Comments on: The Art and Theology Discussion

By: William Lehman

William Lehman — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:34:19 +0000

Casey, Glad you found the post more quickly than I found out I made one of your lists…lol. I would agree most contemporary readers would not consider “nature” something to even need the redemptive work of Christ. Which also lends itself to the idea that humanity is by nature “good”.

We all know that we have to teach our kids to be selfish. Otherwise we’d be saying things like the below statements to our children.

“Johnny, next time the ball comes to you… keep it for awhile”
“Mary, quit it! You are sharing again…”

Unfortunately, we know this is not the case. Nature is flawed, but one thing is sure, she still knows her maker.

Casey, I’d love to know what Jesus drew both in that narrative as well as a child. We know that Joseph was a carpenter. Jesus may have created sculptures out of remnants of wood as a child.

By: Casey Klahn

Casey Klahn — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 17:07:55 +0000

Oh! I’ll add that when I wrote that Jesus didn’t draw the gospel, it did pop into my foggy head that he scribbled something in the sand. So, I was delighted at Card’s song about art and Jesus’ sand work.

Does an artist immediately think Jesus drew something, and a theologian automatically think He wrote in the sand?

Also, it crossed my mind that it is entirely possible that Jesus did draw something sometime! He was fully man, and what child has never drawn? Like my acquaintance Gordon Fee once said, Jesus’ limitations as a man mean that it is entirely true that he (Fee) could out-dribble Jesus on the basketball court. Do you draw better than Jesus? I’d love to know what he drew…

By: Casey Klahn

Casey Klahn — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:49:31 +0000

This post is great – even nicely curated with a couple of artist’s works.

Can’t be on the PC too much today, so I’ll give some quick ideas.

Trying to be too smart by half, I introduced nature in my first thesis, and then by number four (hwammo!) I hit the reader with the thesis that nature is corrupt. Don’t you agree that nature needs to be correctly understood, and yet 99.999% of contemporary readers may not agree (with me) about the corruption of nature.

So, in the interests of polemics, I bring in nature, but I don’t reveal my full hand until #4, where it becomes evident that nature is not straight. William presents a duality of nature – corrupt versus redeemed. This is a true observation, but I think that, because art is not scripture, it must always bear error.

So, sacred art becomes a key question. And, it is my main subject of inquiry, although this exercise only begins down that road, I guess.

Also, I agree that all theology must begin with God, and proceed to the things of man. When I say, maybe clumsily, that my own theses are art-centric, I am saying that in comparison to the faith bloggers who wrote their theses from the outside of the art world, looking in. I think that each category of theology must stay with it’s category to be on target, so a theology of art should keep art in focus. I think I’ll quit calling it “art-centric” – that is not exactly right.