The Disconnect: Why Evangelicals Make Bad Art, Part 1

America and most of the Western world of the early twenty-first century A.D. embody cultures largely driven by the quest for self-fulfillment, affluence, and pleasure (as opposed to things like survival or self-consciously transcendent goals such as serving God’s Will as a society). American society (which influences much of the rest of the world) is largely a cultural product of the secularization of a logical extension of Evangelicalism (a succinct and informative account of this can be found in Michael Horton’s excellent book, Made In America). The quest for pleasure in America is largely expressed by seeking entertainment through the experience ofthe Arts, through the varied mediums such as television, film, popular music, fashion, home decoration, sports (oh yes, Virginia, sports in modern America are also an entertainment art), and so forth.

Scattered throughout America, many millions strong (some demographers estimate between a fifth and a fourth of the population), is the Evangelical wing of the Church, which is comprised not only of the explicitly Evangelical denominations (such as the Baptists, Evangelical Free Churches, and Assemblies of God), but also of millions of other believing Evangelicals who are members of the so-called “mainstream” denominations, as well (such as the Methodists, Episcopalians, and Presbyterians).

Evangelicals, despite their varied denominational status, are united in their belief that a personal encounter with Christ, Who has died for the sins of mankind, is necessary to salvation, and that this encounter will change the individual who experiences such an encounter, enabling him to be obedient to God’s Will, especially as His Will is revealed through the writings in the Bible, God’s Written Revelation.

We Evangelicals (and I am an Evangelical) believe that the Gospel message can change the world (as it is doing today in Africa, South America, and Asia). Not terribly long ago, historically speaking, it changed the West. Yet today the West self-consciously is moving farther and farther from the Biblical concepts which ruled the formation of our culture for centuries. How can this be, in a society riddled with millions of Evangelicals who profess to hold to a message which is life- and world-changing? Why the pagan-ward drift?

More to the point of this article is a related question, an important one for Evangelicals in a society which is moving away from its Christian heritage while idolizing art and beauty: Why, considering the large number of Evangelicals in America, is so little good art being produced by them? Why is most Evangelical-produced art so shoddy?

I recognize that there is some mature, excellent, effective, world-class art coming out of our branch of the Church (in fact, it appears to me that the production of good art by Evangelicals is growing); nonetheless, in comparison with the huge number of extant Evangelicals, the amount of truly well-done art, percentage-wise, is comparatively very low. Why is this?

Evangelicals profess to know and love the Creator-God of all beauty, the Triune God Who is Himself Beauty; how then can so much of our art not reflect this deeply and realistically?

This is a question with a very complex answer, and, Lord willing, we will examine some of the answers to this question in posts to come. At the core of this question, though, is the issue of our knowledge and understanding of Scripture. Evangelicals believe that the Bible is God’s Written Word, inspired by God’s Own Spirit (2 Peter 2:19-21), given to light our way (Psalm 119:105), and to equip the believer for “every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17), which would include the art produced by those Christians called to be artists.

Scripture is revelation from God Himself, providing a lens to correct our sin-distorted vision, and a map to allow us to negotiate Reality as God wants us to. The Bible tells us what life is, as directed by the One Who made and sustains life, the only One Who sees clearly the Reality He has made in all its facets.

Most Evangelicals own at least one Bible (many have several). Yet most Evangelicals neither know nor understand their Scriptures, which drastically affects their ability to produce meaningful, deep art. Why don’t most Evangelicals know their Bibles? There are two basic reasons: laziness and bad theology. To these, Lord willing, we turn next week.

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The Sons of Issachar: Knowing What Israel Should Do, Part 32

We turn now in our continuing consideration of the implications of the various literary styles utilized in the Bible for artists to a consideration of the use of visionary literature in Scripture.  There are two broad categories of literature which exist in Scripture (and everywhere else, for that matter): realistic literature, which attempts to form a likeness of existing Reality, and literature which constructs an alternative to existing Reality, normally called fantasy literature.

Most of the literary types which comprise Holy Writ tend toward realism.  However, there are also some literary types present in the Bible which Christian literary analysts normally consider to be fantasy.  Those types, which include both prophecy and apocalypse, can be considered together under the common penumbra of visionary literature (though there are of course important differences between prophecy and apocalypse: their similarities are greater than their dissimilarities). Visionary literature depicts events, persons (human or otherwise), and backgrounds which differ significantly from normal Reality.  

Many Evangelicals believing (as I do) that Scripture is Inerrant, object strenuously when they hear someone describe parts of God’s Infallible Word as fantasy, thinking that this description means that the events so described didn’t actually happen in history past, or will happen in the future.  However, the word fantasy is not being used here, as it frequently is, to describe something that couldn’t or didn’t happen historically, but is rather used as a literary type,  which doesn’t preclude the historical reality of the events depicted in visionary literature.

Fantasy, as used in this sense, refers to the type of literature which describes events which have happened, or could happen, or are happening, by means of symbolic events, backgrounds, and characters which would generally never happen in our observable, empirical Reality.  These fantastical characters, events, and backgrounds represent events, backgrounds, and characters that have, do, or might occur in normal Reality.

For instance, in Daniel 8:9-10, a ram’s horn grows to the sky to displace some of the stars, knocking them to the ground, and trampling on them.  Most responsible scholars of prophecy agree that this horn represents Antiochus IV Epiphanes, a Seleucid Greek ruler who reigned from 175-164 BC, and who severely persecuted the Jewish people represented by the stars in the sky which were knocked to the ground by the ram’s horn, killing numbers of them (the ram’s horn tramples the fallen stars) in an effort to suppress the true worship of God during the intertestamental period in Israel.  

