Theology Today - Vol 34, No. 1 - April 1977 - ARTICLE - Theology and the Arts: Sources and Resources

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Theology and the Arts: Sources and Resources
By John W. Cook

"My major interest is to discover how the arts may reshape our self-understanding and our conceptual task. One of the initial tasks for theological education is to rediscover the tradition in the arts that has helped shaped Christianity's self-understanding. "

CONTEMPORARY influences have theology riding off in all directions at once, and the resulting impression is that things are at a standstill. I suggest that on the horizon is an integrative force for theology and ministry that, when taken seriously, significantly influences and shapes theological education, Christian ministry, and worship. The integrative force that will play an increasingly significant role in the nineteen-eighties is in the arts.

This will not come as a great surprise to many people because the arts have been active in fits and starts in many areas, especially since the Second World War. Many of these efforts seem to have died for lack of nourishment. Most of these sincere attempts have run aground under financial pressures, and enthusiasm waned with the loss of charismatic personalities or popular theological formulation. Much of the story of the demise of some of these efforts emerges where dogmatic positions, firmly entrenched, used the arts to illustrate points of view and propaganda. Today a cloud of depression resides over some who suffered the loss of direction and support. However, their experiences are the growing pains for a future that promises to be alive and well. Fortunately, the worship life of our churches and the vitality of the

John W. Cook is Associate Professor of Religion and the Arts at Yale University. He did his theology degree at Yale and his graduate work in the history of art at Yale and the University of Bonn in Germany. He is currently directing a study at the Yale Divinity School to design a religion and arts program and would welcome information about programs either past or present. Please address your comments to 409 Prospect Street, New Haven, Conn. 06510.

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individual Christian communities have continued to grow while affirming the Gospel and grappling with the human condition, and in that setting the vitality of the questions and the directions for the life of the arts in the church and theology is kept alive. But the parishes remain disturbingly impoverished because our ministers' backgrounds have not been informed and shaped by the arts. Resistance has set in where fresh vision should grow. My concern is to encourage theological education to integrate the arts in its curriculum so that we may inspire informed and creative leadership.

The direction ahead insists that the arts be allowed to live in their own terms in the faith, rather than be forced to illustrate popular theological positions. In theological education especially, the arts have a rightful place in the curriculum in their own terms because of the value of the language they speak and the fuller life of the Christian experience they expose.

While the range of issues is very broad and the scope of the arts involves many forms and media, this essay is concerned with how the visual arts and architecture can take their rightful place in theological education. We have had less experience with the study of art and architecture in theology than other art forms. Therefore, it may be helpful to make some practical suggestions about content and method. At the outset, the fact that there is an established tradition to draw from and a range of sources indicates that we can move from a position of informed strength and feasibility. The discipline of art history has a wealth of valuable resources for theology. One of the strengths of an approach that draws from another tradition is that it will avoid the pitfalls of the past when teachers and ministers exercised an embarrassing amateurism and made pronouncements about subject matter more respected and better known by others. The strength of the discipline of art history for theology lies in the long tradition it has in delving into the arts, especially those of western civilization, and very often with precision and scrutiny they have been delving into primary documents (visual and verbal) of the Christian faith. Some of the results are stunning exegetical, hermeneutical material for our own self-understanding.

It may be difficult to imagine how the visual media of art and architecture may relate to and participate in the verbal world of theology, but the material available through the sources I shall mention below demonstrates the evidence. This richly creative language of the arts needs to have full voice in the training of theologians and ministers. This evidence, properly understood, allows our tradition to speak loud and clear in a new way.

My major interest is to discover how the arts may reshape our self understanding and our conceptual task. One of the initial tasks for

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theological education is to rediscover the tradition in the arts that has helped shape the history of Christianity's self-understanding.

The material described below may appear to be solely for a study of the history of Christianity, and it may seem as though I am writing this article for teachers of church history. However, this is material available to us to help us reclaim neglected "documents" of our faith, and it witnesses to the creative imagination of the faith. It is material for the total life of the Church.

I suspect that the rediscovery of this material will alter our traditional definitions of theology and pastoral care. It is certain that seminary education will have new, informative and inspirational sources when this evidence is included and when the contributions of the discipline of art history are integrated into the curriculum. With this material in view, theological studies will no longer be simply a history of religious assertions strung together as verbal intellectual history based on creedal or confessional presuppositions. In that regard, it is discouraging to see that some of our major theological schools are not even offering much history of theological thought in a traditional method. Properly assimilated, the arts, introduced through some of the best of the art historical discipline, will broaden our base and enliven our methodology. The serenity of critical method and analytical interpretation will be interrupted while being significantly informed.

Our study of the world of the New Testament and the nature of the early church is enriched when we include the witness of early Christian art. An excellent introduction is available in Andre Grabar's Early Christian Art (New York, 1968) especially for the earliest material, and a broader view is presented in a highly readable study by Eduard Syndicus under the same title, Early Christian Art (New York, 1962). The best set of illustrations of the Christian witness in catacomb fresco painting is found in a valuable little paperback book, Pierre du Bourguet's Early Christian Painting (New York, 1966). His introductory essay contributes to our appreciation for the liturgical background of these remarkable paintings. Early Christian art gives us an inside view of early piety that we do not find anywhere else.

Our understanding of the meeting places and practices of the early Christian house churches is given fresh insight from recent house church (Tituli) excavations in Rome and in the small town of Dura-Europos in Asia Minor. A summary of the findings concerning the meeting places of the young Christian communities in Rome is given in the opening chapters of the remarkable book by Richard Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture (Baltimore, 1965). The complete and meticulously detailed reports of this ancient evidence from Rome are available in the large folio volumes by the same author, Richard Krautheirner's Corpus Basilicarum Christianarum Romae

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(Vatican, 1937), with text in English and Italian. Copies of these, however, are difficult to obtain.

The earliest house church known today from physical evidence is a renovated private home that became a gathering place and center of worship in the first half of the third century at Dura-Europos. Its full story is beautifully told in Carl Kraeling's The Christian Building (New York, 1967). A briefer introduction and description of the Dura house church in relation to other religious groups at Dura-Europos is in Ann Perkins's The Art of Dura-Europos (Oxford, 1973).

When the church emerged in its more public forms after the peace of the church at the beginning of the fourth century, the monumental Christian basilica structures in centers like Rome, Constantinople, and Jerusalem illustrate a dramatic shift in the church's needs and selfunderstanding expressed in architecture. This astonishing story is reported in the titles above by Syndicus and Krautheimer. One of the most surprising parts of the story is about the building Constantine's architects constructed in Jerusalem at the places where Christ was crucified, buried and resurrected. Kenneth Conant's "The Holy Sepulchre," Speculum, Vol. XXXI, pp. 1-48, is a good introduction.

Seeing the theological and liturgical meaning of Byzantine art and architecture is an excellent way to break down some of our barriers to that part of our tradition. For instance, Thomas Mathews, The Early Churches of Constantinople, Architecture and Liturgy (Pennsylvania State, 197 1) is a model for seeing how religion and art can make a unified statement to glorious ends. When that is studied along with Leonide Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky's The Meaning of Icons (Boston, 1952) and Cyril Mango's Sources and Documents of Byzantine Art (New Jersey, 1972), our own Christology and theology of the Eucharist stand in a new light.

The art and architecture in the splendidly preserved monuments of Ravenna, Italy provide a spellbinding chapter in the artistically creative language of the faith. The baptisteries, basilicas, mosaics and liturgical objects reflect a rich, faithful tradition. Get a glimpse of it in Otto von Simson's The Sacred Fortress (Chicago, 1948), Spiro Kostof's The Orthodox Baptistery of Ravenna (New Haven, 1965), and the relevant sections of Andre Grabar's The Golden Age of Justinian (New York, 1967).

The production of Bibles, liturgical books and theological texts created masterpieces of Christendom like The Book of Kells, The Utrecht Psalter, and other amazing illuminated manuscripts. A good one volume introduction to the history of illuminations is in David Diringer's, The Illuminated Book (New York, 1958). This material is related to the monastic movements, and that many faceted story is opened to us with all its complexity and splendor in a book that illustrates its architectural expression and development and contains excellent translations of original documents. It is Wolfgang Braunfels's Monasteries of Western Europe: The Architecture of the Orders (Princeton, 1972).

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The great artistic proliferation of the Romanesque abbey at Cluny, introduced in Braunfels' book, has been published in Joan Evan's Monastic Life at Cluny, 910-1157 (London, 1931). Kenneth Conant has just published the results of his many years work in Cluny in Cluny: Les Églises et la Maison du Chef de I'Ordre (Cambridge, Mass., 1968). The best of Carolingian and Romanesque religious architecture is in his earlier study, Carolingian and Romanesque Architecture, 800-1200 (Baltimore, 1955).

III

The richest development of religious art in western civilization centers around the origins and growth of the Gothic cathedrals. Seldom have the arts carried so much of the religious mentality of an age, or sought to embody such spiritual significance. Otto von Simson's The Gothic Cathedral (New York, 1964), and Emile Male's The Gothic Image (New York, 1958) convincingly interpret the sources. Two publications of translated documents of the time reveal the Christian thinking in the Gothic era, Erwin Panofsky, Abbot Suger (Princeton, 1946) and Paul Frankel, The Gothic (Princeton, 1960).

