Jeremy S. Begbie - A Peculiar Orthodoxy: Reflections on Theology and the Arts

One of the more encouraging signs in theological writing over the last thirty years or so has been a flourishing of activity at the interface of theology and the arts. When I first began working at this frontier in the early 1980s, although it was not hard to find material on poetry, music, and painting with overtly Christian subject matter, in many theological quarters that was about as far as the interest went. A few philosophically minded writers went out of their way to show how a Christian perception of the world might shape and in turn be shaped by our engagement with the arts. But this kind of activity tended to be confined to relatively small and isolated pockets. The majority of theologians in the United States and Europe tended to see the arts as a peripheral and specialist interest. There was little cross-disciplinary conversation, little recognition that the arts presented serious and fruitful territory for theological research, little in the way of college courses and programs, and very little of theological depth to help Christian laypeople come to terms with whatever art surrounded them day by day. And the resources for Christians who were making art on the groundmolding clay, stringing notes together, spinning words into versewere scarce.

Things are dramatically different today. College courses abound, institutes and doctoral programs flourish, parachurch organizations prosper, and literature pours out in myriad forms: monographs, journals, magazines, websites, and social media. Admittedly, funding to support the best of this activity is often meager, but there can be little doubt that, like the confluence of two rivers, Christian theology and the arts are together generating a bubbling ferment that shows no signs of abating. And much of this spans a wide ecclesiastical spectrumProtestant, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodoxgenerating cross-traditional conversation of a kind not witnessed to date. Here we should not forget the dogged persistence of those who over many decades have kept the arts firmly on the radar of church and academy, amid what was often a climate of indifference (in some cases hostility). To the likes of Nicholas Wolterstorff, Calvin Seerveld, Jane and John Dillenberger, Wilson Yates, Frank Burch Brown, Sandra Bowden, Richard Viladesau, Greg Wolfe, Mako Fujimura, William Dyrness, and others, we owe an incalculable debt.

This burgeoning activity is surely in large part to be welcomed, auguring well for the future health of both theology and the arts. If I had reservations about the present-day scene, they would not concern the liveliness of the field or its seriousness or depth. My misgivings would rather involve the theological resources being drawn upon. I welcome the sheer range and variety of ecclesial traditions currently being deployed, but what often seems to be lacking is the sustained exercise of what some have called a scriptural imaginationa sustained immersion in biblical texts that enables us to perceive and live in the world in a way that is faithful to Scriptures theological coherence, and this together with an attention to the classic creedal traditions that seek to convey and foster such an imagination. The reasons for this lack are many and varied. Undoubtedly one of them is that the Bibles overt references to the arts are few and far between, and the early churchs patterns of belief were established with relatively little sustained reflection on the arts. In this light it is hardly surprising that many have turned to extrabiblical and extracreedal sources for the most promising primary sources of theological wisdoman ancient metaphysical tradition perhaps, or a particular strand of modern or late modern philosophy. Others may put their confidence in a contemporary cultural movement or expression. Indeed, the tables can be turned here: some writers tell us that the arts themselves deliver theological wisdom that will make us question key elements in the biblical orthodoxy of yesteryear. The artist is typically an awkward customer, goading pastor and professor with questions they would rather ignore, questions that may well strike at the root of the faith once delivered.

While fully appreciating the motivations and concerns underlying these convictions, I have come to believe that the most profoundly awkward and in the long run most life-giving questions that arise from a Christian engagement with the arts will be provoked through engaging the often strange and puzzling texts the church recognizes as its canon and from the creedal confessions that seek to be faithful to its testimony. It is this stubborn peculiarity of biblically based orthodoxycentering on the embodiment of the worlds Creator in a crucified king, and a God who is perplexingly threefoldthat seems to be all too easily screened out or sanitized by those exploring the resonances between faith and the arts today. And it is worth emphasizing that in using peculiar in my title I have in mind both a strangeness (he had a peculiar look in his eye) and a distinctiveness (she had that look peculiar to academics). That is, I am keen to encourage an awareness not only of the odd and puzzling character of orthodoxy but also of how unique and unparalleled it is, and thus also an awareness of the danger both of muting its witness and of trying to turn it into something it is not.

Orthodoxy, of course, necessarily deals with doctrine, and like orthodoxy, talk of doctrine may well raise hackles. Doctrine, it will be protested, is about tidying things up, things that need to be left open. In the churchs deadening passion for control and conformity, for accurate propositions that supposedly give us a final hold on truth, mystery is dissolved, open-minded inquiry suppressed, conversation closed down. The arts move in a radically different world, so we are told, breathing a much fresher and healthier air. Here we will find openness, allusiveness, ambiguity, a resistance to that stifling pursuit of certainty that has plagued so much of the churchs history. Indeed, at their best, the arts can help liberate the church from its misguided reliance on doctrinal correctness.