The Christian artist

In the days of ancient Greece no distinction was made between the artist and the engineer; and based on what I said above, it could be questioned whether the gulf that separates them today is as great as it seems to be.

Still, they are different, and in some ways very different, and the Christian will recognize the difference. What the artist is trying to do is "make a statement," which used to be called "making something which is beautiful," except that our notion of beauty has been confused with "prettiness," and in reaction to that, artists today seem obsessed with the unpleasant. I remember an artist colleague of mine showing some samples of drawings of a student when the student started studying under him, and then in her last year. The first drawings were rather realistic pictures of flowers; the last, rather realistic pictures of animals' skulls. "See that?" he said. "Now that's strong."

What is beauty? To condense a book (Yes, I have a book on the subject, called Esthetics) into a couple of sentences, what it amounts to is this: Our emotions vary depending on two things: the state our body is in at the moment (e.g. how hungry you are) and the environment that is being reported by our senses (the steak you see in front of you). Now understanding, is being conscious of what the relationship is among the data in our consciousness.

Ordinary understanding uses the perceived characteristics of things as what we see related: the steak is red, the steak used to be part of a steer, and so on. Esthetic understanding, which is where we find beauty, is relationships based on the emotional overtones of what we see. The steak is seducing my eyes, the steak is longing for a home in me, and so on. That is, when I look at the steak, the emotion I experience is similar to what I experience when confronted with a temptress.

Now this is real understanding of a fact, because the steak does in fact tend to awaken this emotion, and the emotion is in fact similar in some ways to the emotion of being seduced; and so something about the steak is in fact similar to what a seductress does. But this particular fact about the steak (as opposed to its redness, its thickness, and so on) can only be understood by using the emotions as the receiving instrument and not the perceptions.

Perhaps I can illustrate the difference between esthetic understanding and perceptive (ordinary) understanding by giving an example of a confusion of the two. St. Bernard (I think it was) in one of his sermons compared a community of monks to a set of teeth: teeth are white; monks are pure; teeth shine, monks' virtue shines; teeth are regular and the same; monks are regular and the same; teeth are hard on the outside, but sensitive on the inside; so are monks; teeth won't let anything come between them; neither will monks--and so on.

The trouble with this analogy is that, however apt the comparison may be on the perceptive level, esthetically it is so inept that it becomes ludicrous. That is, the emotional overtone connected with a community of monks and the emotional overtones encountered in contemplating a mouthful of teeth are contradictory, not complementary. And the sermon is funny, because Bernard is obviously so serious in pursuing the comparison and is blissfully unaware that on the esthetic level he is comparing two opposites as if they were the same.

In any case, the point is that there is factual truth (yes, hard, factual truth) to be got at by comparing our emotional overtones of things, because the things really cause us to react this way, and therefore, the similarities in effects will argue to real similarities in the causes, but similarities undiscoverable by "scientific" understanding, which uses the perceptions as the effects.

Hence, the artist has truths to teach us: truths not necessarily pleasant, but truths got at through emotions. Hence, what is beautiful is not necessarily pretty (i.e. pleasant); and what is beautiful is not just what awakens an emotion; what is beautiful is what is meaningful emotionally. I hasten to add that what is beautiful is what is true esthetically, and what is true can be pleasant as well as "strong." Michelangelo's David, for instance tells us, through the emotions we experience when we see it, something about facing odds (the frown on the forehead) and yet how God will help us overcome (the strength and grace of the body), something about what David is, what Florence is, what Greek art and the Italian Renaissance is (the rough peasant hands in what is an imitation, in a sense, of classic Greek sculpture), what the human body is, what you can do with a flawed block of marble, who Michelangelo is, and so on and so on. It is a treatise, not something that is "nice"; and the longer you look at it, the more nuances you notice is what it says, based on what it does to you emotionally.

Perhaps the first difference between the Christian artist and the non-Christian is that the Christian can avoid the aura of sacred seriousness that seems to pervade the art world. Once when Robert Shaw was about to direct the Cincinnati May Festival Chorus (of which I was a member) in a performance of Handel's Messiah, he gave us our pre-performance pep-talk in language that made it clear that he was convinced that music and only music was going to save the world, and that we were to sing to the best of our ability because the whole future of mankind depended on what musicians did.

