Theology
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Theology and the Arts
By Richard Viladesau Paulist Press, 2000
Chapter 1: God and the Beautiful: Art as a Way to God
Van Gogh: Enclosed Wheatfield with Rising Sun
• Beauty as revelation (cf. Tillich’s Primary Revelation) • Art as the human mediation that both enables and limits its revelatory power (5) (cf. Tillich’s Dependent Revelation)
Unify ing Motif
Thomas ColeThe Connecticut River Near Northhamton
Art • The mind’s apprehension of God – Cf. Tillich’s Subjective Reason
• God’s self revelation through creation (13) – Cf. Tillich’s Objective Reason Paul CezánneMount Saint Victor
Trope: “Revelation: All is Number,” from “The Hidden Sky” Music and Lyrics by Mark Foley
The Hidden Sky is set in a postapocalyptic world where scientific and technological advancement have been outlawed, mathematical computation is a heresy, and seeking knowledge is forbidden, in order to protect humanity from destroying itself again. Ganil, the protagonist, has been recruited by a group of underground scientists who have taught her mathematics. On her own, she discovers a miraculous set of numbers: when rendered graphically, the series creates a particular type of spiral which can be found throughout the natural world. Ganil is completely transformed by her realization that numbers lie beneath all the wonders in the world.
From the numbers comes the series, Comes the ratio, the Golden Mean, The balance and the link between The shapes that form the spiral. A graceful web around me, weaving all around me, Weaving into everything around me A graceful web emerging from a single thread, And the thread is number, a single thread of number.
Passing through me, passing under me and over me and in and out and then around and back again All creation from a single thread, That pulls me in my heart, that passes through my head, That pulls me so I follow where I’m led On from zero into one and moving higher, passing one, two three, and higher still, And higher still, and higher to infinity…
From the spiral in the heavens to the spiral in the seashell, from the swirling of the clouds to the whirling water, in the cabbage and the corn, from the spiral in the seashell to the spiral in the ram’s horn, in the fist, in the ear, on the tip of your finger, all is number. From the leaves of the linden to the needles on the pinetree, in the leaves of the elm and the oak and apple, all is number.
Oh, I must have been sleeping, I must have been sleeping, I must have been sleeping, But I’m wide awake now. In the eye of the spiral, all around me the one great thought, the one great thought, The Absolute, the Truly Real It’s coming out of my head and into my heart, and out of my heart and into my head, coming out of my heart: Nothing is random at all!
Two petals on the nightshade, Three petals on the iris, Five petals on the daisy, All is number All is number
Where there is a pattern, One mind… there is a purpose. There is a pattern! One plan… There is a purpose! An undeniable design One thought… In the spiral in the heavens, yes! In the spiral in the seashell, yes! In the swirling of the clouds and the whirling water, yes! Yes!
Three petals on the iris, All is number, all is five petals on the number. I believe, I buttercup, yes! Eight believe, yes! O, the petals on the daisy, wonder, O the love, the yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!O, law, the Absolute, the the Absolute, the Truly Beautiful, the Real, the Beautiful, the Simplicity, the Simplicity…I believe, passionate creation of I believe, I believe, I God! believe that…
I have seen the face of God! One plan, there is one foundation I believe that I have seen the face of God! One mind, behind all creation Praise God for my longing heart! Praise God for my sacred part in the infinite art… Praise be to the mind of God! Praise be to the mind of God!
Back before the stars were hung, God spoke in His native tongue: symbol and sign. Then the light of the glorious sun unfurled, And in symbol and sign, God wrote the world. All is number… In symbol and sign, God wrote the world.
Fritz Eichenburg: Christ of the Breadlines
• Christian solidarity with the poor and suffering, symbolized by the spirituality of the cross, introduces a “hermeneutic of suspicion” to our experience of the world and its beauties. (52)
“he had no beauty in him”
Van Gogh: Head of a Peasant Woman
• The Christian message is not merely that God is lovely, but that God is love; not merely that God is to be found in the pursuit of what is attractive and desirable in the world, but that God is transcendently and absolutely beautiful and is to be found even in what to the world’s eye is ugly and deformed and unworthy. (523)
Eschatological perspective • Beauty…attains its full meaning only in the light of the final, total order and harmony of God’s kingdom, the triumph of God’s love over the evil, sorrow, and pain, the ugliness and disorder that we now experience in an incomplete and still evolving world. (53)
Fra Angelico: The Transfiguration
Chapter 2: Paradigms in Theology and Art
Michelangelo: David (1504)
Bernini’s David (1624)
Hellenistic realism
realistic not in an ordinary visual sense but in a Platonic sense: its purpose is to portray not what is seen but what is known by faith; not the world of physical appearances, but the world of religious truths; not material objects but spiritual reality. (84)
The “really real” is transcendental. • Hellenistic thought takes a Platonic view – Things of the material world are shadows or images that refer to and to some degree participate in the divine Mind. (97) • Cf. the Parable of the Cave
Duccio di Buoninsegna (fl. 1278–1319) Last Supper
Giotto di Bondone (1267?1337) Last Supper
Caravaggio: The Supper at Emmaus
Diego Velázquez (15991660) Supper at Emmaus
“I think, therefore I am.” • The knowing subject is the starting point of philosophical reflection.
René Descartes
Pierre Auguste Renoir (18411919) The Luncheon of the Boating Party
Vincent van Gogh: Starry Night (1889)
“the structure of the world” • Per Ortega, with Cézanne painting recovers volume and attention to shapes. (92)
Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)
Still Life
The “really real” is transcendental. • Hellenistic thought takes a Platonic view – Things of the material world are shadows or images that refer to and to some degree participate in the divine Mind. (97) • Cf. the Parable of the Cave
From Cézanne onwards, painting paints only ideas. (92) • Cézanne and Gauguin represent a rebellion, based on the conviction that art must be revelatory. (92) Paul Gauguin (18481903)
Spirit of the Dead Watching
The “real” world is invisible • Painting, like music, should devote itself “not to the reproduction of natural phenomena, but to the expression of the artist’s soul.” (93)
Wassily Kandinsky 1866-1944
Composition 6
Piet Mondrian (18721944) Blue Plane
Salvador Dali: Christ of St. John of the Cross
Sacrament of the Last Supper
Edvard Munch (1863-1944) The Scream
Chapter 3: Art as a Theological Text
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) Starry Night (1889)
Art as Locus of the Faith Tradition
Sandro Botticelli (1444?-1510)
Annunciation
Different realms of meaning • Spirituality – Transcendence
• Preaching and worship – Common sense and imagination
• Conceptual theology – Theory and intellectual interiority
• Popular piety and official doctrine
Campin, Robert (1378–1444) Annunciation
Localization conveys theological truth and relevance.
Paolo Veronese (1528-1588) The Feast in the House of Levi
“the sorting out of conflicts within the Christian tradition”
James Christensen: Jonah
The encounter with the plurality of images in the tradition can be liberating insofar as it allows us to imagine differently.
James Tissot: Journey of the Magi (1894)
Edvard Munch: Madonna (1906)
Pictures become an auxiliary text, an interpretive “gloss” that consciously or unconsciously bears a further dimension of message. (143)
Fra Angelico: Crucifixion with Sts. Dominic and Jerome
Art as Visible Reflection of the Divine Beauty and Mystery
Van Gogh: View of Arles with Irises
The Beautiful • is itself a word about God and of God, even when it is not explicitly tied to the sacred. • In sacred art, then, we encounter not only the beauty of the salvific message, but also the beauty of form in general. (1445)
Boticelli: Annunciation
Tradition •
Fra Angelico: The Stoning of St. Stephen
Roman Catholic theology consistently affirms that there is a genuine knowledge of God through creation and human historya selfmanifestation of God attainable independently of explicit biblical revelation. (146)
Not simply sensible pleasure
Matthias Grünewald (Died 1528) The Crucifixion
Limitations of Art as Text and as Revelatory Word • Symbols and representations do not necessarily yield their original meaning easily, even when they have a positive aesthetic or spiritual effect. (157)
Sacramentality vs. Idolatry • The iconoclast controversy highlighted the need to distinguish between sacred art’s sacramentality and the widespread notion of the religious image as the material abode of the deity or repository of divine power.(159)
Sacramentals • Things or acts that are used as aids to the Church’s principle acts of worship and fellowship. (158)
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) The Creation of Man (detail)
• The concreteness and specificity of the work of art are an integral part of its power; but at the same time they can also overdetermine its message.
