LICC: Scripture, the Artist's Bread, Prayer, The Way of the Artist and The Place of the Arts

Scripture, the artist’s bread

God and art-making (4/4)

And he said to me, ‘Son of man, eat what is before you, eat this scroll; then go and speak to the people of Israel.’ So I opened my mouth, and he gave me the scroll to eat.

Then he said to me, ‘Son of man, eat this scroll I am giving you and fill your stomach with it.’ So I ate it, and it tasted as sweet as honey in my mouth.
EZEKIEL 3:1–3

Faith in God endows art-making (and, indeed, human endeavour more generally) with an expansive confidence. I'm called to cultivate the stuff of creation in ways that bring glory to my Maker. Such confidence is, yes, thankful and humble; but it's also venturesome, wondering, active, and amazed.

As we’ve considered, this spacious, creaturely, humble life of making with God is nourished in the intimacy of prayer. Scripture, too, is a key source of nourishment, particularly for vision – what the psalmist calls ‘this meditation of my heart’. So, how might Scripture, along with prayer and Christian fellowship, sustain art-making? What does this look like?

By mentioning Scripture in the same breath as art, you might assume that I’m talking about the ‘content’ or ‘message’ of Christian art. Certainly, Scripture has long inspired great art. But as profound as biblical themes continue to be, the Bible’s relevance to the arts is not simply as a sourcebook or interpretive frame. Rather, Scripture feeds the arts, like eating a loaf of bread.

Let me explain. Artists are called to bear witness – to speak faithfully of the world and God. Bearing witness is not only evangelistic but also prophetic: art – by representation, but also by its existence in the world – speaks about the truth of things. It's interested in what's wrong with the world, who God is, and how God responds to the world. It's not sentimental or naïve. It's faithful, joyful, and unafraid.

Such a posture reflects the understanding given to us in Holy Scripture, which is deeply honest about the darkness of the world, but even more deeply hopeful about God’s purpose. How, then, do we arrive at this understanding? How do you become someone whose life and work are saturated with this vision? Because for all art’s insight and intuition, it’s not something we arrive at naturally.

Instead, a bit like the scroll given to the prophet Ezekiel, it’s given to us through inspired Scripture. How can artists bear faithful witness? How might they offer up the life of creation to God in works that are truthful, joyful, and unafraid? Such art needs to eat.

And so, each day, we take up the book and eat it: we put its words in our mouths, chew on them in our hearts, swallow them down into our lives, and let the book’s vision come out of our pores.

Dr John Dennison
John is a poet, essayist, and Director of Resources at Venn Foundation. He’s the author of Letter to An Artist, a beautiful, practical, and readable reflection on the nature of art-making and its place in God’s purposes.

_{Posted: January 2025}

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LICC: Prayer

Prayer

God and art-making (3/4)

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But who can discern their own errors?
     Forgive my hidden faults.
Keep your servant also from wilful sins;
     may they not rule over me.
Then I will be blameless,
     innocent of great transgression.

May these words of my mouth
    and this meditation of my heart
be pleasing in your sight,
     Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.
PSALM 19:12–14

It seems to me that a longing for God haunts the contemporary artist. For the past 300 or so years, artists have reached for words like ‘inspiration’ and ‘spiritual’ to explain aspects of art experience; indeed, some of these have been used to explain why artists might be special. We’re created as makers, as creatures who have a distinct calling to offer up to God the stuff of his world as the work of our hands. If this is true, then it makes sense that art-making might be ghosted by longing for God.

So, what is it like to practise art in God’s presence? The writer of Psalm 19 is very aware that the priestly office of voicing creation’s life before God is only possible with God’s help. God is the artist’s ‘Lord’, but also his or her security, the one who funds his or her freedom – ‘my redeemer’. Like many works of art, this song anticipates – indeed, longs for – Jesus, God with us.

It is through Jesus Christ that we are redeemed from sin and rescued from death. Faith in Jesus restores art to the communion with God that artists otherwise long for. Through Jesus and by the gift of the Holy Spirit, we can begin to take up the priestly office of voicing creation’s praise. The words of our mouths, the meditation of our hearts, and the making of our hands are now subject to a call to holiness, allowing all that we are and all that we make to be illuminated by Christ.

What does this look like? Well, it looks like honesty about sin and a readiness to accept God’s forgiveness. It entails an ever-deepening understanding of how God’s purposes need to shape and enable our art. It might also include a deepening understanding of the ways in which our art can go astray.

The daily expression of this is prayer: keeping company with God. Prayer is not the special preserve of the arts, but art surely needs prayer. It’s in prayer that intuitions are given warrant or chastened, inclinations given shape and made fruitful, and making laid open to God’s gifts.