Such an attitude is, in a sense, understandable, because music, perhaps even more than some other art forms, engages the emotions powerfully, and yet since there are relationships to be discovered from these emotions, there is understanding of a mysterious kind of truth (about "life") from it; and the combination of actually knowing something valid with a very strong emotional charge can be overwhelming, making you think that the veil of the world is ripped away and you look into the face of God--and you can't stand it, and you break down in tears, though you wish it would never end. It seems, therefore, religious to an atheist (I hasten to add that I don't know whether Shaw is an atheist or not), or at least as a substitute for religion. For many, art is a substitute for religion, and religion is regarded as nothing but an art form: something that gives you an emotional uplift, like a great tragedy, but has no "factual" basis.

There are several fallacies here, of course, that the Christian, who knows what religion is, can sort out. First of all, religion is not in itself emotional. If it involves emotions, and truths to be learned through these emotions, then this is an added esthetic dimension to the religion, and is not the essence of the religion itself, any more than the scientific studies Theology makes into the text of Scripture and the relation of the statements of revelation to facts known elsewhere is the essence of religion. Religion is the relation we have with God; and Christianity is the taking over of God's point of view, which in itself is not emotional at all, and which as one progresses in Christianity, becomes less and less involved with the esthetic dimension and is characterized by "dryness," as they used to say.

Secondly, these facts understood from art (or from the esthetic dimension of religion, for that matter) are simply facts, no more significant than facts understood perceptively or scientifically; no less valid as facts, but no more "profound" or "meaningful." In fact, they are no less abstract than what is known by ordinary understanding, because they only deal with one aspect of the object: the aspect by which it is capable of affecting our emotional apparatus. Nevertheless, they seem terribly profound and "truer" than the cold facts of science, because they engage the emotions, which add a special punch to the experience as a whole. For this very reason, they are suspect as facts by scientists, because for the scientist (who is precisely not using his emotions as a basis for comparisons), any emotionality getting into his investigations interferes with his type of objectivity--which he, of course, takes as the only "real" type of objectivity.

In any case, the Christian artist, because of his faith, can put art into its proper place: as something valid and meaningful and true and factual, but as something that is valid and so on only in its own sphere, and does not replace either religion or science, but merely supplements what is known from them. There are definite truths to be known from what things can do to our emotional apparatus, truths which can be known only by carefully using our emotional apparatus as a receiving-instrument rather than a behavior-guide; and these truths are worth knowing; but they are not the "truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

The Christian artist, then, is not necessarily the person who writes poems on religious subjects, or who makes music to sacred texts, or who adorns churches with paintings, sculpture, and architecture. If he writes a novel, for instance, he has, perhaps, something to say about what human beings are like, by depicting them acting before the reader in such a way that the reader becomes emotionally involved and "identifies" with them and experiences for himself the kinds of emotions they are feeling, and sees connections among these emotions and the lives he is watching, and says, "Yes, that is how people are; that is in me too."

The difference here between the Christian and the atheist is that the Christian has a different idea of what life looks like, because he sees it in the light of his faith; and the existentialist angst that life is at bottom absurd and a frustration and chase after wind is for him a lie--and any of the characters who feel that way and act that way in his novel are mistaken--just as in existentialist novels, it is esthetically clear that the characters who think that life ultimately makes sense are the mistaken ones. The Christian as such cannot make a work of art whose point is that everything is pointless, which seems to be the point of Waiting for Godot or The Stranger or The Trial.

At bottom, even tragedy makes sense. That is the meaning of Aristotle's "catharsis." A life that ends horribly, such as that of Shakespeare's Othello, is seen to be inevitable because of what went before; it is the esthetically logical result of Othello's understandable fear that Desdemona couldn't really love him because he was Black, and therefore when Iago suggests that she is unfaithful, his tendency to paranoia convinces him that it is true, which leads to her death and his own death. The evil makes sense, which makes it no less horrible; but what the play says is that the world is not nonsense, and even the evil in it is not the irrationality it seems. That is why Othello is a great play, and why watching it, though devastating, is a valuable experience.

Of course, the Christian knows that Othello does not stop with the deaths of the characters, and that redemption and happiness are theirs insofar as they desire it: that the real unhappy ending is the eternal ending of the person who refuses to be happy, and who will not accept happiness because it means giving up his cherished misery. But this does not mean that the Christian is going to preach this in his plays and novels; it is just that this attitude is there, giving him a view of life that is essentially different and truer than the atheist's; and this view of life needs a hearing.