Genesis 37:9-10 tells how Joseph dreamed that the sun, moon, and eleven stars (symbolizing Joseph’s father, his mother, and eleven brothers) all bowed down to him.  Both Joseph’s dream and Daniel’s prophetic vision though they were given as fantastical symbolic scenarios (since the sun, moon, and eleven stars did not literally bow down to Joseph, and a ram’s horn did not literally grow to the sky and knock down and trample stars in our normal, empirical Reality) did, in fact, come true historically, in the sense that what they represented came true.  

From this we can conclude two things: (1) that historical truth can legitimately be symbolically related in an artistic fashion, with no loss of truth in the representation of it, and (2) that imagination is a critical factor in apprehending and using visionary literature.

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The Sons of Issachar: Knowing What Israel Should Do, Part 31

In the last column, we looked at the massive presence of poetry as a literary genre in the Bible, and the fact that the goal of all that poetry is not simply the presentation of theological truth, but is the expression of the inspired author’s experience of that truth as an invitation to the reader to share the writer’s experience and make it the experience of the reader, as well.  We also discussed the fact that, since Truth is a Person, not just a concept, as John 14:6 makes clear, more than just a mental knowledge of Him would be expected, and poetry, by its presentation of Truth as both content and experience, would have its natural goal a total-person engagement with that Truth.

We turn now to a discussion of the linguistic devices, the language, that allows poets to invite readers or hearers into their experience.  The language used in poetry is dense; it requires the reader to engage it and meditate on it, to think about what is being said and, frequently, unravel it as you would riddle.  It is frequently not easy to understand, and, consequently, focuses the reader’s attention on a single image or thought, slowing down speedy movement away from that image or a thought, so that the absorption by the reader of the impact of that image or thought is made much greater by a maximum focus on it.  The very complexity of the image arrests the reader’s attention, forcing him to think of that image in all its facets and nuances before he is able to move on to the next concentrated image in the poetic sequence.  This retards the flow of ideas until all the nuances of what the idea or image means can be comprehended, before the reader can move on slowly to grasp the following image until, at the end of the poem or poetic sequence, the reader can assemble them together to understand the total impact of the poem. The slowed process forces the reader to enter into the poetic presentation himself, to identify with the details of it, and absorb it into his own experience.  This heightened speech process is made even more effective in the frequent employment of parallelism, wherein the same basic image or idea is repeated twice from a slightly different perspective, which forces the reader to consider the same truth from different angles (for the various types of parallelism in Scripture, see Psalm 2:4; 1:5-6; 46:1; 29:1; etc.).

“Very well,” you say, “but what is it that causes the reader to be motivated to concentrate his attention on a poem for the extended period of time necessary to really understand and enter into it?”  Good question.  This is where the true skill of a poet (or lyricist) is tested.  

Poetry requires thinking in images (both to read and write it).  What do I mean by “images”?  I mean words that present a sensory engagement of experience in the imagination of the reader.  Poetry is not abstract; it seeks to deflect the abstract by the expedient of using concrete images from our experience (things like water, trees, grass, sheep, swords, etc.).  The poet strives to use images that are affective (that which is concerned with or arousing feelings or emotions), that evoke vivid sensory experience in the reader, so that, as the reader imagines the images, they draw him into the experience of them through the vivid engagement of the reader’s senses in his own memory of the experience of concrete images (e.g., the reader has smelled grass, touched trees, etc., and thus has capacity to be drawn into and share the experience of the poet).  

The language of poetry is that of images that seek to engage the reader to experience those images as imagined sensory experiences of his own.  Remember that imagination is only the image-making ability that we have as part of the Image of God, the Great Creator of images, within us, as we’ve seen in past articles.  The more visual and sense-oriented we can become, the better we can write, understand, and experience poetry (Biblical or otherwise).

To engage the reader’s attention, the images must be striking and permeable to the reader, e.g., he must be taken by the image and able to enter into it: this is what will compel his attention long enough to focus on deciphering what the series of images that comprise any poem mean.

The functions and method of poetry, which to a greater or lesser degree all artistic expression shares, drive home to us the truth that the message of the Bible, and the experience of Christ’s Reality and Lordship, are to be shared and pursued on every level of human existence, not only the mental, but the physical, emotional, and sensory aspects of our lives as well.  This is a quest that the varied forms of Art are Providentially well-suited to do.  What else would we expect, when the Ultimate Author of Scripture Himself not only created the world of the senses, but assumed into Himself the very experience of mankind in His Incarnation.  But what devices serve to engage and present the striking poetic images necessary to good poetry?  To that question we will, God Willing, next turn.

The Sons of Issachar: Knowing What Israel Should Do, Part 30

In the last column, we continued our examination of the implications of the various forms of literature in the Bible for artists by looking at the different emphases used by the Biblical writers within narratives to make specific points artistically to those reading their accounts.  We’ve also seen, in past columns, that the narratives within Scripture utilize numerous artistic language devises, and that even language itself is rife with symbol, personification, metaphor, and artistic image. 

If this is true of the narrative (and even straight didactic, or teaching) parts of Holy Writ, it is even more true of the Biblical literary genre we turn to now, that of poetry.  No one who has read poetry (Biblical or otherwise) can be unaware of the fact that it uses language in a much more concentrated and dense form than regular conversation, narrative, or teaching forms do.  This happens because the poet seeks a slightly different goal than a story narrator or straight didactic teacher.  

There is, of course, some overlap to the goal of all the writers and literary types in Scripture, since they all aim at orienting the hearer or reader towards love, worship, and service toward Christ, but the approach of the poet toward achieving that goal differs somewhat from the others.  

The Biblical poet seeks not only to express theological fact (although that is an intrinsic part of what he does), but also to express their experience and feelings about the interaction of God’s Person and Actions with their lives.  The Biblical poet did this in such a way (by the poetic use of language) that he aimed at provoking the same sort of experience in the reader of his poetry.  Poetry is expressly an invitation to share the experience of the poet, and to make it your own.  

This is not even simply true for individuals.  In the Psalms, for instance, which are all poetry, and which formed the Hymn-book of the Old Covenant Church the poetry there expressed not only the individual’s experience, but the corporate experience of all Israel together, and prophetically, the Experience of Christ Jesus (e.g., Psalms 68:19-21; 110; this is why the New Covenant Church uses the Psalms so much in her worship).  

This aspect of Biblical poetry should reinforce in our faith the understanding that correct theological knowledge (though absolutely necessary) is not enough; we must be personally engaged with God’s Truth with our whole beings: emotions, will, body, mind, imagination, etc.  We must know Truth with our minds, but we must also know Him in our experience (we sometimes forget that Truth is not a concept; He is a person (John 14:6)).  

The importance of this is driven home by the massive presence of poetry in the Bible.  Besides the Book of Psalms, all of the Books of Job, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, and the Song of Solomon are poetry.  Much of the prophetic books of Isaiah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, and Zephaniah, as well as significant parts of Ezekiel, Zechariah, and the Revelation are written as poetry.  Even is Scripture’s historical sections we find huge chunks of poetry.  For example: Genesis 49 (Jacob’s Blessings), Exodus 15 (the Song of Moses), Numbers 23-24 (Balaam’s Prophecies), Deuteronomy 33 (Moses’ Blessing), Judges 5 (the Song of Deborah), I Samuel 2 (Hannah’s Prayer), II Samuel 22 (David’s Song of Praise), I Kings 19 (Isaiah’s Prophecy), and many others.  

The New Testament, aside from the vast amount of Old Testament poetry quoted, contains in its Gospel histories and Epistles poetry such as Mary’s Song in Luke 1, Zechariah’s Canticle in Luke 1, Simeon’s Song in Luke 2, the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:3-20.  Paul frequently waxed poetic in his writings and quoting, and there may even be early Christian Creedal hymns quoted in his Epistles, such as in Philippians 2:6-8 (as also in John’s Gospel in Chapter 1).  

When we men encounter truths and experiences that are so profound that they strike us to the core of our beings, we frequently seek to memorialize and share those profundities through the medium of poetry. This should not be surprising to us when we realize that we are made in the Image of God, and He, the True Author of Scripture, is the One who inspired the Biblical writers to compose so much poetry in His Inspired Word.  We are poets because He is a Poet.  

The poetry of Scripture which invites us to share the experience of the Truth of God permeates our worship, especially in song (this should not surprise us, either, since most of the Bible’s poetry was meant to be chanted or sung).  Poetry was made for music, and the Faith has inspired many Christian artists to memorialize and invite others to share their profound experience of life in Christ.  But what linguistic devises allow poetry to invite others into the poet’s experience of life?  A good question, and one which, Lord willing, we will take up in the next column.  

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The Sons of Issachar: Knowing What Israel Should Do, Part 29

We continue to explore the implications for Art of the varied literary forms used by the Biblical writers (and thus by the Inspiring Author of Scripture) in this column.  Last issue, we saw that the elements of the story-form of literature (plot, character, and setting), which have so influenced Western literary, musical, dance, and visual art forms are drawn from, and are recapitulations of history as seen through the lens of the Biblical Narratives.  We concluded that, since all of Life is God’s Story (His Art), we who are made in God’s Image as sub-creators may legitimately represent, render, and interpret any and all of life’s aspects artistically in the imitation of the Maker.  

That being said, a question arises concerning interpretation and emphasis within history or narrative in the development of the plot of a story, or the retelling of history: Is it legitimate for us to use artistic elements in such an effort to emphasize some point or interpretation we want to make against the backdrop of a story or historical narrative? Or are we limited to simply retelling the story or history exactly as we received it?

The reason this question arises has to do with our current situation as people whose perceptions have been blurred by the Fall to the point that we are, in many ways, unable to perfectly share each other’s perceptions, much less see things as they should actually be seen, e.g., as they really are.  For though those of us who are Christians are being steadily subjected to the process of Sanctification by the Holy Spirit, we still see in a fragmented and broken way until the Resurrection (I Cor. 13:9-12).  This means, of course, that we are unable to see, or even to report perfectly to each other, the way the world truly is, unless God performs a miraculous intervention into the perceptions of men, as He did in a unique and unrepeatable way when He inspired the Biblical Writers to perfectly see and report Reality as He intended it to be in the Scriptures (II Tim. 3:16-17; II Peter 1:20-21).  It was largely because of mankind’s blindness that God caused His Word to be recorded infallibly, so that men could begin to see things rightly by the Power of His Spirit, with His Enscripturated Word as the corrective Lenses through which we could look at the world to see it as it truly is.  

That is not to say that fallen men never represent the truth of things rightly, however.  Though men are fallen, we are still the bearers of God’s Image, and, as such, still have imprinted deep upon our beings some concepts of the Reality of things, though we twist and pervert much of this in our rebelliousness to God’s Truth (Romans 1:18-23;  anyone interested in some of the effects of this may profitably consult J. Budziszewski’s “The Revenge of Conscience” or Cornelius Van Til’s “The Defense of the Faith”) and, consequently, men not infrequently represent things rightly, though usually in a fragmentary way.  

