A Skeptic's Guide to Arts in the Church

Ruminations on Twenty Reservations

Coppenger

• Editorial: Wipf and Stock
• Año: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781532649158
• Categoría: Theology & Religion
• Categoría: Ethics & Religion

Evangelical discourse on the role of arts in the church can be radioactive, and the twenty-one contributors to this book walk right into the "hot zone" to pick up on twenty contentious questions. The volume is a series of written dialogues, each one keyed to a cranky question, one that a skeptic might raise (hence the title). Herein, the gainsayers are taken seriously and given their voice. They even find support in some of the contributors' comments. But apologists for greater use of arts and artists in the church have their say, and things can get edgy. Topics range from the biblically august (the Second Commandment; the regulative principle; Great Commission priorities) to the prudential (expense; "bohemian" influence; weaker brothers) to the programmatic (Christmas festivities; committee makeup). Some of the parties to the discussion are church staffers (pastors and ministers of music); some are professors; several are doctoral students; one is a college student; another, a gallery owner; yet another, a denominational ethicist; and there's a Canadian and a Korean in the mix. The collection of speakers and opinions is illuminating and bracing, and the fruit of their thinking makes for great reading and discussion.

1

Doesn’t the Use of Visual Art Risk Violating the Second Commandment?

Coppenger: At a meeting on the campus of Samford University, several of the conferees expressed their dismay at the new Beeson Divinity School chapel. It was lavish and striking, with images of “saints” from church history, including martyrs. Beeson posts a 360-degree tour of the chapel on their website, and it certainly stands out among SBC venues I’ve seen.

I have to say, I was a little taken aback by the seriousness of the critics’ digs, but it prompted me to review my take on the Decalogue’s prohibition against images.

Around the time of the Beeson visit, I’d done a feature on baptistery art in the Southern Baptist Celebrator, and another on banner ministry. Were these transgressive, or were they kosher so long as no representation of God the Father, the Son Jesus, or the Holy Spirit was on them?

And what of my visit to Chartres cathedral, where I admired the Jesse Tree stained glass window? And how about the time when I, as a kid, saw The Robe at a drive-in, thanks to my dad, a Bible prof, who took the family to see it? Were we slumming, upsetting God?

Kosher and Ferraris

Addington: Kosher! Great choice of words, since we are talking about Jewish law specific to their living in a time and among countries that were rife with graven idol worship. Did the banner-ministry church serve kosher hot dogs at fellowship picnics? This has much more to do with the relationship of emancipated Christians (there is no other kind, by the way) to Jewish Old Testament law than it does with any ideas about art.

Coppenger: So how should we read that passage?

Addington: First, Exodus 20:4 (“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth”) seems to forbid all representational artwork. By the way, this is why Muslims welcome geometric decoration and ornamentation, a form of visual art to be sure, in their places of worship, but forbid any use of naturalistic imagery of any kind. I’d like to think that as Christians, we operate in a different theological place from Muslims, as well as Orthodox Jews.

Verse 5 then clarifies and contextualizes verse 4: “You shall not bow down to them or serve them.” This is the whole point; it’s not an arbitrary command. Verse 4 says, “Make for yourself.” This has to do with a personal use. And what is that use? Verse 5 says it’s, “To bow down and serve.”

It’s hard for us Western, modern folks to get this. We laugh and shake our head when Edward G. Robinson (in The Ten Commandments) convinces the Hebrews and even Moses to go along with the golden calf idea. It’s not our deal, but it was a big deal back then, and God was trying to move his people to a new place. So the command is very culturally specific. In twenty-first century, Western civilization, among educated people, and in the Western evangelical church, idol worship is not about worshiping a calf or a crucifix or an icon. We, in this church, understand that other “idols” have replaced those idols; that basically, an idol is anything that seduces our eyes from Christ, that becomes an object of worship that puts God second or worse, e.g., sex, fashion, money, fame, success . . . even church work or denominational positions. (We would be better to prohibit Ferraris from our church parking lots than icons on our altars.)

