What place, if any, should the arts play in social transformation?
Theology and the Arts, Q. 2
This piece is part of a series in which I share the short essays I wrote for my doctoral comps. To read the intro, click here.
Because we are living in the aftermath of modernity, we have to deal with the implicit held assumption that both arts and the artist live separated from the concerns of everyday life. If art is socially other, we need to move away from our quotidian lives to make space for intellectual contemplation. A Christian theology of art, if it is to uphold the inherent goodness of the world and the action of the Spirit, needs to eschew this perspective and redefine the role of art in relation to the God’s purposes in the world – one of which is social transformation. Unto this end, this short essay will weave the South African theology of John Degruchy’s Christianity, Art and Transformation with the Latin American theology of Roberto Goizueta’s Christ our Companion.
Any account of art has to deal, sooner or later, with the concept of beauty. Beauty, as an effect of modernity, has been commodified and depleted of its power – we now think of beauty in relation to cosmetics.1 Degruchy, however, aims to retain the power of beauty by engaging both with Hans Urs von Balthasar and Karl Barth. For von Balthasar, beauty, together with goodness and truth, is an attribute of transcendent Being. Though this transcendental beauty is made manifest in tangible forms, true beauty cannot be confined to “this-worldly” beauty, for Jesus Christ is the fulfilment of all the tangible forms of God’s beauty. This means, for Barth, that our own concepts of beauty need to be redefined according to God’s revelation in history.2 Degruchy argues, in conversation with Barth and von Balthasar, that the redemptive power of art lies in attending to the Christ event. In Christ, God has borne the ugliness of sin on the cross, descended into hell, depleted it of its power, transformed its effects triumphing over it, and taken it into glory in its resurrection. This means then, that the beauty exemplified by God in Christ does not disdain the world, but has the power to transform it.
Goizueta argues along similar lines: theological aesthetics and theologies of liberation are saying the same thing: theology amounts to nothing if it cannot be connected to the lived reality of people. Latin America, because it is grounded in pre-modern Christianity, does not share the split between content and form. God’s commitment to liberation (content) cannot be found apart from his revelation in Jesus (form) which means, further, that the significance of Jesus (content) cannot be found apart from his historically marginalized and oppressed reality (form). God, then, is present amidst the poor. The aesthetic power of Christianity shines forth chiefly in and through the poor. This means that God’s commitment to the poor calls forth our participatory praxis in favor of the liberation of the poor.
Going back to Degruchy, the transformative power of the arts shows itself in two ways: (1) arts in society, and (2) arts in the Church. In the greater society, art serves transformation by presenting an alternative to the status quo. The artist becomes akin to a prophet by presenting images that critique the dehumanizing images of the oppressive structures of society. This is akin to what Wolterstorff calls “world-projection.” Through art, the artist is able to present a different state of affairs that call into question the way things are.3 Through this world-projection, argues Degruchy, art evokes imagination and wonder, and therefore a desire for change.
On the other hand, art within the Church aids worship, and therefore spiritual and character formation. The purpose of art in worship is for people not only to learn rightly (truth) or to behave rightly (goodness), but to learn to perceive the truly beautiful by attending to God’s revelation in Christ. It is by doing this, that the Church lives in a “revolution of the imagination” that results in the transformation of society.
Both Degruchy and Goizueta serve as two theologians that can help us think about the transformative power of the arts and the Church’s social responsibility to witness to the subversive beauty found in the crucified Messiah.
Beauty
This is also what von Balthasar argues in relation to the difference between “theological aesthetics” and “aesthetic theology.”
Art in Action