The life and community of faith could not exist without the arts. Art exudes from each pious endeavor, every religious expression. While our cultures’ greatest spiritual aspirations have always included art, their interaction with and understanding of art have been in continual flux. Christianity’s relationship to art has historically and contemporarily revealed feelings of neglect, opposition, celebration, and mutuality with art and its theological endeavors, no matter the context, have rarely been able to remain absolute in their stance for long. Our world and cultures are constantly in flux and have been made all the more dynamic with recent technological developments and globalization. The conversation between art and theology has reached a point of great importance, in part because of crises of ethos and ethics within and without the Christian faith.
Whereas religion as a cultural expression is aptly conceived of as an art, the endeavor of theology proper should not be conflated with art. “The ordinances of religion and the power of law are efficacious as they are clothed with pomp, a dignity and majesty that are the work of imagination.” Religious ritual, community cohesiveness, expression through vestments, chalice, and iconography are all properly art, but the task of theology as a reasoned discourse and study of the Divine is not the same as the artworks that can be related to it. While “art and theology share common artistic elements, such as the use of imagination and intuition, mythic language and evocative symbols, metaphor, image, and narrative,” it is misleading to conflate the two. Just as Graham Howes writes the aesthetic must not be confused with the religious, art and theology must remain contrasted although in conversation.
The clearest examples of art and theology’s contrast lay in their character and consequences. Art’s character is to remain hanging over mystery while attempting to relate truths of the human situation and human relationships. Theology’s character lies in the attempt to explain, systematize, or concretize the meaning of a religion or religions. As theology has adopted new language and approaches such as apophatic theologies and even the objectivist atheology of atheists, it remains intent on drawing boundaries of thought and legitimizing narrow constructions of interpretation within those boundaries. The character of art is to overflow with meaning so that its challenge is never consummated and its meaning is multiplied through participation with it.
The consequences are contrasted, but not opposed. Art implies freedom, mystery, and brings a radical responsibility to be fully engaged in all of one’s humanity. The interpreter, or participant, is posed with the awe-full task of self-creation, relating in a new and intentional way with their world, and humbly finding truth that is infinitely unfolding. Theology’s consequences act as an inadequate description via verbal or written expression and grant some measure of respite from the dance of dense relation.
Theology in its reliance on the word has been critiqued for its limitations, but modern innovations to correct this have not escaped similar trappings. Karl Rahner questioned the privileging of verbal arts and feared that by doing so it may “unjustifiably limit the capacity of the arts to be used by God.” As the Theopoetic movement of Amos Wilder through to John Caputo has gained strength and acceptance in academia, the clergy and laity, practices of ‘visual theology’ and diverse non-verbal theological constructions have been undertaken. However, as Mark C Taylor sets out in Disfiguring, these theoaesthetic ventures have still fallen prey to the limitations of privileging Being and presuming coherences between artworks and the Divine, and imposing cognitive and theological prejudices. His A/theoaesthetics, however helpful to the contemporary debate still reflects the continued necessary conversation between art and theology.
Taylor represents a post-structuralist/post-modernist perspective that wrestles seriously with the prospect of continued human progress in an atmosphere where God and the Divine have been largely voided of their past cultural power. George Steiner in Real Presences speaks of some modern cultural contexts as having become where God’s presence cannot be entertained in theory nor experienced, and the numinous weight afforded to art had been excised. Steiner suggests that one approach art and the world ‘as if’ in relation to a Creator and ‘as if’ transcendence was somehow attainable. This Pascal-like wager is attractive in its playfulness and resignation to the human imagination, but it falls short for at least two reasons. First, it appears to pacify a need for transcendence that has already larger been increasingly deemed unpalatable in secular and religious realms. Secondly, in its ‘as if’ proposition, it necessarily narrows fields of possibility by placing a structure of imagination. The playful creation of “behave as is God is watching you” may end up straight jacketing life as much as the theologically supported “behave well because God is watching you.”
