ABSTRACT
The engagement of Christianity with the arts has been a reality nearly since the beginnings of the Christian community. However, through most of the Church’s history that engagement was practical rather than theoretical. Christian theology shows itself implicitly in the artistic practice of Christian communities. Over the centuries artistic genres, styles, and forms that were derived from Christian doctrines and ideas developed. For example, in ritual drama, there are the Eucharistic liturgy and Holy Week services; in rhetoric, there are the homily and sermon; in painting and sculpture, there are specifically Christian genres like the crucifix, the ‘Madonna and child’, and there are Christian styles like the Byzantine icon; in music, we have ‘Gregorian’ and Byzantine chant, sacred oratorios, and the Lutheran oratorio-Passion; in architecture, we see the basilica church and the cathedral; in literature, we find sacred poetry and legends of the saints; and there are many mixed forms, like the illustrated book of hours or sacred dramas, from which Western theatre eventually evolved. However, theological reflection on the arts was mostly ad hoc (literally ‘to this’ or
‘for this’ – that is, directed toward particular issues that were pressing at the moment). Furthermore, such reflection was directed almost exclusively to questions regarding sacred art: art that was explicitly religious and was intended to be used in a religious context. Medieval theology indirectly reflected on the arts in its development of a theology of beauty, but there was little or no theological engagement with the arts as such, that is as art. This could only come about once the arts had separated themselves from the church context. That separation was part of the process of secularization that began in the early modern period, during the Renaissance and the European Enlightenment. Since that period, Western culture’s secularization has entailed the separation of religion not only from the sciences and political life, but also from the arts. The latter increasingly looked to worldly life for their subject matter, and to the secular marketplace (rather than ecclesiastical or aristocratic patronage) for their economic sustenance.1 The independence of the arts from religion also raised the theoretical question: is art an end in itself – and, if so, can it be subjected to a purpose outside itself – including morality, or religion, or even beauty?2
