Prolegomena
In the official response to the iconoclastic conciliabulum of 754 CE, the Seventh Ecumenical Council affirmed the propriety of icons and images in Christian worship in order that “the incarnation of the Word of God is shown forth as real and not merely phantastic.” What all the essays in this issue of the Princeton Theological Review share is a belief in the power of art, in its various ways, to connect us with reality, particularly the reality of the Word made flesh. This issue of the PTR gathers together a wide array of scholarly engagements with the subject of theology and art; some discuss the visual, musical, and literary arts, while others are more straightforwardly philosophical and theological considerations of art and aesthetics. All of the articles in this issue attest to the fact that art has an important theological role in the Christian faith. While the writers represented here differ on what that role looks like, all affirm the importance of art and its power to connect us with the concrete reality of the faith. Thus, while most of the writers are Protestants who descend from a more cautious and occasionally iconoclastic tradition than the Catholic and Orthodox branches of the Church, even so all of the writers represented here share in the common ecumenical spirit of the Seventh Council.
In the first article, “A Vacation for Grünewald,” Matthew Milliner examines Barth’s objection to art that visually depicts Christ. Barth argued that such art leads either to the Docetic heresy or the Ebionite heresy, that is, to an overemphasis on the deity or the humanity of Christ, respectively. While Barth was famously fond of Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece, Milliner contends that the Ghent Altarpiece is a far more suitable fit for Barth’s trinitarian theology.
The following two articles by Bruce Ellis Benson and Gordon Graham focus on music. In “Call Forwarding,” Benson discusses the nature of beauty as a divine call which prompts our human responses in responsible artistry. Relying on the work of Jean-Louis Chrétien and Hans Urs von Balthasar, Benson focuses on the way this call-and-response framework is represented explicitly in black spirituals and jazz improvisation. Graham, on the other hand, discusses the relation between theology and church music. He addresses the role of music, first, as unifying fellowship, and second, as divine service or worship. Graham affirms both roles by suggesting that church music be understood theologically as something that unites the community together and shapes the way people give use the gifts God has given them in the act of giving back in worship.
In my article, I look at beauty in the light of the doctrine of justification by offering a close reading of Eberhard Jüngel’s theology. Jüngel writes about justification and the beautiful in ways that overlap and offer fruitful possibilities for the development of a “christological aesthetics.” The Rev. Walter F. Kedjierski, a Catholic pastor and professor, examines the iconic nature of beauty as a “gateway to the transcendent.” He compares the writings of a few authors associated with the Decadent or Aesthetic Movement of the late 19th century with the theological aesthetics of von Balthasar in order to argue against the notion of “art for art’s sake.” Kedjierski concludes with some ecumenical implications. In our final article, Jason A. Goroncy brings theologian P. T. Forsyth, dramatist Henrik Ibsen, and novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky into a rich conversation over the relation between theology and culture. Goroncy argues that, in their differing ways, both Ibsen and Dostoevsky are ancillae theologiae, handmaidens of theology, and that Christian theologians need to listen attentively to artists.
Finally, we have three reflections that offer diverse perspectives on theology and art with a common focus on the relation between art and worship. First, Scott Jackson sketches a christological aesthetics of worship in light of both his experience leading a small, “emergent” worship service and Barth’s theology of the cross. Second, Adam Tietje reflects upon the fittingness of art for Christian liturgy by examining the philosophy of Nicholas Wolterstorff. And, lastly, Wes Barry speaks about the experiential process of artmaking as an essential form of Christian worship in response to God’s creativity.
A special addition to this issue are the poems of David Wright, who is a published poet and has been professor of English literature and writing at Wheaton College since 2001. He is the author of A Liturgy for Stones (2003) and Lines from the Provinces (2000). Wright is especially important in the Mennonite church, where he has been influential in bringing together Christian devotion and artistic appreciation. He is also involved in the local arts scene in Illinois, where he lives with his family.
In a poem entitled, “On Belief in the Physical Resurrection of Jesus,” Denise Levertov writes that belief in such a material and concrete miracle is not for “intricate minds / nourished / on concept” but rather for “literalists of the imagination . . . of whom I am one.” It is through the power of art, symbol, and metaphor that we are able to feel “the pulse in the wound” and “taste / bread at Emmaus / that warm hands / broke and blessed.” Levertov reminds us in this poem that art theologically considered not only follows from creation and the incarnation, but it also, and perhaps most especially, follows from the reconciliation accomplished in Jesus Christ, through whom “God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things . . . by making peace through the blood of his cross” (Col. 1:20). We must remember that the Word made flesh is the Word who was “found in human form” and “became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:7-8).
When we encounter art, therefore, we come into contact with the material,
concrete, and tangible elements of earthly reality—elements which God brought
into being in creation, sustains “by his powerful word” (Heb. 1:3), assumed and
sanctified in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, destroyed in his crucifixion, glorified
in his resurrection and ascension, and promises to consummate in the eschatological
reign of God. Thus, our theological engagement with the subject of art
and aesthetics absorbs us in the whole scope of the gospel. The PTR has always
striven to remain grounded in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and these contributions
on theology and art are further examples of our attempt to think deeply and critically
about the world—including the world of art and culture—in the light of
Christ who proclaims, “See, I am making all things new” (Rev. 21:5).
A Vacation for Grünewald: On Karl Barth's Vexed Relationship with Visual Art
Matthias Grünewald could use a break. An illustration can only be used so many times before it loses its effectiveness, and on that score Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece as a visual companion to Karl Barth’s theology has, due to extreme over-employment, been wearing somewhat thin. For Grünewald’s sake, and for Barth’s – it may be time for a change.
Of course, it is not that Grünewald’s position was undeserved. The Isenheim Altarpiece is one of the few visual theological illustrations that was consistently used by Barth himself. Roy Harrisville reminds us of the career-long, and not always positive, presence that the altarpiece had in Barth’s career:
Barth referred to the Isenheim Altarpiece a score of times. A reproduction of it stood next to or above his desk for years. Notes from his confirmation instruction at his parish in Safenwil in 1918-1919 assign the retable a prophetic role. The crucified Christ is a reminder of death ‘with all its horrors and mysteries,’ while the group on the left reflects ‘humanity in face of its fate,’ the hand-wringing Magdalene on the right ‘the weakness of our good will,’ and the hand of the Baptist ‘judgment and grace.(1)
Barth’s Grünewald references continued in the Letter to the Romans and his lectures on Calvin. And though in the lectures on Schleiermacher we are told to “forget Grünewald, the Middle Ages and the Reformation to let the Berliner speak,” (2) the Isenheim altarpiece reappears in the Church Dogmatics four times, where in one instance Barth asks,
Can anyone point away from himself more impressively and completely (illum oportet crescere me autem nimui)? And can any one point to the thing indicated more impressively and realistically, than is done there?(3)
That famous crooked finger of John the Baptist even serves as an illustration of the theme that is the beating heart of the Church Dogmatics:
This is the place of Christology. It faces the mystery. It does not stand within the mystery. It can and must adore with Mary and point with the Baptist. It cannot and must not do more than this. But it can and must do this.(4)
Certainly, therefore, the Isenheim Altarpiece is a well-suited illustration of Barthian themes. But might students of Barth seeking visual companions to his ideas be permitted even a little variety? Furthermore, might there be a piece of visual art that illustrates Barthian themes better than Grünewald can? I think so. But before that question is explored, some remarks are in order as to whether visual art and Barth’s theology can be mixed at all. For it is frequently remarked how odd it is that a theologian so suspicious of the visual arts would find an altarpiece a lifelong partner in theological dialogue.
Barth and Art?
Was Karl Barth really disapproving of any visual art that depicted Christ? Indeed he was.(5) Barth is often accused of positions he did not hold, and certainly the volume of his output is such that attempts to isolate any single position are suspect, but nevertheless I do not see any way out of the fact that he held this one. Barth’s reflection on the Isenheim Altarpiece is the exception that proves his rule. Although the Grünewald references show he permitted an illustrative role to depictions of Christ, and though Barth himself showed frequent aesthetic sympathies, (6) still his view of depicting Christ in the first place is clear:
It could not and cannot be anything but a sorry story. No human art should try to represent – in their unity – the suffering God and triumphant man, the beauty of God which is the beauty of Jesus Christ. If at this point we have one urgent request to all Christian artists, however well intentioned, gifted or even possessed of genius, it is that they should give up this unholy undertaking – for the sake of God’s beauty. (7)
Lest one think that this was an early career inclination that Barth somehow outgrew, a similar statement appears towards the end of the Dogmatics, where Barth sadly regurgitates arguments deemed Christologically heretical by the 7th ecumenical council:
… even the most excellent of plastic arts does not have the means to display Jesus Christ in His truth, i.e., in His unity as true Son of God and Son of Man. There will necessarily be either on the one side, as in the great Italians, an abstract and docetic over-emphasis on His deity, or on the other, as in Rembrandt, an equally abstract, Ebionite over-emphasis on His humanity, so that even with the best of intentions error will be promoted…. It is better not to allow works of this kind to compete with the ministry of preaching. (8)
The only conclusion that I am able to draw from these statements is that as much as the Isenheim Altarpiece is helpful in illustrating Barth’s ideas, because it depicts Christ in one of the forbidden manners (in this case the Ebionite over-emphasis on humanity), it would nevertheless have been better, from a strictly Barthian point of view, if the Isenheim Altarpiece had not been made!
Fortunately, there is no reason to be bound to proceed from a strictly Barthian point of view.(9) For the sake of Barth’s greater insights, his weaker ones – in this case his iconoclasm - may have to be jettisoned. Doing so enables the discovery of a different piece of medieval visual art that magnificently displays Barth’s greatest theological insight.
The Ghent Alterpiece
Proceeding then on a road paved by Barth himself – using altarpieces to illustrate theology – I’d like to recommend the justly famous Ghent Altarpiece (10) as a more adequate visual representation of the theology of Karl Barth (Fig. 1). The numerous, erudite, and clearly legible inscriptions on the altarpiece are testimony to its theological precision and didactic intent, making it a unique match to the likewise erudite Barth. (11) But the commonalities between the Ghent Altarpiece and Barth go well beyond mere sophistication.
Ghent Altarpiece
Though the entire gospel narrative, fall to eschaton, is carefully recounted in the twelve panels of the Ghent Altarpiece, I will limit myself to reflection on the central upper and lower panels.(12) The upper right panel shares with the Isenheim Altarpiece that central motif which so impressed Barth, the pointing finger of John the Baptist.
But to whom is John the Baptist pointing in the Ghent Altarpiece? Who is the central figure in the central upper panel? In seeking to answer this long debated iconographical question, and its relation to the lower panel, we will find just how much promise for Barth’s theology the Ghent Altarpiece contains.
At the considerable risk of weighing down a masterpiece of art with theological jargon, for my purposes the upper central panel and its mysterious central figure will be assumed to correspond to the immanent Trinity (who God is “in Himself”), and the lower to the economic Trinity (who God is “for us”). The intimate connection between the two spheres is a point made as forcefully by this altarpiece as it is by Barth.
Like Barth, the Ghent Altarpiece does not “solve the Christological mystery by juggling it away” with modalist or subordinationist heresy.(13) Instead Barth insists on “the offensive fact that there is in God Himself an above and a below, a prius and a posterius, a superiority and a subordination,”(14) facts beautifully conveyed in the upper and lower central panels of the Ghent Altarpiece. The connection between the two panels preserves the “most offensive fact of all, that there is a below, a posterius, a subordination, that it belongs to the inner life of God...” (15) Modalism is avoided by the fact that there is both an upper and a lower panel. God “stays home” even while he ventures into the far country. Subordinationism is avoided by the puzzling unity of the two panels, a unity I will now explore.
In the lower panel (the economic Trinity) all humanity, Christian and non- Christian, has gathered around the lamb. Eucharistic and baptismal imagery abound, and the inscription is straightforward enough: “Ecce agnus Dei qui tollet peccata mundi.” This is what we know of God’s economic activity on behalf of our salvation. Christ speaks to us of God. Making a connection between “the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world” and Barth’s theology should not be a strain on anyone’s credulity, nor would it be a very remarkable connection to make.
In the lower panel (the economic Trinity) all humanity, Christian and non- Christian, has gathered around the lamb. Eucharistic and baptismal imagery abound, and the inscription is straightforward enough: “Ecce agnus Dei qui tollet peccata mundi.” This is what we know of God’s economic activity on behalf of our salvation. Christ speaks to us of God. Making a connection between “the lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world” and Barth’s theology should not be a strain on anyone’s credulity, nor would it be a very remarkable connection to make.
But what of the upper panel, God “in Himself”? We can safely consider one Barthian insight—if not the central insight—to be the elimination of any “God behind God,” and the focusing of all reflection on the divine nature in the person of Jesus Christ. Writes Barth:
Of what value would His deity be to us if – instead of crossing in that deity the very real gulf between Himself and us – He left that deity behind Him in His coming to us, if it came to be outside of Him as He became ours? What would be the value to us of His way into the far country [the lower panel] if in the course of it He lost Himself [the upper panel]?(16)
Central to Barth’s Trinitarian theology is that God as revealed in Christ is not divorced from who God is in Himself. And central to the Ghent Altarpiece is that God in Christ, depicted as the lamb in the lower panel, is intimately connected to God’s own nature, depicted directly above.
Art historical debate has long contested who the upper figure is. Is it Christ or the Father?(17) That the figure is the Father seems to be indicated by the papal tiara, normally connected iconographically to the first person of the Trinity, as well as by the royal scepter in place of Christ’s traditional Gospel book. Furthermore, the word on the sash, “Sabaot” refers to the God as the “Lord of Hosts,” words connected to the Father during the sanctus of the medieval Mass. There also appears initially to be no hand wounds that would belong to Christ. Finally, the words on the back of the throne “Hic est Deus…” though not ruling out the divine Christ, seem nonetheless to invoke the Father.
However, there is also sufficient evidence to support the thesis that the middle figure is Christ. Firstly, that the figure is Christ seems to be indicated by the features. A youthful brown beard replaces the traditional white beard that can be seen in similar figures of the Father. Secondly, the standard medieval Deësis, of which this seems to be an obvious example, depicts Mary and John the Baptist flanking not the Father, but Christ. In addition, the evidence that there are no hand-wounds can be mischievously (but fairly) contested by suggesting that the way Christ’s fingers fall perfectly conceal the wounds. Finally, there is inscription evidence to suggest Christ as well. Directly to the left of the figure is a picture of a pelican pecking its chest to feed its young, a clear reference to Christ which is further bolstered by the unmistakable Greek inscription, IHESUS XPS.