A middle ground for those searching a viable and honest post-modern seat at the table of art and theology’s intersections may find helpful clues for doing so in Robin Jensen’s The Substance of Things Seen. Rigidity of correspondence implied at times in theoesthetics can carry on assumptions and privileges of past theologies and has shown its limits, but the Void or Abyss spoken of in Taylor’s A/theoaesthetics can be intimidating. If Steiner’s ‘as if’ narrows or limits theological imagination, then the multivalent meanings availed in Jensen’s hermeneutics can offer a new ground for the Church and secular circles. She depicts an ever expanding horizon of possibilities where each can interact with an artwork through many different lens as they ‘live with it’. This suggests that just as we grow in ourselves, and in our relationships with those in our communities, our interaction with theologies and art will be in flux. It can be spoken of as a synthesis of the hermeneutical ‘circle’ and ‘spiral’; as we spiral in our considerations of artistic context, culture, intent, and the vibrancy of our interpersonal relationships, we also ‘circle’ or return to ourselves in greater possibilities of personal development.
When Matisse said that if he were paint a Virgin, “I would be forcing things. God would leave me to myself,” may reflect a wider sentiment of the modern barrenness of traditional Christian systems of symbols. This degradation of their power of evoking the divine with gravitas was explored above as a cultural reclamation and reform of power away from the Church was explored above as a cultural reclamation and reform but this coup was in part aided by phenomena among Christian faithful without the intent of disrobing their symbols of power. The phenomena referred to here are what may be called iconoclasms of well intentioned misappropriation. The most accessible of examples is the at times ironic hybridization of Christian symbol with commercial icons.
In 1984 a local church in Elgin Illinois opened in their basement ‘God’s Gym’, a derivation of the popular ‘Gold’s Gym’. Since then, God’s Gym t-shirts and various merchandising are near ubiquitous across America. The ironic play off the mainstream icon “Gold’s Gym” and their fitness themed images (“His pain, our gain.”) at once rides the coattails of an accepted commercial image, subverts it, and becomes a form of ironic art. A pedestrian on a city sidewalk wearing a shirt that writes “Jesus Christ” in the Coca-Cola brand fond with the subversion of the company’s motto “He’s the real thing.” acts in the same way. In this hybridization, what is of most impact is the contemporary Christian acceptance, support, and continued patronage of these bastardizations of corporate advertizing triggers the same immediate brand recognition that can be criticized as symptomatic of a consumer culture and gives it a veneer of creedal Christianity.
This thwarts the traditional use and milieu of iconography and the credal in art. The synthesizing of spiritual themes and art and commercialism can result in a neutralizing of the original perceived icon or a conflicting ambiguity towards a clear portrayal of the blurred lines between the sacred and profane. Margaret Miles of Harvard writes, “The way to discount a symbol is not to walk away from it and ignore it, but place it in a decorative rather than religious context.” This phenomena is not limited to Christian symbols however. Writes Michael Heim, “Star Trek lost any sublimity it may have had when it came to occupy Kmart shelves along with electric flyswatters and noisemaker whoopee cushions.” Seen as ironic art, it too begins a cycle of parody that resurrects the “Jesus Is My Homeboy” merchandise of modern Christian fashion as “Jesus Is My Babydaddy.”
The changing role of the European cathedral has been well documented and may crudely be explained in broad strokes as a shift from place of worship to a space of historical or cultural interest like that of a museum. While the portrayal of the grand spaces of Chartres, Notre Dame, or Sistine as destinations of tourism is accurate, implying that they are merely so is reductionistic. The full ministerial life and worship schedule of Ely Cathedral belie this caricature. Yet, as Martin Heidegger asserted, something changes when the context of religious art is changed. His example of displacing the Greek Temple’s art into museums points towards the real impact of an artwork’s larger context being implemental in the relation to it, and the power vested it.
More regularly than religious artifacts being secularized by crowds of vacationers or the revealing light of a museum’s curator, religious art and expression is undergoing a crisis of decontextualization that has occurred through the open forum of the internet and media. The grassroots hacker community Anonymous has opened Scientology to exponential skepticism and criticism, Magnolia Pictures’ 2006 Jesus Camp documented Pentecostal youth ministries to much mainstream concern, and videos of both Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the Wasilla Bible Church have taken their turns stirring controversy and derision. The issue of how religious images have come under skeptical scrutiny must now be expanded to religious expressions including worship, liturgy, dress, and dogma. The modern church has transparent walls and the all seeing eye of the internet has finally transformed Christianity from what was a marginalized mystery cult into a subject as open to analysis as a celebrity’s fashion or sports’ highlight reel. While this will require intense reflection on art and theology’s relationship for those inside and outside of the faith, if “…religious art in an ostensibly secular setting such as the National Gallery can serve as an effective vehicle for religious meaning” it is most likely that some fundamental characteristics of their relationship will remain.