Those of us who are Christians, though, have been changed in our natures to desire God’s Will and Viewpoint, to want to conform our hearts, minds, and actions to God’s Word, and to represent Jesus in all we are and do.  By the steady influence of Christ’s Spirit, we are gradually being conformed to His Image and Word, “from Glory to Glory” (II Cor. 3:14-18), and thus are gradually coming to our senses, as it were, from the insensibility of our depravity.  

As we submit ourselves to the Spirits’ Ministrations, our viewpoints concerning Reality are gradually corrected, and we begin to form a vision of the world that reflects the uniqueness of our individual history and perspective, cleansed and corrected by the washing of God’s Word.  This cleansed perspective is the basis of the artistic vision of the world that the Christian artist is called to share with others, so that hopefully the perspectives of those others can be broadened and corrected to see the world as God wants Reality to be seen.  

The legitimacy of our corrected and sanctified individual visions of God’s Reality as the basis of our art is demonstrated in the very structure of the Biblical Narrative Forms themselves.  This is by way of what modern Bible scholars call redactors, or editors.  We frequently see in Scriptures’ Narratives the work of an author who reworks or rearranges extant written or oral narratives to form his own emphasis or interpretation, e.g., to make a point that the author wishes to make.  

For instance, Moses arranged and edited the Accounts of his Godly ancestors under the Inspiration of God into the Text that we know as the Book of Genesis.  Remember, Moses was not alive until after all of the Events of Genesis had taken place, and he took the ancient accounts (called toledothim) written by Adam, Seth, Abraham, etc., and smoothed them into a whole, actually retelling Genesis 1 so that it was a refutation of the pagan gods of the peoples who surrounded the fledgling Hebrew nation (for this, see Allen P. Ross’ “Creation and Blessing” and Henry Morris’ “The Genesis Record”).  In doing so, Moses did not change the facts (which God had providentially arranged to be interpreted as Moses did); he simply told and emphasized them in such a way as to refute the pagan nature-gods.  

The author of the Histories of I and II Chronicles, during a time in Israel when the priesthood was under attack, simply retold the histories of I and II Kings, adding fuller information about, and specially emphasizing, the role of the Priests and Levites, to establish more fully their legitimacy.   

From early in the Church’s history, the four faces of the cherubim (ox, eagle, bull, and man) have been interpreted as symbols of four different Aspects of Christ’s Ministry, reflected in the four different emphases of the Evangelists.  Using the exact same Events of the History of Christ’s Life, they all providentially emphasized editorially different Aspects of His Earthly Ministry.  

Matthew used frequent Old Testament Messianic references, obviously writing primarily to convince Jewish readers of Christ’s Messiahship.  John’s Gospel records huge blocks of Jesus’ Teaching designed to bring men to belief, and frequently describes the Jews in an extremely negative fashion, aiming by this at Gentile conversions.  Luke sought to provide men with as much detail as possible, emphasizing the Humanity of the God-Man, while Mark (probably writing Peter’s memoirs) shows Christ primarily in His Actions as the Servant of God and men. 

All these differing emphases about the one True Gospel Story are valid, each aiming at a slightly variant emphasis of the same story.  God sovereignly used the intentions and emphases of all the Biblical Writers to achieve, with great Artistry, the Inspired Book that He wanted in all its complex completion.  

This should tell us that, even though we don’t have the benefit of Inerrant Inspiration in artistically expressing our own visions and emphases, it is still legitimate to present interpretations and emphases to wake the dead to God’s Truth, so long as we do not contradict or violate the bounds of God’s Word.  Our individual perspective matters, and is a legitimate basis for artistic expression.  

The Sons of Issachar: Knowing What Israel Should Do, Part 28

In the last column, we saw that the Biblical Narrative elements of Plot, Character, and Setting have impacted and formed Western literacy, musical, dance, and visual Arts in terms of influencing the progressive flow from a beginning to the arising of a problem or tension which is brought to a resolution point by the end of the poem, musical piece, dance or theatre-piece.  We further saw that this appeals to men of every culture, but especially to those raised in a culture dominated by Christianity and its Bible.

Mention was also made of the fact that this appeal of the Biblical Plot-Form was rooted in the historicity of the Scriptural Narratives.  The Bible is the revealed Record of God’s Purposes in History, as history is itself a Narrative designed and enacted by God, in which we humans (along with spiritual beings and animals) are the characters, and Creation is the setting.  

That God is the Author of history is borne out by His Word, as He is taught there to uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things.  (Heb. 1:3; Dan. 4:34-35; Ps. 135:6; Acts 17:25-28; Job 38, 39, 40, 41; Matt. 10: 29-31; Acts 15:18; Eph. 1:11; Ps. 33:10-11; 2 Chron. 20:6; etc.).  So involved is the Lord Jesus with creating, sustaining, and bringing history to its consummation, that He is titled “the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End, the First and the Last” (cf. Rev. 1:17). 

Christ is Himself, as the Incarnate Second Person of the Trinity, both fully God and Man at the same time, the Principal Character, the Protagonist of history itself.  History is a plot (in both senses), as the true narrative of God’s Plans to create and refine for Himself a people in His Image.  History begins with a beautiful and harmonious creation (Gen. 1-2), whereinto comes betrayal, tragedy, sorrow, and alienation (Gen. 3ff.), leading to the necessity of an Heroic Sacrifice (Heb. 10:10-18; John 19), which leads to a miraculous restoration of the creation to its harmony and beauty (1 Cor. 15:12-57; Rom. 8:19-25; Rev. 21-22). Notice that history bears the shape of the classic plot-form of a story (which, as we saw in the last column, Scripture’s Account of history gave birth to): a peaceful beginning (Creation at the first) wherein a tension or problem arises (the Fall of Man), which must be struggled against and overcome (the Incarnation, Life, Death, Resurrection and Ascension) by a protagonist or central character (the Lord Jesus) to lead to a successful resolution (the evil in Hell, the redeemed in Heaven, and an all-new Restoration of Creation to its full intended glory).  Within the Gospel Story, the very History of Redemption as recorded and revealed in Scripture, are all the elements of any good story: tragedy (the Fall, Samson, Judas, Absalom), comedy (Balaam and his ass; some of Christ’s Parables; Isaiah’s taunting of the priests of Baal), epic (the Holy Quest of the Lord Jesus), even what J.R.R. Tolkien called “Eucatastrophe, “where out of a seemingly hopeless situation, good triumphs (the Crucifixion and subsequent Harrowing of Hell, Resurrection and Ascension) [Tolkien gives this theme amazing realization in his own The Lord of the Rings].  