So who is this illusive central figure? Christ or the Father? It is perhaps as difficult to answer this question as it is to understand the depths and contours of Barth’s Trinitarian theology. Regarding the illusive figure, art historian Dana Goodgal suggests that,
When all the attributes and inscriptions are understood together … they characterize the united Godhead … the inscription describing his divine nature, the figure, his human nature. (18)
Above we saw that Barth pointed out that depictions of Christ err towards a
“docetic over-emphasis on His deity,” on the one hand, and “an equally abstract,
Ebionite over-emphasis on His humanity” on the other. But by dialectically setting
the inscription (suggesting deity) against the depiction (suggesting humanity),
we may have a case in the Ghent Altarpiece complex enough to avoid Barth’s
dilemma.19 Yet, interesting as this avoidance may be, the Ghent connection to
Barth’s theology is more significant than the mere fact that this kind of depiction
might, by Barthian criteria, be allowed.
Again, who is the figure? Christ or the Father? After summarizing the centuries long debate, the eminent art historian Erwin Panofsky suggested a solution:
From the dogmatic point of view this figure belongs in the same class as its forerunners, its parallels, and its Flemish derivatives: it fuses the three Persons, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost into one image which is dogmatically equivalent to the whole Trinity. (20)
But Panofsky’s tidy iconographical resolution – that the figure simply represents the Trinity – may be more than the Ghent Altarpiece wants to give. What if the tension between Christ and the Father is not meant to be resolved? Perhaps the aim of the altarpiece is to keep us guessing, and perhaps the point of the guessing is to drive home the idea that we cannot think of God the Father at all apart from the form and figure of Christ.
In The Humanity of God, Barth declares that there can “be no theological visual art. Since it is an event, the humanity of God does not permit itself to be fixed in an image.” (21) However, the Ghent Altarpiece, with its spring-loaded tension between Father and Son, perhaps avoids Barth’s critique that theological visual art must be static.(22)
A figure that preserves a holy ambiguity between Christ and the Father illustrates, in a theologically appropriate way, Christ’s statement that “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). And when this mysterious figure is seen in context with the adoration of the Lamb in the panel below, the key Barthian theme emerges: That the God who ventured below into the far country has always been anticipating, by His Trinitarian nature, this very outpouring of love. The crown laid down at the foot of the God above declares that self-emptying kenosis is intrinsic to Christ’s very nature. The Ghent Altarpiece illustrates, better than any work of art that I’m aware of, that “the One who reconciles the world with God is necessarily the one God Himself in His true Godhead.”(23) The difference between the Ghent Altarpiece and Barth’s Trinitarian reflection is that in Ghent the idea can be seen, which after all is something Barth clearly wanted his readers to do:
This concealment, and therefore His condescension as such, is the image and reflection in which we see Him as He is… Everything depends on our seeing it, and in it the true and majestic nature of God: not trying to construct it arbitrarily; but deducing it from its revelation in the divine nature of Jesus Christ. (24)
Getting It Wrong
Perhaps the significance of this kind of medieval visual connection to Barth’s theology can be underscored by another piece of medieval art that makes almost the exact opposite assertion. In the same crucial passage from which I have been quoting, Barth warns that we cannot be disturbed or confused by any pictures of false gods…. not an ontic and inward divine paradox, the postulate of which has its basis only in our own very real contradiction against God and the false ideas of God which correspond to it. (25)
Figure 2: Coronation by Charonton in Avignon
We have seen what a visual depiction of the proper Trinitarian concept would look like, but what would the sub-Christian “ontic and inward divine paradox” look like? What would the divorce of the economic and ontological Trinity, contra both Barth and Ghent, look like?
An illustrated devotional manual of the fourteenth century Rhineland Mystic Henry Suso may give us an answer. The manuscript contains an elaborate diagram that charts the mystical path that Suso commends (Fig. 3). Explains Jeffrey Hamburger,
Beginning at the upper right and progressing in clockwise fashion, the drawing traces the progress of the soul, from its origins in the Trinity, through the imitatio Christi, to its ultimate destination, reunion with the Godhead, represented at upper left as a passage through the veil of the tabernacle into the midst of three concentric circles. (26)
Figure 3: Henry Suso Manual
(Bibliothèque nationale de France)
A more blatant illustration of the “God behind God” which Barth found so abhorrent is difficult to conceive. The goal of the mystical path is to get past the Trinity to the uncharted, dark concentric circles of the Godhead. Admittedly, in Suso’s theology “images were considered appropriate to the lower, preliminary stages of the mystical itinerary … but by necessity were abandoned at the highest level of contemplation.” (27) Yet provisional or not, there can be no doubt that the images used at the preliminary level convey a troubling and obfuscating message. In contrast we have the Ghent Altarpiece, illustrating Barth’s essential notion that “there is no height or depth in which God can be God in any other way.”(28)
Conclusion
Karl Barth’s relationship to visual art seems not entirely unlike his relationship with Charlotte von Kirschbaum: Stimulating, inspiring, but for a complicated set of reasons, formally unconsummated. Saddled with tensions from an unhappy marriage and his Swiss iconoclasm, Barth proceeded on both the romantic and artistic fronts as he could. But there is no reason we need inherit Barth’s circumstantial tensions either in our private lives or in the realm of visual art.
Art is neutral. It can, perfectly fulfilling Barth’s fears, be a source of theological confusion as with the devotional manual of Henry Suso. It can also, as in the Ghent Altarpiece, express theological truth with unique precision and force.
Hence, I have attempted to show here that there is more than one way to visually illustrate Barth’s theology, and certainly among them is the Ghent Altarpiece. Thanks to the dynamism of the inscrutable upper figure, it avoids Barth’s standard critique of images of Christ. Beyond this, it illustrates that central Barthian insight, recalling the “light from light” of the Nicene Creed, that
The One who reconciles the world with God [lower panel] is necessarily the one God Himself in His true Godhead [upper panel]. Otherwise the world would not be reconciled with God. (26)
How remarkable that a depiction of Christ in visual art, a matter on which Barth
was wrong, so wonderfully captures Barth’s Trinitarian theology, a much more
significant matter on which he was so right.
1 Roy Harrisville, “Encounter with Grunewald,” Currents in Theology and Mission
31, no. 1 February 2004): 5-14.
2 Ibid.
3 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/2, ed. G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh:
T&T Clark, 1956), 126.
4 Ibid., 125. Yet, later in the same volume he warns, “If we presume to point directly
to it, to dream of coming forward ourselves, somewhat in the attitude of Grünewald’s
John, as witness to this event, we should be alleging what one should never think of
alleging … the word ‘pointer’ would then be merely another word for ‘presupposition’”
(ibid., 301).
5 The remarks of John Dillenberger neatly summarize Barth’s overall attitude: “The
verbal imagination of Barth is indisputable. His delight in and his writings on Mozart
are common knowledge, and Grünewald’s Crucifixion meant much to him. But he opposed
placing stained glass in the Basel minister and his theological comments on the
visual arts of painting and sculpture in relation to the church were few and mainly negative
in character. Images and symbols, he declared, ‘have no place at all in a building
designed for Protestant worship.’ And though his correspondence with Carl Zuckmayer
‘shows human and cultural concerns so characteristic of Barth, but for him, theology as
a discipline is different from all that.’ (“Contemporary Theologians and the Visual Arts,”
Journal of the American Academy of Religion 53:4 [Dec. 1985]: 602).
