{"id":454,"date":"2020-04-04T20:29:53","date_gmt":"2020-04-05T00:29:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/?p=454"},"modified":"2020-04-12T09:20:16","modified_gmt":"2020-04-12T13:20:16","slug":"god-is-necessary-for-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/2020\/04\/04\/god-is-necessary-for-art\/","title":{"rendered":"God is Necessary for Art"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is an excerpt from my essay “<\/b>Christian Civilization is the Only Civilization –\u00a0Part II:\u00a0A Critique of Specific Disciplines and their Christian Reconstruction” under the topic “Art<\/a>.”<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Janus<\/a><\/p>\n

Defining art has been a perennial problem, but regardless of what the definition should be, regardless of whether the definition is in the form of necessary and sufficient conditions or in the form of family resemblances \u00e0 la Wittgenstein, defining art is impossible in terms of non-Christian philosophy because defining anything is impossible if God does not exist.\u00a0\u00a0Predication is impossible if God does not exist. To define art is to impose a unifying, abstract category on a diversity of sensible phenomena.\u00a0\u00a0It is a matter of relating a unity to diversity.\u00a0\u00a0It is flatly contradictory to begin with particulars that, by hypothesis, exclude abstract universals, and then try to relate these abstract par<\/a>ticulars to abstract universal.[1]<\/a> \u00a0There must be an eternal concrete universal in order for particulars and universals to be able to relate to one another. <\/p>\n

Modern art has clearly favored the many in the dialectic tension between the one and the many.\u00a0\u00a0The goal of modern art is to achieve greater freedom.\u00a0\u00a0Having rejected the concrete universal God, modern artists have equated freedom with disorder.\u00a0\u00a0Diversity becomes abstracted from all unity.\u00a0\u00a0Freedom is achieved only to the extent that order is rejected.\u00a0\u00a0Thus the modern artist is placed in the dilemma that achieving the goal of absolute freedom excludes the possibility of calling what he achieves \u201cart,\u201d or giving the creation any other evaluative term.\u00a0\u00a0Artistic freedom becomes as stultifyingly uniform as pure order.\u00a0\u00a0Gunther Stent observes how artistic revolution become self-defeating:<\/p>\n

As artistic evolution unfolds, the artist is being freed more and more from strict canons governing the method of working his medium of creative expression. The end result of this evolution has been that, finally, in our time, the artist\u2019s liberation has been almost total. However, the artist\u2019s accession to near-total freedom of expression now presents very great cognitive difficulties for the appreciation of his work:\u00a0\u00a0The absence of recognizable canons reduces his act of creation to near-randomness for the perceiver. In other words, artistic evolution along the one-way street to freedom embodies an element of self-limitation. The greater the freedom already attained and hence the closer the approach to the random of any artistic style for the percipient, the less possible for any successor style to seem significantly different from its predecessor.[2]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Stent\u2019s quote suggests, the issue of the one and the many arises in relation to art with respect to its communicative function.\u00a0\u00a0Although art may be produced for the purpose of the artist\u2019s sole enjoyment, most often art is intended to communicate something to others.\u00a0\u00a0If interpretations of art are purely subjective, then nothing can be communicated by art.\u00a0\u00a0There could only be solipsism, each artist stuck in his own isolated world.\u00a0\u00a0If art is to be a means of communication, there must be a universal human nature.\u00a0\u00a0If humans come into existence from abstract particulars, then there is no basis for a unity in human nature that would allow communication.\u00a0\u00a0If human nature arises Platonically, from abstract universals, then human nature will have no content.\u00a0\u00a0On the Christian view there can be a unity among humans that allows for communication, by art or otherwise, because humans are made in the image of the Word \u2013 an absolutely rational, absolutely personal God.<\/p>\n

Art often involves creating sensory-rich symbols, and a symbol is defined as a concrete, objective reality with an additional level of meaning beyond that reality.\u00a0\u00a0But why should any collection of sensory inputs be able to refer to a higher spiritual, moral, or rational meaning?\u00a0\u00a0Why should the paint, stone, sound waves or other material that constitute what is commonly called art be able to represent any meaning beyond themselves?\u00a0\u00a0If the diverse world of sense experience is divorced from the unity of abstract concepts, then the sensory world can have no higher meaning, no more than beads without holes can be strung on an infinite string without ends.<\/p>\n

In terms of the concrete universal God, there is an answer to this problem.\u00a0\u00a0As Van Til says, \u201cChrist was the Logos of creation as well as the Logos of redemption. The things of nature were adapted by himself to the things of the Spirit. The lower was made for the higher. The lower did not just exist independently of the higher. And because all things are made by God, that is, through the eternal Logos of creation, we too can use symbolism and analogy and know that, though we must always look for the\u00a0tertium comparationis<\/em>\u00a0in all symbolism, nevertheless it is at bottom true.\u00a0\u00a0Without a revelational foundation all symbolism and all art in ge<\/a>neral would fall to the ground.[3]<\/a>\u00a0 Only on Christian grounds is there justification for relating sensible phenomena to abstract rational concepts.<\/p>\n