• Signs may draw attention to themselves as signs, rather that to what they represent. (162)
Antisigns: “The Opiate of the People”
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (18251905) The Thanks Offering
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
By Richard Viladesau Paulist Press, 2000
Chapter 1: God and the Beautiful: Art as a Way to God
Van Gogh: Enclosed Wheatfield with Rising Sun
• Beauty as revelation (cf. Tillich’s Primary Revelation) • Art as the human mediation that both enables and limits its revelatory power (5) (cf. Tillich’s Dependent Revelation)
Unify ing Motif
Thomas ColeThe Connecticut River Near Northhamton
Art • The mind’s apprehension of God – Cf. Tillich’s Subjective Reason
• God’s self revelation through creation (13) – Cf. Tillich’s Objective Reason Paul CezánneMount Saint Victor
Trope: “Revelation: All is Number,” from “The Hidden Sky” Music and Lyrics by Mark Foley
The Hidden Sky is set in a postapocalyptic world where scientific and technological advancement have been outlawed, mathematical computation is a heresy, and seeking knowledge is forbidden, in order to protect humanity from destroying itself again. Ganil, the protagonist, has been recruited by a group of underground scientists who have taught her mathematics. On her own, she discovers a miraculous set of numbers: when rendered graphically, the series creates a particular type of spiral which can be found throughout the natural world. Ganil is completely transformed by her realization that numbers lie beneath all the wonders in the world.
From the numbers comes the series, Comes the ratio, the Golden Mean, The balance and the link between The shapes that form the spiral. A graceful web around me, weaving all around me, Weaving into everything around me A graceful web emerging from a single thread, And the thread is number, a single thread of number.
Passing through me, passing under me and over me and in and out and then around and back again All creation from a single thread, That pulls me in my heart, that passes through my head, That pulls me so I follow where I’m led On from zero into one and moving higher, passing one, two three, and higher still, And higher still, and higher to infinity…
From the spiral in the heavens to the spiral in the seashell, from the swirling of the clouds to the whirling water, in the cabbage and the corn, from the spiral in the seashell to the spiral in the ram’s horn, in the fist, in the ear, on the tip of your finger, all is number. From the leaves of the linden to the needles on the pinetree, in the leaves of the elm and the oak and apple, all is number.
Oh, I must have been sleeping, I must have been sleeping, I must have been sleeping, But I’m wide awake now. In the eye of the spiral, all around me the one great thought, the one great thought, The Absolute, the Truly Real It’s coming out of my head and into my heart, and out of my heart and into my head, coming out of my heart: Nothing is random at all!
Two petals on the nightshade, Three petals on the iris, Five petals on the daisy, All is number All is number
Where there is a pattern, One mind… there is a purpose. There is a pattern! One plan… There is a purpose! An undeniable design One thought… In the spiral in the heavens, yes! In the spiral in the seashell, yes! In the swirling of the clouds and the whirling water, yes! Yes!
Three petals on the iris, All is number, all is five petals on the number. I believe, I buttercup, yes! Eight believe, yes! O, the petals on the daisy, wonder, O the love, the yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!O, law, the Absolute, the the Absolute, the Truly Beautiful, the Real, the Beautiful, the Simplicity, the Simplicity…I believe, passionate creation of I believe, I believe, I God! believe that…
I have seen the face of God! One plan, there is one foundation I believe that I have seen the face of God! One mind, behind all creation Praise God for my longing heart! Praise God for my sacred part in the infinite art… Praise be to the mind of God! Praise be to the mind of God!
Back before the stars were hung, God spoke in His native tongue: symbol and sign. Then the light of the glorious sun unfurled, And in symbol and sign, God wrote the world. All is number… In symbol and sign, God wrote the world.