6 For example, Barth makes the following strong observation: “The word and command
of God demand art, since it is art that sets us under the word of the new heaven
and the new earth. Those who, in principle or out of indolence, want to evade the anticipatory
creativity of aesthetics are certainly not good. Finally, in the proper sense, to be
unaesthetic is to be immoral and disobedient” (Ethics, ed. D. Braun [New York: Seabury
Press, 1981], 510). Yet, my concern in this essay is visual art representing Christ, for
which Barth makes the exact opposite claim.
7 Karl Barth, CD II/1, ed. G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark,
1957), 666.
8 Karl Barth, CD IV/3.2, ed. G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T
Clark, 1962), 868. The iconoclastic Byzantine Emperor Constantine V made similar
arguments, prohibiting icons of Christ on the basis that they could depict only Christ’s
deity (and thus depict the undepictable and provoke idolatry) or only Christ’s humanity
(necessitating a Nestorian separation of Christ from his deity). By limiting the Christ
icon to depicting neither the human nor divine nature, but the composite hypostasis of
Christ’s person, Theodore of Studios overcame Constantine’s arguments, which were in
turn themselves deemed heretical at the Triumph of Orthodoxy in 843.
9 Were one nevertheless so inclined, one could proceed on strictly Barthian grounds
by taking a cue from recent arguments for the use of embryonic stem cell lines: To
produce new ones strictly for research is unethical, but one can employ the lines that
are already made. Likewise, to continue to produce paintings of Christ is (for Barth)
an “unholy undertaking,” but this does not preclude gaining insight from art (like the
Isenheim or Ghent altarpiece) already in existence. Should one still object that employing
visual art to depict Barth’s theology is impermissible in light of his objections, one
solid if childish argument remains: He started it.
10 The literature on the Ghent altarpiece is enormous, and has recently been well compiled
in a dissertation by Dana Ruth Goodgal (The Iconography of the Ghent Altarpiece,
University of Pennsylvania, 1981). Goodgal makes a convincing case that the altarpiece
in its original context proves to be a complicated and rich illustration of medieval Eucharistic
theology, as informed by the well studied theological consults equipped by the
impressive library of the St. Bavo monastery. I am admittedly stepping far afield from
this warranted contextual interpretation by applying a Barthian insight. But by dropping
the smokebomb of postmodern hermeneutics, I should invoke enough confusion to enable
me to proceed.
11 Goodgal (see note 10) makes a convincing case that the inscriptions reflect the
ideas of medieval theologian Oliver de Langhe who must have worked closely with the
artists, one or both of the brothers Hubert and Jan van Eyck. Would that contemporary
theologians resume their historic role of theological consultation to artists
12 Considering the depth of this altarpiece and length of the Dogmatics, many alternative
connections could be fruitfully explored.
13 Karl Barth, CD IV/1, ed. G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark,
1956), 200.
14 Ibid., 201.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid., 185.
17 A summation of the debate by an art historian of near Barthian stature (respective
to his discipline) can be found in Erwin Panofsky’s “Once More: ‘The Friedsam
Annunciation and the Problem of the Ghent Altarpiece’” (The Art Bulletin 20:4 [Dec.
1938]): 433ff.
18 Goodgal, Iconography, 280. The full translation of the inscription surrounding
God the throne is “Here is God, most powerful because of his divine majesty and high
over all because of his sweet goodness and most generous in giving because of his
measureless bounty.”
19 Such gymnastics are hardly necessary however, for the standard Eastern icon, as
understood in the reflection of Theodore of Studios and Patriarch Nicephoros, avoids the
Barthian dilemma as well (see note 8 above).
20 Panofsky, “Once More,” 442.
21 Karl Barth, The Humanity of God (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1960), 57.
22 The Isenheim Altarpiece, I am moved to reassert, does not avoid Barth’s critique.
23 Karl Barth CD IV/1, 193. For another visual example of Christ being in the form
of God, one might point to the bizarrely literal depiction of Christ crowning the Virgin,
accompanied by the Father who, following the stipulations of the commissioning contract,
looks exactly the same (Coronation by Charonton in Avignon, Fig. 2). This would
seem to also make the point, but the loss of ambiguity, even the eerie literalness, leads
me to conclude it does not do so nearly as well.
24 Karl Barth CD IV/1, 188.
25 Ibid.
26 Jeffrey Hamburger, The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Spirituality in Late Medieval
Germany (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998), 202.
27 Ibid.
28 Karl Barth, CD II/1, ed. G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark,
1957), 77.
29 Karl Barth, CD IV/1, 193.
CALL FORWARDING: IMPROVISING THE RESPONSE TO THE CALL OF BEAUTY (1)
Hush! Hush! Somebody’s calling my name Hush! Hush! Somebody’s calling my name Hush! Hush! Somebody’s calling my name O my Lord, O my Lord, what shall I do?
But isn’t this always the case? Somebody’s calling my name. I hear the call and I’m faced with the question “what shall I do?” What shall I do? What shall I do? Who is this I who is being called? What happens to this “I” in being called? And who or what is calling me?
This pattern of call and response goes back at least as far as creation. God calls the world into being, and so the being of all that exists is a response to that call. But, of course, there is no one call, even in the creation narrative. Instead, there are multiple calls—calls upon calls—and thus responses upon responses, an intricate web that is ever being improvised with the result being a ceaseless reverberation of call and response. Yet what structures this relation of call and response? Further, how exactly does it relate to beauty, and thus to the topic of this conference? (2)
In what follows, I examine what I take to be reflections of God’s beauty in creation. If all beauty originates from God, then all beauty found in the world is a reflected beauty. Rather than attempting to define beauty, to provide the “essence” of beauty, or even to reflect on beautiful things per se, I will consider beauty in a roundabout way: by way of the call. Here I am following the call of Jean-Louis Chrétien as laid out in his book The Call and the Response.(3) There Chrétien reminds us just how central this structure of call and response is to creaturely existence, and how intimately connected to goodness and beauty it is. Here I unpack Chrétien’s analysis of the call, likewise calling upon Hans Urs von Balthasar. Then I turn to how we might work out the call and response in black spirituals and jazz and then reflect upon how they likewise provide an example of beauty. It is, I think, appropriate to consider music that originates from the margins of music, from those oppressed and considered the least. For Jesus—whom Paul terms the “icon” of God (II Cor. 4:4) (4)—self-identifies with the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, and the naked, saying “just as you did it to the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Mt. 25:40). The beauty that is reflected by the marginalized is a broken beauty, one that reflects a God who not only takes a stand with those oppressed and broken but also becomes oppressed and broken himself. And yet that broken beauty likewise points to the eschatological beauty of the risen, reigning Lord.