Romans 1:18-23 tells us that every man knows, deep inside himself that God is the Creator of all things, including history and that we are all actors or characters in His Story.  We know intrinsically, all of us, that God’s Story is true; it is, as it were, hard-wired into us all.  Because of this, we recognize deep down, and are drawn to, stories that recapitulate on some level the same elements and order of plot that characterize history (which is the story of Redemption, the Gospel).  On that deep level, we know that all stories are about God’s Story (it could not be otherwise, since we are all actors who exist in, and take our meanings from, God’s Creation and Enactment of historical Redemption).  This is why hero and anti-hero, and the actions of protagonist and antagonist are built around themes of love, betrayal, rejection, tragedy, restoration, and resolution: they are all elements drawn from the pattern of the Great Story – of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and the Restoration of all things.  All stories bear witness on some level to the truth that there is only one Story, and that Story is God’s.  

Romans 1 also tells us, however, in the very same passage, that men in their wickedness seek to suppress the knowledge of God, and thus false religions and the cultural forms that arise from them attempt to aid in this suppression.  Even in this rebellion, though, the knowledge exerts influence, and, though men attempt to suppress it, this knowledge of God that is at our core reasserts itself, since even false religions have only the Reality given by the True God to work with, and, though it attempts to pervert and twist Reality, the true shape of Reality and its witness can still be clearly seen.  By the telling and living of the Gospel in its full sense, the suppression of the true nature of things is removed, as the Holy Spirit empowers God’s People in their cultural incarnation and enactment of the True Record of history and existence form the Perspective of history’s Maker, the Triune God. 

Man, created in the Image of God, is a sub-creator; we make artifacts in imitation of the Creator Who Makes.  Because of this, we make our own little histories (stories and narratives) and we make things that comment upon the Great Story (songs, dances, architecture, etc.), embodying our interaction with God’s Story.  We are always interacting, artistically and otherwise, with God’s Story, whether positively or negatively.  In Scripture, we see all of life represented, rendered, and interpreted artistically, and, since God authored this Scriptural Rendering, we know that we sub-creators can follow His Example.  

The Sons of Isaachar: Knowing What Israel Should Do, Part 27

In my last post, we saw that Scripture’s content is communicated through a variety of literary forms (narratives, parables, poetry, law, epistles, etc.), each of which utilize patterned language in the way appropriate to its form to heighten the expressiveness of what is being said, to catch the attention of the reader, and simply to beautify the content.  We saw further that, in order to catch the full intent of what is being communicated in the Bible, every reader of it must himself become an artist, learning the way the art of the form used works, so that he can understand all of the nuanced meaning carried by both form and content.  The implications of this wedding of form and content in Scripture have tremendous implications for Christian artists, who are called, as the inspired writers of Holy Writ were, to communicate content through form and thus effectively share the meaning of what is being communicated across the full spectrum of their audience’s understanding.

In order to begin to appreciate how to understand the relationship of these various forms to their content (and how the forms themselves, as forms, constitute content), we will begin in this post to look at some of the aspects of the literary form which constitutes the greater part of the Bible, that of narrative, which comprises both history and stories in Scripture.

The characteristics, or elements, of Biblical narrative are primarily plot, character, and setting.  The setting, of course is the place (or places) where the story’s action occurs, but it involves more than just the locale.  Setting takes in the socio-cultural background of a story (e.g., how a royal Egyptian household would be ordered in the time of Ramesses, or a wedding’s customs in Cana of Galilee in the closing years of the first century before Christ), as well as naturally changing factors (such as the weather on the Sea of Galilee, or the abundance of food or lack thereof in the ancient Middle East, or the presence of invading or occupying foreign troops). These factors of the setting are frequently the critical elements around which the plot whirls.

The characters are the persons who act within the story, and this aspect of narrative sets forth not just who the characters are, but how they will respond in a situation, their abilities (an important component, especially if the character is not human or is supernaturally energized, such as angels are, or Samson in his strength was, etc.), and their relationships with other characters and their environment, as well.

The plot of narratives is essentially what happens, the actions and experiences of the characters in the setting of the story.  The shape of Biblical narrative has deeply impressed itself on, and has essentially formed, Western ideas of what a story should be—how it should be introduced, flow, and resolve itself (its beginning, middle, and end).  Whether the inspired histories of Scripture end in tragedy (like the story of Jephthah or of Cain and Abel), comedy (like the tale of Balaam and his ass), or epic heroics (like the accounts of David and Goliath, or Gideon and his three hundred), the pattern of the tales in the Bible introduce their characters in a setting in which a tension, or problem, arises which is dealt with to lead to a resolution (sometimes satisfying, sometimes disturbing, sometimes comforting, depending on which subtype of narrative, e.g., tragedy, comedy, epic, etc., is being employed; which depends upon the desired end the writers intend their audience to experience).

