A Theology of Art in Five Minutes
00:00:00.000 | Pastor John, a listener named Alicia emailed to ask, "What role does the vast
00:00:09.740 | field of art play in the Church? In a nutshell, can you give a theology of art?"
00:00:17.340 | There are great books on art, and I haven't read most of them or written any
00:00:23.820 | of them, but I'll tell you what I think, and that's all I can do, and if it
00:00:28.980 | gives some help, I'm thankful. The word "art," I think, comes from a Latin word
00:00:38.740 | "art" that means skill or craft or craftsmanship. So here's the way I would
00:00:44.780 | define the word. Any effort to make something, and that could be an object or
00:00:52.140 | an action, like you make a dance or you can make an action in a play, or an
00:01:00.020 | object like a carving or a painting or a sculpture or a poem, so any action that
00:01:06.380 | makes something that takes a special skill so that the result is more than
00:01:16.380 | utilitarian or pragmatic but moves us more deeply with beauty or wonder or
00:01:25.300 | something touching our soul with a sense that life is more than food and drink.
00:01:31.980 | So that's a long, complicated definition, but basically it's a craft, a skill
00:01:37.780 | that aims at an effect that is more than just keeping food on the table. And
00:01:45.980 | what makes it Christian, I think, so here's the theology part, is God is an
00:01:55.580 | artist. He made the heavens that are telling something about his glory. In
00:02:01.540 | other words, he didn't just make the heavens to protect us from solar rays.
00:02:06.060 | They're not just utilitarian, they're beautiful. They say something
00:02:11.180 | about his glory. And Job is just great on this, as you read the last chapters of
00:02:17.220 | Job, God is pointing to his artistry all over the place and what it says to Job
00:02:23.300 | about his life from nature. And Jesus, you know, the lilies and the birds and the
00:02:33.380 | leaven, all of it is more than utilitarian. So my first way of getting a
00:02:40.620 | theology of art is that God is one. And then secondly, I would say the Bible
00:02:45.380 | writers are one. They're artists. They put things--maybe three-fourths of the
00:02:50.980 | Bible is crafted in some way linguistically so that it's poetic or
00:03:00.620 | striking or unusual, and it obviously evidences some craft that is intended
00:03:08.580 | not merely to communicate a raw fact but to produce a certain kind of effect in
00:03:13.540 | us spiritually, which is what artists want to do. So there are acrostics in the
00:03:18.700 | Bible and there are parallels in the Bible, there are metaphors in the Bible, and these
00:03:22.620 | writers clearly are giving artful attention to how they are shaping their
00:03:29.340 | words, and they're doing that under the inspiration of God. And maybe one
00:03:34.340 | more thing, Paul says, echoing Jesus, "Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink,
00:03:40.340 | do all to the glory of God." Well that must mean take thought in everything you
00:03:47.820 | do to try to craft it in such a way that it has an effect that opens the eyes to
00:03:56.500 | see beauty, namely glory, the glory of God. Which means there ought to be a way of
00:04:02.100 | eating pizza and drinking pop or doing the laundry and making your bed and
00:04:09.540 | making meals and writing reports and driving your car that are not merely,
00:04:17.580 | "I've got to get someplace," or "I've got to get something done," but rather, "I'm supposed
00:04:21.340 | to do it so that it has an effect beyond the merely utilitarian." And Jesus said,
00:04:26.980 | "Let your light, let your light so shine that men may see your good deeds and give
00:04:31.980 | glory to your Father in heaven." So there, we're to take our bodies and our lives
00:04:37.260 | and cause them to have a kind of brightness so that when people look at
00:04:43.580 | them, they look at them and there is a kind of artful intentionality that
00:04:49.420 | gets people to see something more than a mere body. So God is the Maker,
00:04:56.900 | right? And we have the mind of the Maker. We talked about this once before, and
00:05:01.260 | therefore it seems to me that Christians have the deepest and best
00:05:08.540 | foundations for serious art than anybody. Thank you, Pastor John. We did talk about
00:05:16.100 | vocation in episode 17 of this podcast series. Thank you for listening. Please
00:05:20.900 | send your questions via email to askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. Please
00:05:25.100 | include your first name and your hometown. You can find thousands of other
00:05:27.780 | free resources from John Piper online at DesiringGod.org. I'm your host Tony
00:05:32.300 | Renke. Thanks for listening.
00:05:35.580 | [BLANK_AUDIO]