I. BEAUTY AS THE CALL
There is absolutely no sense of “beauty for beauty’s sake” in Chrétien: as he says, “things and forms do not beckon us because they are beautiful in themselves, for their own sake, as it were. Rather, we call them beautiful precisely because they call us and recall us” (CR 3, my italics). Here we have a surprising reversal. Chrétien is clear regarding the relation of call, beauty, and goodness. But it is the order of them that he puts into question. “Beautiful, kalon, is what comes from a call, kalein” (CR 7), he says. So the call is what constitutes the beautiful, rather than the other way around. Things are beautiful precisely because they call out to us. Or, we might put this the other way around: God’s call precedes the pronouncement of beauty. In creating the world, God calls various things into being. “Let there be light,” says God, and only after calling it into being does he then reflect on its goodness (Gen. 1:3-4). In this sense, kaleô is more primordial than kalon. Or, as Chrétien puts it: “The word ‘beautiful’ is not primary, but responds and corresponds to the first call, which is the call sent by thought construed as a power to call and to name” (CR 7).
Yet the creation of light lacks the dimension of a human call. Light may “respond” by illuminating, but a person called by God responds both by a readiness to hear and a readiness to act. In this regard, it is remarkable how similar are the responses of Moses and Samuel to God’s call. God calls out from the burning bush, “Moses, “Moses” and Moses responds: “here I am” (Ex. 3:4). This “here I am” is to say “I am at your disposal.” And the formula that Eli gives to Samuel is: “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening” (I Sam. 3:3-9). What takes place in these exchanges is a crucial reversal. Emmanuel Levinas puts it as follows: “here I am (me voici)! The accusative here is remarkable: here I am, under your eyes, at your service, your obedient servant.”(5) In other words, the subject is now truly subject to the Other, the one who calls, and so stands in the accusative case. Similarly, Balthasar, influenced by the famed writer on acting, Konstantin Stanislavsky, speaks of a disponibilité in which “the whole human system is available.”(6)
Yet how does beauty call and what is its attraction? While the Hebraic priority of the voice has often been contrasted with the Hellenic priority of sight, the “call” can come in either form, or another form altogether. Relating his enlightenment from Diotima in the Symposium, Socrates speaks of moving from an eros for the body to an eros for the soul to an eros for beauty itself.(7) Ultimately, this eros for—or, we might well say, call to—beauty is disconnected from both sight and sound. So it would seem that the call may be delivered through sight or sound, or even something else. However, Chrétien points out that, even in the Symposium, “vision, at every step, produces speech in response [e.g., the very speech that Socrates is making at the banquet]” and so concludes that “visible beauty calls for spoken beauty” (CR 11). What exactly, though, is beauty’s allure? In commenting on Plato, the neo-Platonist philosopher Proclus makes the insightful etymological observation that beauty calls (kalein) “because it enchants and charms (kelein).”(8) Chrétien concludes that the charm beauty exerts results in “voice, speech, and music” (CR 12). Of course, Chrétien is overstating his case. No doubt beauty often results in speech and music, but it can likewise move us to paint or sculpt.
Yet Proclus does more than define beauty in terms of enchantment and charm, for he likewise connects this enchantment with God. In his Platonic Theology, he writes: “beauty converts all things to itself, sets them in motion, causes them to be possessed by the divine (enthousian poiei), and recalls them (anakaleitai) to itself through the intermediary of love.”(9) We find this same connection of beauty and God in Dionysius—or Pseudo-Dionysius—again by way of the call: “Beauty ‘calls’ all things to itself (whence it is called ‘beauty’),” writes Dionysius, who makes it clear that “Beauty” here is another name for God (in his text titled The Divine Names).(10)
So beauty enchants and this enchantment comes from God. But, once moved, how do we forward the call? The answer to that question can best be found in analyzing the initial call itself. And here I turn to Balthasar. For, although the language of call and response is not central to Balthasar’s thought in the way that it is in Chrétien, his description of how beauty charms us is remarkably in line with Chrétien. Yet Balthasar adds at least three elements (and, no doubt, many more) that help clarify the call. All three of these elements can be found in the following passage from the Theological Aesthetics:
The form as it appears to us is beautiful only because the delight that it arouses in us is founded upon the fact that, in it, the truth and goodness of the depths of reality itself are manifested and bestowed, and this manifestation and bestowal reveal themselves to us as being something infinitely and inexhaustibly valuable and fascinating.(11)
Let me enumerate these elements. First, whereas secular liberalism/modernism (particularly as exemplified by Immanuel Kant) had disconnected the traditional transcendentals of the good, the true, and the beautiful, Balthasar reconnects them and makes them not merely logical operators (as in the thought of Duns Scotus) but truly part of the created order.(12) Second, and closely related, in Balthasar “the beauty of the world” and “theological beauty” are once again connected, as they were in Thomas Aquinas (GL 1, 80). This reconnection is why Balthasar insists that his is a “theological aesthetics” rather than an “aesthetic theology.” But this means that God’s call to us is very much connected to the beauty of the earth, even while surpassing and pointing beyond that earthly beauty. Third, the possibility of the call is due to what Balthasar calls a “double and reciprocal ekstasis—God’s ‘venturing forth’ to man and man’s to God” (GL 1, 126). Balthasar goes so far as to speak of the “elevation of man to participate in [God’s] glory” (GL 1, 125).
On both Chrétien’s and Balthasar’s accounts of the call, then, participation is central. But how do we participate in the call? In one sense, that participation is possible because God both transcends the world and yet is reflected by it. One can on this point agree with John Milbank, who writes that “participation can be extended also to language, history and culture: the whole realm of human culture” precisely because “human making participates in a God who is infinite poetic utterance.” (13) While it seems to me that Milbank here unduly limits participation to poiesis (i.e., artistic making)—and I would want to broaden it to include phronesis (i.e., practical wisdom)—the context for these reflections, music, certainly makes poiesis an appropriate way in which to participate in the divine beauty. Of course, there are different ways of thinking poiesis. The notion of artistic “creation” has been a guiding one in the arts. No doubt, artists are “creators” of a sort. Unfortunately, the term “creation”—at least in the modern period—has come to have rather individualistic connotations and an unhealthy tinge of ex nihilo. Given that the call always precedes us—and is what makes it possible for us to call in response— a significantly better notion would be that of “improvisation,” which (as one dictionary would have it) is simply to “fabricate out of what is conveniently on hand.” (14) Improvisation is, I think, a helpful way of conceptualizing the call and the response and a far healthier—not to mention more accurate—way of thinking about what artists do.
Here, in an important sense, I am building off of my previous work on improvisation. In my book The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue, I have argued that improvisation is a key moment in all of music making.(15) Although it is most evident in explicit improvisatory performance practices—such as jazz and Baroque music—there I contend that it is likewise present in all musical discourses, even in classical music. My way of thinking about music making, then, is that composers, performers, and even audience members are part of an improvisatory practice: composers “improvise” upon the conventions of their music genre (not to mention the work of previous composers); performers improvise certain elements of their performances (more or less, depending on prevailing conventions); listeners participate in the improvisatory practice by listening.
II. IMPROVISING THE RESPONSE
In this section, I turn to black spirituals and jazz—musical practices that are strongly improvisatory—to illuminate what takes place in the call and the response. As will become clear, my principal points are that: 1) the call always precedes me; 2) in responding, I do not speak entirely on my own behalf but on my behalf and the behalf of others; and 3) that the improvised response is always a repetition and an improvisation.