How does the artist (or, by extension, anyone who seeks to let God shape their work) do this? Well, you learn, slowly, to let prayer infuse your whole art practice, from inspiration to exhibition and beyond. So, may the words of our mouths and our hearts’ meditations become pleasing in our Redeemer’s sight!

_{Posted: January 2025}

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LICC: The Way of the Artist

The way of the artist

God and art-making (2/4)

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Then Moses said to the Israelites, ‘See, the Lord has chosen Bezalel son of Uri, the son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah, and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with wisdom, with understanding, with knowledge and with all kinds of skills – to make artistic designs for work in gold, silver, and bronze, to cut and set stones, to work in wood, and to engage in all kinds of artistic crafts.’
EXODUS 35:30–33

It can be challenging to be an artist. Artists are often viewed as individual geniuses who stand against convention and tradition. They’re seen as radical and responsible to no one. But this story is false.

As we’ve already considered, art-making is a thoroughly creaturely affair: it’s one good vocation among many given for the praise of God and the good of the world. So, how can we better understand art-making? What postures characterise faithful artistry? And, as one vocation among many, what might art-making teach us about good work generally?

Consider Bezalel, son of Uri, the artist tasked with making Israel’s sanctuary and tabernacle. We’re left in no doubt that here is a gifted person, one who is alive to the beauty of the world and primed to join in. But Bezalel is not an isolated genius intent on self-expression. His work may be singular, yet Bezalel’s artistry helpfully highlights some general features of all art-making.

Here is a human creature making with the stuff of creation. Art involves hard work, attentiveness, years of practice and life-long learning, delight with curiosity. Above all, faithful art-making entails limits – physical, moral, spiritual – and wisdom to work well with the grain of creation. And his work is bound up with others and with the flourishing of human community.

If we acknowledge art involves these things – hard work, paying attention, learning, limitations, and collaboration – we can also intuit some of the postures of good artistry. Experienced artists are typically gifted with distinct insight and an intuitive grasp of the possibilities for meaning and beauty. But they are often also marked by humility, diligence, and patience: they’re reasonably unconcerned about themselves and intent on work that reflects the integrity of the creation.

The constraints and postures of making, then, reflect our human life and calling. As such, art-making can highlight features of good work generally. Faithfulness in such creaturely making requires that artists not only work hard at their craft, but also that they become wise. Bezalel does not conceive of himself as a mini-god, free from all constraints to express himself as he wishes; he is not some lonely genius intent on making a name for himself. Rather, we are shown an artist whose hard work and skill are permeated with the knowledge of God: God who gives each artist life and to whom each artist might respond with faithful making. Here, that means art that enables the life of a community before God, that reflects back God's glory – just as a mirror reflects light.

_{Posted: January 2025}

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LICC: The Place of the Arts

The place of the arts

God and art-making (1/4)

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The heavens declare the glory of God;
    the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
    night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
    no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
    their words to the ends of the world.
PSALM 19:1–4

Human beings have always made art. It’s not just something we do on the side once we’ve sorted life out: people make art in lean times as well as rich. When we make useful things, we often also make them beautiful. In all its various modes – visual, musical, literary, embodied, and sculptural – art is a human impulse, one that profoundly shapes our common life. So, where does art-making fit into God’s purposes?

In the first place, let’s consider delight. The world is full of colour and sound, light and form. It is excessively beautiful – and it draws delight out of us like nectar from a flower. We are captured by the undulations of a cloud formation, we are arrested by a blackbird’s evening song, we keep glancing at the tree outside, its repose and light-filled form. The world is beautiful, eloquent with meaning. This delight offers us an important clue about art’s place in the big picture.

Artists often want to respond to the world’s beauty by joining in. Indeed, our delight in the world can make us want to respond to its source: to express awe and gratitude, praising the Artist behind all this beauty. Psalm 19 does exactly this. The world, it claims, isn’t random but is a creation: the work of the glorious Creator. Despite the travail of sin and evil, this world is fluent with delight. In its purpose-filled radiance, it offers its life back to the Maker, declaring the glory of God.

What is our part in all this? And where does art come in? Well, Psalm 19 is itself a poem – a memorable, beautiful, work of art. Scripture frames human beings as God’s image-bearers, stewards of God’s good rule who are uniquely placed to represent creation to God in a free response of love. Indeed, as theologian Jeremy Begbie has explored, human beings are made to voice creation’s praise – and art-making is key to this. Alert to the beauty of the world, artists are called to respond by giving voice to creation’s praise and also – as the rest of the Book of Psalms so clearly shows – to its lament. Art can’t be merely for its own sake. Rather, art is one distinct way that we express creaturely life to God and before God.

There is of course more to say! But here, as you head into this week, stay alert to delight: it’s an invitation to join in on the concert of creation.