God, we have quite a task. We may have to use the word, but we must then refashion its definition and be certain that the people to whom we are speaking understand just how we are using the word. It must mean something different than it did in the symbol system out of which the word came.

There is the same dilemma in art styles and forms. Think, for example, of T. S. Eliot’s form of poetry in The Waste Land. The fragmented form matches the vision of fragmented man. But it is intriguing that after T. S. Eliot became a Christian — for example, in The Journey of the Magi — he did not use quite this same form. Rather, he adapted it for the message he was now giving — a message with a Christian character. But he didn’t entirely give up the form; he didn’t go back to Tennyson. Rather, he adapted the form that he used in The Waste Land, changing it to fit the message that he was now giving. In other words, T. S. Eliot the Christian wrote somewhat differently than T. S. Eliot the “modern man.” Therefore, while we must use twentieth-century styles, we must not use them in such a way as to be dominated by the world-views out of which they have arisen. Christianity is a message with its own distinctive propositional content, not a set of “religious” truths in an upper story. The whole man is to be addressed, and this includes his mind as well as his emotions and his aesthetic sensitivity. Therefore, an art form or style that is no longer able to carry content cannot be used to give the Christian message. I am not saying that the style is in itself wrong, but that it has limitations. Totally fractured prose or poetry cannot be used to give the Christian message for the simple reason that it cannot carry intellectual content, and you canØt preach Christianity without content. The biblical message, the good news, is a good news of content.

It is here that feedback is important in regard to the style the artist chooses. Let us say, for example, that you are playing in a Christian rock group, making an art form of rock. Suppose further that at the same time you are going into certain coffeehouses and using rock as a bridge to preach the Christian message. That’s fine. But then you must be careful of the feedback. When you have finished playing, you must ask whether the people who have heard you play have understood what you have been saying. Have they heard your message clearly because you have used their modern idiom, or have they simply heard again what they have always heard when they have listened to rock because you used their form? Sometimes the content will get through, sometimes it will not. Not all situations will be the same; the immediate situation and what you are trying to do must be kept in mind.

The problem is just as prevalent in folk music as it is in rock. Joan Baez sang so beautifully, “You may call him Jesus, but I call him Savior.” But as far as Joan Baez and most of her listeners were concerned, when she said, “I call him Savior,” she was not calling him Savior in the way a Christian calls him Savior. She could have been singing southern folk or country and western or a Hindu lyric just as well. So when we come along and say, “My purpose is to sing folk so that I will be understood,” we must find a way to make it clear that we are singing folk to convey a world-view and not just to sing folk.

The form in which a world-view is given can either weaken or strengthen the content, even if the viewer or reader does not in every case analyze this completely. In other words, depending upon the vehicle you use, something can come across that an audience does not notice and yet will be moving either in the direction of your world-view or away from your world-view. And as a Christian adopts and adapts various contemporary techniques, he must wrestle with the whole question, looking to the Holy Spirit for help to know when to invent, when to adopt, when to adapt, and when to not use a specific style at all. This is something each artist wrestles with for a lifetime, not something he settles once and for all. In conclusion, therefore, often we will use twentieth-century art forms, but we must be careful to keep them from distorting the world-view which is distinctively ours as Christians. In one way, styles are completely neutral. But in another way, they must not be used in an unthinking, naive way.

the Christian world-view

The Christian world-view can be divided into what I call a major and a minor theme. (The terms major and minor, as I am using them, have no relationship to their use in music.)

First, the minor theme is the abnormality of the revolting world. This falls into two parts:

(1) Men who have revolted from God and not come back to Christ are eternally lost; they see their meaninglessness in the present, and in this they are right from their own standpoint. Nietzsche can say that God is dead and Sartre must follow along, showing that man is dead, and Sartre is right from his own perspective.

(2) There is a defeated and sinful side to the Christian’s life. If we are at all honest, we must admit that in this life there is no such thing as totally victorious living. In every one of us there are those things which are sinful and deceiving; and while we may see substantial healing, in this life we do not come to perfection.

