Reclaiming the Arts: In Defense of a Calvinistic Poetic, Part I

In contradistinction to the elevation of reason that characterized the Enlightenment and Modernism, our post-everything culture has exchanged this edifice for one more befitting its "beyond propositional" mantra: art. Facing such a cultural milieu, Christians should rejoice that reason has been exchanged for art not because truth cannot be encapsulated in propositions, but because truth cannot only be encapsulated in propositions. There is a kind of knowledge in the gospel that while not against reason is essentially different from reason. God in his grace has disclosed certain truths about his character that we would not know apart from revelation. In many ways, the unfolding of this revelation in Scripture is best understood as art. This is not to deny the propositional truths of Scripture, but to say that they are most fully understood in the wider backdrop of the redemptive metanarrative. The Bible is not to be read as a systematic theology or we would not need systematic theologies. The Bible is literature or, rather, a variety of literary works. In this sacred text, we find the foundational inspiration for all art: the fusing of the transcendent and the imminent. It is this dichotomous union that leaves its traces throughout the story of redemption. The wedding of the transcendent and the imminent is found in nearly every tenet of Christianity: the deity and humanity of Christ, the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man, the divine and human agency of inspiration, the old covenant and the new covenant, and, ultimately the reconciliation of heaven and earth. It is this fusion that serves both to explain and to guide a Christian approach to the arts. Not only does it address the artist's most difficult dichotomy of form and content, but it also ensures that art, as a representation of the human condition, depicts both beauty and truth. While the Reformation is typically stigmatized as a movement that was antithetical to artistic pursuits, this caricature fails under closer scrutiny. Though an explicit Calvinistic aesthetic is seldom articulated (much of later Calvinism has been preoccupied with polemics), the one that emerges is in fact informed by the dichotomous union of transcendence and imminence. Our focus will be a bit more myopic as we look not more broadly at aesthetics, which pertains to the arts in general, but to poetics, which is a philosophy of literature in particular.

Before considering how the dichotomous union is central to a Reformational poetic, let us address the common objection that the Reformed tradition is resistant to the arts. Though not an accurate assessment, such an objection is not completely without merit. In the early hours of the Reformation, there was much open hostility to the use of art in corporate worship as a reaction against the abuses of Rome. When the decisive break finally occurred, the Reformers rightly asked what should constitute Sabbath worship. The consensus was that Rome's use of visual art in corporate worship violated the second commandment. While Old Testament temple worship included sculptures of the celestial beings, the Reformers argued, New Testament worship should be patterned after the apostolic precedent of simplicity: Bible reading, prayer, singing, and the sacraments. Rome's incorporation of art in corporate worship undermined the truth that the ceremonial art of Old Testament temple worship were types of a heavenly copy that has been inaugurated in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. In addition, the Regulative Principle was determined to be the guiding force for the form and content of corporate worship. Only what God explicitly commands in Scripture should dictate the subject and manner of our worship. Thus, it was not so much that the Reformers eliminated art in corporate worship but they simply advocated it in a different form. For really there is the art of the homily, the art of singing, and the overarching art of the whole liturgy. In fact, it can be argued that the Reformational worldview liberated the Christian world from a utilitarian perspective on the arts. It is to this subject that we must turn our attention.

An Unfortunate Utilitarianism

The assertion that religious art pervaded the Pre-Reformation period goes largely uncontested. Rome, in its understanding of the sacred, esteemed art as having value only so far as it depicted subjects explicitly religious in nature, hence the ubiquitious Madonna and child paintings of the 15th and 16th centuries. With the emergence of the Reformed world-in-life view, the sacred/secular distinction was eradicated. According to the Reformers all of life was worship. Whether at work, church, or play, everything is to be done to the glory of God. A paradigm shift of this magnitude meant a complete redefining of what constituted Christian service. The blacksmith was not a Christian blacksmith, because he emblazoned the name "Jesus" on his tools but because he was a good blacksmith. We can see how this applies to the artist and more specifically the writer. A writer's work does not bring glory to God because he deals explicitly with matters of faith, but because he writes material that is beautiful and true. In our contemporary context, the "Christian" writer is often not taken seriously, because he is confined only to dealing with the explicitly religious. However, the Reformed view that all of life is sacred removes such an unnecessary burden. While books of theology, devotion, and much that is displayed as "Christian fiction" in bookstores talk about faith directly, literature uses faith as a lens through which to present the human condition. What gives the two branches of literature, fiction and poetry, such value is that they are able to do what theological books cannot: they make you feel faith rather than just understand it. Literature puts skin on theological truths. Even if we do not preoccupy ourselves with seeing evangelistic truths in literature, we can ruin our enjoyment of a piece if we focus too much on determining the meaning. The experience is the meaning. The reason literature is so powerful is because it communicates something that a simple statement could not. If a statement would have been sufficient, then the author would not need to write the piece.

Some people have the notion that you read the story and then climb out of it into the meaning, but for the fiction writer himself, the whole story is the meaning, because it is an experience, not an abstraction.
-Mystery and Manners, Flannery O'Connor (73)

The removal of the sacred/secular distinction releases the harness around the Christian imagination, and allows it to roam freely in the open plains of pleasure and experience. However, given the guiding principle of sola scriptura in the Reformers' life and thought, how did they seek to justify such a new perspective on the Christian calling? Drawing from the cultural mandate in Genesis 1:28, the Reformers correctly understood that the message of redemption throughout Scripture included culture. Thus, a redeemed earth assumed a redeemed culture as well. This mandate and its implications for the Christian writer will be examined in further detail in Part II.