Fritz Eichenburg: Christ of the Breadlines
• Christian solidarity with the poor and suffering, symbolized by the spirituality of the cross, introduces a “hermeneutic of suspicion” to our experience of the world and its beauties. (52)
“he had no beauty in him”
Van Gogh: Head of a Peasant Woman
• The Christian message is not merely that God is lovely, but that God is love; not merely that God is to be found in the pursuit of what is attractive and desirable in the world, but that God is transcendently and absolutely beautiful and is to be found even in what to the world’s eye is ugly and deformed and unworthy. (523)
Eschatological perspective • Beauty…attains its full meaning only in the light of the final, total order and harmony of God’s kingdom, the triumph of God’s love over the evil, sorrow, and pain, the ugliness and disorder that we now experience in an incomplete and still evolving world. (53)
Fra Angelico: The Transfiguration
Chapter 2: Paradigms in Theology and Art
Michelangelo: David (1504)
Bernini’s David (1624)
Hellenistic realism
realistic not in an ordinary visual sense but in a Platonic sense: its purpose is to portray not what is seen but what is known by faith; not the world of physical appearances, but the world of religious truths; not material objects but spiritual reality. (84)
The “really real” is transcendental. • Hellenistic thought takes a Platonic view – Things of the material world are shadows or images that refer to and to some degree participate in the divine Mind. (97) • Cf. the Parable of the Cave
Duccio di Buoninsegna (fl. 1278–1319) Last Supper
Giotto di Bondone (1267?1337) Last Supper
Caravaggio: The Supper at Emmaus
Diego Velázquez (15991660) Supper at Emmaus
“I think, therefore I am.” • The knowing subject is the starting point of philosophical reflection.
René Descartes
Pierre Auguste Renoir (18411919) The Luncheon of the Boating Party
Vincent van Gogh: Starry Night (1889)
“the structure of the world” • Per Ortega, with Cézanne painting recovers volume and attention to shapes. (92)
Paul Cézanne (1839-1906)
Still Life
The “really real” is transcendental. • Hellenistic thought takes a Platonic view – Things of the material world are shadows or images that refer to and to some degree participate in the divine Mind. (97) • Cf. the Parable of the Cave
From Cézanne onwards, painting paints only ideas. (92) • Cézanne and Gauguin represent a rebellion, based on the conviction that art must be revelatory. (92) Paul Gauguin (18481903)
Spirit of the Dead Watching
The “real” world is invisible • Painting, like music, should devote itself “not to the reproduction of natural phenomena, but to the expression of the artist’s soul.” (93)
Wassily Kandinsky 1866-1944
Composition 6
Piet Mondrian (18721944) Blue Plane
Salvador Dali: Christ of St. John of the Cross
Sacrament of the Last Supper
Edvard Munch (1863-1944) The Scream
Chapter 3: Art as a Theological Text
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) Starry Night (1889)
Art as Locus of the Faith Tradition
Sandro Botticelli (1444?-1510)
Annunciation
Different realms of meaning • Spirituality – Transcendence
• Preaching and worship – Common sense and imagination
• Conceptual theology – Theory and intellectual interiority
• Popular piety and official doctrine
Campin, Robert (1378–1444) Annunciation
Localization conveys theological truth and relevance.
Paolo Veronese (1528-1588) The Feast in the House of Levi
“the sorting out of conflicts within the Christian tradition”
James Christensen: Jonah
The encounter with the plurality of images in the tradition can be liberating insofar as it allows us to imagine differently.
James Tissot: Journey of the Magi (1894)
Edvard Munch: Madonna (1906)
Pictures become an auxiliary text, an interpretive “gloss” that consciously or unconsciously bears a further dimension of message. (143)
Fra Angelico: Crucifixion with Sts. Dominic and Jerome
Art as Visible Reflection of the Divine Beauty and Mystery
Van Gogh: View of Arles with Irises
The Beautiful • is itself a word about God and of God, even when it is not explicitly tied to the sacred. • In sacred art, then, we encounter not only the beauty of the salvific message, but also the beauty of form in general. (1445)
Boticelli: Annunciation
Tradition •
Fra Angelico: The Stoning of St. Stephen
Roman Catholic theology consistently affirms that there is a genuine knowledge of God through creation and human historya selfmanifestation of God attainable independently of explicit biblical revelation. (146)
Not simply sensible pleasure
Matthias Grünewald (Died 1528) The Crucifixion
Limitations of Art as Text and as Revelatory Word • Symbols and representations do not necessarily yield their original meaning easily, even when they have a positive aesthetic or spiritual effect. (157)
Sacramentality vs. Idolatry • The iconoclast controversy highlighted the need to distinguish between sacred art’s sacramentality and the widespread notion of the religious image as the material abode of the deity or repository of divine power.(159)
Sacramentals • Things or acts that are used as aids to the Church’s principle acts of worship and fellowship. (158)
Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) The Creation of Man (detail)
• The concreteness and specificity of the work of art are an integral part of its power; but at the same time they can also overdetermine its message.
• Signs may draw attention to themselves as signs, rather that to what they represent. (162)
Antisigns: “The Opiate of the People”
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (18251905) The Thanks Offering
Karl Marx (1818-1883)
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