The major theme is the opposite of the minor; it is the meaningfulness and purposefulness of life. From the Christian viewpoint, this falls into two headings, metaphysics and morals. In the area of metaphysics (of being, of existence, including the existence of every man’, God is there, God exists. Therefore, all is not absurd. Furthermore, man is made in God’s image and so man has significance. With this comes the fact that love, not just sex, exists. True morals, as opposed to only conditioning, exist. And creativity, as opposed to mechanical construction, exists. So therefore the major theme is an optimism in the area of being; everything is not absurd, there is meaning. But most important, this optimism has a sufficient base. It isn’t suspended two feet off the ground, but rests on the existence of the infinite-personal God who exists and who has a character and who has created all things, especially man in His own image.

But there is also a major theme in relation to morals. Christianity gives a moral solution on the basis of the fact that God exists and has a character which is the law of the universe. There is therefore an absolute in regard to morals. It is not that there is a moral law back of God that binds both God and man, but that God Himself has a character and this character is reflected in the moral law of the universe. Thus when a person realizes his inadequacy before God and feels guilty, he has a basis not simply for the feeling but for the reality of guilt. Man’s dilemma is not just that he is finite and God is infinite, but that he is a sinner guilty before a holy God. But then he recognizes that God has given him a solution to this in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. Man is fallen and flawed, but he is redeemable on the basis of Christ’s work. This is beautiful. This is optimism. And this optimism has a sufficient base.

Notice that the Christian and his art have a place for the minor theme because man is lost and abnormal and the Christian has his own defeatedness. There is not only victory and song in my life. But the Christian and his art don’t end there. He goes on to the major theme because there is an optimistic answer. This is important for the kind of art Christians are to produce. First of all, Christian art needs to recognize the minor theme, the defeated aspect to even the Christian life. If our Christian art only emphasizes the major theme, then it is not fully Christian but simply romantic art. And let us say with sorrow that for years our Sunday school literature has been romantic in its art and has had very little to do with genuine Christian art. Older Christians may wonder what is wrong with this art and wonder why their kids are turned off by it, but the answer is simple. It’s romantic. It’s based on the notion that Christianity has only an optimistic note.

On the other hand, it is possible for a Christian to so major on the minor theme, emphasizing the lostness of man and the abnormality of the universe, that he is equally unbiblical. There may be exceptions where a Christian artist feels it his calling only to picture the negative, but in general for the Christian the major theme is to be dominant — though it must exist in relationship to the minor.

Modern art that does not depend on the Christian consensus has tended to emphasize only the minor theme. We look at the paintings hanging in the modern art galleries, and we are impressed by the pessimistic analysis of contemporary man. There are, of course, some works of modern art which are optimistic. But the basis for that optimism is insufficient and, like Christian art which does not adequately emphasize the minor theme, it tends to be pure romanticism. The artist’s work appears dishonest in the face of contemporary facts.

Finally, the Christian artist should constantly keep in mind the law of love in a world that is bent upon destruction. The Christian poet or painter may write or paint emphasizing the minor theme; at other times, and on other days, he may concentrate on the major theme. But our world at the end of the twentieth century already has so much destruction without Christian artists so emphasizing the minor theme in the total body of their work that they only add to the poorness and destruction of our generation. A Christian businessman who does not operate on the basis of compassion does not live within the biblical norms of economics, and the Christian artist who only concentrates on the abnormality of the world is likewise not living by the law of love.

There is a parallel in our conversation with men. We must present both the law and the gospel; we ought not end with only the judgment of the law. Even though we may spend most of our time on the judgment of the law, love dictates that at some point we get to the gospel. And it seems to me that in the total body of his work, the artist somewhere should have a sufficient place for the major theme.

the subject matter of Christian art

Christian art is by no means always religious art — that is, art which deals with religious themes. Consider God the Creator. Is God’s creation totally involved with religious subjects? What about the universe? The birds? The trees? The mountains? What about the bird’s song? And the sound of the wind in the trees? When God created out of nothing by His spoken word, he did not just create “religious” objects. And in the Bible, as we have seen, God commanded the artist, working within God’s own creation, to fashion statues of oxen and lions and carvings of almond blossoms for the tabernacle and the temple.

We should remember that the Bible contains the Song of Solomon, the love song between a man and a woman, and it contains David’s song to Israel’s national heroes. Neither subject is “religious.” But God’s creation — the mountains, the trees, the birds and the bird’s songs — are also nonreligious art. Think about that. If God made the flowers, they are worth painting and writing about. If God made the birds, they are worth painting. If God made the sky, the sky is worth painting. If God made the ocean, indeed it’s worth writing poetry about. It is worth man’s while to create works upon the basis of the great works God has already created.