Let us turn to our first characteristic—viz. that the call always precedes me. It is not just that the response is a response to a prior call; it is that even the call in these songs echoes a prior call. That call can be spelled out in terms of the previous performance of these pieces. But it can likewise be traced back to earlier calls. For these songs are, in effect, echoes of echoes—going back to the call from God at the beginning of the world. Or, in the case of spirituals, to Jesus’ call to his disciples. Jesus says to Peter and Andrew: “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people” (Mt. 4:19). That call is, in turn, broadened by the Great Commission, in which the disciples—and, by extension, we—are called to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Mt. 28:19). Here we become explicit messengers of God’s call to the world. We do not call in our name, but “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Mt. 28:19). This is why Chrétien speaks of it being “always too late for there to be an origin” (CR 5), for the origin of the present call far precedes it. Thus, responding to the call is both a responding to a present call—one here and now—and to the calls that have preceded it. Scripture echoes this kind of echoing of calls: so, for example, when Jesus calls for repentance, he is echoing God’s multiple calls to Israel through Moses and the prophets.
To improvise in jazz, then, is to respond to a call, to join in something that is always already in progress. One becomes an improviser by becoming part of the discourse of jazz. While it would take considerably deeper analysis than we have time for here to explain what is involved in becoming a jazz musician and learning how to improvise, we can briefly summarize what happens as follows. Speaking with Pierre Bourdieu, we might say that one must cultivate a habitus, a way of being that is both nurtured by and results in what Bourdieu terms “regulated improvisations.” (16) They are “regulated” precisely by the constraints that make jazz “jazz”—and not something else. One first becomes habituated into this habitus by listening, and learning to listen is the precondition for all future improvisation—especially when one improvises with others. So we can say that each improvisation is like a response to improvisations of the past. To become an improviser, one must have an intimate knowledge of past improvisations and the possibility conditions for those improvisations (i.e., the conventions of improvising). To be able to improvise means one is steeped in the tradition and knows how to respond to the call of other improvisers. Although we tend to think of jazz improvisation in terms of spontaneity, that quality of improvisation—while undoubtedly present—is usually greatly exaggerated. It is also remarkably paradoxical. Not only are many “improvisations” often heavily “scripted” but also spontaneity is only possible when one is well prepared. It takes a great deal of work to be spontaneous. It also takes a significant knowledge of improvisations of the past, for they provide the guidelines for improvisations of the present and future. Consider what Wynton Marsalis says in response to a question of how he achieved his remarkable level of success:
I would listen to records, I would buy all these etude books. Any money I would make on little pop gigs I would buy trumpets or books with it. I would get all the etude books, I would go to different teachers, I would call people, and really seek the knowledge. I would go to music camp in the summer time. Practice, listen to the recordings of Adolph Herseth [the principal trumpet in the CSO for many years], or Clifford Brown, trying to learn the records.(17)
Further, “being spontaneous” is not something one simply wills. Keith Johnstone notes that it is the “decision not to try and control the future” that allows for spontaneity. (18) The implication here is that one opens oneself up to the future to allow something to happen. But, of course, that opening oneself up to the future is only possible by being fully prepared. That requires a thorough grounding in the tradition. In jazz, knowing the past is what makes the future possible.
Of course, in realizing the debt to and dependency upon the past, the jazz musician is aware that any response to the call is made possible by a gift. The call is a gift to me, something that comes—like life itself—ultimately unbidden and simply disseminated. Rowan Williams reminds us that art “always approaches the condition of being both recognition and transmission of the gift, gratuity or excess.”(19) There is, of course, a long tradition (both inside and outside of the Christian tradition) in which the ability to paint or sculpt or improvise has been seen as a gift, something simply bestowed upon one that calls for responsibility on the part of the receiver to cultivate, nurture, and exercise.(20) In this sense, both the ability and the products that arise from that ability are gifts. And such gifts are hardly given simply to Christians or to the religiously faithful. Indeed, they are sometimes—perhaps often—given to people who neither appreciate them nor are thankful for them, and may not even exercise them. Yet, if one takes their gift character seriously, then one senses a kind of responsibility for exercising artistic gifts. Although it is theatrical rather than jazz improvisers who speak in these terms, the call is like an “offer” that can be either “accepted” or “blocked.” (21) To “accept” the call is to respond in kind, to say “yes” to what is being offered and thus develop the call.
Second, my response is never mine alone. To be sure, I speak for myself, yet also for others and in their name. To improvise is always to speak to others, with others (even when one improvises alone), and in the name of others. Given that the call precedes me, I do not begin the discourse, nor do I bring it to a conclusion. For instance, if I’m playing one of the perennial standards of jazz, I do so along with so many others—e.g, those playing alongside me, those playing the tune in some other corner of the world, and all of those who have played it before. Jazz musicians typically have a sense of what the author of Hebrews calls a “great cloud of witnesses” (Heb. 12:1). Moreover, when I play a tune, I am never simply improvising on that tune alone. I am improvising on the tradition formed by the improvisations upon that tune—what literary theorists call its “reception history.” Whereas in regard to literature, Harold Bloom has spoken of “the anxiety of influence”—which is the desire to be new, fresh, and original—jazz musicians would rather speak of “the joy of influence.” (22) Bloom’s talk of “anxiety” stems from the romantic paradigm of art, with its drive to be “original.” The primary artistic goal in the modern, romantic paradigm is to carve out a place for oneself by overcoming the influence of previous artists. One wants to become (to use Bloom’s language) a “strong poet” who stands out as unique and thus distances oneself from the tradition.
But jazz provides an entirely different model for the artist. It is one far more along the lines of that in T.S. Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” (23) and one that aptly reinforces the kind of model of artistic participation Balthasar has in mind. As a jazz improviser, one becomes part of a community of improvisers. As improviser, one works with material that already exists rather than creating “ex nihilo.” As improviser, one is aware of being wholly indebted to the past. As improviser, one speaks in the name of others. Although Chrétien almost certainly did not have jazz in mind, he opens The Call and the Response with a quotation from Joseph Joubert that captures these aspects perfectly: “In order for a voice to be beautiful, it must have in it many voices together” (CR 1). My voice is always composed of many voices and so is never simply “my own.” Chrétien goes on to say that “every voice . . . bears many voices within itself” (CR 1). In a beautiful article titled “The Other in Myself,” Rudolf Bernet writes: “Only somebody who must hold a lecture discovers that he or she is continually paraphrasing other authors and speaks as well in the name of colleagues and friends.” (24) Interestingly enough, it so happened that the last time I spoke at the Wheaton Theology Conference there was a student visiting from the University of Leuven—where I did my doctoral work—who was just then taking a course with Professor Bernet, who was my doctoral adviser (my Doktorvater, as the Germans would have it). After my address, she commented: “listening to you was like being in class with Bernet,” which I took as a compliment! So, indeed, we professors are constantly improvising upon what our professors taught us, and they upon their professors. What emerges in this improvisation upon improvisation is an ever-evolving hybridity in which identity and ownership are often stretched to their limits. Is an improvisation “mine” if it is so indebted to other improvisers? Further, even my identity as an improviser is interconnected with those of other improvisers. I may still have an identity, but it is hardly fixed or simple.
This question of identity naturally leads to my third point, which is that my response is always both a repetition and an innovation. Chrétien writes of the strange logic of improvisation (even though he is hardly thinking explicitly of improvisation, let alone jazz): “Our response can only repeat. It starts by repeating. Yet it does not repeat by restating” (CR 25). Chrétien goes on to explain this enigmatic claim by saying that there is kind of space that is opened up in ourselves that gives us a voice so that we are able to pass on the call without mere repetition. We hear the call and we translate it into an idiom of our own. Yet how should we think this mélange of sameness and difference, a repetition that is not merely a repetition but also a development?
A particularly influential way of thinking about this identity and difference is that of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s notion of “signifyin(g).”(25) It is interesting — and quite instructive for my point here—that Gates admits that he is in effect improvising on Derrida’s notion of “différance.” (26) Gates says that “all texts Signify upon other texts,” but we could modify that by simply saying that “all improvisations improvise upon other improvisations.” (27) On Gates’s view, there are two ways in which one “signifies.” Given that Gates is providing an account of how Africans and African-Americans relate to white culture, one of those ways is “signifyin(g)”—i.e. repetition with “a compelling sense of difference based on the black vernacular.” (28) Yet signifyin(g) can also take the form of “homage,” in which one performs the music of another—or improvises upon the improvisations of another—as (and here I quote Gates) “a gesture of admiration and respect.” (29)
Murphy provides a fine example of that homage by analyzing a solo of Joe Henderson that utilizes a theme from Charlie Parker’s improvisation on “Buzzy.”
It is the ‘Buzzy’ theme that tenor-saxophonist Joe Henderson chooses to transform during his improvisations on two performances of a 12-bar blues in F. The first transformation is heard on his “If” . . . . One might argue that the appearance of Parker’s motive at the end of Henderson’s third chorus is a coincidence, but the fact that Henderson moves on to construct the entire next chorus on a restatement of the motive in its original form, followed by two transformations, shows it to be a conscious manipulation of Parker’s idea.(30)
Here we have a blend of repetition and transformation, but one that is clearly designed to pay a kind of homage to Charlie Parker. Or, to take a different example, Paul Berliner provides a fascinating genealogy of a particular jazz lick from 1946 to 1992. It starts with Billy Eckstine and Miles Davis and makes its way through Bud Powell, Clifford Brown, Dave Young, Paul Chambers, Red Garland, Ella Fitzgerald, Cannonball Adderly, The Manhattan Transfer, John Scofield, Benny Green, and Christian McBride. (31) Anyone familiar with jazz realizes that these names cover a rather long and wide sweep in the life of jazz. So a given lick can constantly be transformed and yet have enough “sameness” to have a continued identity. Yet each of these voices adds something along the way. An example like this provides us with a way of conceptualizing differing voices all improvising in their own respective ways upon the same basic line. And this, in turn, helps us think about how the call of beauty can go forth in so many different ways and be continually transformed.
III. BEAUTY AND THE CALL
It may seem that, in section two, we left beauty in order to focus on improvisation. Yet beauty has been present all along. Since beauty is precisely the call and its enchantment, then beauty is part of improvisation. But, in this third section, I wish to consider the implications of linking beauty, the call, and improvisation for the practicing artist.
If we can rightly say that our artistic creation is a participation in God’s poiesis (which I believe we can), then our calls are rightly seen as continuation of God’s calls. Of course, I have argued that the beautiful must be taken not merely as a logical operator but as a transcendental that is connected to goodness and truth. With that in mind, all art that reflects beauty, goodness, and truth is beautiful, good, and true. But this connection of beauty with goodness and truth does not simplify but instead complexifly the situation. For what is the status of beauty in the midst of a fallen world, in which all is not necessarily beautiful, good, or true? And what is the artist to do in such a world?
The artist is certainly faced with a difficult situation. The world is still—in many ways—as God pronounced it: “good.” And, yet, it is so full of that which is “not good.” Traditionally, artists have particularly focused on that which is beautiful in the world, whether the human figure or the natural landscape or pleasing harmonies. It has been only more recently (and “recent” here is defined in terms of the long history of western art) that artists have turned their attention to subjects that are not traditionally thought to be “beautiful.” While there is no question that some art created today is shocking just to be shocking and vile just to be vile, it is likewise the case that artists who, say, paint that which is not beautiful in some traditional sense do so out of a deep commitment to truth. So, for example, Dmitri Schostakovich’s symphonies are not necessarily “pretty,” but they are faithful witnesses (the thirteenth, for example) to the horrors of his time. Here we might be tempted to say that such music puts greater emphasis on the true rather than the beautiful. But it is not that the beautiful has simply been neglected; rather, we witness a sense of the beautiful that is not that of Kant’s harmonious free play of the faculties but what Bruce Herman has called a “broken beauty.”(32) To quote Herman: “We long for completeness and health and perfection; yet more often than not we encounter fragmentation, weakness, and at best a tragicomic dignity.”(33)
What unites Christian artists whose work is part of the exhibition “A Broken Beauty” (which was at the Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach and then at the Joseph D. Carrier Gallery in Toronto) is that they depict both “suffering and hope,” both “human brokenness and human beauty.” (34) And here we can make a strong connection to both black spirituals and black improvisers. So many of the spirituals speak of both “suffering and hope” with a recognition that they are currently captives but that freedom looms on the horizon. So we have “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” that is “comin’ for to carry me home.” Or “Steal Away,” which ends with the line: “I ain’t got long to stay here.” There is clearly an eschatological hope in these spirituals, both of the more immediate eschaton of escape from slavery and of the ultimate eschaton of being “home.” Likewise, black jazz improvisers have seen their music as a way to “overwrite, resist, and confound both conventional musical practices and the orthodox social structures those practices reflect.” (35) Many black improvisers have seen their work as undermining repressive, white social structures. And, indeed, it was partly due to the respect that black improvisers slowly gained that blacks in general gained dignity. Houston J. Baker says of the blues that they transformed the “economics of slavery” into a “resonant, improvisational, expressive dignity.” (36) We could likewise say that jazz has helped transform the “economics of oppression” into a similar sort of dignity. Is it the logic of God’s reversal in which the lowly are lifted up that explains why jazz is seen today as arguably the greatest American contribution to music? Or is it that suffering sometimes produces art of poignant beauty? I’m not sure. In any case, both the spirituals and jazz have this sense of suffering tempered by hope.
As fallen, earthly vessels, we receive God’s call and improvise a response that goes back to God and forward out to all of creation. It is indeed incumbent upon us—in light of the Great Commission—to spread that call. And art—whether aural or visual—is a powerful way of speaking God’s call. The beauty that results is undoubtedly imperfect and broken. It should come as no surprise that our art reflects the brokenness of ourselves, both of our souls and bodies. Moreover, we are called by God himself to heed the voices that come from the margins, from those whose reality is in many cases far more broken than ours but likewise whose voices are sometimes much more forthright and honest. And here we must connect poiesis to phronesis: for the art that we make as a response to God’s call ought to be in service of a phronesis—that is, a practical acting in the world—that pays heed to the marginalized of the world. Art, as Nicholas Wolterstorff long ago reminded us, must be connected with action. (37) Through art, we are reminded of the broken beauty that surrounds us and we are summoned to act.
Yet art can also serve as an icon that points us to the glorious beauty of
God’s kingdom to come. We stand on this side of the Jordan, able only to catch a
glimpse of God’s beauty but knowing that one day we shall see “face to face” (I
Cor. 13:12).