The strength of the Christian tradition in the Italian Renaissance has been neglected in light of the emphasis on classical sources in the new humanism. However, the Christian story is an essential aspect of the Renaissance. See Peter and Linda Murray, The Art of the Renaissance (New York, 1966). Studies of the individual artists of this period are especially important; e.g., James H. Stubblebine, The Arena Chapel (New York, 1966) is a set of documents and essays about Giotto's great cycle of the life of Christ at Padua. Masaccio's work and the influence of the Reformer, Savonarola, on the painter Botticelli are fascinating illustrations of Christian responses in the arts. Especially poignant are studies of Donatello and Michelangelo. See, for instance, Frederich Hartt's History of Italian Renaissance Art (New York, 1960), Charles de Tonay's The Art and Thought of Michelangelo (New York, 1969), and Charles Seymour, Jr.'s collected essays and interpretations of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel in Michelangelo: The Sistine Chapel Ceiling (New York, 1972).

The Renaissance in northern Europe is best illustrated in the changing priorities of the time. An excellent introduction is Otto Benesch's The Art of the Renaissance in Northern Europe (London, 1965). Significant in treating the artistic and religious attitudes of the time is Wolfgang Steckow's Northern Renaissance Art, 1400-1600 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1966). The central figure of Albrecht Dürer comes alive in Erwin Panofsky's excellent book, Albrecht Dürer (Princeton, 1948). The remarkable story of one of Christianity's most important works of art is told in Georg Scheja's The Isenheim Altarpiece (New York, 1969), a beautifully illustrated and documented interpretation of Matthias Grünewald's masterpiece. The role of the arts in the Reformation is described in the Benesch volume mentioned above and

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in A. G. Dickens's Reformation and Society in Sixteenth Century Europe (London, 1966). A great deal remains to be clarified about Reformation iconography, especially in English, but a valuable study and model of scholarship is Charles Garside, Zwingli and the Arts (New Haven, 1966).

The Counter Reformation responded to the Protestants, vigorously through the arts. The arts burst into the Counter Reformation as if they were essential to the enterprise. Baroque art forms took over the church. See Rudolf Wittkower and Irma Jaffe, The Jesuit Contribution to Baroque Art (New York, 1972) and Wittkower's Art and Architecture in Italy, 1600-1750 (Baltimore, 1958). See also G. Bazin, The Baroque (London, 1968) and the surprising evidence concerning Catholic piety and the arts in Robert T. Petersson's The Art of Ecstasy (New York, 1970). One of the best studies of high baroque art in a Christian context is John Rupert Martin's Rubens: The Antwerp Altarpieces: The Raising of the Cross and the Descent from the Cross (New York, 1970).

The baroque sources are vast and although they are often out of favor today, they demonstrate a powerful use of decorative art forms born of a particular facet of a Christian point of view.

The story comes together and reaches new heights in Rembrandt. Visser t'Hooft's Rembrandt and the Gospel (New York, 1960) gives the essential points, and Jacob Rosenberg's Rembrandt, Life and Work (1964) is the best one-volume introduction.

If one jumps at this point in the seventeenth century to a preoccupation with Christian attitudes reflected in American art and architecture, see Marian C. Donnelly's The New England Meeting Houses of the Seventeenth Century (Middletown, Conn., 1968) and Jules Prown's American Painting, Vol. I (New York, 1969). The story gets complicated at this point because traditional definitions and subject matter in the arts have changed. The problem is how to discover the authentic religious consciousness in the contemporary arts. One could begin with the visionary art of William Blake. See Anthony Blunt, The Art of William Blake (New York, 1959).

Some nineteenth century movements address specifically religious questions. For instance, A.W.N. Pugin's The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (London, 1841) and Vincent van Gogh's Complete Letters, 3 vols. (Greenwich, 1958). Curious phases claiming religious motivation are seen in Edward Lucie-Smith, Symbolist Art (New York, 1972), Robin Ironside, Pre-Raphaelite Painting (London, 1948), and Charles Chasse, The Nabis and their Times (Paris, 1960).

For a glimpse at twentieth-century religious attitudes in modern art, scan the anthology by Hershel Chip, Theories of Modern Art (Berkeley, 1971), Kandinsky's Concerning the Spiritual in Art (New York, 1947), Hans Jaffe, De Stijl (New York, n.d.) and Georges Rouault, by Pierre Courthion (New York, n.d.).

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The story reaches a peak in the writings of Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, because by the 1970's they had produced an imageless art that sought great religious and moral depth. Some of these sources are included in Barbara Rose, Readings in American Art, 1900-1975 (New York, 1975).

Put them all together, they spell a language of the religious experience too often stifled in modern religious institutions. Art history cannot save us, but it can enrich our understanding and proclamation of the Gospel.

Many monographs have appeared in the young discipline of art history that demonstrate the uniquely integrated nature of the artistic enterprise and religious sensibilities. The evidence is there through excellent publications, and more and more through good museums. We have the opportunity in theological education to give it a proper place and allow it to come alive for theology and ministry. There is a vitality to be reclaimed here. The language of the arts can expand the scope of our observations and assist our task.