The widespread influence of this concept of narrative (especially the plot aspect) in the Western world can be attributed primarily to the ubiquitous influence of the Bible in the West, especially the King James Version (see Alister McGrath’s excellent book, In the Beginning, on this subject).  The accounts in Scripture, with their attendant approaches to narrative art, have impacted and given birth to Western narrative art forms, as Christian artists (who dominated the Arts in the West until recently) and their cultural heirs (Christian and non-Christian) imported the Scriptural approach to narrative into their own approaches.  The foundational ideas of our early epic poems (like Beowulf, or the Song of Roland) and ballads, which gave rise to more developed poems (The Divine Comedy, The Canterbury Tales) and stories (Boccaccio’s Decameron), plays (Shakespeare), novels (Moby Dick), graphic novels, and movies in the West all bear the deep imprint of biblical ideas of narrative.  This can easily be contrasted with Eastern ideas, where, for instance, either no resolution takes place in the plot, the character development is extremely shallow, and the story will end most abruptly (as in the Tale of the Three Kingdoms, the Tale of Genji, or virtually any oriental “karate” film).

This concept of plot outline (beginning, then tension, followed by resolution) has even affected the Arts beyond literature, as successive-panel triptychs in painting, narrative friezes (like the Bayeux Tapestry), dance (“Swan Lake”), music (classical pieces, folk ballads, opera, etc.) and even worship (the historic liturgies of the Church), all of which display the pattern found in the Biblical plot outline approach.

It’s obvious, even in a cursory look like this one, how much of the Arts in the West have been impacted by the narrative form ensconced in Holy Writ.  Modernists’ attempts to circumvent or alter that form (especially under existentialist, absurdist, or Eastern models), while from time to time injecting novelty into the process, ultimately are doomed to eventual obscurity, since mankind, especially Western man, who has been trained to consider the Biblical approach to plot the normal one, is created in the image of God, and hence have an inborn sense of appreciation for the kind of event progression displayed in Biblical plot forms, especially since history itself is a narrative designed by God, and in which we are the characters, and God’s Creation is the setting.  This is why Western narrative art-forms tend to displace or effect change in Eastern ones when they interact (this is not because Western forms of art are naturally superior to Eastern ones, but is rather because the Western forms have been subjected to the cleansing and reorienting influence of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  This also does not mean that Eastern art-forms are devoid of beauty or artistic worth, since all men, East and West, equally bear God’s Image.  It simply means that the Far Eastern art-forms have not yet been cleansed by the power of the gospel.  I don’t believe that humanity will be capable of offering its full offering of cultural praise and beauty until the Eastern peoples, with their unique cultural emphases and insights, enter into the communion of the Christ who restores all things to their originally intended purposes).

The lay out of the Biblical narrative plot form is directly related to the historicity of the stories recorded in Scripture.  The next post will (God willing) address that issue.

The Sons of Issachar: Knowing What Israel Should Do, Part 27

In my last post, we saw that Scripture’s content is communicated through a variety of literary forms (narratives, parables, poetry, law, epistles, etc.), each of which utilize patterned language in the way appropriate to its form to heighten the expressiveness of what is being said, to catch the attention of the reader, and simply to beautify the content.  We saw further that, in order to catch the full intent of what is being communicated in the Bible, every reader of it must himself become an artist, learning the way the art of the form used works, so that he can understand all of the nuanced meaning carried by both form and content.  The implications of this wedding of form and content in Scripture have tremendous implications for Christian artists, who are called, as the inspired writers of Holy Writ were, to communicate content through form and thus effectively share the meaning of what is being communicated across the full spectrum of their audience’s understanding.

In order to begin to appreciate how to understand the relationship of these various forms to their content (and how the forms themselves, as forms, constitute content), we will begin in this post to look at some of the aspects of the literary form which constitutes the greater part of the Bible, that of narrative, which comprises both history and stories in Scripture.

The characteristics, or elements, of Biblical narrative are primarily plot, character, and setting.  The setting, of course is the place (or places) where the story’s action occurs, but it involves more than just the locale.  Setting takes in the socio-cultural background of a story (e.g., how a royal Egyptian household would be ordered in the time of Ramesses, or a wedding’s customs in Cana of Galilee in the closing years of the first century before Christ), as well as naturally changing factors (such as the weather on the Sea of Galilee, or the abundance of food or lack thereof in the ancient Middle East, or the presence of invading or occupying foreign troops). These factors of the setting are frequently the critical elements around which the plot whirls.

The characters are the persons who act within the story, and this aspect of narrative sets forth not just who the characters are, but how they will respond in a situation, their abilities (an important component, especially if the character is not human or is supernaturally energized, such as angels are, or Samson in his strength was, etc.), and their relationships with other characters and their environment, as well.

The plot of narratives is essentially what happens, the actions and experiences of the characters in the setting of the story.  The shape of Biblical narrative has deeply impressed itself on, and has essentially formed, Western ideas of what a story should be—how it should be introduced, flow, and resolve itself (its beginning, middle, and end).  Whether the inspired histories of Scripture end in tragedy (like the story of Jephthah or of Cain and Abel), comedy (like the tale of Balaam and his ass), or epic heroics (like the accounts of David and Goliath, or Gideon and his three hundred), the pattern of the tales in the Bible introduce their characters in a setting in which a tension, or problem, arises which is dealt with to lead to a resolution (sometimes satisfying, sometimes disturbing, sometimes comforting, depending on which subtype of narrative, e.g., tragedy, comedy, epic, etc., is being employed; which depends upon the desired end the writers intend their audience to experience).

