The Disconnect: Why Evangelicals Make Bad Art, Part 24
We’ve been exploring in this series answers as to why millions of Evangelical Americans have produced so few examples of quality art in any artistic category, seeing that this is largely due to limited (and/or distorted) views of Biblical teaching (or a failure to act on the implications of its teachings), despite the fact that Holy Writ instructs Christians in “every good work” (2 Tim 3: 16-17), which works of necessity includes the making of art.
We looked at the negative effects of such theologically deficient perspectives on the doctrines of Creation and Eschatology, which result in denigrations of the physical world and time as appropriate theaters of God’s Purposes, encouraging pessimism concerning history, and viewing the world as Satan’s realm, which needs only to be escaped from rather than redeemed and fulfilled.
We saw also that sub-Biblical views on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity led to a destruction of Scriptural justification of symbol as simultaneously showing forth both multiple meanings and unified meaning. Such views lead as well to the reduction of men from the mysterious bearers of God’s Image to simplistic machines amenable to quick-fix formulae.
We then turned to look at the implications of the Incarnation of Christ, in which God, in the Second Person of the Trinity, joined Himself to a fully Human Nature and Body so that He could be the Perfect Sacrifice to atone for the sins of mankind by dying in fallen humanity’s place. This Eternal Joining of God to Man in Christ Jesus is summed up by the Council of Chalcedon (A.D. 451) when it wrote that He is “at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood. Truly God and truly Man…”
In the last post, we saw that many Evangelicals hold a view of the Incarnation which mirrors the basic thrust of the heresy known as Nestorianism, which views Christ’s Humanity as only peripheral to His Divinity, and as, at best, only something to be tolerated, at worst as an irrelevance to His Person and Mission. In other words, Tough it is to be admitted that He is also a Man, He is really to be thought of as God, not as Man. This imbalanced view of Christ Jesus, which emphasizes His Divinity and ignores His Humanity, results in a devaluation of the human as a sphere of spirituality and an arena of God’s Purposes.
An example of this aberrance in view of the Incarnation can be seen in a consideration of Luke 2:40: “And the Child grew and became strong in spirit, filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him,” and at verse 52 of the same chapter: “And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.”
Scripture here plainly teaches that Jesus grew physically, and in spirit, wisdom, grace, favor, and stature. If Jesus’ Humanity (Which must be what the Bible is intending here, since Jesus was already as full of grace, favor, and wisdom as He could be in His Divinity, having always been so as God) is indeed co-inherent with His Divine Nature in comprising His One Person (“One Person in Two Natures” as the Chalcedonian Definition tells us), if His Humanity is as vital to His One Person as His Divinity is in the Constitution of His Person, then the fact that He grew in His Humanity is stupendously important in its implications for humanity, the world, and art.
How? Because if Jesus’ Humanity is as vital to His Existence as the Incarnate Redeemer as is His Divinity, then the growth of His Humanity in its various aspects is also vital to His Mission as the Second Adam (cf. 1 Cor 15). Hebrews 5: 8-9 tells us that Christ in His Humanity perfectly learned obedience and thus became perfectly prepared and suited to be the Sinless Sacrifice for humanity. Jesus thus, as a Human, had to undergo a process of preparation and growth (which, as an Unfallen Man, He did perfectly) to achieve His Mission on earth.
It was His Humanity Which was offered for the sins of men, and that Humanity was both joined to His Unchanging Divine Nature and underwent growth to accomplish the goal intended by God. This means that human growth in time is important to God’s Purposes, and that it is proper and necessary for men to change and grow as part of God’s Plan.
Rather than some unrealistic, static, idealistic concept of humanity, artists are to depict men as they actually are, creatures intended to grow and change as they move toward sanctification, thus showing such change as a vital part of man’s spiritual existence. This allows the artist (in whatever media) to depict men as deeper and more complex (and thus as more believable and real) creatures in a world where time and change not only happen, but are intended to happen, the change (for good or ill) being fraught with numinous meaning.
A deficient view of the Incarnation throws suspicion on change and time as vehicles for spiritual content, and thus on men as real loci for God’s Grace. Don’t hold such a view. Your art (and your faith) will suffer for it.
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A helpful book on heretical views of Jesus:
