A Short Theology of Art

The idea of created beings creating things is something that has both perplexed and intrigued me over the past year. As I write this, I’m sitting in a coffee shop, sipping an americano while one of my favorite records plays in the background. While they all serve different purposes, the shop, the drink, and the record are all byproducts of the human tendency to create.

God created and values the human ability to create. Exodus 28 speaks to God’s placement of skill and ability within the Israelites as they built the tabernacle. Of course, I’m not saying that God resides in the Louvre in the same way that He did the tabernacle, but I do believe that He’s bestowed similar gifts in humans throughout all of time.

I find it quite beautiful that within His design for inerrant inspiration of scripture, He allows for the flavors of human individuality to peek through. We’re able to see the stylistic differences of writers in various epistles, read the poetry of different writers, and even get different perspectives on the life of Jesus. To me, these differences create a sense of multi-noted wholeness, that holds a perfectly artistic nature. This idea hit home for me when I studied the Book of Revelation at Rosedale Bible College. The level of depth, inter-textual references, and beautiful imagery stirred my affection for God in a way that it hadn’t been before. There was a profound beauty in the poetic nature of the text that I hadn’t previously understood.

We’re all familiar with the command to serve God in all that we do (Col. 3:23) and that God has prepared works for us (Eph. 2:10). I believe that the arts are a part of these works and that God has used and will use them to draw people near Him. The Chronicles of Narnia series is an example of a Christian work that has pushed itself out into the secular mainstream, despite its well-known and clear Christian themes (any possible disagreements with atonement theory allegories aside). I’m sure that there’s been a non-Christian reader who, through the stories of Aslan, has had their mind opened and heart softened to the belief of Christianity.

I don’t believe that the arts are to be purely “evangelical” though. There’s discourse around the purpose of art, but I would hold to a framework that simply views it as an expression of the human condition. That could be a praise to God, a lament of loss, a reflection of the past; almost anything that relates to being human. I believe that an authentic approach to art allows humans to create art in a variety of mediums that serve as extensions of oneself. These extensions give us the space to examine the nooks and crannies of the human condition, and through those examinations, we can better understand ourselves and those around us.

There’s a rhetorical nature to art, and that’s why I believe that Jesus used parables throughout His ministry. Stories serve as examples and cause us to reflect on principles in our own lives. In the same way that I can be challenged through a conversation with a friend, I believe that I can be challenged through the themes of a book or a film. Referencing C.S. Lewis again, The Screwtape Letters was a book that helped me to see ways that “smaller” sins had slowly crept into my life, and I was able to bring these realizations to God in repentance.

Music is a staple of God’s people, and throughout scripture, they are to use it in their praise of God (Rev. 14:3, 1 Chron. 16:6). Christians are the children of the Creator and have been given the gift to create. This takes many different forms but is rooted in the image that we are modeled after. May we create works that allow us to better serve each other, but most of all, serve our wonderful Father and Creator!

Artwork citation: The Adoration of the Lamb, from the Apocalypse series by Albrecht Dürer