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W. David O. Taylor, ed., For the Beauty of the Church: Casting a Vision for the Arts (Grand Rapids: BakerBooks, 2010).

In 2008 pastors and artists converged on Austin, Texas for a symposium called “Transforming Culture: A Vision for the Church and the Arts” organized by David Taylor—then Arts Pastor of Hope Chapel in Austin, and now Duke ThD student. Happily, Taylor has just published an edited volume of essays by speakers at the symposium (plus contributions from two who were not, and ample illustrations) so the rest of us can engage with its vision. For the Beauty of the Church is a remarkable collection of essays from academics, pastors and artists aiming, as Taylor puts it in the introduction, to “inspire the church, in its life and mission, with an expansive vision of the arts.” These essays provide an inspiring vision, always framed theologically and made concrete through practical stories and suggestions. Rather than offering a summary of the book’s contents (Taylor provides a nice overview on pages 23–26), here I want to consider a few questions the book raises in order encourage you to read it yourself.

One question is the utility of art. What purpose does art serve that might justify its place in a world of scarcity? Some writers argue that this misses the point of art. In the opening essay Andy Crouch argues “art and worship stand together on the common ground of the unuseful.” His point is that both art and worship are ultimately tied to our view of human nature. If the final explanation of human culture is in terms of biological or economic utility, then ultimately humans themselves are only useful (which has chilling implications for those deemed to lack usefulness). The challenge for the church, Crouch concludes, is to “bend our lives toward the recognition of Christ’s body, beautiful and broken, at play and in pain….to discover Christ taking, blessing, breaking, giving.” (Note here the emphasis on honest engagement with the brokenness of the world, a theme that pervades these essays, and is tonic to those weary of overly sentimental “Christian art.”) Similarly, Barbara Nicolosi, a Catholic screenwriter in Hollywood, says in her essay that art “is useless—except as a vehicle for the beautiful.” By which she means that art is about responding thankfully to God’s gratuitous gift of the cosmos. Thus, following Pope John Paul II, she writes that artists function in a sort of “priestly” role insofar as their being and work leads to praise of God. For both Crouch and Nicolosi art, like Creation itself, is not reducible to utility.

On the other hand, Lauren Winner—in the creatively titled essay, “The Art Patron: Someone Who Can’t Draw a Straight Line Tries to Defend Her Art-Buying Habit”—traces the function of art in North American Christianity and concludes that art is useful. “A Christian understanding of art involves a recognition that art does things,” she writes. “In our Christian history, art mattered. For good and for ill, it was a key part of the Christian experience. Art had a purpose. It taught children to love the Bible. It schooled viewers in theological stories. Sometimes it incited violence. Sometimes it directed Sunday worshipers’ attention heavenward.” Winner does not disagree with the types of arguments for the uselessness of beauty that Crouch and Nicolosi advance, but she points out what such arguments tend to obscure: the uses to which art has been put.

For the Beauty of the Church is made more compelling by the inclusion of pastoral voices, all of which speak frankly of his or her failures and successes with engaging the arts in the churches. These pastoral voices add a where-rubber-meets-the-road legitimacy to the collection. For example, Eugene Peterson discusses how he learned more about what it is to be a pastor from his interactions with artists than he did from his seminary professors, primarily because the artists he met upheld a distinction between their vocation as artist and whatever job they were doing to pay the bills. Joshua Banner, the Minister of Music and Art at hope College, offers a fecund metaphor of the pastor as farmer, patiently and carefully nurturing those in his or her charge. “As patient, careful stewards,” he writes, “we, as pastors and leaders, can nourish the soil of our culture by the way we love artist intentionally—loving not only their artwork, but who they are as persons in process.” Like farmers with land, pastors must nurture artists, he says, not exploit them.

In the last essay in the collection, Jeremy Begbie gives the richest theological account of the future of arts and the Church, by beginning with God’s future. “The Spirit arrives with a vision of the future already assured,” he writes, “and invites us to share in his work of re-creating the present in the light of that future.” His depiction of a vision for the arts and the Church “when the Spirit comes from the future” is hopeful, subversive, and challenging.

Hopeful is perhaps the best adjective to describe For the Beauty of the Church. As even the brief, selective sampling presented here shows, the compelling vision these essays put forward just might engender fuller engagement of the arts by the churches. Let us hope that it helps contribute to a more beautiful Church.

Sometimes
I almost see it
A tremor of inspiration
A gossamer descent
A dove?
Reaction to unseen action
Dancing amidst stillness
Falling cloth?
Clarity of new sunshine
Light tickled by water
Holy spirit?
Promise at vision’s edge
Sometimes

A book review of  Jeremy Begbie’s Resounding Truth:  Christian Wisdom in the World of Music

Today we swim in the sounds of music.  Sometimes we are thrown into the deep end involuntarily.  Often we live within it unknowingly.  And every now and then we embrace music for God’s sake.  In the midst of our floating and sputtering, drowning and swimming, Christians should recognize where they are and do something about it.

For those who would like to do something about it, theologian-musician Dr. Jeremy Begbie has provided a combination alarm-and-lifesaver in his Resounding Truth: Christian Wisdom in the World of Music.  This text is “not only for the professional theologian but also for anyone who wants to think seriously about music from a Christian perspective” (19).

Ultimately, he hopes to “situate music within a vision of the purposes of a Triune Creator, who in Jesus Christ has embodied and realized his purposes for creation, who now through his Spirit works to bring all things to their intended end, and who invites us, with Christ and in the Spirit, to ‘voice creation’s praise’” (305).

To guide us to a Christian perspective on music (particularly Western tonal music), Begbie must first challenge some of the modern West’s basic assumptions about music.  In his definition, music is actually a set of actions, particularly music-making and music-hearing.  Moreover, music is simultaneously socially and culturally located and  based in the physical order of the world.  This dynamic drives much of the book’s argument.  Although music is made and shaped by humans, music is also based upon God’s created order, and as such music can testify to God, align us with God’s order, and be a part of our Christian vocation.

After considering what little Scripture has to say about music, Begbie turns in Part 2 to the “rich reservoirs of thought” found in historical Christian reflections on music.  He begins with “The Great Tradition” (c. 500 BCE - 1500 AD).  Begbie knows this tradition is flawed, but he doesn’t want its flaws to deafen us from its echoes of the truth.  While it wrongly downplays the physical, the sensual, and the practical, it also stresses (in ways that modernity does not) how music is “grounded firmly in a universal God-given order.”  This tradition rightly saw music “as a means through which we are enabled to live more fully in the world that God has made and with the God who made it” (94).

From here Begbie considers the views of three influential Reformers (Ch 4), J.S. Bach (Ch 5), three musical theologians (Ch 6), and two theological musicians (Ch 7).  These chapters cover an impressive amount of ground. To grossly summarize, these Christians give us hints on how to approach music, which include theological affirmations of the goodness of the physical world (including music), and musical portrayals of Christian themes that communicate in ways that words simply cannot.

Begbie’s crowning achievement, Part 3, offers a Christian perspective on music that draws upon the insights of these earlier chapters.  Chapters 8-10 sketch a doctrine of creation and locate music within that doctrine.  First, he establishes that the cosmos are created by the triune God freely and in love, and this cosmos sings God’s praise.  Humans, as those made in God’s image, are to “extend and elaborate the praise that creation already sings to God,” and this takes place in Christ.  In him “we are to bring creation to be more fully what it was created to be, and in so doing we anticipate the final re-creation of all things” (207).

According to Begbie, how does music fit into this cosmos?  1) Like the cosmic order, the sonic order of music is given to us by God freely and in love; we should be thankful for it.  2) Just as the physical creation is good but is not God, so too is music.6  3) Music can bring God glory by offering “experiences of a fruitful interaction with time,” which God has given to us and which “we inhabit as physical creatures.”7  4) Music is bound to and reflects a sonic order that is both ordered and open.  5) The sonic order is a unity that is also internally diverse, which reflects “the diversity of the [one] world” (235).

How is music a part of our calling to voice creation’s praise?  Music can help us be attentive and responsible to creation.  It is a way for us to develop upon the given order and encourage newness and life.  Music also allows us to partake in God’s healing of creation, in that music can testify to the hope we have in the cross and the final resolution in the eschaton.

Begbie’s last chapter considers music’s “singular powers.”  Most notably, music uniquely draws us into dynamics of tension and resolution, which reflects how the Christian life is marked by both Good Friday and Easter Sunday, and how we must patiently await the ultimate resolution in the eschaton.  Moreover, in music we hear distinct entities (notes) that not only share the same space but enhance one another, which is a great way to imagine how the persons of the Trinity relate, and therefore how Christians hope to relate to God and others.

In sum, Jeremy Begbie has offered a substantial contribution to a Christian wisdom about music.  Drawing upon past Christian insights and the doctrine of creation, he fashions a “Christian ecology” in which he couches a theology of music.  His Christian ecology is impressively Christocentric and attentive to the trajectories of Scripture.  Music in his scheme is part of our human engagement with God’s created, ordered cosmos, and it can be part of our vocation as those who voice creation’s praise.

However, Resounding Truth also raises questions that Begbie could address more explicitly in his next installment.  Theological readers of a postmodern bent in particular would benefit from a more explicit account of his view of natural theology and revelation.  That is, how do Christians come to know what is and is not ‘order,’ ‘good,’ ‘beautiful,’ or ‘true’?  How can we be confident that our judgments are not bent by sin?  Similarly, given that flourishing in Christ should look different from worldly standards of flourishing, then how do we discern the difference and live accordingly?  Begbie assumes that Christians will judge with a redeemed outlook, and we would all benefit from knowing more about how we acquire and evaluate such skills of discernment as redeemed sinners.

