© Contra Mundum 1991-2022
Christianity and the arts
Reformed art: Does it exit?
The interest in combining theology
and art generally seems to go with
Platonist philosophy, for example as
in the Inklings writers. This Platonism
is more compatible with the vision of
an enchanted world, which especially
is received by the public as a
Christian-friendly religious vision. But
another view of the Christian
influence on culture is its removal of
this enchanted cosmos as an
essentially pagan world view that
confuses the divine with the created.
The confusion of the aesthetic with
the spiritual is a serious and seductive
error. This view often goes further
and considers God’s action in the
world to be inscrutable, except when
explicitly revealed, as in the Bible.
Since God’s presence cannot be show
that, leaving aside didactic paintings
and depictions of pious acts (the
praying hands, etc. that used to be so
common on the walls of Protestant
homes), the only place where it
explicitly enters into art is perhaps
the psychological novel. There still
remains in this view another way in
which Christianity engages art, and
that is criticism, which uncovers the
religious agenda in much of art and
judges it by Christian standards.
Is art sacred?
In the ancient world it depicted the
gods. It most Western homes through
the 19th century it was
predominantly icons. In modern times
art is treated as something special
that it is wicked to destroy. Should it
enjoy this status? Will the internet,
the video camera and industrial
design erase the distinction between
art and other artifacts of culture?