This whole notion is rooted in the realization that Christianity is not just involved with “salvation,” but with the total man in the total world. The Christian message begins with the existence of God forever and then with creation. It does not begin with salvation. We must be thankful for salvation, but the Christian message is more than that. Man has a value because he is made in the image of God, and thus man as man is an important subject for Christian art. Man as man — with his emotions, his feelings, his body, his life — this is an important subject matter for poetry and novels. I’m not talking here about man’s lostness but about his mannishness. In God’s world the individual counts. Therefore, Christian art should deal with the individual.

Modern art often flattens man out and speaks in great abstractions; sometimes we cannot tell whether the subject is a man or a woman. Our generation has left little place for the individual. Only the mass of men remains. But as Christians, we see things otherwise. Because God has created individual man in His own image and because God knows and is interested in the individual, individual man is worthy of our painting and of our writing.

Christian art is the expression of the whole life of the whole person who is a Christian. What a Christian portrays in his art is the totality of life. If, therefore, Christianity has so much to say about the arts and to the artist, why is it that recently we have produced so little Christian art? I should think the answer would now be clear. We have not produced Christian art because we have forgotten most of what Christianity says about the arts. Christians, for example, ought not to be threatened by fantasy and imagination. Great painting is not “photographic” in the poor sense of photographic. The Old Testament art commanded by God was not always “photographic.” There were blue pomegranates on the robes of the priests when he went into the Holy of Holies. In nature there are no blue pomegranates. Christian artists do not need to be threatened by fantasy and imagination, for they have a basis for knowing the difference between them and the real world “out there.” Epistemologically, as I have pointed out in He Is There and He Is Not Silent, Christian man has a basis for knowing the difference between subject and object. The Christian is the really free man — he is free to have imagination. This too is our heritage. The Christian is the one whose imagination should fly beyond the stars.

Moreover, a Christian artist does not need to concentrate on religious subjects. After all, religious themes may be completely non-Christian. The counterculture art in the underground newspaper in which Christ and Krishna are blended — here is religious art par excellence. But it is completely anti-Christian. Religious subjects are no guarantee that a work of art is Christian. On the other hand, the art of an artist who never paints the head of Christ, never once paints an open tomb, may be magnificent Christian art. For some artists there is a place for religious themes, but an artist does not need to be conscience-stricken if he does not paint in this area. Some Christian artists will never use religious themes. This is a freedom the artist has in Christ under the leadership of the Holy Spirit.

an individual artwork and the body of an artist’s work

Every artist has the problem of making an individual work of art and, as well, building up a total body of work. No artist can say everything he might want to say or build everything he might want to build into a single work. It is true that some art forms, such as the epic and the novel, lend themselves to larger conceptions and more complex treatments, but even there not everything that an artist wants to do can be done in one piece. Therefore, we cannot judge an artistØs work from one piece. No art critic or art historian can do that. We must judge an artist’s performance and an artist’s world-view on the basis of as much of that artist’s work as we can.
There is a parallel here with the sermon. No single sermon can say everything that needs to be said. And no one can judge a minister’s total theology or the content of his faith on the basis of a single sermon. The man who tries to put everything into one sermon is a very poor preacher indeed. Even the Bible is an extended body of books, and it cannot be read as if any one book or any one chapter included the whole; it must be read from beginning to end. And if that is true of the Word of God, how much more is it true of an artist’s work!

If you are a Christian artist, therefore, you must not freeze up just because you can’t do everything at once. Don’t be afraid to write a love poem simply because you cannot put into it everything of the Christian message. Yet, if a man is to be an artist, his goal should be in a lifetime to produce a wide and deep body of work from which his world-view will show forth.

the christian life as a work of art

I would suggest that we take all of these perspectives on art and consider how they apply to our own Christian life. Perhaps it would be a good idea to read this essay again and specifically apply it to your life as a Christian. No work of art is more important than the Christian’s own life, and every Christian is called upon to be an artist in this sense. He may have no gift of writing, no gift of composing or singing, but each man has the gift of creativity in terms of the way he lives his life. In this sense, the Christian’s life is to be an art work.

The Christian’s life is to be a thing of truth and also a thing of beauty in the midst of a lost and despairing world.