The following article describes how visual and verbal elements have been used throughout the history of the church, noting how the modern church has not allowed visual elements to have a significant role in worship. It goes on to describe how the visual arts can be revived and how we can learn to communicate and receive theological truths through the visual arts.
In the life of the church, the visual arts have ranged from being conspicuously pervasive to being totally absent. In no period was art as central or so important as in the Middle Ages, nor, in contrast, so programmatically and theologically absent as in the Reformed tradition beginning from the sixteenth century as well as in many churches that grew on English soil. Although such extremes do not define our time, their impact has left us with considerable ambiguity about the place and role of the visual arts in the church.
History sheds only partial light on the sources of this ambivalence. For the Middle Ages we can point to the proliferation of saints and the ascendancy of Mary to a special place in redemptive history, both widely depicted in the arts along with biblical figures, Christ and the Godhead. At that level, one would assume that the Reformation would stand for the removal of the saints and of Mary, with concentration instead on Christ and biblical subjects in works of art. But the total abolition of the arts in the Reformed churches, sometimes with frightening evidences of violence, indicates that more than the subject matter was involved.
Idolatry, of course, was the pivotal word, and the second commandment was interpreted to mean that images, not just false images, were to be destroyed. But for images to be considered idols meant that something had happened, for up to the Middle Ages an image remained an image and was not confused with the reality it represented or mirrored. But already in the Carolingian period images were viewed with suspicion, not because they would be confused with what they imaged, but because they were only images. Relics were considered more important, for they provided tangible realities in which God was literally as well as symbolically present. Seeing and touching such realities was more important than experiencing images in which the divine was not physically present. But in the subsequent medieval history, images, as well as the consecrated elements, were interpreted as if they were relics. Then images became idols, or so the Reformed tradition understood them.
That this could happen discloses something about the visual. It too, like other sensibilities, can be a power for good or evil. In much of the Middle Ages, seeing was more important for the public than hearing. The consecrated elements were lifted up to be seen, and it was believed that seeing the elements made it unnecessary for all to partake or to hear what was said.
What a reversal, then, when the Reformed tradition based everything on hearing, and its derivative, reading, along with the abolition of the visual. But what had happened to the visual in the Middle Ages now occurred with respect to the verbal. The initial symbolic power of language took on a literal meaning, as the verbal increasingly and variously was understood as propositional statements of truth, or a fundamentalist reading of Scripture, or a spiritual or moral reduction of content to management proportions. Emphasis on the words in the Word had brought a new form of idolatry.
What we need, of course, is a rightful view of both the visual and the verbal. They represent one reality through two modalities, each appropriately important and necessary for the full expression of our humanity. Theologically, considerable progress has been made in recovering the imaginative power of language, a development that bodes well for an alliance between the visual and the verbal. But among those responsible for services or worship, a preoccupation with the dynamics of the worship service has led to a conviction that only that which directly serves the liturgy has an appropriate place. Some liturgists have declared that the better the work of art, the more it interferes with liturgical practice or the worshiping community. That outlook encourages the use of poor art, including the inordinate profusion of banners, with the result that only art which has no power of its own, that is, only art that can be used for purposes other than what art conveys, is acceptable. Such a reintroduction of art is neither dangerous nor helpful; such art is simply banal.
The reappropriation of the visual for the church, for which theological seminaries can be a vehicle—and for which some have taken responsibility—requires taking the arts seriously on their own terms.
Scripture is not directly helpful on that point, for some passages are positive; some are negative. In addition to the problem of how the second commandment is to be understood, there is a reference in 1 Kings (7:14) to Solomon’s bringing Hiram from Tyre to do works of bronze, and in Exodus 31 (vv. 1–11) an artist named Bezalel is mentioned as doing works in various media for the temple. Concepts of beauty play their part in the Psalms and in sections of the New Testament, as in the lilies of the field, though these passages point to the works of God, not the works of the artists.
The other arts—music, drama, and dance—also have had an ambiguous relation to the church, but, unlike the visual arts, they have been more widely accepted. It is surely ironic that many churches will not shrink at spending large sums of money for a new organ, but not a penny for paintings or sculpture. The plea for the organ rests, of course, on the fact that music has made its way into the worshiping life of the congregation, even though, in principle, music is not necessarily dependent on the organ. Surprisingly, literature as an art form does enter into biblical consciousness. Perhaps that is because Scripture itself is a literary form, thereby making it a natural medium for those who expound Scripture, sometimes with quotations which at their best shed new light on biblical passages.
Music and literature, while banished from the church at certain periods, are art forms that have nevertheless made their way within it. They confirm rather than challenge the worship life of the community, though to be sure avant-garde music and literature can create a stir within the church.
