A Divine Calling to Creativity

The following was originally written for the members of my church small group starting a “creative worship night.”  This serves as a “biblical theology” in brief of creativity and the arts as worship.  Some of it may overlap with writings in previous posts because of its autonomy as a writing done specifically for a set people and purpose.  Please see the references at the bottom, from which a great deal is drawn.

A DIVINE CALLING TO CREATIVITY:  A BIBLICAL LOOK AT CREATIVE WORSHIP – Jacob A. Davis

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.” – Genesis 1:1*

“The greatest artist of all, the greatest imaginer of all, is the one who appears at the opening of Genesis.  Esthetic has to do with form, design, harmony, beauty.  Perhaps the key word is “form.” Now the earth, says Genesis, was without form.  God shaped the creation into form… And we are told that he looked up on each thing he had shaped and said that it was good… Even after the fall of man the Bible treats nature as beautiful, with God as its maker and wielder… God did not, as so many of us, think the esthetic was an incident for leisure time.” – Clyde S. Kilby, Ph.D. (1902-1986), Professor of English, Wheaton College

From the very first passage of the Scriptures, we see God as a creative being; indeed, he shows himself to be the ultimate creative being.  We behold him establish the whole created order, including mankind itself.  He then lays before us an astounding pronouncement: “let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” (Gen. 1:26b).  He gives us dominion over the earth.  The creator of the earth has given us, in turn, the earth to use and rule over.  Not only does he gives us dominion, but as we shall see, throughout the Scriptures he also calls us to an unquestionable creativity with the resources and talents he has given us.

More coming soon!

And we’re back, after a couple months haitus.  More stuff is coming soon, just to let you know.  I’m really going to re-vamp this site, add content, add contributors, and perhaps even do a drastic redesign.  Because of a real shift in my church life, I now am realizing the importance of engaging creativity and the arts more than ever.  Stay tuned.

– Jake

Why We Need Art in a Recession

Carolyn Arends, a Christian folk singer-songwriter I first encountered a decade or so ago when I heard her cover Rich Mullins’ “Jacob and 2 Women” on a tribute album, has written a great piece for Christianity Today entitled “Saying More Than We Can Say: Why the Arts Matter Even During A Recession.” Arends expresses a certain concern she has had:

In these tough times, I worry that violins and stained glass and folk songs may become extraneous. Many people are in a state of financial frostbite; just as blood flow to the extremities is restricted to save vital organs in a case of hypothermia, resources for less essential items must be diverted during an economic crisis. Who’s going to buy tickets to a film festival, ballet, or concert when there isn’t enough money for groceries?

What business do I have writing songs when there is practical work that needs doing? Do the arts matter? Are they expendables or essentials?

The Spirituality of Vincent Van Gogh

When most people hear the name Vincent Van Gogh, they immediately think of a rather eccentric artist who painted in vivid color and violent brush-strokes, whose life was marked by the mailing of his mutilated outer ear to a prostitute, and whose life ended after a somewhat boggled suicide attempt.  He is well known for his rejection of the Church, and rumors abound about an embrace of eastern mysticism.  The romanticism of Van Gogh as a tragic reject and artistic genius is perpetuated throughout the artistic world.  However, it may be that those in the artistic world have made Van Gogh in their own image and rejected some major aspects of who he really was.

Coming Up

Because of the thoroughness in many of this blog’s articles, posts might not always be as frequent as some of the other blogs you frequent.  Simply put, this site is more about content than quantity of posts.  I am incredibly excited about the last few weeks here, and I want to keep you abreast of upcoming additions.  There should be new posts by each of our listed contributors coming in the next few days or weeks, and I am seeking to invite some more writers, artists, ministers, and theologians from somewhat more diverse perspectives aboard in the near future.  I am also looking to expand the features of the site a bit, including reviews, artist profiles, and the like.  I want this blog to be as useful as possible, so if you have any ideas or suggestions, please let me know.

Jake, Image of Truth manager/editor

In Honor of Barth’s Birthday: Grünewald and Mozart

On this day in 1886, Swiss Protestant theologian Karl Barth was born, a man who would be known as the most important Christian theologian of the 20th Century and the most important theologian living after Thomas Aquinas. What many outsiders may not know is how heavily a role two artists played in Barth’s life: Matthias Grünewald and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. A reproduction of Grünewald’s Crucifixion from the Isenheim Altarpiece hung squarely over Barth’s desk for decades, joined only in his wall’s adornment by a portrait of Mozart. Barth regularly referenced Grünewald’s Crucifixion in his writings, making a tangent-like reference to it in many of his works. Likewise, Barth was incredibly devout in his adoration of Mozart.