Art’s relation to theology can play a role of disclosing or causing to seen that which had remained unconsciously or uncritically adopted into one’s life. Using the examples of ecoprojects, Deborah Haynes portrays the role of art drawing into focus that which had been absorbed into cognitive backdrops. Kim Abeles says of her The Smog Collectors, “[they] materialize the reality of the air we breathe…They are reminders of our industrial decisions.” Just as Abeles gave embodiment to the environment that so many can take for granted, Marc Chagall’s White Crucifixion in a powerful way brings the Jewishness of Jesus again to one’s consciousness. In many modern contexts, interplay with Christian art depicting hell acts to call to the fore of Christians’ minds again a theology that otherwise may have been unconsidered or uncritically accepted.
Art acts as a prophetic critique interrupting our status quo of relationships. It challenges and disrupts paradigms on levels personal, such as that of John the Baptizer, the tribal/national-Jeremiah, and lastly appealing to universals as that of Amos. John Dewey recalls poet and social critic Matthew Arnold’s saying “poetry is criticism of life” to portray this fundamental aspect of art’s function. The strength of art as prophetic and correctional, writes Dewey lies in its appeal to imagination and possibility. Acting through sign, symbol, the immediate and radically relational, art implies a required moral judgment on behalf of the art’s participant. Dewey found its strength in its opening and disclosure of possibility and the nurturance of the imagination. “It is by a sense of possibilities opening before us that we become aware of constrictions that hem us in and of burdens that oppress.” In other words art opens humanity to its fullest potentials of justice and compassion through the divinity that lies within humanity itself.
The fullness of humanity’s potential has never been reached and one function of art is to call its interpreter’s to refigure the unplumbable depths of human greatness. Art as prophetic seeks to secure greater justice, inclusion, and compassion, through sometimes shocking and unsettling means but are always advocate a turning (repentance) from one way of life towards an awakening to new life. The challenge that prophetic calls housed within dogma or theology face is that they can more easily be approached as ethical impositions that come from without and “moral lessons have been experienced as indoctrination, not challenge.” By giving body and expression to the prophetic through art, it confronts the interpreter and through the hermeneutic process creates an ownership of the repentance that would have been unachieved through other means. As justice is a means and process rather than a goal or end that will be reached, it is only to be found through the relationality that art affords and demands.
John Dewey cites the poet T.E. Hulme’s Speculations when speaking of art’s inability to be understood alone in its isolation. Instead, writes Dewey, art is encountered as a fine-tuning of humanity’s experience in the world. In our hermeneutic mood we meet the art’s creator, their culture, their religion, the spiritual and theological ethos that accompanied its forging. Through this process, while keeping all individuality and uniqueness, the universality of human experience is met; where culture was once obscured by language, novel theologies, and disorienting worldview, it is granted a medium of transcendence. In an intentional hermeneutic we open our relationality, connect to the shared humanity that stretches through all culture, and our ‘self’ is shaken from the disillusionment of isolation. The arts “effect a broadening and deepening of our own experience, rendering it less local and provincial”, and prevent cultures aside from our own from being patronized in a fetishistic exoticism or being dismissed out of hand.
Thus art as universally empowering in a theological era dominated by the lost projects of Modernism, is finding its place in Post-Colonialism. The fuller actualization of all peoples is progressing and their exploitation is endangered. Domination of Empire and imperializing theologies have been severely threatened. Art and art supporting technologies play no small part in this. Post-structuralist movements and current trends supporting open-source philosophies are reaching into technological innovation as well as civic governance and point towards a greater democratic and non-hierarchical model of human organization. The empowerment of web technologies are only the latest iteration of the freedom availed in art. It is a process of greater liberation as art and theology’s relationship has been made more complex. However, the increased freedom and density of possible meanings in art, religious and not, calls for a heightened responsibility, creativity, and intentionality. Heraclitus’ aphorism in Fragment 93 stating “The Delphic god neither reveals nor conceals, but gives a sign.” is an early philosophic clue of the uneasy job of negotiating truth via sign, symbol, and icon. The task is only becoming more compounded as we become media saturated in a world exponentially encoded by sign.