On the Christian view, humans are made in the image of the One who is the source of all beauty and moral perfection.\u00a0\u00a0There is an infinite wellspring for the human artist to draw from for inspiration.\u00a0\u00a0Yet some art that has received a great deal of media attention recently directly defames Christianity.\u00a0\u00a0These works may be called art in a formal sense because they are sensory-rich symbols, but in another sense they are anti-art because they attack that which is necessary for the very intelligibility of art, the God of Christianity.\u00a0\u00a0The artists who created these pieces are sitting on God\u2019s lap in order to slap Him in the face because what they create would have no meaning if not for the One whom they attack.<\/p>\n

Christianity is attacked in the name of freedom, but that freedom is an irrational freedom because it is a freedom that rejects all order, a diversity in abstraction from all unity.\u00a0\u00a0The lawless, and especially in our day the pornographic, is exalted and the moral ideal of God\u2019s law becomes a natural object of attack.[4]<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0By attacking that which is legitimate about Christianity, art is self-destructive.<\/p>\n

Challenging the present, corrupt institutions of power is often seen today as a necessary goal of art, and it is a legitimate goal of art in the Christian worldview, in which the source of art is ultimately not any corrupt human institution.\u00a0\u00a0Because there is a transcendent, absolutely morally pure standard for art, art can display the moral courage to challenge the corrupt institutions of power in this world without self-destructing into an irrational freedom.\u00a0\u00a0Even the church, as an institution composed of sinful humans, is a legitimate object of challenge by socially conscious artists.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

Placing Christianity, ideally considered (i.e. God and His Word), ethically off-limits to criticism does not mean blinding one\u2019s self to corruption.\u00a0\u00a0Everyone has some ultimate standard of truth and beauty.\u00a0\u00a0As ultimate, there is no higher standard to bring that standard into judgment.\u00a0\u00a0Infallib<\/a>ility is an inescapable concept.[6]<\/a> \u00a0If that ultimate source of judgment is said to be found in man and this world rather than in an absolute God, then the standard is self-destructive because the source of the standard is ultimately irrational.\u00a0\u00a0Communicating an ethical message through art faces the same problems mentioned above of communicating any other meaning.\u00a0 In a world of pure freedom, the artist’s critical standard he intends to convey through his creation has no life or application beyond the moment it spontaneously arises in his own psyche.\u00a0\u00a0But in addition to the problem of the one and the many, the lack of a transcendent<\/em>\u00a0ultimate standard of ethics undermines the possibility of any negative ethical judgment. \u00a0If all is one, if there is no transcendent standard of truth, then no ethical distinctions can be made. \u00a0\u00a0There is no basis for distinguishing between truth and falsehood;\u00a0ethical corruption is then equivalent to ethical virtue, darkness equivalent to light, ugliness equivalent to beauty.\u00a0\u00a0Christianity, centered on the transcendent, concrete universal God, is the wellspring and ideal of all true art.<\/p>\n

\n

[1]<\/a>\u00a0 A Kantian dialectic tension between the one and the many is evident in Nietzsche’s philosophy of art.\u00a0\u00a0In\u00a0The Birth of Tragedy<\/em>\u00a0Nietzsche described the source of art as a duality between Apollonian thinking and Dionysian thinking.\u00a0\u00a0Representational art is under the restrains of Apollinian thinking, which is controlled by attention to the distinctions between appearances, whereas abstract art rejects Apollo in favor of Dionysus, a metaphor for non-rational, primordial unity.\u00a0\u00a0The two approaches are in tension, but they both are necessary to produce the greatest art.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a>\u00a0 Gunther Stent,\u00a0The Coming of the Golden Age: A View of the End of Progress<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0(Garden City, New York: Natural History Press, published for the American Museum of Natural History, 1969), \u00a098.\u00a0\u00a0Quoted in Gary North,\u00a0Moses and Pharaoh<\/em>, 148 n.13.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a>\u00a0 Cornelius Van Til,\u00a0An Introduction to Systematic Theology<\/em>\u00a0(Phillipsburg, NJ:\u00a0\u00a0Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1974),\u00a066-67.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a>\u00a0 R.J. Rushdoony,\u00a0Infallibility:\u00a0\u00a0An Inescapable Concept<\/em>\u00a0(Vallicito, CA: Ross House Books, 1978), \u00a034-38.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a>\u00a0 Jesus attacked the religious leaders of his day with vicious sarcasm.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a>\u00a0 See Rushdoony,\u00a0Infallibility: An Inescapable Concept<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is an excerpt from my essay “Christian Civilization is the Only Civilization –\u00a0Part II:\u00a0A Critique of Specific Disciplines and their Christian Reconstruction” under the topic “Art.” Defining art has been a perennial problem, but regardless of what the definition … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[9,8,10],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":460,"href":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454\/revisions\/460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/christianciv.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}