Deuteronomy says we should not bow down to nature—the sun and the stars. But Luther asked rhetorically, when discussing iconoclasm, whether we should pull these heavenly bodies from the sky. And note that, in Exodus 25:18–22, God actually commands that certain images be made, two cherubim to be carved and placed on the Mercy Seat. God also commanded that a bronze serpent be sculpted, even though he knew it would later become an object of worship!

Remember the Catacombs

Seo. Across church history, the visual arts have always been embroiled in controversy, and that’s understandable. Throughout scripture, God warns against idolatry, and even Aaron, whom God chose as the helper for Moses, committed this sin by fashioning a golden calf. So, we might ask whether visual images have special, enticing power to draw believers to worship them?

I don’t think so. Idolatry starts with the human desire for autonomy. But we also wish to worship something, so we proceed to make beautiful things with our hands, objects which can satisfy our religious interest while preserving our supposed right to have things our own way.

I believe that art is unavoidable instinct of human beings, a gift from God. God used it in the tabernacle, and early Christians, who suffered from severe persecution, expressed their faith on the walls of clandestine worship places. And, in spite of various iconoclastic movements, many Christians, including Protestants, have retained visual beauty in their liturgical settings.

Surely, beautiful art reflects the presence of God in many ways. And even though human beings can misuse any of God’s gifts, there is no reason to reject the use of the gift of art in worship.

“Holy” Idols

Westerholm: In his biblical survey of idolatry (We Become What We Worship), G. K. Beale notes how the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day placed their confidence in the Temple as a sign that they were God’s people. Beale argues they turned the Temple itself into an idol. Idolatry doesn’t limit itself to objects of pagan origin. Beale also tracks the ways that Jesus uses the terminology of idolatry from the Old Testament to condemn those who “loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God” (Jn 12:43). It seems idolatry doesn’t limit itself to visual imagery.

Coppenger: Good point, that appreciation for even the “Holy Temple” could be unseemly. In that connection, it strikes me that talk of the “Holy Land” can get us in trouble. While I’m a huge supporter of Israel, and I’ve enjoyed, beginning in 1966, a half dozen trips to the nation, I want to insist that whatever land the believer stands upon is “holy land.” When I witness on a doorstep in Detroit, that moment and that place are as sanctified as the deck of a boat on the Sea of Galilee, where Christian tourists are singing hymns. (Yes, I’m echoing Luther a bit in dismissing the distinction between sacred and secular vocations.)

The point is, we need to be very careful about attributing magic or special grace or surpassing sustenance to physical things, whether icons, cars, buildings, bishops, or land. The power is in The Way, The Truth, and the Life, not in the The Stuff, the Setting, or the Style.

Westerholm: To put it another way, idolatry isn’t ontological; it’s ethical. That is, idolatry is not a function of what an object is, but a description of how something is (mis)used.

Burning Bush and Descending Dove

Bolt: Scripture contains no clear prohibition against visual art in worship. Rather, Scripture prescribes the use of visual art in worship, describes God anthropomorphically by appeal to various physical features, and posits God’s self-revelation in physical form on multiple occasions.

The Second Commandment does not forbid worshiping God or making images and likenesses, but it does forbid worship of false gods through their images and likenesses. The law of God is good if it is used lawfully (1 Timothy 1:8), but the Second Commandment of Exodus 20:4 is sandwiched between verses 3 and 5 for a reason. The First Commandment says not to worship other gods than God, and perhaps the Second Commandment is like unto it: Do not worship other gods than God through their images or likenesses. The Second Commandment does not prohibit the production of all images and likenesses, since such images and likenesses are used in God-sanctioned worship throughout the Old Testament, especially in the temple. Rather, one must not bow down and serve them. The distinction between using visual arts in worship and worshipping visual arts is plain.

The Second Commandment is so far off from addressing particular practices in Christian art that one wonders why it was ever used as a proof text in the first place. Not even the Reformers agreed on the place of this passage in that discussion. But if this text is not at the center of the debate, what text would be? Would we not expect to find such a serious prohibition clearly stated in Scripture?