Interestingly, even when dealing with a religious subject, it does not follow that the Christian artist will treat it "religiously." Let me illustrate by a play I once wrote about the soldiers who crucified Jesus. The theme of the play was not, really, how the crucifixion effected the conversion of Longinus; but it was "If you had been there, you probably wouldn't have been converted." The Jewish soldier kept his faith in the Lord, and his rejection of Jesus as a deluded man who thought he was God; the devout pagan thought that Jupiter had won the battle of the gods against this Jewish god; the atheistic Roman had his atheism shaken up for a while, even by a vision of his brother, but after the earthquake was over, was convinced that it all had a natural explanation. Only Longinus, who actually nailed Jesus to the cross, changed his way of thinking. And I think that is the way life is: the light shines, but there are very few who open their eyes to it, or having opened them, do not close them again and deny that it was really the light.

The point here is not the esthetic validity of the play; that is for those who see it to decide--if any ever do. The point is that a Christian play dealing with a "religious" theme is not a vehicle for propaganda; it is a means of saying something true through the emotional involvement in the characters. To make the characters all be converted would be false to what people really are like (and certainly false to what actually happened); and lies are lies, whatever their purpose.

There are esthetic falsehoods, just as there are scientific falsehoods, and the art that surrounds religion is full of false esthetic statements. It is hoped that the Christian artist, who is not interested in "promoting religion" or "converting souls" (both laudable goals, but not lay), but in seeing things as they are, with God's eyes rather than "for God's glory", will spot the misunderstandings and false statements in the art that surrounds his religion and perhaps do something to replace it with something that is true.

What am I speaking of? Look at the statues that "adorn" our Catholic churches. Does this statue of Jesus with his knee slightly bent so the robe will fall, oh so gracefully, and his hand held out in the proper balletic attitude and the rosebud lips showing through the perfectly cut beard--does this show what Jesus is really like? Is our emotional reaction to this simpering effeminate the meaning of the way we are to regard the one from whom we would ask the mountains to cover us? Or poor Mary, looking up to the sky with that silly smile on her face, incapable of being bothered with us on earth because she's so busy being filled with emotional transports at whatever she sees up there in the clouds--is this our mother and model? Is this what it means to be a saint? No wonder there are so few of them.

And listen to the music at Mass. We are about not merely to witness the Crucifixion, but as the Body of Christ living today, to be crucified now two thousand years ago, and we sing "Holy! Holy! Holy! Lord God of Hosts!" It is the most awesome moment of all of history, by the mysterious timelessness of the Infinite made present to us and us present to it and part of it--and the music we sing says esthetically, "Let's get out the tambourines and dance." And at Communion, one of the old hymns said, "O wondrous thing: a poor nobody, a slave, is eating his Master!" O res mirabilis! Manducat Dominum pauper servus et humilis! Mozart's music reinforces the meaning. Today's Communion hymns have very little to do with "breaking bread together on our knees," as the Spiritual says, with this same awe; they are more concerned with how neat togetherness feels.

What Cardinal Ratzinger called "utility music" that involves catchy tunes that the people can pick up easily has its place in church services; but its place is not all over the place; and in some places, it is an esthetic falsehood, if not a downright lie.

I think it significant that Catholic congregations have for twenty years now--a whole generation--been forced to sing at Mass, and by and large have resisted all the urgings. Very few sing at all, and those who do either bellow or timidly whimper the notes. Why is this? First of all, I think that most parishoners feel that they can't sing, and why do something badly just because it "ought" to be done? Secondly, they find singing a distraction to what they are really here for: to participate in the crucifixion, not to be involved in a social get-together. They instinctively see the fallacy in being so involved in participating in the ceremony that you forget that the ceremony has as its purpose to get you involved in participating in the crucifixion. The pop music is not only irrelevant to this, it is often positively detrimental to it.

I think that the problem with religious art and religious music is not that the artists don't have their hearts in the right place; their intentions are good; it's that they don't have their minds with the right focus; they don't see accurately. They see their religion as it "ought" to be, not as it is; religious art is a depiction of what sanctity "should" be, not what sanctity is. The musicians make music for the purpose of allowing the people to participate (because the people "ought" to participate, and therefore we have to encourage them by making tunes that will make them want to sing), not music that says what the place it is used in means.

Now it may very well be that a Christian artist has no particular ideas dealing with sanctity or the meaning of various parts of the Mass, or even with any religious topic at all. Fine. Let those who have something to say on those subjects say them. The Christian artist has something true to say on whatever subject he receives an idea about. Like the Christian scientist, he listens to reality (with his emotions, however, unlike the scientist), until reality speaks to him; and then with the best of his skill, he tells us what reality is like. This is certainly as valid a Christian function as producing art for use in religious contexts.

Once again, it is the attitude toward things that distinguishes the Christian from the non-Christian; and since this attitude is the universal, objective one of God Himself, then what the Christian says will be that much more likely to be true than his non-Christian counterpart.