This is the redeemed imagination podcast, a podcast, of the
Anselm Society on re enchanting the church.
Hello, welcome back to the redeemed.
Imagination podcast. This is Brian Brown and I'm
excited to share with you the next in an ongoing series of
bonus content drawn from our 2019 imagination, redeemed
conference in Colorado Springs. If you like to Attend the
conference next year, you can learn more at Imagination,
redeemed.com imagination, redeemed is a gathering of
people who long for God's Mysteries to be illuminated more
clearly on the stage of our world to find his handiwork
everywhere to see his people filled with the kind of stories
songs and ideas that awaken them to their parts in the great
drama. In 2019, we focused our
conversation on three acts. The first was corporate worship
and sacred art. The second, the life of the
church and art created for it. The third, the sacred theater of
art for a non-Christian audience in that third act, the Perpetual
rehearsal of God's drama concludes as we bring the gospel
to the world. As we take the sacred theater
outside the church into the Fallen World As We Live and
create in the ruins doing full Justice to their darkness.
And to the light, that will swallow it up.
We bring the Divine to the ordinary because there's No,
such thing as ordinary. Our speaker for this portion was
Junius Johnson. Professor of historical theology
at Baylor University My talk today is going to have five
parts. There's an overture and then a
for movement Symphony, and there are some Tempo markings and
things that will indicate to you as we go into various parts as
well. So bear with me over sure.
Like in the ruins My Point of Departure is a famous line
industrious Keys, the idiot Beauty will save the world.
What sort of people do? We have to be both to come up
with this thought and to be entranced by it.
The answer these questions is to set out on a diagnostic of
culture. First, Let It Be noted that this
notion that beauty will save the world is only compelling for
those who feel that the world is in need of Salvation, it would
be a non-starter for the denizens of Heaven.
Unless it were a world other than their own that were to be
saved. We confess by are very
attraction to this saying that we are whatever else we may be a
people of longing. Briefly, our whole notion of
beauty is founded upon longing. For The Human Experience of
beauty is nothing other than a moment in which a creature we
encounter reminds us of God. It is nostalgia, in the
etymological sense, a longing for home and it is possible,
even though we have never seen that home because our home is
indelibly, written on our hearts, Children born in Exile,
know that they are Exiles and to the extent that they do not
reject who they really are the home.
They never knew Burns in their hearts and summons them with
pounding waves of sorrow and yearning.
And so we learned that we are Exiles and the eyes, we lift to
the hills, searching for salvation are red and puffy with
crying and weary with staring into the distance straining for
any sign of Hope. But this is only half of the
power of that, quote, the other half stems from mysterious way.
The world Beauty itself affects us.
We hear this word industrious Keys, famous phrase, We Come,
perhaps, as close as we ever do to feeling with dependencies,
felt when mr. Beaver, Whispers Aslan is on the
move. This means the beauty is no
stranger to us. It is Elusive and insufficiently
common but we know it and we love it and we want it.
And it is really on this point that the entire interpretation
of this passage depends. Let's pass it has often been
understood, especially when taken out of context is usually,
is as a call to aestheticism, who will worship of Art For
Art's Sake, if we make and consume beautiful things, we
will find Salvation. But this is a domestication of
this passage for by rendering the beautiful something under
human control by making it the result of what we can make and a
product, we can consume we hide from the Transcendent
magnificence that threatens at every moment, to break over our
lives like a mighty wave. But note how this domestication
was accomplished. It is precisely by Shifting.
The Thing referred to by the word beauty to something
internal to the creaturely world.
The products of our own hands or the creatures we see around us
but these are beautiful in a derivative sets.
They are beautiful because they are like God what is really
gripping Us in those moments is the Divine they remind us of
This error then does not just domesticate the passage.
It also abuses it by turning that which is to be the occasion
for worship of God into the object of worship itself.
The beauty that gives our hearts like the name of Aslan is not a
beautiful creature. No one on being first arrested,
by this remarkable claim Beauty will save the world thinks that
a beautiful human or a beautiful Symphony will as beautiful, save
the world. Nothing that is merely.
One thing in this Splendid Cosmos can save it for nothing
in the cosmos is proportioned to the cosmos and power.
The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
No, it is the beauty these things point to a Transcendent
and dangerous beauty that will save the world.
The reference another quote from the idiot.
This beauty can turn the world upside down because it made the
world in the first place, it can save the world because it is
greater than the world. So, let us gather these thoughts
into a coherent image. It is not the case that we fall,
like, in the rolling fields of bliss, stopping to pluck a
flower whose subtle beauty is evidence that we live in a world
in which all is well rather. This is a dark and foreboding
landscape gray with a half light whose Source we cannot discern
the vegetation. What little of it there is is
twisted and malformed the air is stale and taste of Ash in decay.
The water is stagnant and like the vegetation while it will
sustain life. It can only be said to nourish
it by something like equivocation, we are not alive,
we merely exist. From this nightmare landscape
rise, the bones of the ruins of magnificent buildings, the
former glory of our people now lost the ravages of time and the
insufficient strength of our own memories.
We can read nothing of this LastPass other than the mournful
refrain. We were great once.
Judy is a distant light. The sign we have loan for a
first flower of spring, the post an Unbound and undi formed head
from the ground. So long believed in capable of
supporting such robust and healthy.
Life is simultaneously long-desired and unhoped-for,
because we dared not dream anything.
So rich could ever truly exist again.
But there's a rub. Something is wrong?
Not with the light that beauty is that we can and do try to
shift the wrongness, we feel to displace the McCobb.
Dread that oppresses us to that light in order to preserve the
deceptions with which we nourish our anguished Half-Life, know we
are what is wrong and this to Right.
Light discomforts fills us with nausea and Dread This is not the
hope we had hoped for. As the light grows, its
intensity becomes a problem. It is too strong, too sharp it.
Blinds us and its warmth Burns us and still it goes brighter.
Surely this Supernova will ignite the world and cleanse Us
by consuming us it is too high a price to pay until we get this
right. We will always mistake the
beauty that comes as our greatest friend for our greatest
enemy. We won't recognize it in his
humility and so we will withhold our Allegiance and if we fail to
recognize it in its humility, we will not love it when it has
grown to its full Glory, but we will have only practiced loading
it at that point. No Rehabilitation is possible.
We are unsuited for the light and so we must go into the
darkness. Well, I suppose that you
recognize the story, The Light first shines and utmost,
obscurity and secrecy. It is a word spoken by an Angel
to a teenage girl, in a country of no consequence on the
backside of the world. As it grows, the true lovers of
beauty reveal themselves coming, one by one to Adorn it John the
Baptist still in the womb Simeon, the prophet and on the
prophet and then in groups the 12, the 500 and then in masses,
but none of them know how the world was to be saved.
So none of them recognized in the darkness of the cross.
The silence between the tuning of the orchestra and the first
magnificent notes of the symphony, no one knew they had
been listening to an overture. Till it was over.
A Christian like the artist does not create this beauty in the
world, she only Bears witness to it.
She looks like a fool through the long years when the light
has not yet emerged or in the shadows of the ruins from which
the light cannot be seen. When standing in the direct
illumination of the light she is odious.
A traitor, she has cited against her own people with the invading
power that would destroy us. All When she extends a hand, to
raise the lowly, when she weeps with the mourners, when she
visits the sick and buries the dead, when she continues these
duties, even while the same plague that killed those, she
buries ravages her own skin. She is an enigma and the
perplexity. One thing, she must not be
silent when then she cannot be is ignored.
She of the previous paragraph is in the first instance, the
Christian. But in the second instance, it
is also the artist who has the courage to look beyond what is
acceptable to Brave that harsh glare of the light of beauty and
bring back some kernels of Truth.
The artist to is something of a profit and cameos that have
Dostoevsky that he'd not Mars was the true prophet of the 19th
century. Our task is to reconcile these
two figures, the Christian and the artists but also to
determine what to make of their Collision in the world outside.
Side of the Holy Cloister of the community of Salvation first
movement that goes in Whispers, Allegro con Brio.
Theme conception the moment of Mystery.
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth.
We are not told how that first coming forth from nothing.
The moment, when for the first time, it becomes true that
something besides God is lies outside, our chain of
explanation, but we do know this, the earth created in that
moment was both formless and void.
That is to say it lacks definition shape and it like
content, these two words form and content were destined to
become Staples of the philosophy of Art.
And while there is a tendency to identify art with form, that is
to say with a meaningful arrangement of elements.
Every artist knows that the idea that art can be separated from
the question of content is an artless fiction.
It matters what you depict to such an extent that the form
must bow in some particulars to that which is depicted even when
a brilliant artist finds a way to pair of form with content
that at first seems inimical to it, this must be According to
some principle implicit or explicit but discernible that
can mediate between form and content.
If the result is to be judged to be art, And so, Genesis 1:1 is
not the Exemplar of artistic creation.
It is, but the stretching of the canvas over the frame.
But in verse 3, the unexpected happens, God speaks perhaps for
the first time, and this speech is the exemplary moment of
artistic creation for by means of this speech.
God begins to form the world and is to say to give it form.
But speech is theologians going back to at least Augustine have
reminded us and externalization of an internal.
This is the Exemplar of all artistic creation, the artist
conceives in the mind and then what is conceived is
externalized. The end result of this
externalization is the art. This is because all human making
is in the image of divine making, we do what we have been
made to do and we do what we see our father doing analogous to
divide making, then human making begins with conception in the
soul of the artist. A conception of any sort is a
great mystery, a Wonder. We can never fully explained.
We may, for instance, understand something of the biology of
human conception. But the fact that such a thing
should be possible. That all the two individuals
could come together in just this way to produce another
individual. This lies outside the realm of
scientific explanation precisely, because it is not a
question of fact, but a question of meaning One who fails to
Marvel before this mystery has succumbed to the temptation to
believe. That information is knowledge.
And that facts are truth. In artistic conception because
the antecedent causes are even more opaque to us.
We are before the deepest mystery for here.
Above all do we imitate the creative act of the God who
calls things that are not into existence.
Artistic creation is ex nihilo, not in an absolute sense, but in
an analogous and therefore, real and important sense.
But note that Genesis 13 is the exemplary moment of artistic
creation. And even though it is NEX knee,
hello for God, doesn't make light out of anything.
Nevertheless it is preceded by something my context.
I spoke earlier of God, stretching the canvas in verses
12 and it is this canvas. There's the context from the art
of God that is to follow. It is also this canvas the
created our that is the context for the humid artists only now
that canvas has been filled with Wonders, by the Divine hand.
The artist is placed in the world and this world feels her
senses and echoes in her soul. But an echo is an echo of
something and we are in a position to indicate, what that
something is, it is the very speech of God in creation, which
itself describes the very being of God In terms that are not
God. Thus, the artist's soul is
filled with Whispers And Echoes of the Divine being glory and
beauty. And it is out of this, overflow
of the heart Wells up to Artistic conception, it is only
because creation is full of the speech.
And glory of God, that the soul of the artist is fruitful
Development externalization. Wordsworth famously said, in the
preface to lyrical ballads, The Poetry is the spontaneous
overflow of powerful feelings. This is, of course, false, but
it has captured the imagination of so many generations of poets
and lovers of poetry because it Ted does touch upon something
that Rings true. With the experience of the
artist that the work of art. Once conceived in the soul,
cannot be contained. There it is like a fire shut up
in one's bones, it must be released into the world.
Indeed, there is no art until the concept has been
externalized. The concept in the sold is the
plan of the art but it is mere form, without matter until it
has been realized in the world of extra mental reality.
The soul must have a body It is here that the artistic struggle
unfolds, as inherent talent, and long years of training labor to
bring into existence, what has been conceived a labor that
always falls short in important ways and that nevertheless can
manage to produce something that astonishes and for, all of its
shortcomings is also so, right. The concept drives at
externalization because it was always meant to be brought to
the public. It must out.
It must be offered for inspection and assimilation.
For once externalize, I may stand before it and in that
moment, I am not safe. My life values and beliefs are
on the line. In this moment of aesthetic
appreciation. I am asked to understand what
the artist understood and there is the possibility that should I
catch even a glimpse of that. That my life will never be the
same. The making of heart is an
intimate and Powerful. Concourse between Souls this
complements, the previous reflection on the fact that
human creative agency is grounded.
In the Divine Act of Creation in that Transcendent frame, the
artist creates because God's very Beauty.
And the images of that beauty that creatures are whisper and
echo in the artist's Soul giving rise to new creative
conceptions. In the imminent frame, the
artist creates because the beauty conceived in the soul is
of such a sort that it must out analytic to.
It's very power is the need to be expressed because it is a
beauty that is pointed at existence outside of the Mind as
its own true mode. Not to create would be to
transgress the concept to fail to respect.
The demanded is placed on you just by virtue of being the one
to think of it. As artists it is your idea, but
it does not belong to you alone, it was given to you to give to
others. Second movement.
Indelible logging March of food a day Adagio acai?
What is just been this court discussed is true of all artists
regardless of the extent to which there has been an explicit
turning of the Soul towards. Not just the presence of a light
but to its meaning and this is something of a scandal to some
who feel that we who do not just see the light but are also of
the light ought to have the upper hand in our ability to
express it and witness to it such as these May.
No doubt allowed to a non believing artists whom I shall
henceforth referred to as an artist of Babylon or Babylonian
artist. The exalted privilege of saying
truth. Things about that light but they
find it intellectually troubling to think that an artist, a
Babylon, could speak the specific truths of the faith
better than a Christian artist. But how could it be otherwise
when we are speaking of the Lord who causes his rain to fall on
the just and the unjust? Who berates the Wayward Prophet
with the word of a donkey who makes even Cyrus of Babylon?
His Messiah for a Time. We see time and again in both
Testaments at the word of the Lord goes out into all the Earth
and we know that that word does not return void.
And yet, we must go deeper than this.
It is not only the case that the artist of Babylon can penetrate
as far as the Christian artist. He is indeed capable of saying
more than the Christian artist. This is because the Babylonian
artists, he's in a fundamentally different way than the Christian
artist. And so when he penetrates to the
truth in appears differently to him without thereby appearing
falsely and so are the same object is seen, what is seen is
not the same for the aspect that that light shows to us observers
varies greatly between its admirers and is despisers.
It is here. I think that we must pause, but
while the Babylonian artist gazes upon and witnesses to the
light, he is also in flight from that light.
This the artist knows in his soul, even when he denies it
publicly and privately the self-deception fails.
And at the last day, when that light has been fully revealed,
you will hear him confess. Just this, that he knew the
light and hated it, even while he loved it and therefore, that
he read from it, but was always looking over his shoulder
because he could not stand not to gaze upon it.
This Relentless pursuit in which the pursued cannot escape and
indeed both launched two and long as not to escape, I would
describe as a haunting. Haunting requires presence.
If nothing whatsoever is present in the house is not haunted.
And yet haunting also requires that this presents be of a
specific mode. I am not said to haunt my house,
except in a non-literal, poetic sense.
Haunting basis itself upon absence insofar as the hunter
has been punitively removed and certainly does not remain in its
fullest form. And yet does for all of that
abide, there is dense something unnatural about hunting for what
ought to be present is present but in a diminished mode that
often increases rather than diminishes that realities power.
The bodily presence of my friend is much less effective than the
haunting presence. This is where the auditor
Babylon finds himself. The inspiring spirit that
engenders conception in the artist's, soul is a hostile
Spirit and the strictly etymological sense.
It is an enemy Spirit, not because it as yet holds any
animosity to the Babylonian artists soul, but because that
Soul has made an enemy of it and its own animosity, but make no
mistake. Should the soul persist?
It will find it has made a real enemy of the spirit.
Babylonian artist is, as I have just indicated pursued and his
art not only reflects this Pursuit, but is itself part of
the pursuit indeed. It is the Chief Cornerstone of
the assault. Thus, for the Babylonian artist,
The Whispers And echoes in the soul that are the ground of the
first conception of the work of art.
Take out a Sinister sound. They are at times ominous.
Infuriating. Terrifying, unnerving.
At best, when it is the image of God, that Echoes In The Soul, a
sense of the Macabre is, never far away.
I worse when it is God himself, the danger is of gothis.
Is mmm, who knows? But that a massive?
Hell might not drop from the sky or a statue.
Come calling for dinner to drag one down to Hell.
Now, there is a lighter side to haunt it.
Surely the spirit of her beloved departed is welcome in this
house her warmth that her scent, maybe God.
But yet the way she conditions a room by her, very presence, May
linger. Should she continue as a
haunting? This is surely to be desired.
Yes, but even our Pleasant ghost stories are never far from a
terrible turn. The living and the dead do not
live easily together for the one is a challenge to the other.
There is nothing natural about haunting just as there is
nothing natural about death, neither ought to be haunting is
of its nature liminal and therefore transitory it is no
path to Eternity. However, cheap or expensive
would be held to be My jewelry major.
Let us know, bring this explicitly back to the beauty of
God is witness to, in the Babylonians art first.
Let it be said that any lingering discomfort, we have
with the profundity of expression in the majesty and
mystery of God. President such art needs to be
recognized as a failure to get the nature of God, right?
God is trying to save as many as possible.
And that means extravagant Grace, both common Grace and the
grace of Salvation. There is a wideness to God's
mercy and whatever else art is. It is divine mercy.
And let's go further. The specific charism of
Babylonian art is to reveal the face of the Lord of Mercy as it
appears to those who have not found favour through the grace
of his son. Three moments, I'd like to
consider here. First, this means the ability to
ask questions, more urgently, I think here of Andrew Lloyd
Webber's, Jesus Christ, Superstar, which obsessively,
ask the question, who is Jesus, each character?
Who asked this question? Mary Magdalene, Simon the Zealot
herot pilot and most hauntingly Judas in their questioning in
perplexity. They cannot decisively answer
the question about Jesus identity because the composer
and Lyricist themselves cannot answer this question and so they
have no answer to put into the music.
But what they do have, is an experience of how urgent this
question can be, they know the desperation of sensing that it
is just possible that everything hinges on a question to, which
they are not willing to give an affirmative answer, but to,
which they are also not prepared to give a negative answer.
If the question of Jesus did not haunt their souls, they could
not have written the show. The question, who is Jesus would
be too uninteresting to be fruitful because simply answered
as just another man. But what they wrote doesn't just
witness to the power and compelling Us in the person of
Christ. It does do that and also
expresses an urgency that is not foreign to the people who bear
his name. To be a Christian is to have
faced the same question. We may have answered it given
into the Event Horizon of his singular, indecisive excellence.
But at one point was not. So every Christian begins as a
Babylonian, so the Babylonian artist helps to reveal our own
past and illumines our current condition.
Secondly, the charism of the Babylonian artist also has to
consider finality for God's spirit will not continue
forever. With humans.
Christ is believed to be the coming judge.
God's mercy may be wide but it still marks off a path.
It is so far from including every path that it is called
narrow by the savior. The Babylonian artist who stands
under threat of judgment and final rejection who course
Disaster by rushing headlong towards the throne of grace.
As an enemy of Grace, is able to depict the Tripper inducing
Majesty of the king in a way that the Christian as Christian
cannot. But when I look under severe
face of God, I know that it is. Not the last expression, I will
see on that Most Blessed face, a Babylonian knows in his soul, in
that same place where art is conceived, that he is the object
of the terrible displeasure. He sees there, Third.
And finally, it also very importantly, the Babylonian has
something to say about Hope. At the Christian does not for
the Christian. Hope is an anchor for the soul.
A promise, whose fulfillment is sure.
However, delayed it may be But the Babylonian hopes
groundlessly. What I mean is not that his hope
has no ground for it is. In fact grounded in the same
place is Our Hope in the God who makes a way, but because the
Babylonian resists, or even denies this ground, his hope is
not set upon it by detached. And the Babylonian Soul
recognizes the precarious nature of this free-floating hope.
And in that recognition knows itself to be in Mortal peril.
And yet, and this is what we can learn so much from The Hope.
Abides. Babylonian hope is always in the
process of Disappearing, but as expressed in art, it never, in
fact, disappears. The Artist May Despair and
despair is to lack. Hope day Sparrow to be away from
home, and the artistic expression of this may be on the
road to suicide. But the art itself, always
contains something of Hope because it is itself, an
expression of hope it is. Minimally The Last Cry for
understanding of the anguished soul.
I no longer believe, there's anything worth fighting for.
And yet I leave you this art by Testaments as evidence of my
struggle. Evidence.
Yes. And more than evidence it is
also itself, giving meaning to the struggle.
And so does most extreme at the very point when hope does indeed
vanish. Abandon every hope ye who enter
here. We see a witness to the good of
that hope to its power and a plea that this hope not be
groundless that it all not have been meaningless or in vain this
is image. Beautifully is like
Tchaikovsky's Symphony begins in darkness and reaches for the
light for every modality frantic gentle triumphant timid.
It is where it began in the same Darkness, but worse Britt has
found that none of its tactics have grasped the light and so it
ends in despair the lingering dying.
No, to the basis is an image and a cry of dereliction.
The relinquishing of Hope. And indeed of life And yet The
Listener is not often, I think convicted at the end of the
symphony that there is no hope and that life is to be
relinquished. Whatever may have been following
the composer a few short days later instead we come away so
bird but with the flame of Hope lit within the hope we have
glimpsed there that the artist reaches after and ultimately
turns away from draws us on cause us to seek it may even
reinvigorate our search. You know, what?
A minor key. A major objection of risers to
all of. This are not these elements
present also in the work of Christian artists How can I draw
such a neat delineation between the Christian artist and the
Babylonian quite simply, I do not know such neat division
exists. Then how is there any meaning to
the distinctions? I've been making precisely for
this reason. Every Christian artists not only
begins as a Babylonian artist but also remains one I mean,
this in two senses in the first sense, I mean, what I said
earlier that every human is born in Babylon and only becomes a
citizen of the New Jerusalem, subsequently there for the songs
and Babylon, are our songs and those experiences are not just
those of our fellow humans, but are our very own But I also mean
it in a present sense, for we have not left Babylon, we have
only been called out of her, indeed, it is best to say that
we are being called out of her. Whatever progress we may have
made away from the city of mud. We have not completed the
journey, and so, I write both as an ambassador of the New Kingdom
and as nurturing and in completely severed, allegiance
to the Old Kingdom, And here there is a mandate the Christian
can and should draw on the experience of Babylon.
But her commitment is with the New Jerusalem.
This means that we may dip into the urgency of not knowing who
God is the terror of being rejected by Beauty itself and
the doubt that hope can at all have any meaningful sense.
But we cannot abide in these places.
The artist aims at faithful externalization.
And so witnesses to the light, the Christian artist must
therefore reach the part of her soul.
Where such witness is most true because most in accord, with the
light of Truth, They drove it in dwelling and imitation, Allegro
Vivace. Scherzo indwelling the temple,
receive ye the Holy Spirit. In creating God, created a space
outside of himself from which he nevertheless would not be
absent. The cosmos was not flowing into
existence. It was placed.
And the First Act, we see God, doing after creation is
completed a completion that includes Sabbath Rest.
By the way, is to walk in the garden that he has made to
Delight in the diurnal. Rhythm of this world.
Enjoy the cool of the day. Got interesting to Creation in
his first moments because he's made a place where he Wills to
be present. Likewise Christ enters into
creation at the Incarnation and in a more intimate way.
But what do I mean when I say the creation is outside of God,
except that it is external to his personal identities.
But in Incarnation, that is no longer true for now, one who is
personally, God, is also a creature.
And so, a part of creation and we must not miss that.
The insurance is also, by means of a conception, the most
singular and wonderful conception there is The entrance
of God into Creation in this way.
Changes, everything. yet once more God enters into Creation,
in a special way this time in the person of the Holy Spirit
when he comes to indwell believers, it is this entry that
is of greatest interest here. The interests of the Holy Spirit
Into the Heart of the individual believer may be called a
conception. It is known as mysterious as his
witness by the fact that we can give no account of it.
What is the mode of presence of this Divine person in us?
We can only call it personal and idea of which we have an
implicit understanding that we cannot ultimately explicate but
there's more the Holy Spirit by virtue of his name is linked
with that quality. God, that grounds empowers and
surrounds our worship. Namely the beauty of holiness.
Indeed, as very God, the holy spirit is the Eternal beauty of
which all creaturely beauty is the beautiful.
Reminder. What occurs?
Then when the spirit comes to enjoying a Christian, is the
beauty is conceived in the soul of that.
Christian not indeed the beauty of artistic conception, but that
beauty to which artistic conception Witnesses and so,
there is an analogy between what happens when the soul receives
the Holy Spirit and what happens, when the soul of the
artist conceives, a work of art Like the conception of a work of
art is entrance of the holy spirit is personal.
That is to say individual, the Holy Spirit indwells each
Christian in a way that is particular and that as such is
unique. I may call it mine.
But as with the work of art entrusted to me, it is mined in
a sense quite other than the exclusive Mastery, we usually
associated with ownership. This possession is neither
exclusive nor mastering. And in fact, we would do well,
to say that it is mine, not because it belongs to me.
But because I belong to S and here we move in the direction of
the song of songs, I am my beloved and my beloved is mine.
This leads directly to the next point of likeness.
For like the artistic conception, the Holy Spirit
conceived in my heart is not meant for me alone, but for me
to bring to others. This is true in the salvific
economy of God, but we are called to Bear witness to the
goodness of the Lord. Let the redeemed of the Lord say
so, And what greater goodness. Have we seen that impersonal
indwelling But this is also true in the created order where it is
easily. Imagine that the God who spoke
personally with Adam and Eve would also speak personally with
Cain and Abel. Seth, and so on Down the Line,
had we not sent but then those encounters would give Seth
something to share with me about God, that lay outside of my own
experience. Seth's encounters with God,
would be private in the sense that they were unique to him,
but not in the sense that they were closed off to others.
Rather my access to them would be through his recounting of
them, his telling me of the ways, he personally had seen the
goodness of the Lord. And thus this is to be restored
eschatologically at the end of all things for each Christian
Bears, a name written on a white stone, that none knows.
But God and the one to whom it is given Revelation 2:17, there
is a secret that each state has with God.
That is the grounds of a unique praise.
We each have to offer God, but that is also a private
experience out of which we will enrich others.
Well, as you listen to my song of Praise, You Will Marvel at it
and at the relationship out of which it arises for.
It is so different to your own. And yet harmonious and
complementary indeed, how can this not be?
So if the martyrs will wear on their bodies, the marks of their
martyrdom, as crowns of Glory. The story of the things we
suffer for his name. Sake will be written Upon Our
glorified bodies and will constitute an art vegetable by
all the redeemed. Let's recapitulate this theme
once. More before moving on, for there
is another important internalization of a Divine
person, the life of Faith. Namely, the faithful reception
of Christ in the Eucharist. Eucharist nourishes.
Holy Spirit indwelling, according to its two modes, as a
memorial of Christ's death, Eucharist in Flames, us with
love for the one who has done these things and gratitude for
the things done. And so, softens our hearts The
softening of the heart, makes the spirits work of recreation.
Sanctification easier. It makes the heart of more
suitable, dwelling place for the spirit because the heart has
become more malleable to this work of recreation and
sanctification. And as the very presence of the
whole Christ, in the Eucharist, we are transformed by direct
personal encounter with the one who is our Exemplar in the
direction of the true image of that image, we were always meant
to be Eucharist changes us more into Christ and in so doing
makes us more truly Who We Are. He is fire and we are lesser
fires kindled from him sin, weakens our Flames to, We Are by
smoldering coals. But when the original Blaze
draws near our own flame leaps up in response, renewed, by this
transfer of heat, the real presence of Christ in the
Eucharist transforms, our very being The point of the last
section is to underscore that the conception by which the Holy
Spirit comes to dwell in a Believer is not just analogous
to the conception of a work of art in the sense that both our
conceptions but also because both conceptions a mat
externalization that is indeed true of all conception insofar,
as we ground, our understanding of the word conception and our
use of it to cover biological conception, what is conceived
in? The room is meant to go forth
from the room and into the world, as with artistic
conception In the case of the indwelling of the holy spirit,
externalization is necessary. What has come to dwell in?
You must be brought forth for public view.
It must be offered to another, that the other may have a chance
to see something of what you have seen and having seen it to
never be the same again. in short, the externalization of
the indwelling of the holy spirit that which is analogous
to the creation of the work of art is Witness and so, when I
say that a Christians witness is her art, What I mean in the
first instance is not that we have a responsibility to witness
to the truth in our art. But rather that the witness that
we bear to, the hope that has been conceived in US is itself
art. If we get this right, we will
have no need to obsess about Evangelistic strategies,
cultural relevance and sensitivity or accessibility
because the externalization of internally can see, beauty is
itself, beautiful. The beauty of the art, that is
our witness brings with it. Its own compelling us, its own
self evidence, a compelling, - it never crosses over into
compulsion. Beauty is not in need of
apology, because it captures us before we have had a chance to
think about it. All of this, of course,
presupposes that our witness is in fact, beautiful.
And yet, we know from experience and history that this is not
always the case. How then do we ensure a
beautiful Witness? Well, how does the artist
proceed in externalizing? The concept.
The art is judged by the artist to be successful, precisely to
the extent that has faithfully and meaningfully captured.
The Contours of the inner conception.
The outer form is bound to the inner concept.
Or externalization to be truly externalization and not merely
cheap imitation that which is to be externalized, must form a
rule that governs. The artistic process Likewise
with witness the form. This of the indwelling spirit,
both its inherent form as the third person of the Trinity and
the form distant drilling takes specific to this particular
Christian must guide. The witness that is offered to
it. Violence done.
In the name of the faith, is not a compelling witness because it
is transgress, the form of the indwelling spirit as God, the
spirit compels, no one, but romances running the risk of
ultimate rejection. As God in Me, the spirit, does
not compel my transformation but offers powerful and compelling
because beautiful arguments internally towards a more
Sanctified me. And we must keep in mind.
That's a production of great art requires the exercise of the
skills involved in making the art.
The Masterpiece is the product not merely of one conception,
and process of making. What if all the making?
The artist has done up to that point.
We must be exercised in the spiritual disciplines in faith
and prayer and meditation on scripture and repentance to be
able to paint a compelling Witness.
However, it also follows from what I've said that the
Christian does have a responsibility to witness by her
art. And so, a Christians witness is
her. Art must also be taken in the
sense that this is the case now. Where is this responsibility
grounded? How do I get off saying?
You artists have a responsibility to witness the
truth in your heart? It is grounded in the fact that
the Christian has the personal opportunity and obligation to
refer the beauty conceived as the beginning of the work of art
to the beauty as well as in her soul.
In. So doing she recognizes not just
the what but the Winds of the beauty that will become the art.
Even this is not enough for why? Mushy compare these two beauties
at all? Surely the knowledge of the
Winds is not required for sterilization, for the artist of
Babylon. Does not have or has fooled
himself into thinking. He does not have, it's not much.
But the truth is they crucially beauty is not just from Christ
as its Alpha but also towards Christ as its Omega, the
creature cannot be understood. Well, either as creature or as
beautiful apart from the recognition of the fact that it
exists to refer to another and it's whole Glory lies in the way
unique among all creatures. It does this.
Thus insofar as every artist logs to and has an obligation to
the art to capture as much as possible to the concept in the
external product. The Christian artist must
connect, the beauty of the artistic conception to the
beauty of the Spirit dwelling within her.
But then the externalization that is the Christians art is
always also an externalization of the indwelling spirit.
And so also witness your witness is Art in your art is Witness
Fourth Movement. Sacramento, remediation.
Allegro con spirito. IMA behold.
I have made all things new. It is time now to speak of the
Salvation of the world pointed to, by Dostoevsky, with which we
began this journey. We need to speak especially of
the means, by which the Salvation will be accomplished.
No worldly power can save the world as I stated at the outset.
It is only the blood of the god, man.
Yes, blood inescapably. And without appeal that can save
the world and yet that blood is not poured out, formless lie.
When Christ externalizes, the healing of the Nations that he
has conceived internally, he does this by the pouring out
externalization of his blood inscribing, his death on the
world as his art. this takes visible form, not only in the
cross, but in the cup, He blesses at the beginning of his
passion, world-saving power has been poured out from God into
the sacraments water and blood flowed from his side.
And these sacraments are now also the art of God.
But the truth constituted by these sacraments is also as a
whole and in each individual member the arch of God.
We are through Sacramento agency, the increasingly
accurate externalization of God's idea of us.
We only imperfectly resemble it now, but much less imperfectly
after Grace than before. If the word of God does not
return void, neither is the art of God to be thought to return
void. Rather it accomplishes.
What it was sent out to do And we have already discussed what
work it is that art accomplishes in a scene.
And what seen it challenges? And often transforms the viewer.
Let us say, art be makes the world.
Christian's Dan is the art of God, transform the world around
them. We transform it not aimlessly or
after our own image and likeness.
That's the logic of Babylon. But rather into the true image
of the Holiness of God, we do this, in two ways
epistemologically. That is how the water start of
and ontologically, how the world is histologically.
How it's thought of we transform the world first, in our own
minds, by referring each creature to the divine Simpler.
And so, coming more and more to see the way that all things
image God, and to restore to each creature its ability to
point to God. But we also train the world to
see itself differently as he creatures differently.
This last we do Above All by your heart, both as artists and
as Witnesses. The take just two examples a
cathedral such as the Majestic and beleaguered.
No speedometer pocket has given Generations or Babylonians.
A sense of a majesty and Transcendence that goes beyond
what their philosophy as categories for.
Just listening to the news, the French news doing interviews
with folks on the street, as the cathedral was burning.
And the things that these very non-Christian Frenchmen were
saying about, what this Cathedral meant to them
indicated that it's not just a national cultural Landmark, it's
not just the most visited tourist site in Europe.
It is to them as a place where they're reminded of something
more than they really have space to talk about their philosophy.
And for a second example, consider the sacrificial actions
of Christians, which once revolutionized, how Roman looked
at children D, commodifying them and restoring to every baby born
a chance at life. Ontologically.
We transform the World by restoring broken, things to
their proper state. Principal among things to be
restored or Sinners and it is at the Reformation of life that the
art of Christian witness principally aims, the Call of
Beauty. That our witness sounds to
others is a call of like, to like deep calls to deep.
The rational creature has a special place in the created
order and God's purposes are, especially urgent with regard to
our race. We also transform places and
objects and this can be seen in the Saints who by the Holiness
of their lives have left behind an experiment in ladder, a
legacy of blessing, the sometimes attaches especially to
places or things. These relics we're lichter have
been especially honored through the senses.
Such things may be said to have been Sanctified by the state in
a broad sense because it is an extension of in continuity with
the Divine work at the Saints. Life is That God works in these
ways. All right of the ministry of a
saint is the work that God does through the ongoing Legacy left
behind This is indeed. The only way in which Christians
can be said to sanctify my participation in the sanctifying
work of God, but this participation is real and so
then is the participatory sanctification.
Development There Is Power in the Blood witness as martyrdom.
I pointed out earlier that there is no appeal from the blood of
Christ. No matter the problems we may
have with the notion of an innocent dying for the guilty or
with blood is a necessary means to appease the wrath of God
these remain our problems. Scripture is unequivocal and the
apostles knew that one could only make sense of the saving
work of Christ and the context of the prescribed Jewish
sacrifices It Is by blood that the world is saved and if Christ
is the Exemplar of all things then in this sinful world, we
have fashioned out of God's perfect one.
Every form of God's art stands under the sign of blood we can
no more transform the world without the spilling of our
blood in the world could be saved apart from the spending of
Christ's blood. As his blood had to flow so must
hours. Surely this is the mystery of
filling up. What is lacking in his suffering
a space remains in the suffering of Christ.
It is only because he has made room for us to join him there.
And so we cannot and must not flinch from the truth proclaimed
already. In the New Testament that
Christian witness is etymologically martyrdom We were
sent to be his Martyrs in all the world.
There is no space to be found between our witness and
suffering, the to coincide of every moment in a world that
needs Beauty to save it. Our art then which is one form
of that weakness, cannot be true to that witness and descend into
mere sentimentalism, which I would add is actually a lot
harder to do than you think. It cannot be superficial and
fully externalize. The spirit of the crucified who
lives within us. this is the truest form of Sacramento
remediation, but the sacraments only flow from the wounded side
of Christ and the blood of the Christian Martyrs is the truest
form of imitation of the Christ after whom we long to be Pi,
patterned We sanctify this world and his people is through our
faithfulness in suffering and above all through our
faithfulness unto death. The message of Hope We Carry
will be challenged because it comes to those who know it to be
true and yet have shut their eyes to it.
We have found deep holes in which to hide themselves from
the Searing, all-consuming demands of the light of life.
In the face of such challenge which grows, increasingly
strident, vehement and violence the more it sees us and moved.
Our greatest defense of the strength of our hope is our
death. The first art of the Christian
is to show the world how to live for Christ.
Her last art is to show the world, how to die for her.
Christ, introduced from triumphantly in order to suffer.
We do not enter into my unfriendly, except through
suffering. The way is not just narrow, it
is a gauntlet. You said on every side, my sword
and spear fireman water, instruments of torture, and
degradation disease, and pestilence rejection and Scorn.
The point of these things is to terrify us out of the way.
Remember, that's what the faith was called originally, as the
way to appeal, to our sense of self-preservation and I love
about my safety, very ones you set these trials before us.
Bulk in a horror when they see as walk steadfastly forward.
Raving, what to them is unthinkable.
We take heart because Christ has overcome the world.
Now it's our turn We March joyfully towards the suffering
because it is our honor to die for the one who died for us.
And because we are back in Don, by The Beauty with which he will
close us, the seven magnificent promises for those who overcome
in Revelation, 2 and 3. And we're back in town by the
beauty that he is. If we walk this path faithfully
and transparently, then as the world's weary and watery eyes,
follow our progress, it will eventually lose sight of us and
the radiance to which we walk. Your eyes will be filled with
the glory of God and our art would have brought them to their
lives crisis. It has we cross the vanishing
point and last dying echo of us. They hear me a shout of Joy
indistinguishable between Hosanna and marinara.
Thank you.