We continue to consider the question of why, in an America where a large portion of the population (one-fourth to one-fifth, reportedly) claim to be Evangelicals, who believe that Holy Scripture directs believers in “every good work” (1 Tim 3: 16-17) (which would include the making of art by Christians), the Church has failed so dismally in producing effective and quality art (music, television, dance, film, etc.).

In earlier installments, we discovered that this failure is in large part due to a lack of knowledge and understanding of the Bible by Evangelicals. The twin causes of this ignorance we saw to be, first, laziness motivated by self-worship in the pursuit of pleasure, and, secondly, deficient theology as a result of disregarding the Bible’s ethical demands in favor of an emotional feel-good experience.

The surface view of Scripture which flows from these sins results further in the loss of the ability for Evangelicals to see reality (God, themselves, and the world) as it really is. Christian art depends in its creation on a Biblically particularized version of the human experience of God’s Created Reality, and the absence of a correct understanding of that reality leads inexorably to inferior, distorted expressions rightly viewed by both Christians and non-Christians as inaccurate and irrelevant representations of the universe in its depth and beauty. Bad theology inevitably leads to bad art.

In the last few weeks, we began to examine the ways a defective theology of Creation (especially of the Providential Sustaining of the universe by God) affects the making of art. We saw that a lack of understanding that God mediates knowledge of Himself through all created things (Rom 1:18-24; Psalm 19) and actively “holds all things together” (Col 1:16-17; Heb 1:3) leads to a devaluation of Creation itself (especially of matter), and to seeing reality as something other than what it is, the arena of the spiritual, of God’s Engagement with His world in every aspect and area.

We saw as well that, if God is not seen as engaged with Creation in mediated multiple levels of symbolic knowledge through the world, reality itself collapses into an opaqued collection of meaningless random things, which are subject to being manipulated into meaning anything sinful man wishes them to mean. This is the reduction of the universe from a multi-level, meaning-imbued Creation to nothing more than a platform for the propaganda of the wicked and the strong.

This also reduces art, which is itself particular expressions of artists’ experience of the world, to a one-dimensional expression of whatever the artist wishes to understand and portray the world as (and thus an attempt to generate meaning for the world from his own finite being, rather than an understanding and receptive reflection of the multi-nuanced, deep meaning with which God has imbued His Creation).

Since fallen mankind outside of regeneration into Christ is committed to suppressing the Truths they unavoidably know from Creation itself (Rom 1:18-36), they are inescapably held captive by the devil (2 Cor 4:4) and are hostile to God’s purposes (Rom 8:6-7). This results inevitably in the art produced by unregenerate man as being, in important ways, only an imitation of the Satanically-dominated world-system, rather than an accurate expression of the reality revealed in Scripture.

This is what makes it so dangerous for Christians to uncritically ape pagan art, loosely “baptizing” that art with surface cosmetic “Christian” overlays: such a practice makes a Christian worldview sub-Biblical and thus sub-Christian. Anyone who is exposed to such an expression can easily be left confused about what the Faith truly is. The ignorance of Scripture rampant amongst most Evangelicals virtually guarantees that this misguided practice will continue, eroding both knowledge of and respect for Christianity in our culture.

Art, of course, must be expressed through culturally-grounded media, since art does not spring from a vacuum. Therefore, cultural forms must be embraced and employed by Christian artists (indeed, the reclamation of all things [Acts 3:21] is part of what the advance of God’s Kingdom is intended to accomplish at the end of time).

The way Christians go about this task, the methodology of doing so, must be governed by God’s Word to inform the correct appropriation of those forms. 

For additional teaching on Worship, Art, World, visit patreon.com/kempercrabb