We have seen, in past installments of this series, that the failure of the millions-strong American Evangelical Church to produce any quantity of quality art (music, dance, film, architecture, etc.) is largely due to the lack of Evangelical understanding (much less action upon such an understanding) of the Scriptures, despite Evangelical profession that they believe the Bible to be God’s Word, which directs Christians in “every good work” (2 Tim 3:16-17), which includes the making of art.

Subsequently, we examined the negative implications for Art of holding deformed versions of central doctrines of the Faith.

We saw that a deficient idea of the doctrine of God’s Creation leads to a devaluation of matter which leads to the belief that the physical is not the arena of the spiritual, an idea which conflicts with Scripture’s teaching (Rom 12:1-3), leading to an artistic preoccupation with personal aspects of salvation and an escapist eschatology.

An inferior view of Creation leads, as well, to a simplistic, propagandistic view of Art, as the multi-faceted nature of the created order, which mediates complex, multi-layered knowledge of God, is viewed as univocal, inevitably resulting in Art as the simple carrier of propaganda, rather than a deep, multi-valenced reflection of reality.

We have also examined what a deficient view of Biblical Eschatology (the doctrine of what God is shaping history toward, and of what His Purposes will accomplish within and at the end of time) implies for a theology of Art. We saw that such a deficient Eschatological view inexorably leads to a pessimism concerning history itself, and that such a pessimism regarding the Surety of God’s Promises in time leads also to the conviction that the Created Order is Satan’s realm, and that, since time itself is unimportant as an arena of change, personal, individual salvation (as escape from history and the world) is all that is important. This leads to escapist, hyper-individualist art.

We turn now to another artistic implication of a deficient view of Eschatology. The idea that God’s Purposes will be defeated in history means that history is only intermittently meaningful, if at all. This non-Biblical idea leads those who believe it to devalue the concept of working and struggling across the passage of time to understand and work out an idea or to develop a work of Art, since the meaninglessness of time and the lordship of Satan over history means that anything accomplished in time (save perhaps for something that contributes to an escape from history) is worthless, having no true transcendent meaning.

This devaluation of the worth of struggle and working in time in turn causes the believer of this idea to value only those “instantaneous” creations of intuition, sudden insight, and so forth, as either works of internal genius or extra-historical “in-breaking” inspiration, so that works of Art (or theological concepts, or relationships, or the possibility of suffering as redemptive, or the careful working out of the meaning of Scripture,) honed and perfected across time are not seen as meaningful or worthwhile.

This idea also sees as unimportant the Biblical concept of sanctification, of progress into holiness over time, including the possibility of an artistic calling by God contributing across time to the sanctification of the artist and his audience, and of thus fulfilling the performance of the “good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Eph 2:10).

The abandonment of sanctification in time has led to a quest by many Evangelicals for a mark or proof of spirituality that instantaneously shows spiritual advance (such as a certain spiritual gift obtained all at once, or a pet doctrine adopted in short order, or even membership in a particular congregation, movement, or denomination), something which requires little or no time for development.

This same impulse has led many Christian artists to downplay the development of their song-writing, painting skills, dancing abilities, etc., in favor of shallow and inferior aping of popular or developed artists, all the while considering their work superior since it was “given” them from above without the necessity of temporal development… All of these things have contributed to the derivative, substandard body of bad art produced by the Evangelical Church of our day.

For more teaching on Worship, Art, and the World, visit patreon.com/kempercrabb

See below for a helpful book on Eschatology: