Art, Beauty and God: On the Religious Significance of Art
In his Letter to Artists, John Paul II (1999) explores the analogical relationship between man as craftsman and God as Creator. Drawing from the mandate given by God to man to have dominion over himself and the earth (Gen. 1:28), the artist enjoys a certain, though limited, participation in God’s creative action. While this mandate can be applied to mankind generally, the artist has a particular vocation: to disclose themselves by way of imprinting their own self upon an external object. It is in this particular context that John Paul II (1999) speaks of the transcendentals: the artist has a special vocation towards beauty insofar as he is called to pursue beauty for its own sake.
John Paul II (1999), however, argues that the artist’s vocation takes upon a Christological dimension. Through the incarnation of God—Beauty himself—into matter, the worlds of faith and art are brought together. Hence, John Paul II (1999) argues that “if the Son of God had come into the world of visible realities—his humanity building a bridge between the visible and the invisible— then, by analogy, a representation of the mystery could be used, within the logic of signs, as a sensory evocation of the mystery” (n. 7). Illustrating the unfolding of this incarnational understanding of art throughout the history of the Church and the Western world, he argues for the mutual interdependence of art and the Church.
In this essay I shall defend John Paul II’s position: art has an inherently religious significance which finds its greatest fulfilment in Christian culture.
The fact that art often takes upon a religious significance is generally accepted even by most secular thinkers. However, to say that art has an inherently religious significance presupposes that it always and everywhere has some kind of reference towards the Divine. This can be demonstrated by way of Thomistic metaphysics: art is directed to Beauty-as-such, but God is Beauty-as-such, art therefore must be directed to God in some way. This follows from a more general understanding of Being and the transcendentals: every thing which exists has some kind of analogical participation in Being, which in its purest form is God.
Thomistic philosophy would argue that “goodness and beauty are really the same, and differ only in idea” (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Part I, Q. 5, A. 1). John Paul II (1999), on the other hand, understood that “beauty is the visible form of the good, just as the good is the metaphysical condition of beauty” (n. 3). If we are to take this metaphysical framework to its logical conclusion, we can see that because God is being (and therefore goodness) itself, and beauty is the visible form of goodness, we can say that God is Beauty itself. And because the artist is called to pursue beauty for its own sake, then it follows that the artist has some connection towards God.
What about the Catholic Church? Christianity is one of the few religions in the world which posit a real union of the human and divine natures in the same Divine person. God really becomes man, and in doing so elevates the visible world. For this reason, the Church has judged it permissible to depict God visually insofar as Jesus Christ—the “image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15)—is concerned.
The mystery of the Incarnation changed the way people viewed both human dignity and materiality vis-a-vis its Creator. Not only does God descend to man, but man ascends to God. For this reason, the Church became one of history’s most prolific patrons of the arts in its various forms: visual art, sacred music, and even literature. John Paul II (1999) acknowledges that the Church is not strictly necessary for there to be good art as such; nevertheless, art is perfected in the supernatural order by the Church, insofar as a renewed awareness of the spiritual significance of matter has been brought forth by the Catholic faith.
Some may object that not all art is ordered towards God insofar as there is evil art. A quick glance at modern art unveils certain perversions: sexual degeneracy, blasphemy, and the inversion of the human order. How can something so offensive to the Divine maintain a certain relation with Him? Nevertheless, even bad art—insofar as it attempts to approximate beauty—has a certain intentionality towards the Divine, although marred with various errors. Saint Thomas understood that an evil thing is not evil insofar as it has being, but insofar as it has a certain privation of a due good (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Part I, Q. 5, A. 3). For this reason even evil art, insofar as it possesses some level of being, has a real relation to the Divine and therefore has an inherently religious significance.
It is also true that many atheistic countries produce works of art—and good ones at that—without having any religious affiliation. However, man’s vocation towards transcendence is so ingrained into his nature that he cannot avoid searching for the Transcendent, i.e., God. The lack of formal religious affiliation does not take away from what John Paul II (1999) called the “‘spirituality’ of artistic service” (n. 4), although it certainly impoverishes its expression. Even a professed materialist cannot but be taken away by the proportional transcendence of a beautiful sculpture or a harmonious sequence.
Nevertheless, John Paul II’s letter to artists is by no means a comprehensive treatise. It does not delve into popular artistic culture (or even meme culture) as it does into the fine arts. These lower art forms certainly have some intentionality towards the Transcendent. But does Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” have the same spiritual value as Bach’s “Arioso”? Can there be a normative evaluation of artistic beauty beyond mere sensory response? These questions remain crucial in a century where the “art industry,” as they call it, seems to have betrayed the artist’s original vocation for “the search for empty glory or the craving for cheap popularity, and [. . .] by the calculation of some possible profit” (John Paul II, 1999, n. 4).
References
Aquinas, T. (1920). Summa Theologiae (Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Trans.). Benziger Brothers.
John Paul II. (1999). Letter to artists. Libreria Editrice Vaticana.
