The Sons of Issachar: Knowing What Israel Should Do Part 19

This week we continue our examination of the meaning of the Bible’s form and its implications for Christian artists.  We began in the last post by realizing that the fact that God used human authors to inscribe His Word in a variety of literary forms (poetry, parable, narrative, etc.) shows us that God uses people to communicate Himself to mankind.  Although He will not use us in the same way that He used the authors of Scripture (which is unique and inspired in a way that normal artistic ventures are not), the principle still remains that God uses humans to communicate spiritual Reality under artistic forms, which shows the high potential of human artistic endeavors.

The fact that artistry and the communication of spiritual Truth are inseparably bound together is further seen in the physical form and pattern of Holy Scripture.  By this, I mean that the Bible is comprised of written language, which is formed of written words, which are made of written letters.  These are such basic truths that we rarely consider the implications of them.

We must remember that these things (language, words, letters) are all symbols.  Language is a patterned organization of words, and these words are an organization of sounds (represented by letters) which symbolize ideas and things that occur in physical reality.  For instance, in English, the letter “c” followed by an “o” followed by a “w” form the word cow, which, when sounded out (by our lips or in our minds) makes the word that we recognize as what English-speaking people call the placid, horned bovine we obtain milk and meat from.  The word cow symbolizes the sounds that correspond to our idea of a cow.  This concept works for virtually anything in Creation, be it a physical creature, an idea that has no direct physical correlative, or even a nonsensical series of sounds.

When we arrange words (which symbolize the sounds which represent the creature or idea, etc., that we recognize) into longer patterns, we are capable of symbolizing much more complex ideas by combining multiple concepts, such as action, time, state of being, etc., by the use of phrases and sentences (such as the one you are currently reading).  By this method complex communication is possible between thinking beings.

This being so, realize this: communication is only possible by means of symbols (whether audible, visual, or tactile), and symbols are the basic tool of the artist.  This means that, insofar as any type of communication is involved, artistry is inevitable and inescapable.  In point of fact, the Ultimate Artist (the Triune Creator-God) has made symbols the basic mode of creaturely existence, since everything that has been created finds its true meaning in the fact that all things symbolize and reveal some aspect of God and His attributes and character. This is especially true of the one creature who has expressly been made in the image of God, mankind (for the previous sentences, please see Gen 1; Ps 19, Rom 1, etc.).  All things, especially man, find their deepest meaning in the fact that they reveal something of God as His symbols.

This is even more true of more abstract parts of Creation, like language, words, and letters.  The human penchant for organizing symbols in increasingly complex patterns to communicate things is rooted in the fact that we are made in God’s Image, and we are thus like Him in that way.

Like God, men communicate through symbols (like sounds, letters, words, and language), and by a particularly complex organization of these types of symbols, we speak and write to each other about all manner of things, frequently in recognizably artistic ways such as poetry, narrative, parable, etc.  This is even true of written and spoken forms of communication that seek to present a maximum amount of content by minimizing as much as possible “artistic” ornamentation, forms which we normally think of as discursive or didactic (teaching) forms (such as a reader may find in the books of James or 1 John).

However, even the most didactic of language is still unavoidably artistic.  Why?  Because language (both written and spoken) must utilize symbols, and the symbols that comprise the language and its inherent ideas by their very use constitute an act of artistry.

Anyone who uses language to communicate must, whether intentionally or not, engage in artistry at some level.  This means that even the pastor who disparages the artistic as a means of communicating Christ gives the lie to his disparagement in direct proportion to his skill at preaching or teaching (the more skillful he is, the more artistic; but, even if he is only marginally skillful, he still exhibits artistry).

In Scripture, we see this type of artistry raised to the pinnacle of its possibilities, as, under the forms of these different symbols, spiritual Reality and Truth is communicated (the Word does not return void on any level).  Thus, even the most basic constituent of the form of Scripture screams out to us that artistic communication of God’s Truth is not only possible, it is necessary and deliberate, for God in Scripture has enshrined His Word through symbol and art.

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