What is it about dance and the visual arts that make the church uncomfortable? Undoubtedly, it is because both are sensual. In dance for the church, that art form is frequently stylized to the point that it merely illustrates biblical passages and has been deprived of much of its sensual nature as dance. But sensuousness defines the very essence of dance and the visual arts.
We have come full circle. The Reformed tradition, in its fight against idolatry, defined the spiritual over against the material or sensual. Hence Reformed churches, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, or those who eschewed such connections, such as Quakers, abolished the arts, for in their way of perceiving the spiritual, the material or sensual was not a medium through which the spiritual could be manifest. Theologically, that was the great divide between the medieval world and the Reformed tradition, with Lutherans and Roman Catholics accepting that the spiritual was also manifest in materiality and through the senses, even though the latter had been abused in the past. On this issue, the Anglicans, reflecting England’s self-conscious Protestant stance, were also originally suspicious of the arts; but in the nineteenth century, they returned to more Catholic sensibilities.
In recent decades, spirituality has invaded the consciousness of most churches. Derived from the Catholic tradition, but understood partly in Protestant terms, spirituality has become a bridge on which the spiritual, the material, and the sensual have come together again. Without judging either the defects or contributions of spirituality as a movement, one can say that it has become a vehicle for overcoming the split between the spiritual and the material or sensual. Hence, it places us in a more favorable ethos with respect to the visual.
Just as the disappearance of the visual in Protestantism and its transformation in Catholicism was a theological issue, so its reemergence today is theological. This reemergence involves how we understand our various sensibilities, that is, how all our senses may be related to moral, religious, aesthetic facets of existence, involving both emotional and intellectual ingredients. One way of understanding the human scene is to admit that hearing, seeing, feeling, tasting, smelling—all of which belong to our humanity—do not form a unity. It is as if, theologically speaking, there were a split among our senses, and some of them were considered safer than others. No one would challenge the role of hearing, giving preeminence to speaking and to the printed word. More recently, we have witnessed the dominant characteristic of television and its technique of telling us what to hear through seeing. Hence it is more a verbal than a visual source of understanding. But while we accept the role of hearing, and its consequences for good, seldom do we face what may be called word pollution. For some reason, word pollution is not considered as dangerous or bad as the abuse of the other senses. In contemporary life, the verbal is surely as abused as was the visual in periods of the Middle Ages.
All of our senses belong to our humanity. Therefore, to bracket one or more out because it or they present problems, also deprives us of the good that belongs to each sensibility, that is, it leaves out something that belongs to our created humanity. That is too high a price to pay, for we are called to be fully human. Leaving out part of our humanity makes us less than that which was intended in creation, for each sense gives us something, which, while related to what the other senses convey, is also unique. The intermixture of the senses is surely evident in biblical and religious language, such as “having the eyes of our hearts enlightened,” or “taste and see how good the Lord is.” Surely, the word in proclamation and the word in sacrament are the same word; yet, in each, the mode of reception also provides us with perceptions that come to us only in that way.
Stressing the visual as well as the verbal demands visual as well as verbal literacy. The expression “I know nothing about art but I know what I like” has to go. Would one really accept ignorance as an ideal anywhere else in life? No sensibility is to be trusted unless it has been honed. An informed sensibility is the fruit of work and discipline. Just as we are schooled in the verbal, we must be schooled in the visual. Yet, schooling in the visual requires disciplines appropriate to that sensibility. While there are analogies between the verbal and the visual, schooling in the visual is not the same as schooling in the verbal.
The visual requires a discerning eye. While our distinguished artists have a special talent, as do our distinguished writers, talent is not enough. Without the disciplined exercise of the medium, which comes only with practice and learning, and usually with the help of teachers, talent burns itself out and provides nothing of enduring or transcending value.
For those of us with lesser talent, the development of a discerning eye is especially important. That can happen in two forms, sometimes separate, sometimes combined: (1) by engaging in the practice of an art form, such as painting or sculpture, or (2) by repeated seeing and careful study of works of art. Traditional learning, whether through lectures or books, about the works of art is appropriate, but as an adjunct to seeing.
Learning to paint or sculpt introduces one to the special dynamics of seeing as evident in the creative process. It has the special character of interiority, in which there is an immediacy that can hardly be secondhand. When guided by those with exceptional talent, we enter into the special world of seeing, where the eye is the pulse directing the arms and hands in the use of brush or chisel. Such an experience creates forms of perception that will make us see the world differently.
By entering directly into the making of art, those with little talent may still learn the special way in which the eyes inform and form works of art. If the process becomes recreation rather than creation, human purposes may still be served, but one has not entered into the world of art. Those with little talent for the education of their own eyes need to accept and understand the difference that talent makes in the creation of art. In the visual, as in the other arts, we need to accept the range from the average to the excellent, an outlook we have learned to accept in music. While excellence in the arts may statistically be small in volume, it provides all of us with the unimpeachable power and structure of the visual. The excellent, too, is not without its dangers, for such creations express an audacity dangerously close to creation itself. But in such creations, we may also come to know the power of the human eye in imaging God and seeing ourselves as created in the image of God.
For many, probably most of us, the discerning eye will be developed by the repeated seeing of works of art, habituation that creates its own discipline and satisfactions to the point that not to see is to feel deprived of a part of one’s very being. Here it is important to be specific, for merely wandering around in museums can be debilitating. It is important to start somewhere, such as choosing four or five artists that seem to interest one. Then repeated seeing of the same works, as well as other works by the same artists, creates seeing patterns of new discoveries that become the basis for widening one’s horizons. In the context of such seeing, information about the works and the artists will be enriching but is not a substitute for seeing. In fact, information is detrimental to seeing when the printed word or the verbal defines what one is to see. Information rightly provides a helping hand, but when an end in itself, it substitutes the verbal for the visual. Sad to say, there are art historians whose studies of the iconography or social setting can be carried out without actually seeing the works of art, an exercise that has been dubbed “art history without art.”
Hence, the recovery of seeing as a human discipline is essential as a prelude to the recovery of art within the church. The loss of the visual was more pronounced in Protestantism than in Catholicism. But even Catholicism began to substitute plaster saints for authentic works of art, thus providing reminders of the verbal rather than creating the fresh perceptions required of art and its appropriate seeing, which is the function of great art.
Given that seeing is so much a part of our lives, it plays a role even when we ignore it. Both space and the forms and shapes around us affect us, whether or not we are conscious of them. Hence, poor art also affects us negatively, even unknowingly. But the obverse is also true, that significant art and architecture stimulate genuine seeing that enriches everything with which we come in contact, that stretches us, that makes us comfortable on the other side of being as comfortable as an old shoe.
Surely it is ironic that the poor or the oppressed have a greater interest in what feeds the human spirit—the visual arts, theater, and indigenous cultural ingredients—than do the conservatives or the liberals who translate justice primarily into economic terms. The drive against spending funds for architecture and art when money should be given to the poor is a liberal guilt trip that contrasts markedly with the attitudes of the poor, who have no such hang-ups. Of course, extravagance is a problem; but we also know that the funds used for art and architecture would not make a significant dent in the problems of oppression.
One cannot live without the necessities of life. But there is more to life than survival. How we determine what is “more important” becomes an essential ingredient in how we perceive the needs of our society. For some, beauty and aesthetic dimensions are as necessary to the human spirit as anything else. Perhaps it is the aesthetic dimension that makes ethics full-orbed in its concern for the human spirit. It is the aesthetic dimension that makes humanity human.
Part of the problem is that liberals and conservatives alike often fail to see aesthetics and the arts as integral to being human. For liberals and conservatives, art is entertainment, or an interest that is fashionable or au courant. Hence, they show a schizophrenia about the arts, either deriding them or courting them, but they do not see them as part of one’s very humanity. A greater danger results when society attacks the fundamental nature of humanity. Theodore Gill makes the point that a part of Bonhoeffer’s resistance to the Nazis came from an aesthetic revulsion to its limited, inverted, cynical view of what it means to be human. It is not by accident that revolutionaries, whether from the right or the left, first attack the vanguard artists. Such artists are always pointing to aspects of humanity denied or being suppressed in the culture. Many people say that the arts are not important, but why do the same people attack them so vehemently when the message of the arts does not coincide with what they believe? The arts look to the future; though, to be sure, the arts can also be reactionary when they are simply a part of the establishment or are being co-opted by it.
The New Testament demonstrates clearly that Jesus was concerned about the poor. But, as Theodore Gill reminds us, his first miracle was turning the water into wine, when Jesus was the life of the party. And of course, we all know of the story of Mary and Martha, surely an approbation of considerable waste when one thinks of the cost of the ointment. In short, there are aesthetic dimensions to the New Testament as well.
Everything can be abused, and aesthetics can become an avoidance of social responsibility. But aesthetics can also be true to ethics, to that wedding in which humanity is enriched in all its facets, its physical, spiritual, and beauteous aspects. The Expressionist painter Barnett Newman wrote that the first human was an artist, that is, a human being whose imagination created worlds that made this world worthwhile.
In a world of competing visions, the aesthetic relation to the ethical can provide conceptions of the human that make us unafraid, that make our diversity a source of enrichment, that stretch our humanity, and that create common cause in our quest for an enriched humanity. The visual and the verbal express our rich humanity through diverse modalities, and the question of God will become real again when our humanity is wide and deep enough to be encompassed by its source, that is, the God who as Creator is also redemptive.