The Disconnect: Why Evangelicals Make Bad Art, Part 13
In previous installments of this series, we have explored the question of why millions of American Evangelicals have produced so little quality art (film, literature, music, architecture, dance, etc.), and have discovered that this is largely due to a limited or distorted view of the Bible’s teachings, or, even worse, the unwillingness to live out and apply what is known from Scripture, all despite the fact that the Bible teaches believers how to accomplish “every good work” (2 Tim 3: 16-17), including making art.
This lack of understanding we’ve seen played out in the application of shallow versions of the Biblical Doctrines of Creation and Eschatology. If the Doctrine of Creation is not understood, the material world (the arena and materiel of spirituality in history) is devalued, making art’s meaning appear worth less, restricting its appointed purpose. If the Doctrine of Eschatology (what God is shaping history toward) is misunderstood, a pessimistic view of history results, and time is seen as Satan’s captive, that which is only good to be escaped from, rather than redeemed.
Last issue, we began to examine the artistic implications of a faulty view of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity, a doctrine which teaches that, though we cannot completely comprehend such a great Mystery as the Triune God, we can understand to some extent the Aspects of that Mystery revealed in His Word (Deut 29:29), and draw logical conclusions and implications from those Revealed Aspects.
We saw that the failure of Christians to believe that God is equally both One and Three, Unified in His Essence while Diverse in His Persons, denies us the answer to the perennial question of the one and the many (of which is more primary or important, unity/singularity or diversity/plurality), a question the answer to which affects everything from art to civil governance. We turn now to a consideration of further implications of bad Trinitarian theology.
Scripture tells us that God the Triune Creator has created all things to reveal knowledge about Himself (Rom 1: 18-21; Ps 19: 1-4). Since the Creator-God Who created all things is Himself Three-Personed, His Creation reflects both His Unity and His Diversity (though clear discernment of tri-unity in Creation can only truly be informed through the revelatory lens of Special revelation, God’s Word). This can easily be seen in a consideration of the primary way through which God reveals Himself in Creation: by means of symbols.
A symbol represents (re-presents, or presents again) that for which it stands. More accurately, symbols represent a plethora of things all at once- they have multiple meanings simultaneously (just as the Holy Trinity is One Unity with Multiple Persons, each of which Persons exhibit Unique Distinctives).
We have seen that everything reveals God, and the revelation of God is the primary symbolic purpose of all created things. However, each of these created things also symbolize other things, as well, all at the same time. For instance, a man reveals God, yet he is also a son, and may be a husband, a father, a king, a warrior, etc., at the same time. These various aspects of that man symbolize the roles which accompany the various modes of his male human existence.
Yet each of those other symbolic functional roles also reveal God at the same time they represent the aspects of that man (they are, in fact, the way in which God is revealed through the man), so that each of these symbolic representations stand for God and the man’s roles, together and separately. A symbol is thus analogous in its created mode to the Triune Creator Who is both One and Many simultaneously, since the symbol also has unified and diverse meanings simultaneously.
To fail to recognize that God is equally and simultaneously One and Three, and that His Creation reflects its Maker in many ways, especially as it reveals Him, leads to the conclusion that Creation is neither a symbol in its discrete and combined parts, nor (if Creation is seen as symbolic) that the elements of the Creation carry multiple and unified meanings simultaneously.
For an artist, who depends on symbols (whether musical, visual, or verbal), the devaluation of, and/or misapprehension concerning symbols severely compromises his ability to create in complex and nuanced ways, leads the artist’s audience to misunderstand his art, and generally flattens and distorts the view of the world. All this results from bad theology. Ideas have consequences, and theological ideas are no different, especially when the ideas are drawn from God’s Infallible Word, our only true picture of reality.
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A helpful book on Biblical Symbology:
