I need someone who is good in Humanites and has read The Great Gatsby?

APPENDIX A

“A Blank Stare or Active Engagement? Toward a Christian Approach to the Arts”

By

C. Scott Shidemantle, Ph.D.1

Introduction

I remember one of the first times that I visited the Carnegie Art Museum in the Oakland section

of Pittsburgh. As I browsed the various rooms, observing people looking pensively at the

various works of art hanging on the walls, this question went through my mind: “What am I

supposed to do while I’m here? Should I just sit and contemplate each piece with a blank stare

like many of the other people in the room seemed to be doing? And, if so, what should I

contemplate? Should I contemplate the brush strokes? Should I try to get into the head of the

original artist who produced the piece? Should I focus on how the artwork ‘makes me feel’?” I

felt like I needed some guidance! These questions became even more profound when I began to

add to them the issue of whether or not my Christian faith should or should not interact in some

way with my experience with the arts.

Perhaps you have had similar experiences. The purpose of this brief essay is to give some

reflections on what art “is” and what art “does,” and to propose some ideas on how you as a

Christian might engage art meaningfully—beyond simply the “blank stare” approach.

Situating Art in the Cultural Mandate

After creating Adam and Eve, God instructed them to, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill

the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air…” (Genesis 1:28

NIV). This “filling” of the earth with humans, and cultivating the creation by drawing out its

potential through developing it, is called by theologians “the Cultural Mandate.”

What is the “Cultural Mandate”? Simply put, it is the call on all human beings to link together

with shared values to communally cultivate God’s creation in God-honoring ways.

Generally speaking, how does the Cultural Mandate relate to “art” and the call to some to be

artists? We might say that art, and the call to be an artist, is “creational.” That is, God built into

particular humans the ability to create “art” as one of the means by which we create and sustain

human culture. In fact, we find that in the subsequent chapters of Genesis, where the playing

out of the Cultural Mandate is portrayed, there are references to individuals who initiated various

types of artistic expression. For example, there are Jubal (the father of music; Genesis 4:21) and

Tubal-Cain (the father of metal working; Genesis 4:22). Behind the first of these two individuals

we can perhaps picture in our minds groups of humans gathered together to hear music played on

lyre and flute for the first time and being drawn together by that shared experience. This shared

experience served to forge a “link,” or a shared “culture,” between those humans.

1 C. Scott Shidemantle (Ph.D. Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Th.M. Princeton Theological Seminary,

M.Div. Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary) is Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Geneva College. He

enjoys Mozart, Maynard Ferguson and the O.C. Supertones—in addition to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

We know that the Cultural Mandate did not go away after the Fall. To illustrate this point, the

words of the Cultural Mandate are repeated after God judged the world by means of the Flood.

God instructed Noah, when he and his sons went forth from the Ark after the Flood receded, to

once again link themselves together with shared values to communally draw potential from

creation in words very similar to the language of Genesis 1:28: “As for you, be fruitful and

increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it” (Genesis 9:7 NIV).

While the Cultural Mandate is not withdrawn after the Fall, it is true that after the Fall we

humans have the tendency to “do” culture in all kinds of distorted ways. If one were to focus on

the main verbs of the Cultural Mandate (being fruitful, increasing in number, filling the earth,

and subduing the earth), we could easily identify many different ways from our own experience

how each of these commands are distorted in our own culture. The arts, which portray and

convey culture, are not exempt from this reality.

The Fourfold Cultural Function of the Arts

If God created the arts and has gifted and called some to be artists, then how specifically do the

arts connect with the Cultural Mandate? The Christian writer William D. Romanowski argues

that there are at least four culture-building and culture-sustaining functions of the arts

(Romanowski, 2007, pp. 94-99), which we will examine below.

Communicating the Values of a Culture.

Art has the power to communicate the various values and assumptions of a culture. If you look

at art, including popular art like movies and television, values are communicated from the artist

to the audience. A “value” is a strongly held approach to life. For example, many American

films portray the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” approach to life. Examples of this might

be found in movies like Flashdance, Rocky, and even the more recent 2006 movie The Pursuit of

Happyness. In each of these examples, the main character faces all kinds of odds in life, and

through their own sheer fortitude and hard work, they overcome the odds and triumph. This

pattern is repeated over and over again in American films—only the characters’ names change.

Perhaps you can think of other examples of this pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps value in

film.

Since the Fall, the shared values that hold together cultures tend to be distorted forms of the

values portrayed in Scripture—values like justice, chastity, and respect for other humans because

they are created in the image of God. In art, many of these values are portrayed vividly, but they

often are a pale reflection, in some way, of their full-orbed articulation in Scripture.

Social and Cultural Criticism.

Art has the power to critique societal ills that need to be addressed. The popular movie Mean

Girls, starring Lindsay Lohan, is a social critique of the value that junior high and senior high

girls place on a form of popularity based on social class, appearance, and dress rather than on

character. The powerful movie Remember the Titans, starring Denzel Washington, is a

commentary on the explicit racism of the early 1970’s and the struggles of one southern town to

deal with this racism in the context of an integrated football team. The power of human

friendship, even across racial divides, is communicated through the film—most poignant in the

closing scene as the team is gathered around a coffin in the cemetery.

Even after the Fall, humans still retain a sense that things are not quite right in this world.

Because of the Fall, however, our answers to why things are not quite right are not always

accurate. Our answers are normally only partial and not all-encompassing, and more often than

not simply distorted. But, sometimes just the recognition of what’s wrong with the world, and a

work of popular art’s recognition of this, can be a powerful and true observation—one that can

challenge us as Christians.

Providing for Social Unity.

Art has the power to create a sense of unity around the subject matter. If you were to walk into a

room and say “Live long and prosper” most people would know exactly what you mean! These

are the words of Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame. Even if you walked in the room and instead of

saying those words, you held up your hand, palm outward, and spread your ring finger and

middle finger, most would know that you are making the characteristic Vulcan welcome gesture.

The phenomenon of trekkies is an example of a form of social unity that the television series, and

the subsequent movie series, created. Perhaps you can think of some other examples of this:

“Quack, Quack, Quack” refers to the Mighty Ducks movie series. As a college professor,

sometimes I find myself in the classroom asking a question, not receiving any responses from the

students, and then repeating the words “Anyone, Anyone, Anyone, Bueller” and having the

students react in laughter knowing full well that I have just made an allusion to the movie Ferris

Bueller’s Day Off. This is not just a phenomenon of the popular arts, but is it also a phenomenon

of the arts more broadly defined. Perhaps you can think of some examples.

Since the Fall, even this powerful use of the arts tends to be distorted. False and temporary

senses of social unity can be created—and social unity can be created around values that are not

biblical or that cause that social unity to go in directions of destruction and distortedness.

Pornography is a form of “radically distorted art” that can cause this kind of destructive social

unity—as sub-cultures are forged around distorted forms of pleasure and the objectifying of

other humans in ways that demean them as precious humans created in the image of God.

Because of this effect, we should indeed question whether pornography should even be classified

as “art,” even as some pornographers have wanted to label it as such.

Contributing to the Collective Memory.

Art has the power to cause the audience to recall a shared experience and bring meaning to that

shared experience. As someone born in the mid-sixties, I have never been able to relate to those

older than me when they say, “I remember where I was when JFK was assassinated.” I was not

born yet! But, I could perceive that when the conversation came up, people could draw on their

shared memories of where they were, and that shared experience became quite powerful. Since

911, however, I can relate to the phenomenon that earlier generations experienced when they

talked about where they were with JFK was assassinated, or where they were when Pearl Harbor

was bombed, etc. The recent series of movies related to 911, including Twin Towers, have

contributed to causing us as Americans remember the events of that very difficult day in 2001.

Since the Fall, we can tend to distort history and perhaps even give it a “message” that is

contrary to reality. For example, the movie The Patriot, starring Mel Gibson, who plays the role

of a southern plantation owner transformed into leader on the side of the colonies in the

Revolutionary War, has a scene in which a southern African American slave, fighting for the

colonies, comes to realize along with one of his white fellow soldiers that he has fought the

required one year in order to win his freedom. In a poignant scene, one southern white solder

expresses that he is honored to serve along side his fellow African American patriot on the field

of battle. The problem, historically, with this scene is that in reality most southern African

Americans fought on the side of the British during the Revolutionary War because slavery was

still practiced in the American south and in Great Britain at the time slavery had been abolished!

The scene is historically distorted, whether intentionally or unintentionally, to portray an

abhorrence of slavery in a context in which, unfortunately, slavery was tolerated and even

embraced!

Art as a Map of Reality—a “Worldview”

Romanowski has argued that art is a crucial aspect of sustaining culture. In addition, to push the

culture sustaining aspect of art further, he goes on to argue that art, including the popular arts, are

a “map of reality” (Romanowski, 2007, p. 89). That is, he argues that in any work of art, the

artist intends to reflect a world that exists behind the work of art. In other words, the artist is

driven to portray “the way she thinks things are” or “the way she thinks things should be” in the

world that she has created in the artwork itself. Art is, therefore, more than simply colors on a

canvas, or actors on the screen, or the materials that make up a sculpture. Art speaks to the

artist’s view of the world—a perspective on reality—that the artist has built into the very fabric

of her artwork. We call this “perspective on reality” one’s “worldview.” Any “worldview,”

including a Christian worldview, answers four specific questions about reality. These four

worldview questions are behind the world created by the artist, and normally can be discerned by

analyzing the work of art.

What is the nature of the world?

The artist who creates a work of art presumes a view on the nature of the world. In part, the

artist expresses what she sees to be the ordering principle depicted in and through her work of

art? On the one hand, the artist can present a world that is created and sustained by God and

therefore has purpose. This can be done without even mentioning God explicitly, but by

appealing to order—that there is a way that things should be. There should be justice in the

world, faithfulness, love; a way things should be. Or, on the other hand, the artist can present a

world that is chaotic—there is no purpose to this order-less word. Do you see elements of order

in the work of art or is there disorder?

What is wrong with the world?

The artist who creates a work of art presumes that there is something wrong with the world. In

the words of the Danny Glover character in the movie Grand Canyon, “This ain’t the way that

things are supposed to be.” Works of art may explore both the identification of what is wrong

with the world and the source of what is wrong with the world. Very often, works of art either

by-pass this issue or trivialize what is wrong with the world.

What is the remedy for the world?

In addition, works of art may also explore what the remedy is for what is wrong with the world.

Perhaps the answer is “education” or “more taxes” or something else. In the movie Titanic, the

main character Jack, himself, becomes “the remedy” for everything that is wrong in Rose’s. In

fact, at a crucial point in the film, Rose says about Jack: “You have saved me in every possible

way.” In Titanic, human love replaces the need for reconciliation for God, thus resulting in a

humanistic understanding of the remedy for what is wrong with the world.

Where are things heading in the future?

Lastly, often, behind a work of art there exists some vision for where the world is heading. What

will the future look like? Is there a telos or end-goal to world history? Often, this worldview

issue is also not addressed or is even trivialized—living for the “now” alone is the subject of

many works of popular art.

The Dynamic Relationship between Common Grace & Antithesis

Life in this fallen world is a mishmash of good and bad, wholeness and brokenness, clarity and

distortedness. What do I mean by this paradoxical statement? Well, on the one hand, I can

imagine myself being much more evil than I am—more evil in terms of behavior, more broken in

terms of the different areas of my life, and more distorted in the way I think about this world.

But, on the other hand, I can imagine living my life with more goodness in the way I behave,

with more wholeness in the way that I live my life in light of Christ’s Kingship, and with more

clarity in my thinking in terms of a worldview informed by Christian assumptions.

The Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper argued that a particular form of God’s grace is at work

in the world to sustain it—even amongst non-Christians. This form of grace is called “common

grace.” Common grace is different from what we might call “Saving Grace,” which is directed

only toward those who come to faith and trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Common

grace is directed toward Christian and non-Christian alike.

Common Grace.

There is a negative and positive aspect to common grace. On the positive side, God gives gifts

and talents to Christian and non-Christian alike. This reality is reflected in passages of Scripture

like Matthew 5:45 where we are told that the Lord permits the sun to shine and the rain to pour

on the righteous and the unrighteous alike, without distinction. The implication here is that both

the righteous and the unrighteous enjoy God’s gracious gifts, of all sorts, in this world. The

same sun and the same rain cause both the Christian farmer’s and the non-Christian farmer’s

crops to grow.

The reality of common grace allows me to go to the pharmacist and purchase a prescription

without being concerned to know that the scientists who developed my medication was or was

not a Christian. Why? Because you don’t have to be a Christian to be a scientist who specializes

in the production of medication that works. God has given the gifts and talents necessary for

Christian and non-Christians alike to serve in the medical arts field, which results in the

development of helpful medication that preserve life.

How does this idea of common grace relate to the arts? A non-Christian artist, who has received

his or her gifts and talents from God, is able to create art that fulfills one or more of the cultural

functions of art that we discussed earlier in this essay. I do not know, for example, if those

involved with the production of Remember the Titans were Christians, but they certainly

understood how to portray something true as they produced a film that powerfully challenges us

all, Christian and non-Christian alike, to ask where in the recesses of our hears and minds we

might retain a remnant (or even more than a remnant!) of racist and prejudiced attitudes toward

others.

Antithesis of First Principles.

While it is true that non-Christians can indeed discover truth in this world through the use of

their gifts and talents, it is also true that Christians and non-Christians have radically opposing

starting points or assumptions or “first principles” that undergird the use of their gifts and talents.

We can appeal to Remember the Titans again to illustrate the concept of antithesis of first

principles. While it is true that Remember the Titans, through common grace, functions

extremely powerfully as social and cultural criticism as it identifies a problem in our culture that

is absolutely real, the answers that it gives to how to solve the problem is incomplete and anemic

at best. Remember the Titans seems to make the point that the way to solve racism may simply

be to raise Rodney King’s question “Why can’t we all just get along?” or perhaps the solution is

just to hang out more. Now, we must acknowledge that both of these “solutions” have some

degree of validity and are perhaps part of the solution. But, in the end, as solutions they are

quite anemic and powerless to address a much deeper problem that comes from our Christian

assumptions about the nature of humanity. Neither of these two solutions addresses the reality of

my cold, dead, broken mind and heart that harbors distrust of others unlike myself and the

tendency to think of people in terms of us and them. The solution, at the personal level at least,

involves the radical need for a changed heart. So, at the heart of it, is at least the question of the

difference between a biblical view of sinful humans contrasted with a Western secular view of

humans who are neutral if not innately good.

The Interaction of Common Grace and Antithesis.

As we turn our attention to a Christian engagement of the arts, we can explain what we do as

making observations on a work of art based on the dynamic interplay between common grace

and the antithesis of first principles. In other words, we simply ask two questions: 1) what truths

are expressed in this work of art, and 2) what assumptions that stand behind the work of art

might be different from a biblically informed set of assumptions?

We can illustrate these two questions by once again appealing to Remember the Titans. On the

one hand (common grace), Remember the Titans grasps the reality of racism and prejudice in

American culture and it is a call to explore the extent to which it might be present in our lives

today. On the other hand (antithesis), Remember the Titans, perhaps trivializes the extent to

which humans have fallen and fails to explore the need for a radical heart and mind

transformation in order for an individual to overcome what is a distorted pattern of thinking and

behavior toward others of a different race.

The Arts and Aesthetics

What are aesthetics? Aesthetics has to do with the sensory-emotional appeal that a work of art

elicits from its audience. In other words, as one’s senses (hearing, sight, touch, etc.) experience a

work of art, what emotional response does it evoke?

Aesthetics and the question of beauty is highly controversial, even among

Christian art critics. Some, like H. R. Rookmaaker (1994) have argued that

most forms of modern art are not really “art” because they fail to utilize the

structures of art properly. Rookmaaker’s book title illustrates his sharp

criticism of modern art: Modern Art and the Death of a Culture. Others

argue that modern art is indeed art, because even in the seemingly

unstructured work of Jackson Pollack, who hung paint cans from ropes

hovering over a large canvas and swung the paint cans back and forth to

produce a design, there was “structure” to it. Structure was found in the fact

that gravity and pendulum forces were at work in the production of his

artwork and therefore structure was indeed an ingredient of Pollack’s

creativity. For the purpose of this essay, we must leave some of this argument aside and move

on to more practical concerns.

How do we “judge” a work of art’s aesthetic appeal? One way to do so is by employing an age-

old system that is listed in the Figure One.2

Whenever we engage a work of art, whether it is a love song, or a painting, or a novel, or a

poem, or a building, or a symphony, we examine it with the topics of these aesthetic elements in

mind. Posing these topics as questions (What is the subject? What are the elements?) allows us

to discover and to analyze the work on our own. These elements help us to discover interesting

features of all kinds of art and gives us something to say about even the most unappealing works.

Let us look at each of these categories.

Subject

Sometimes it seems very obvious to ask, “What is the subject of this art work?” or “What is it?”

On the one hand the subject may be clearly named as in a portrait; on the other hand there may

be no apparent subject as in some orchestral music. Nevertheless, establishing what the art work

is or what it is about is the first step in appreciating its qualities. How many times have you tried

2 Figure One is adapted from an already existing anonymous essay found in a Summer 2007 Geneva

College HMT 411 Syllabus.

Figure One “Aesthetic Elements”

Subject

Content

Source

Function

Medium

Elements

Organization

Style

Evaluation

a new TV show or gone to a particular movie just because someone told you, “It’s about a

disastrous avalanche,” or “It’s the story of a man who thinks he’s invisible.”

Content

Having identified the subject, content is the second topic to ask: “What does this art work say

about its subject?” What kind of man does that portrait of John Calvin depict? What kind of

God can be worshiped in that space? The subject of the poem Cherrylog Road by James Dickey

is sex in wrecks; the content is the message that sex wrecks. If an Impressionist painting, like

one of Monet’s, has, as its subject, the play of light on water, what does the painting say about

how we perceive that moment?

Source

The artist in his/her time and place always interests me more than other components of the

model. Who made this? Has the artist “signed” it, or is it a work from the “period of…” or

“school of….?” What has the artist drawn on for inspiration? Personal experience? History?

The Bible or faith? Contemporary culture? Imagination? Other works of art? What in the

artist’s own time period has influenced the work? The Civil Rights movement? Religious

warfare? New scientific discoveries? Freudian psychology?

Function

Function, utility, use. What is the function? I can hear some of you muttering, “Stupid question,

none of this artsy stuff is of any use”; and, of course, you’re sometimes right. Where a building

may have a utilitarian function – like the medieval cathedrals for worship and community

education, music and painting and poetry are not useful in that sense of function. But function

can also be understood as the effect the work has on the viewer or reader or listener and his/her

community. This makes a much more interesting question: “What is the effect that this has on

me? What associations and connections does this stir up in me?” Generations of viewers have

been moved by Michelangelo’s Pieta; the political opinions of a nation have been influenced by

Picasso’s Guernica. I weep every time I read John Donne’s poem “Batter my heart three-

personed God.”

Medium

Is not medium a funny word, with lots of related meanings! In the arts, the medium comes in

between – between the artist’s idea and the audience or viewer or listener. In another sense,

medium generally means the material a work is made from. Words are the medium of literature;

sounds are the medium of music; paint is a medium, and clay is a medium; the stage is a

medium. Medium is both material and the means of expression. But it is hard to separate the

medium from the meaning in some works. It is also difficult to separate the medium from our

experience of the art work. Some artists would say that the medium itself is the meaning of their

work; the medium is certainly part of the inspiration.

Elements

An emotional response to an art work may be sufficient, but sometimes we want to share our

enthusiasm or dislike for a piece with others. In that case, it is helpful to be able to describe the

details, qualities, or properties of the composition to substantiate what we have felt. Elements

are different for different mediums, but they help to answer the question, “How has the artist

achieved the result?” Elements include, for example, plot and characterization in literature,

rhythm and pitch in music, color and line in painting.

Organization

Another word for organization is structure. How have the elements been arranged? Even

apparent disorder is usually the result of a deliberate choice on the artist’s part – a plan. Maybe

there’s a center of gravity in a sculpture, around which the other masses are shaped. Perhaps

there’s an eight measure theme in the fugue. Sometimes poets choose a set structure, like a

sonnet, as a challenging constraint.

Style

Do you have a favorite musical group? When you catch a snatch of a new song by one of your

favorites, don’t you recognize it instantly as a new work by that group? Why do you recognize

its source, even if you’ve never heard it before? They have a certain “style” or personality that is

identifiable, don’t they!

In artistic terms, style has three interconnected levels; each gives plenty of scope for talking

about style. The first level is the signature of the individual artist: his/her characteristic turn of

phrase or melodic cadence or favorite colors. Because people develop over time, this style can

change and develop, too. Picasso, for instance, has a period when he uses primarily a blue pallet.

Personality is only one level of the style of a work, though, because contemporary attitudes and

ideas affect an artist’s style as well. This is why we can talk about the second level of style -

historical style - like “rococo” interior design or impressionist painting. Picasso, although he

could paint in a realist or an impressionist style, experimented with cubism – a new style which

most of us now associate with Picasso.

Finally, there are centuries-old continua of artistic styles that transcend individual and cultural

styles but are important for us to notice—the classical, romantic continuum, for instance. The

clean and mathematical proportions of classical Greek architecture and other artistic works with

idealized human figures or clear, logical structures have long been associated with the ancient

Greeks and called “classical.” When artists experiment with more free-form, with outside the

lines forms and with emotions, they produce works at the other end of that style continuum – the

romantic style.

Evaluation

What makes any work of art aesthetically “good” or “beautiful”? Sometimes we look

disparagingly at a painting and say, “My three year old could have painted that,” even though the

abstract in question is hanging in the Carnegie Museum of Art. This is a vexing question without

an easy answer. Part of our answer must be the way that we respond to the worldview expressed

behind the art as well as the conclusions that we can draw from the antithesis that we see

between our Christian assumptions and the assumptions of the artist.

Pulling Things Together: How do I engage the arts as a Christian?

So, how do I engage the arts Christianly? After all, this was the purpose of this essay! We can

boil it down to the following three steps or categories.

1. By asking the Four Worldview Questions.

You can begin by asking how the world behind the work of art. Does it clearly or even subtlety

answer the four worldview questions: 1) what is the nature of the world, 2) what’s wrong with

the world, 3) what is the remedy to what’s wrong with the world, and 4) where are things

heading in the future?

2. By analyzing the Interplay between Common Grace and Antithesis.

Next, you can ask the following two questions of the work of art that you are exploring: 1) what

truth is conveyed in the work of art, and 2) are there assumptions behind the work of art that

might be different from our Christian assumptions?

3. By exploring the Aesthetic Features.

Last, you can employ the aesthetic elements to your analysis of the work of art. Now you’re

done!

Please recognize that while we have presented these as three self-contained categories of

questions, there may indeed be overlap between the three categories. Don’t be frustrated by that.

Please see that as part of the amazing reality of exploring art as a cultural function of God’s

marvelous Creation Mandate.

An Aside: When Does Art Cease to Be Art?

In our day and age, with the kinds of freedom that we experience in our culture, we have seen the

proliferation of pornography, in part due to its increasing availability. One exclamation uttered

by a student who encountered nudes in classical art, such as Michelangelo’s David, was “This is

pornography!”

So, when does art move from being truly “art” to being “pornography”? This is an important

question, especially considering that for many in our culture, mostly men who are more visually

driven than women, struggle with this area of life. An important way to frame this question is to

do so with sensitivity, by acknowledging that as a covenantal- and community-driven faith, and

not as an individualistic lone-wolf faith, we need to have a concern for those in our midst that

may more easily stumble when they encounter nude visual art like Michaelangelo’s David.

While retaining a commitment to sensitivity, we must ask this question: is there a difference

between the work of Hugh Heffner’s Playboy and Michalangelo’s David? Can we conclude that

one is art and the other clearly is not? If this conclusion is correct, then what is the difference

between Heffner and Michelangelo?

Colin Gunton (1993) is informative at this point. In his book The One, The Three and The Many,

which is a description of God as Trinity, Gunton argues for a definition of art that draws its

meaning from a focus on God as Trinity. God is Trinitarian—when God created humanity, the

text says, “Let us make God in our own image.” The Father, Son and Holy Spirit mysteriously

took counsel with Himself and created man. There are parallels between God’s Trinitarian

creation of humans (and the rest of the universe for that matter) and a human beings “creation”

of a work of art. In Gunton’s analysis, art is never meant to be solely an individualistic

endeavor. Art functions as a cultural phenomenon that relationally draws people together to

form culture—to reflect real ethical living in relationship with other humans. Art has a cultural

purpose—meaning that it should be experienced in community with others, not by an individual

in a solitary place. He argues that to engage the arts in a way that is faithful to God’s intention

for them is to engage in the arts together with others—as God engaged in creation in Trinitarian

relationship. This means that a personal encounter with a novel must never remain simply you

and the novel for it to be a full-orbed artistic encounter. You need an interpretive community of

at least one other person with whom to talk about that novel. It is at this point that Gunton

makes this astute observation in a footnote of his book: "Somewhere in this area is the answer to

the question of where the portrayal of the erotic degenerates into pornography” (Gunton, 1993, p.

176). The implication for Gunton is that art’s function is to draw people together in relationship

with one another but pornography’s function is to isolate people by sending them into a dark

quiet room for reasons of selfish, personal satisfaction. And, this is the expressed purpose of

pornography. Interestingly enough, pornography is normally sold or available in out-of-the-way

locations either behind the counter or in an adult-only bookstore, which serves to illustrate how it

serves to isolate people rather than draw them together to joyfully explore God’s world.

As we turn our attention back to Michelangelo’s David, we might ask what Michelangelo’s

purpose was in producing this work of art. Was it to isolate individuals in the darkness of a back

room or was it in some way to draw an interpretive community together to explore one of the

four cultural functions of art that we presented earlier in this essay?

Certainly much more could be written on this particular point of differentiating art from

pornography. Gunton’s book is a great place to start.

Works Cited

Gunton, Colin E. (1993). The One, The Three, and The Many. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Romanowski, William D. (2007). Eyes Wide Open: Looking for God in Popular Culture.

Revised and Expanded Edition. Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press.

Rookmaaker, H. R. (1994). Modern Art and the Death of a Culture. Reprint Edition. Wheaton,

IL: Crossway Books.