Creature and Creator: Theological Profiles in Frankenstein

CREATURE AND CREATOR: THEOLOGICAL PROFILES IN FRANKENSTEIN – Jacob A. Davis

Introduction

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly begins her singular famous novel Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus with an epigraph taken from John Milton’s Paradise Lost on the title page:  “Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay / To mould me man? Did I solicit thee / From darkness to promote me?”   With this quotation, she first establishes a connection between the characters of her own novel and the characters in Milton’s work and, through its parallels, the Scriptures also.  At different times, the characters of the Creature and his creator draw a direct correspondence to the characters of the classic creation narrative, yet turn what was beautiful into what, in Frankenstein, is an abomination – a doppelganger effect on the divine narrative.  The characters of Victor Frankenstein and his Creature take turns playing the roles of Adam, the first man, and Satan, the rebellious fallen angel, as represented in the Miltonian epic. In doing so, though Milton paints the creation narrative with a certain literary interpretation, a theological statement is thus securely issued within the context of Mary Shelley’s magnificent prose.  What, then, ensues in Frankenstein is a theological journey of creator and creation in a post-fallen world and the tension created when man dares play God.

What is Art to Christianity?

[Note: This article is being cross-posted as a guest blog at Katagraphais.]

What is Art to Christianity?

It’s a loaded question. One could seriously talk for days on end about the issue and only brush the surface, so I feel that an introductory blog post can be only that… introductory. However, more disturbing than the simplicity of this overview is the fact that Protestant Christians have, by and large, totally been oblivious to the fact that art is an issue for the Church at all. When one walks into the majority of our chapels, they see our bare, whitewashed walls and solid-colored carpet, a solitary cross perhaps being the lone sign of some sort of artistic imagery. We stand in a long line of churchgoers influenced by the iconoclastic tendencies of John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli. As much as we appreciate the theology that these men brought to the Church during a crucial time, they sadly set in course actions that would put a wedge in the worlds of visual art and Protestant Christianity for the next four centuries.

Art in Creation: God as Sculptor

The idea of art is found all throughout the creation narratives of Genesis. Creation is, of course, more than art, but it is certainly nothing less. Take the idea of aesthetics, for example. In the same way that a painter, who has been working on specific details of his painting, will often step back to remind himself of bigger picture and judge whether the element he has been working on brings the aesthetic he wants, so too God steps back from working on the details of his creation to view it in light of the bigger picture. He does this no less than seven times in Genesis 1, and each time he does so he gives it a value judgment: “this is good.” In his commentary on Genesis in the Interpretation series, Walter Brueggemann argues that God is not giving a moral/ethical judgment, but an aesthetic judgment. Brueggemann is certainly overstating his case- there’s definitely an ethical element involved- but I don’t think we need to take it as an either/or issue.

Aesthetics is not where I want to camp out today, however. I want to look at the creation narrative in light of the idea of God as sculptor. This idea, appropriately, is rooted in the beginning. Genesis 1:1-2 states that God created, and that the creation was initially formless and empty. The verb translated create here (bâʾrâ) is always used of a divine act. God created the material that would be contained in all things, but had yet to give shape to any of it. The ancients reading this narrative would have recognized the idea of chaos latent in this description. The creation narrative is one of overcoming chaos, fashioning matter into an orderly world. The picture presented in the text is very much a like a sculptor standing before an untouched block. All the material he needs is before him, but he has yet to give it shape, to give it order. Slowly and surely, the sculptor begins to chisel, order, and form- the creation begins to take shape. Land emerged from the chaotic primeval waters, trees and plants sprouted and grew, animals, fish, and birds came and roamed the newly ordered world.

Welcome

Welcome to Image of Truth, a blog dedicated to engaging aesthetics and the arts from a Biblical Christian perspective.  As a brief introduction, there will be numerous contributors here, each from a somewhat unique perspective when it comes to their involvement in art, church tradition, and background, though we could all be considered Protestant and broadly evangelical, thus coming at this from certain set presuppositions that will hopefully unify our conversation.  From practicing artists with a commitment to the Christian faith to ministers and theological students with an interest in art (and many in-between), we will act as a community trying to shed light on the issues regarding beauty and art from the perspective of Biblical Christianity.

The goal of this blog is simple:

• To equip the Church to recognize the importance of beauty and developing a truly biblical aesthetic (that is, a philosophy of beauty).
• To equip the Church to recognize the importance and sanctity of the arts in the daily life of the Christian and the corporate Church, as well as in the history of God’s people over the course of history.  Specifically, we will address issues of visual art (drawing, painting, sculpture, printing, etc.), music, theater, film, and literature.
• To engage the arts in our contemporary culture by interacting with and analyzing various artistic expressions today, from contemporary art to music, film, and theater.

It is my hope and prayer that this blog will be of great use for the Kingdom.

For the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.

Jake, Image of Truth manager/editor

[Pictured: Rouault, Paysage]