Mark C Taylor’s examination of the deep responsibility and opportunity availed through web technologies as one illustration of the contemporary situation of art. Networks, he writes, make space for a co-presence with others that is neither here nor there which acts as a constraint on influence through a critical distance that remains collaborative. As the Greeks’ physis increasingly is becoming mimesis through heads-up displays (HUDs) and street level marketing, and we are related instantly through web interaction, our hermeneutical stance often requires heightening. Although, the web structure is also inherently volatile and vulnerable and our responsibilities are expanding to include an ability to stabilize the web and the world with one’s own personal art.
As a counter-point to hermeneutics stands the burgeoning field of study and art known as heuretics. Heuretics is at once an applied theory, philosophy, and art form that takes seriously the role of the interpreter in the hermeneutical task; “The perceived meaning of any piece of art depends on the experience, social location, interests, needs, and predisposition of its audience…Interpretation depends on the circumstances and character of the interpreter.” As much as an art piece gives us as individuals and the world, so we also give back to it and all our relations. Simply, instead of hermeneutics’ task of relation with others through their artifacts, it creates opportunity to relate by re-creating their artifacts. Michael Jarrett of Penn State writes, “hermeneutics asks ‘what can be made of the Bible?’ Heuretics asks, ‘what can be made from the Bible?’”. In popular culture, we see this process in Terrence McNally’s theatrical depiction of a contemporary Texan and homosexual Jesus in Corpus Christi, in fanfiction resurrection the mythic adventures of Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker, and the sampling mash-ups of musician Girl Talk. In technological terms, we are all hackers-decoding, recoding, thieving, pirating, and reposting in our globally available art galleries of Facebook.
Heuristics has always occurred, yet only recently has begun to receive its place in thoughtful mainstream academia. The human race is artists, whose art is piecemeal from the ashes of the past, and collaged from the relationships they share. It is the additional ‘And’ that we put forth along with our affirmation of the world. Theologically, its implication is clear. We can espouse no creed or tradition without taking full individual responsibility. It means that just as free adults take responsibility for their actions, so too when we articulate the Divine in our words and art we stand as the sole creators. In a pejorative sense this can be misconstrued as ‘buffet Spirituality’, or syncretistic and ‘watered-down’ Christianity. More appropriately, it is a restatement of the Christianity of Soren Kierkegaard. To mimic or parrot the status quo of what Kierkegaard called Christendom is to hide oneself from the true relationship with the God/Man and to avoid even achieving an authentic selfhood. A creative, authentic self cannot be negotiated within the system of Church dogma or Hegel’s speculative philosophy, but instead by remaining in the absurd. Kierkegaard’s definition of faith as ‘the relation which relates one’s self to itself and the power that constitutes it’ is as close a theological frame for the absurdity of the heuristic life.
Robin Jensen looks into the future of the dialogue between theology and art and how those in contemporary Christian contexts may undertake portraying Christ. She suggests that the Church may be open to new depictions of Christ that are daring and challenging. She suggests renewed theological commitment towards entertaining complex and shocking religious art. While these are valid hopes, they fall short. A more full vision for the future of art and theology might also be hinted at by Jensen herself. She writes of the Baptist and Greek Orthodox experience of humanity as an image of God, and despite one’s interpretation of that theological statement, it articulates emphatically taking seriously humanity’s first responsibility to one another. Art confronts. It confronts us with our deep relationality with the past, our own and diverse cultures, the artist, our perceived enemies. Even in art’s expression of the brokenness and despair of the human condition, one experiences the unique, sublime ability to be confronted within the dialectic of relation. Without having to ascribe to humanity as being an ‘image of God’, art nonetheless reveals our existence’s tragic grandeur-a grandeur that when experienced can only be responded to by love or art; whose distinctions if any, are few.
“[Words] belittle the yearnings of the heart…Words, solely from personal vocabulary, speak only to a portion of the mystery and revelation of God…Both God’s and the world’s imaginative revealing may be missed.”