Of course, we do not know what God looks like. God is spirit. And as creatures—sinful ones—we are prone to recreate God in our image. That would be a huge problem, were it not for the fact that God has revealed himself to us through physical categories in his redemptive Word. When God reveals himself to us in something that is creaturely, we need not shrink back from it. Not only does God use anthropomorphism to tell us what he is like; God appears in various physical, creaturely forms throughout the Old Testament. For example, God appears to Moses in a burning bush. Certainly, Moses was not in sin when he saw the bush, or imagined the bush, or described the bush in writing. God also reveals himself in physical, creaturely forms in the New Testament. For example, at the baptism of Jesus, the Spirit descends in the physical form of a dove. Again, John the Baptist was not in sin when he saw the dove, or imagined the dove, and Luke was not in sin when he described the dove in writing. Nor are we in sin when we read about the bush and the dove, imagine the bush and the dove, or create images of the bush and the dove. We are merely picturing God as he intended for us to picture him.

Some may object that the bush or the dove do not picture God as he is. Yet God is the one who revealed himself through these means. So also, some may object that the bush or the dove do not communicate all there is to know about God. Of course, this objection would apply to any literary description of God as well. Not only do manmade theological descriptions of God fall far short of communicating all there is to know about God, no one text of Scripture communicates all there is to know about God.

We do not know exactly what Jesus looked like, so our “pictures” of him are guesses. Of course, we do not know what many other figures of history looked like either, and yet we still make images and likenesses of them. Jesus would have looked just like other men from his place and time, and not stood out as God in virtue of his physical appearance. But this leads to one last concern, which is that if we are not making images and likenesses of Christ to worship them, and if there is nothing in particular that stands out about Jesus in terms of physical appearance, then why are we making images and likenesses of him at all? In a way, artists are the ones to answer this question, not by way of theological and philosophical thought on the question, but through producing their art.

Coppenger: I’m neither an artist nor the son of an artist, but I can give one reason for ...

Índice

• Title Page
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Doesn’t the Use of Visual Art Risk Violating the Second Commandment?
• Chapter 2: And What About the “Regulative Principle”?
• Chapter 3: Don’t We Risk Taking the Wrong Side in the Struggle for Primacy of the Word Over the Image?
• Chapter 4: What’s Next? Incense?
• Chapter 5: Don’t They Abuse Language?
• Chapter 6: Why Should Artists Have a Seat at the Worship-Leading Table Any More Than Plumbers or Accountants?
• Chapter 7: Aren’t Artists Habitually Cranky, Impatient with and Dismissive of Work that Might Please the Congregation?
• Chapter 8: Aren’t Artists Prone to be Prima Donnas?
• Chapter 9: Aren’t Artists a Risky Lot, a Bit Too “Bohemian”?
• Chapter 10: Aren’t Artists a Different Language Group, Speaking a Tongue Most Don’t Understand?
• Chapter 11: In Our Eagerness to Deliver Fine Presentations, Don’t We Risk Enlisting the Unregenerate in Leading Worship?
• Chapter 12: What About the Weaker Brother?
• Chapter 13: By Patronizing the Arts, Aren’t We Introducing a “Gateway Drug” to the Culture’s Godless Realm of the Arts?
• Chapter 14: Aren’t Field Trips Awkward?
• Chapter 15: Don’t the Arts Smack of Elitism, Making the Church Haughty? After All, the Arts Have Great Cultural Caché in Society, and a Church Embracing the Arts Can Begin to Strut.
• Chapter 16: Shouldn’t the Church Have Other Priorities?
• Chapter 17: Aren’t the Arts Expensive, When Funds Are Short?
• Chapter 18: Won’t we Find Ourselves in the Offending Role of “Talent Show” Judge if We Open the Gates to the Arts in the Church?
• Chapter 19: Taste Is So Subjective. How Would You Ever Decide What to Choose for Presentation?
• Chapter 20: But Nobody Got Saved at Christmas.
• Contributors