Art is a Dangerous Blessing – Part One
Due to its c. 5500 word length, I’ve split this paper into three parts. This is Part One of three (find Two and Three here when they’re published). Works Cited and the full paper can be found here.
Are Christians who watch Marvel movies endangering their eternal souls? What about those who watch The Lone Ranger, Merrie Melodies, or Cuties? However innocent or repulsive, these works of art were made by imperfect men and are therefore imperfect in beauty, goodness, and truth. Each could be more factually correct. Each could be more morally staunch. Each could be more aesthetically excellent. Further, by name or by category, Godly men have warned the church against such works. Because the art carries an imperfect message, the argument generally runs, to view it is to compromise one’s own soul. Most, nowadays, are fine with Merrie Melodies (for children) or The Lone Ranger, apart from concerns about screen time. Conversely, only the most radical will justify watching pedophilia-apology like Cuties for enjoyment or spiritual benefit. Clearly a line exists, a standard, voiced or unvoiced (for even silence is a judgement). The question, then, is where the line lays- for complete abnegation of art would rule out the Psalms, a clear non-starter. The Biblical course, which is meet for all men, is to assess the costs and benefits of the art to the soul, approaching the art as art only when the benefits of such outweigh the costs for the particular person and circumstance.
Before the standard can be formed, two terms must be defined: ‘art’ and ‘approaching art as art’. Fundamentally, art is the result of a creating person. The artistic act, most easily seen by man’s cloudy eyes in other men, finds its origin in God, the Supreme Artist, particularly His creation of the world in the first two chapters of Genesis and in His creation of the Scriptures (Lee 2:40; Van Til 62, 107). In men, therefore, art is an imitation of God’s art, of which man is a part. From this origin the components of art can be derived: truth, goodness, and beauty. Truth is the nature of God and reality reflected; goodness the character of God and reality reflected (sometimes via contrast and not facsimile). The third, beauty, is the “shining forth of the majesty and glory of… God”, “the light of an ever-working wisdom and an ever-creating will”, reflected in man and his work (Van Til 107-109). This third, in its original form, is the inspiration for art and delineation from the remainder of culture, its means, as per Kuyper, of fulfilling the task of anticipating God’s coming glory in the eyes of man (Van Til 108-109, 129). These three are, moreover, evident in the character of God and His art, the world, particularly as seen in the pages of the Bible (Ps. 8:1-4, 67:2; Rom. 1:19-23). In this origin art is delineated as the result of personal intent, not random chance or impersonal mechanistic force. These facts, then, create the following complete definition: art is a created work of personal intent with a central (organizing) purpose of beauty.
This established, what does ‘approaching art as art’ mean? Another question will help here: what delineates The Lord of the Rings from Principles of Biblical Hermeneutics? The essential difference, already hinted above, is that art has different emphases from didactic works. The didactic requires that beauty only which is necessary to convey the truth and goodness it bears. Art, by contrast, focuses on beauty, not to the exclusion, supersession, or diminishment of truth or goodness but as their apotheosis (Van Til 108). To illustrate by means of the first work of man, the tending of the Garden of Eden, consider: truth is keeping the plants alive, goodness is cultivating sufficient for man’s thoughts to be occupied with higher matters than rest or food, and beauty is creating a land which communicates God’s character even without speech (Lee 7:20). Beauty seeks to show God’s attributes in effectual harmony by portraying Him and His creation, and thus relies on truth and goodness for its existence and value (false beauty being ephemeral and essentially ugly (Van Til 109-110)). Art, then, when approached as art, is approached in a search for beauty, with an eye that sees truth and goodness also but sees them as a part of beauty rather than the inverse.
That art is a work of personal intent has consequences, unfortunately. Human art, as a result of its creator’s turpitude, is flawed. Human ignorance is not without influence here, of course, but at its core, the true faults in human art are a result of sin (Van Til 60). Pervasive depravity (also called ‘total’ or ‘radical’ depravity) is the universal state of fallen man; as Charles Spurgeon said in his commentary on the Psalms, “Without exception, all men have apostatized from the Lord their maker… from the eternal principles of right” (48). Even the holiest believer sins, as Paul declares of himself in Romans 7:15-25, so that it would be incredulous to assign even inerrancy to the work of man’s hands. These flaws manifest in all three parts of art: in truth, in goodness, and in beauty. Goodness, though, receives the first assault, being most proximate to the root of the issue. Man despises God’s law, particularly its moral aspects, both behavioral and religious (Ps. 14:1-3). This hatred leads him to distort, deny, or ignore the character of God, starting in that which most irks him, God’s right to his fealty, and its outworking, the moral law. Then, in support of this assault, man twists the truth, by intent, by motivated neglect, or by external deception. Here too his creaturely finitude becomes a tool to obscure the truth he essentially knows (Rom. 1:19-23; Van Til 62).
Beauty, the last domino, is injured by four intertwined reasons, though it may stand less marred than the rest for its apparent distance from the center of man’s rebellion, preserved also by his instinctive draw to it. First, beauty dies before the destruction of goodness and truth, for without the headwater the river dries. Second, beauty is unreached as a result of human ignorance, motivated or otherwise. Third, beauty plateaus at imperfection simply because man’s polluted mind cannot produce a pure stream without divine intervention, nor judge aright to see if the stream before him is indeed perfect (Van Til 59-60). Fourth, as a result of man despising the goodness and truth from which beauty flows, he often grows in his swelling iniquity to hate beauty itself, condemning the pinnacle as he condemned the foundation, replacing it with false standards inimical to God (Van Til 62). Thus, all human art is simultaneously the imitation of God’s artistry and universally flawed, imperfect in goodness, in truth, in beauty. The question must be asked: can the Christian consider art aught (in either sense) but kindling in light of this?
The first problem to get out of the way is the base permissibility of creating or interacting with art, in light of its imperfect nature. Biblically speaking, this statement, bearing ‘imperfect’ rather than ‘totally corrupt’, has no barring power, for two reasons. First, all human deeds and creations- each family, each back-hoe, each building, each meal, each sentence- are flawed, particularly those which flow from the unregenerate. The same reasoning, different in specifics but congruent in basis, applies to them as to art. To outlaw any interaction with the imperfect, therefore, would outlaw any interaction with the world at all, including the individual’s interaction with himself. Such a demand would be absurd, as thinkers from Augustine to Van Til have recognized (Van Til 87). Second, Christians have a calling to interact with this world. Both Genesis 1:28, the dominion mandate, and Matthew 28:18-20, the Great Commission, demand that Christians advance into the world in triumph, to reform and to sanctify, which, in this sinful world, necessitates interaction with the imperfect. For both these reasons, building on each other as they do, mere imperfection does not itself bar, though art’s goodness is yet unproved.
Thankfully for the artist, the Bible does provide solid positive direction towards artistic endeavor and interaction. At the most basic level, God called man to live in His image, an image which includes the greatest artistic work ever produced. He called him to produce works of art, from carving to poetry to song and beyond (Ex. 36:1; Eph. 5:19). To demand that any art so produced immediately be destroyed or cloistered from human eyes due to its inevitable imperfection would be absurd, a denial of God’s good gifts. Furthermore, God called man to create a culture which honored Him, separate from sin (holy). This command did not lapse with man’s ability to fulfil it, and art is a part of it (Lee 2:00; Van Til 57, 59-60). This responsibility necessitates interaction with the culture as it is (within the bounds of prudence), in order to draw a course from Is to Should Be. In order that this understanding might be complete, though, the Christian must approach art as art, according to its purpose. Therefore, Christians have a responsibility, insofar as their individual callings comport, to approach art as art, in addition to assessing it on other grounds (financial, educational, etc.), in order to see the good and the bad within it, in order to turn more closely to God.
This Christian prerogative to interact with art does not end with the end of art made by Christians. Pagan art, while generally morally inferior (if often more beautiful than the banal ugliness of some ‘Christian’ artists), still contains, by the grace of God, a measure of truth, goodness, and beauty (Van Til 108, 118). After all, though man is depraved and fallen, he still has an innate longing for and awareness of God, overwhelmed as it is by his hatred for Him (Rom. 1:20; Van Til 120). This innate knowledge of God’s character, both in the man’s own heart and as he sees the world with his senses, can produce in his art real virtue. Of course, much of what pagans make will be too immoral or too ugly to be worth the time it would take, but that does not make the entire grouping illegitimate. By God’s grace, good exists within the art, unwilling homage to the Lord of heaven and earth, homage which will someday open redound to him (Rev. 21:24). Thus, the Christian has the right and the duty to interact with some section of the art of both the regenerate and the unregenerate for these reasons at least, besides others unenumerated.