Regardless of this lingering question, Begbie’s argument remains robust.  He proves that music can point us to Christ and many truths of the Christian faith that otherwise often perplex us.  He shows that music is a part of how we can faithfully engage creation, encourage one another in Christ, improve our imaginations, and praise God alongside all of creation as we were created to do.  In short, music is a God-given gift within creation that re-sounds God’s truth.  This book exhorts us to receive the gift by hearing it, and to give it back by making joyful sounds of praise.  Christians, do you hear the music, and will you do something about it?

photograph by Jacki Price-Linnartz

Amongst the bare, chill trees

and the sun-speckled slopes

I see my elusive friend,

the white-mottled deer,

who drifts in and out of my view

and graces my days

like the grace-bearing breath

and the mysterious light

of the Spirit who quickens

yet remains beyond grasp.

John Calvin famously described Scripture as the spectacles by which human beings can properly see God and God’s world. The question then is: what is the vision of Scripture? When we put on these holy glasses, what do we see? And how does this vision shape what we do? Church history is, of course, a veritable jungle of diverse interpretations and manifestations of this vision.

The show’s (incomplete) view of the future is essential for decisions in the present, both for the characters and the viewers. In other words, knowing the future has ethical implications. In this article-the first of two relating to LOST-the broader contours of this narrative structure will be explored from the viewer’s perspective, before I turn to more specific aspects of the plot in my next piece.

Since the end of the third season, the viewer almost always knows a future point beyond the center of the action on the screen. This raises an important question: if the viewer already knows how it will end, why is the show compelling? Why keep watching? The first answer is that, in the show, knowing the future does not make the story utterly deterministic. Though the theme of destiny runs throughout, there is creativity and imagination in the course these destinies take. People end up in the places we knew they were going to be, but not in the ways we expected them to get there.

More significantly, though, the show is compelling because the vision of the future is usually brief or vague, and thus prone to misinterpretation. The future vision is certainly true, but it is fallible because it is incomplete. It is outside of the context - the moments, events, words and actions that precede it and proceed from it - that provides this future moment with its full meaning and significance. In this way, context changes the perception of an event: where one “stands,” spatially-temporally, changes her interpretation of the (albeit incomplete) reality that is observed.

This means that even in knowing the future, we do not know everything - knowing the end does not tell you the whole story. Our vision is still limited, even when we see something that is “true.” Put another way, even what is revealed is in some sense hidden.

Taken further, this means that knowing the future does not necessarily provide the viewer with solid ground for moral decisions in the present. The show may be teasing the viewer with an image or conversation that appears to mean one thing, while in its larger context it means something else. An action may appear horrendous, for example, when taken out of its context, but may, in fact, be more benign. Thus, the viewer cannot come to a final moral judgment about a character until she has seen the whole story.

These insights are not foreign to those who profess a Christian worldview. In the New Testament, the resurrection literally changes everything: Jesus had predicted it before, but the whole context or narrative had not happened yet. Only after the event did the disciples see the significance of his words. Only after touching his wounds do their confessions find their meaning and significance. For only in his resurrection do they understand that Christ is God. To say that Christ is the Son of God before this event, though true, is incomplete because it lacks the context in which this statement makes the most sense.

Furthermore, this insight applies not only to the resurrection, but to the current space Christians occupy: the so-called now and not yet. Christians, through the Holy Spirit, participate now in Christ’s life, even as they await the consummation of Christ’s Kingdom. The Revelation of John concludes with an imaginative vision of the rider on the white horse who is also the crucified lamb, of a new city, streams of life and leaves of healing. This is a vision of the future diametrically opposed to our current circumstances, and yet shapes our actions in those circumstances.

But even here it must be noted that the vision of Revelation is by no means exhaustive in regard to the future, or even completely literal. It is real and true, but it remains a vision that is open to a wide range of interpretations, as its exegetical history indicates. Again, there is limitation and hiddenness in the revelation, which, importantly, does not make the revelation untrue. But it does call for caution in the implementation of the vision.

Here, however, the analogy between LOST’s chronology and the Christian narrative breaks down. In LOST, the viewer must be cautious in moral judgments because the full “revelation” has not happened yet. There is a lack of information - as noted above, the show’s writers may simply be tossing out a teaser. For the Christian narrative, however, the problem is not a lack of data, but sinful human nature, which impairs even the ethical faculties of human beings. Christians are called to live morally, but they must recognize, too, that final judgment belongs to God in Christ. Our moral vision is cloudy at best.

In further opposition to LOST, Christians claim that the fullness of revelation has already occurred in Jesus Christ. In short, Christ is the object of our vision, and is himself the vision. He is how we see, and he shapes what we see. He is the pair of spectacles that let us see how to act. And yet, his vision is not always what we expect. He came in humility, he died on a cross, he left no writing behind. Even as he was revealed, he was hidden, even to those who gazed upon him.

What is needed, then, to discern the revelation of Christ in the midst of its hiddenness? Put simply, the answer is faith (which happens to be another key theme in LOST). Faith is trusting that the things previously foreseen but currently unseen will come true. It means trusting the narrative that began long ago will one day be complete. In short, it means believing that one man, Jesus of Nazareth, was actually raised from the dead, and that this changes everything. It means putting on new glasses, spectacles that can see the impossible.

In my next post, I will explore the analogous counterpart to these “spectacles” on LOST, pointing especially to the Island itself as containing the key for unlocking the complicated mix of competing visions on the show.