WORD AND IMAGE

THE BEAUTY OF GODART IN THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH

THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESSISAIAH 6

• In the year that king Uzziah died I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the skirt of his robe filled the temple. Seraphim were in attendance on him. Each had six wings: with one pair of wings they covered their faces and with another their bodies, and with the third they flew. They were calling to one another:

• • `Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts:• the whole earth is full of his glory.’

Walter Brueggemann speaks of the tabernacle tradition (Exodus 25-31; 35-40) as `preoccupied with beauty’, and the temple tradition in which `nothing is spared in order to create for Yahweh a place of beauty.’ The primary intent of the prophets was to desacralise images and declare their impotence; it was not to destroy the symbols of the covenant nor prevent artistic creativity inspired by the Spirit.

EXPERIENCING BEAUTY

• Sunday worship on the Greek island of Skiathos

• Darkness and light• Icons, candles and prayer• The iconostasis telling the story• Scripture and psalms• A sense of the splendour of God

CHRISTUS PANTOKRATOR

MOTHER OF GOD OF TENDERNESS

THE SPICE-BEARING WOMEN

REDEEMED BY BEAUTY

• Beauty is a terrible and awful thing! It is terrible

because it has not been fathomed and never can be fathomed, for God sets us nothing but riddles… Beauty! I can’t endure the thought that a man of lofty mind begins with the ideal of a Madonna and ends with the ideal of Sodom … The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

THE GLORY OF THE LORD

• God’s joyful and creative Beauty

• The Alien Beauty of the Cross

• The redemptive power of beauty

TRUTH, GOODNESS & BEAUTY

• Truth without goodness and beauty becomes dogmatism

• Goodness without truth and beauty becomes moralism

• Beauty without truth and goodness becomes aestheticism

• God’s revelation in creation and Christ is true, good and beautiful

ART IN THE LIFE OF THE CHURCH

A brief overview

• Art in the early church (Catacombs)

• The Iconoclastic Controversy (Defining Orthodoxy)

• Privileging the Word (Western Christianity)

• Patronage of the Arts (Roman Catholic)

• Stripping Sanctuaries (Protestant iconoclasm)

• Recovering creativity and art (Ecumenical renewal)

Visual Art in the Life of the ChurchSome issues

• Connecting Sanctuary and Public Square• The Beauty of Holiness• Sacred, Religious, or Spiritual Art?• Artistic Creativity and Christian Conviction• Doing Theological Aesthetics in Context

THEOLOGY AND ART

• `theology cannot be complete until it appropriates’ the non-verbal `arts as an integral moment of itself and its own life, until the arts become an intrinsic moment of theology itself.’ If we reduce theology to `verbal theology’ we unjustifiably limit `the capacity of the arts to be used by God in his revelation.’ Karl Rahner

Recovering Aesthetic Existence

• I wonder whether it is possible (it almost seems so today) to regain the idea of the church as providing an understanding of the area of freedom (art, education [Bildung], friendship, play), so that Kierkegaard’s `aesthetic existence’ would not be banished from the church’s sphere, but would be re-established within it?

• Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

CREATIVITY & IMAGINATION

• Creativity as a gift of the Spirit• Images evoked by the Word• Art as inspired by God (Calvin)• Renewal movements and art

ART IN THE SANCTUARYDANGERS

• A fear of creativity & imagination

• God alone is creator

• Vain imaginations

• Church as museum

• Religious kitsch!

APPROPRIATE ART

• Art that glorifies God therefore reflects God’s truth, goodness and beauty

• Art that is consonant with God’s revelation in Christ

• Art which communicates the gospel

BROKEN FOR YOU