Art and the Bible

As evangelical Christians, we have tended to relegate art to the very fringe of life. The rest of human life we feel is more important. Despite our constant talk about the Lordship of Christ, we have narrowed its scope to a very small area of reality. We have misunderstood the concept of the Lordship of Christ over the whole of man and the whole of the universe and have not taken to us the riches that the Bible gives us for ourselves, for our lives, and for our culture

The Lordship of Christ over the whole of life means that there are no Platonic areas in Christianity, no dichotomy or hierarchy between the body and the soul. God made the body as well as the soul, and redemption is for the whole man.

If Christianity is really true, then it involves the whole man, including his intellect and creativeness. Christianity is not just "dogmatically" true or "doctrinally" true. Rather, it is true to what is there, true in the whole area of the whole man in all of life.

How often do Christians think of sexual matters as something second-rate. Never, never, never should we do so, according to the Word of God. The whole man is made to love God; each aspect of man's nature is to be given its proper place. That includes the sexual relationship, that tremendous relationship of one man to one woman. At the very beginning God brought Eve to man. A love poem can thus be beautiful.

Christianity is not just "dogmatically" true or "doctrinally" true. Rather, it is true to what is there, true in the whole area of the whole man in all of life.

The ancients were afraid that if they went to the end of the earth, they would fall off and be consumed by dragons. But once we understand that Christianity is true to what is there, including true to the ultimate environment -- the infinite, personal God who is really there -- then our minds are freed. We can pursue any question and can be sure that we will not fall off the end of the earth. Such an attitude will give our Christianity a strength that is often does not seem to have at the present time.

But there is another side to the Lordship of Christ, and this involves the total culture -- including the area of creativity. Again, evangelical or biblical Christianity has been weak at this point. About all that we have produced is a very romantic Sunday school art.

We do not seem to understand that the arts too are supposed to be under the Lordship of Christ.

I have frequently quoted a statement from Francis Bacon, who was one of the first of the modern scientists and who believed in the uniformity of natural causes in an open system. He, along with other men like Copernicus and Galileo, believed that because the world had been created by a reasonable God, they could therefore pursue the truth concerning the universe by reason. There is much, of course, in Francis Bacon with which I would disagree, but one of the statements which I love to quote is this: "Man by the Fall fell at the same time from his state of innocence and from his dominion over nature. Both of these losses, however, can even in this life be in some part repaired; the former by religion and faith, the latter by the arts and sciences." How I wish that evangelical Christians in the United States and Britain and across the world had had this vision for the last fifty years!

The arts and the sciences do have a place in the Christian life -- they are not peripheral. For a Christian, redeemed by the work of Christ and living within the norms of Scripture and under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, the Lordship of Christ should include an interest in the arts. A Christian should use these arts to the glory of God -- not just as tracts, but as things of beauty to the praise of God. And art work can be a doxology in itself.

I personally think the Getty Index of Christian Art easily has it beat in terms of images (if not outright pieces): http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/photo_study_collection/christian_art.html

While the BJU gallery has several dozen galleries there are foreign museums (granted, not just holding Christian art) that have HUNDREDS OF GALLERIES. The State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia. has 15 miles of galleries - 322 galleries in all - housing nearly 3 million works of art.

BJU describes it’s collection this way: “In thirty years, a small collection of paintings grew into one of the world’s largest and most important university art collections. However, the Gallery’s phenomenal development surprises no one who has ever witnessed God’s miraculous power and blessing. Now, fifty years after its inauguration, the collection comprises over 400 paintings by the Old Masters, nearly 200 pieces of Gothic to nineteenth-century furniture, approximately 100 works of sculpture, some 60 textiles, nearly 50 drawings and prints, over 1,000 ancient Biblical artifacts, and approximately 130 miscellaneous items that range from stained glass windows to a Byzantine baptistery.”

That’s big by university standards but doesn’t come close to what Europe’s major museums have. Even in the USA, “The Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception [in D.C.] contains the world’s largest collection of contemporary ecclesiastical art.” And that’s just ONE church. I think it’s safe to say, however, that BJU is the largest collection of Christian art in this hemisphere as you said.

Here is one extremist nut’s description of the BJU collection: “displaying more than 400 works by famous pagan artists such as Rembrandt, Ribera, Murillo, Cranach, Veronese, Titian Tiepolo, Botticelli, Tintoretto, Van Dyck, Rubens, and Sabastiano de Piombo.” http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/Psychology/bju/gallery.htm

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