The widespread influence of this concept of narrative (especially the plot aspect) in the Western world can be attributed primarily to the ubiquitous influence of the Bible in the West, especially the King James Version (see Alister McGrath’s excellent book, In the Beginning, on this subject).  The accounts in Scripture, with their attendant approaches to narrative art, have impacted and given birth to Western narrative art forms, as Christian artists (who dominated the Arts in the West until recently) and their cultural heirs (Christian and non-Christian) imported the Scriptural approach to narrative into their own approaches.  The foundational ideas of our early epic poems (like Beowulf, or the Song of Roland) and ballads, which gave rise to more developed poems (The Divine Comedy, The Canterbury Tales) and stories (Boccaccio’s Decameron), plays (Shakespeare), novels (Moby Dick), graphic novels, and movies in the West all bear the deep imprint of biblical ideas of narrative.  This can easily be contrasted with Eastern ideas, where, for instance, either no resolution takes place in the plot, the character development is extremely shallow, and the story will end most abruptly (as in the Tale of the Three Kingdoms, the Tale of Genji, or virtually any oriental “karate” film).

This concept of plot outline (beginning, then tension, followed by resolution) has even affected the Arts beyond literature, as successive-panel triptychs in painting, narrative friezes (like the Bayeux Tapestry), dance (“Swan Lake”), music (classical pieces, folk ballads, opera, etc.) and even worship (the historic liturgies of the Church), all of which display the pattern found in the Biblical plot outline approach.

It’s obvious, even in a cursory look like this one, how much of the Arts in the West have been impacted by the narrative form ensconced in Holy Writ.  Modernists’ attempts to circumvent or alter that form (especially under existentialist, absurdist, or Eastern models), while from time to time injecting novelty into the process, ultimately are doomed to eventual obscurity, since mankind, especially Western man, who has been trained to consider the Biblical approach to plot the normal one, is created in the image of God, and hence have an inborn sense of appreciation for the kind of event progression displayed in Biblical plot forms, especially since history itself is a narrative designed by God, and in which we are the characters, and God’s Creation is the setting.  This is why Western narrative art-forms tend to displace or effect change in Eastern ones when they interact (this is not because Western forms of art are naturally superior to Eastern ones, but is rather because the Western forms have been subjected to the cleansing and reorienting influence of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  This also does not mean that Eastern art-forms are devoid of beauty or artistic worth, since all men, East and West, equally bear God’s Image.  It simply means that the Far Eastern art-forms have not yet been cleansed by the power of the gospel.  I don’t believe that humanity will be capable of offering its full offering of cultural praise and beauty until the Eastern peoples, with their unique cultural emphases and insights, enter into the communion of the Christ who restores all things to their originally intended purposes).

The lay out of the Biblical narrative plot form is directly related to the historicity of the stories recorded in Scripture.  The next post will (God willing) address that issue.

The Sons Of Issachar: Knowing What Israel Should Do, Part 26

We saw in the last post that the artistic form of Scripture was vitally important to the communication of the message of the Bible, since the form itself influences the content, shaping content by the inherent emphasis of the type of form it embodies, and thus contributing to, and heightening, the overall context by virtue of highlighting strands of the information embedded in the message itself.  We saw that this contributed to a “symphonic” view of the Bible’s truth, necessitating reading Holy Writ not in isolated passages alone, but in light of all of Scripture together, with one part interpreting another (which images, in turn, the relationship within the Holy Trinity), so that we can arrive at a balanced assessment.  We saw that God’s vastness is best presented to us through a variety of forms; that, in Special Revelation (e.g., the Bible) God has revealed Himself under a variety of artistic forms, implying that the full range of artistic expression is valid for expressing God’s glory and message.

I have said in past weeks that the Bible is artistic in a literary sense.  But what does that mean?  To answer this, we must first determine the elements of artistry that define literature generally, before we can begin to see how the particular elements of various forms of literature present Scripture’s message.

Though there are different genres or categories of literature that comprise the biblical writings, all of these genres use larger proportions of particular types of language usage than everyday language does.  These types of language most obviously are constructed of figurative language, which include symbolism, allusion, metaphor, irony, simile, pun, word play, paradox, and a variety of connotative language usages.  Most of these language types occur most frequently in poetry, but they still appear throughout all of the other categories of literature which make up Holy Scripture.

It is also true that literary forms reflect, besides figurative language, rhetorical patterning, which is an arrangement of sentences or clauses that are the primary form of biblical poetry, as well as imaginary dialogues, repetition of questions or statements that use the same pattern, etc.

The way all these patterns are put together is what makes up the style of the writer of the particular literary text, which varies uniquely from author to author.  Writers use these patterns to multiply the meaning of the language and get more out of it than regular discourse does, which causes the reader to pay more attention to what is being written than they normally would, as the patterned usages catch and focus the attention of the reader, forcing a higher degree of concentration and, if it’s done well, appreciation and delight at the wedding of content and appropriate form.  Aesthetics are a part of the appreciation of good literature, beyond the content (even if the content is vital) of the work.

The Bible, the content of which is unarguably the most vital information a man will have in this life, has also enshrined its content in glorious artistic form, which carries, especially for those of us who are artists, its own content and meaning, which, Lord willing, we will examine in weeks to come.

The form of literature is shaped by the patterned language usages listed above, as well as balance, symmetry, variation, coherence, repetition, contrast, theme, and progression, all of which are utilized differently depending on the type of literary form being used (e.g., narrative, poetry, etc.).  Meaning is communicated through form, and literature’s techniques and forms are generally much more complex than regular communication.  To understand what a type of literature is saying, we must understand its form.

If we are going to understand a story, we need to figure out something about the background, the people or characters involved, and what they are doing (the events of the story).  If we are going to understand a poem, we need to figure out the images and the figures of language utilized by the poet before we can correctly assemble them to know what the poet is communicating in the poem.  This is also (and especially) true for understanding Scripture, which conservatively speaking, is at least eighty percent literary in form.

Thus, to even correctly understand God’s word, we all must become artists, or, at least, appreciators of Art, since so much of the Bible is Art!

The presence of so much artistry in Scripture means that, in contradiction to theories of gradual, accretive, impersonal evolution of the biblical writings (which the literary unity of the books militates against), or of theories of automatic-writing, divine dictation of the Word (which the varying literary styles from book to book contradicts), God prepared self-conscious human writers of the Holy Writ, a process in which God sovereignly used the personalities, literary styles, and individuality of His servants in the composition of His miraculously inspired and inerrant Word.

This is good news for artists, because it means that God deliberately used artists to communicate Truth about Himself, and we can gratefully know that Truth about the Lord can still be communicated legitimately (though not in the inerrant sense of the Bible) through our artistry.

For more on Biblical images and language, go to www.Patreon.com/kewmpercrabb

The Sons Of Issachar: Knowing What Israel Should Do, Part 25

We saw last week that the biblical authors, under divine inspiration, frequently adapted the cultural forms (literary and artistic) to holy use, in the process cleansing and restoring these literary forms to their intended original use of the glorification of God.  This adaptation was based not only on redemptive grounds (since Jesus continues about the business of reconciling the world to Himself), but also on the ground of Creation, since God originally created all things to reflect and reveal His Persons and attributes: to reorient these forms is but to restore them to their true purposes.  Christian artists today should see the practice of the authors (and through them, the Author) of Scripture as a paradigm, or model for their own artistic interaction with the cultural forms that have been captured and perverted by the world system to satanic ends (Creation itself groans for liberation from its enslavement to Satan as Romans 8:19-23 tells us).  Christ has made the members of His body agents of liberation for the world itself.

From this we turn to a consideration of the implications of the fact that the Truth revealed in the Bible is revealed under a multiplicity of literary forms.  Scripture itself contains (at least) the following kinds of writings: narrative stories and histories, poetry and song, parables, letters, law, wisdom, apocalyptic (or prophetic) writing.

These sundry literary forms all communicate differing emphases by virtue of the different artistic forms embedded in their structures.  (We will, God willing, be examining in some detail these varying forms and each one’s implications for artistry in weeks to come).  What does the existence of multiple artistic forms in Scripture teach us?

Each of these various artistic forms emphasizes, by its form, different aspects of Scripture’s one Truth, and it is only by a process of understanding these varied emphases in their contexts that we can arrive at a balanced assessment of what that one Truth is.  This is one reason why the Church has historically (and scripturally) adhered to the principle that Scripture must interpret Scripture (we must not impose our fallen, solipsistic ideas on God’s inerrant Word).

This is also instructive in helping us realize that Christianity is much more an art than it is a science.  We must by the help of the Holy Spirit, see these various scriptural emphases in interlocking balance, rather than as some sort of uniform technique.

Scripture’s varied revelation of the one Truth also provides a salient antidote to our culture’s reductionistic quest for “the bottom line,” our tendency to see only one meaning for a thing (and that frequently seen in isolation), and to either not look for, or to devalue and discount any secondary meanings also revealed.  We’ve seen in past weeks that God has constructed Reality out of symbols, and that symbols inevitably possess a God-given multiplicity of meanings (though they all ultimately point to the Creator).

God intends for His truth to be seen symphonically, for us to see that any “bottom line” takes its fullest and most true meaning from all of its interlocking and balanced meanings simultaneously.  The melody of Truth is best appreciated and understood in a setting of Truth’s attendant harmonies, contrapuntal melodies, and rhythms, e.g., in Truth’s symphony.  (Anyone interested in pursuing this line of thought could do no better than to read Vern Poythress’ Symphonic Theology and John Frame’s The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, both of which address the subject with more insight and eloquence than I could ever muster.)

The fact that Holy Writ reveals the one Truth of God under various artistic modes is also illustrative of the triune nature of God, as He is One in His essential being, and yet exists in three differing Persons.  Even the very structure of the Bible reveals God as He is.

What does this all have to teach to the Christian artist?  At least three things: (1) It teaches us that God’s truth is so vast that it can only be revealed to limited, finite man under a variety of forms, since God in His infinity can never be circumscribed or completely summed up by any created thing or combination of created things.  This is why God constructed all of Creation to reveal Himself (and, after the Fall, gave Scripture as Special Revelation as a key to the Fall-opaqued Creation), though even the whole of Creation could not fully reveal God.  Nonetheless, God is so Vast that multiple modes of revelation were considered by Him good and necessary.  (2) God revealed Himself in Special Revelation under a variety of artistic modes.  This means that God, in His inspired and inerrant Word, chose to reveal Himself in His Word via Art.  This should fill artists with great confidence in using their artistic vocations to be vehicles for revealing God’s Glory (though not of course, inerrantly, as Scripture does; rather, we do so by ordering General Revelatory created artifacts according to the principles and patterns found in the Special Revelation of the Bible).  (3) God revealed Himself in Scripture under a variety of artistic modes.  This implies that the full range of artistic expressions (music, dance, architecture, literature, etc.) are legitimate vehicles for expressing and revealing God’s Glory.  God Himself caused a variety of artistic forms to be used in His Word, each highlighting a differing part of God’s truth and revelation.  All of this should inspire confidence and joy in using our artistic callings and God-given talents to glorify our God and King, Christ Jesus.

For more teaching on symbols and Art, see www.patreon/kempercrabb.com