1 This essay is a slightly revised version of a chapter taken from “The Beauty of God,”
edited by Daniel J. Treier, Mark Husbands, and Roger Lundin. Copyright (c) 2007 by
Daniel J. Treier, Mark Husbands, and Roger Lundin. Used with permission of InterVarsity
Press, PO Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515 www.ivpress.com.
2 This paper was originally presented at the 2006 Wheaton Theology Conference.
3 Jean-Louis Chrétien, The Call and the Response, trans. Anne A. Davenport (New
York: Fordham University Press, 2004)—hereafter cited as CR with pagination following.
4 All references are to The New Revised Standard Version.
5 Emmanuel Levinas, “God and Philosophy,” in Basic Philosophical Writings, ed.
Adriaan T. Peperzak, Simon Critchley, and Robert Bernasconi (Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press, 1996), 146.
6 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, Vol. 1 Prologomena,
trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1988) 288 (hereafter cited
as TD with volume number and pagination). Here Balthasar references Konstantin Stanislavsky,
Das Geheimnis des schauspielerischen Erfolges (Zurich: Scientia, n.d.), 168.
7 Symposium 210a-e.
8 Proclus, Sur le premier Alcibiade de Platon, ed. and trans. A. Segonds (Paris: Belles
Lettres, 1986) vol. 2, p. 361 (cited in CR 12).
9 Proclus, The Platonic Theology, trans. Thomas Taylor (El Paso: Selene, 1988), 77.
Here I am following the quote as translated by Anne A. Davenport in CR 9-10 (my italics).
10 Pseudo-Dionysius, The Divine Names 701c-d, in The Complete Works, trans. Colin
Luibheid and Paul Rorem (New York: Paulist, 1987). The English translation uses
“bids” in place of “calls.” But, since the verb is kaloun in the Greek text, then “calls”
seems a more accurate translation.
11 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 1
Seeing the Form, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis (San Francisco/New York: Ignatius/
Crossroad, 1982), 118 (hereafter cited as GL with volume number and pagination).
12 On this point, as well as the one that follows, I am indebted to Oliver Davies’s
piece “The Theological Aesthetics,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hans Urs von
Balthasar, ed. Edward T. Oakes, S.J. and David Moss (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2004), 131-42.
13 John Milbank, Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon (London: Routledge,
2003), ix.
14 Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed. (Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-
Webster, 2003), s.v. “improvise.” This definition—as I will show—much better reflects
actual improvisational practice.
15 See, for example, Bruce Ellis Benson, The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue: A
Phenomenology of Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) and “The
Improvisation of Hermeneutics: Jazz Lessons for Interpreters,” in Hermeneutics at the
Crossroads, ed. Kevin Vanhoozer, James K.A. Smith, and Bruce Ellis Benson (Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press, 2006), 193-210.
16 Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1977), 78.
17 “Music’s Jazz Maestro,” an online interview with Wynton Marsalis dated January
8, 1991. See http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/mar0int-4.
18 Keith Johnstone, Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre (New York: Theatre Arts
Books, 1979), 32.
19 Rowan Williams, Grace and Necessity: Reflections on Art and Love (Harrisburg,
PA: Morehouse, 2005), 163.
20 Just as an example, I note that at the Iridium Jazz Club (NYC) website one finds
the following regarding the famed jazz guitarist Les Paul: “Les Paul says his greatest
God-given gifts are perfect pitch, a love for music with the ability to learn it quickly,
and the curiosity and persistence of an inventor who wants to know ‘how things tick’”
(http://www.iridiumjazzclub.com/les.shtml).
21 “I call anything that an actor does an ‘offer’. Each offer can either be accepted, or
blocked. . . . A block is anything that prevents the action from developing” (Johnstone,
Impro 97).
22 Harold Bloom, The Anxiety of Influence (New York: Oxford University Press,1973)
and John P. Murphy, “Jazz Improvisation: The Joy of Influence,” The Black Perspective
in Music 18: (1990): 7-19.
23 T.S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” in The Norton Anthology of English
Literature 3rd ed. M.H. Abrams et al. (New York: Norton, 1975), 2553-60.
24 Rudolf Bernet, Tradition and Renewal: The Centennial of Louvain’s Institute of
Philosophy, Vol. 1 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1992), 85.
25 Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American
Literary Criticism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 46. Here I simply assume
that “signifyin(g)” can have a positive function, though I discuss this question in
detail in my article “The Fundamental Heteronomy of Jazz,” Revue internationale de
philosophie 4 (2006): 453-67.
26 For more on the notion of différance, see Jacques Derrida, “Différance,” in Margins
of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982),
3-27.
27 Gates, The Signifying Monkey, xxiv.
28 Ibid., xxii.
29 Gates, The Signifying Monkey, xxvii and 63.
30 Murphy, “Jazz Improvisation” 10.
31 Paul Berliner, Thinking in Jazz: The Infinite Art of Improvisation (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1994), 576-8.
32 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1987), 62.
33 Bruce Herman, “Foreword,” in A Broken Beauty, ed. Theodore L. Prescott (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), vii.
34 Timothy Verdon, “Broken Beauty, Shattered Heart,” in A Broken Beauty, 25.
35 Daniel Fischlin and Ajay Heble, “The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation,
and Communities in Dialogue,” in The Other Side of Nowhere: Jazz, Improvisation,
and Communities in Dialogue, ed. Daniel Fischlin and Ajay Heble (Middletown, CT:
Wesleyan University Press, 2004), 2.
36 Houston A. Baker, Jr., Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature: A Vernacular
Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 13.
37 Nicholas Wolterstorff, Art in Action (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980).
THEOLOGY AND CHURCH MUSIC*
Rarely, if ever, have liturgical revisions been as radical and drastic as those introduced in the Book of Common Prayer published by Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1549. This was the most radical of a series of Prayerbooks, culminating in the version of 1662. As a world wide Anglican Communion emerged from the national Church of England, in large part a result of the American Revolution, the 1662 Prayerbook served as one of its unifying factors, and remained unchanged for over 300 years.
Among the orders of service prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer, it was the order for evening prayer, especially as set to music for the purposes of cathedral worship, which became the Anglican Church’s most distinctive and enduring contribution to liturgy. While the radical nature of Cranmer’s original changes to the ancient office of Vespers may initially have met with reluctance and resistance on the part of musicians, over succeeding centuries it attracted an unusually high level of loyalty and enthusiasm from organists, singers and choirmasters. Moreover, it generated a significant number of composers whose principal claim to fame lies in their settings of this service. Many of these settings require the levels of musical skill and careful rehearsal appropriate to a concert performance, and in places such as Westminster Abbey or King’s College Cambridge it is common to see hundreds of tourists waiting in line for Evensong as they would for a concert.
Gratifying though such crowds may be, they are confined to just a few places. Even in some of England’s most magnificent cathedrals and abbey churches, mid-week services of this sort are attended by tiny numbers of people – occasionally none at all. Yet in these places there is nevertheless a continuing commitment to maintain the highest possible musical and liturgical standards, both on the part of the clergy and the musicians. This clearly implies a radical difference between choral evensong and a concert. A concert that fails to attract an audience is a failure, and there is no point in performing it. By contrast, the evident musicianship of choral evensong, it seems, continues to have its point even in the absence of any congregation. How can this be?
The question is often a real one for church musicians, but here it simply provides a specially striking focus to an important question about church music. What is its point? I shall argue that there are at least two competing conceptions which, whatever those who subscribe to them may think, can be seen to reflect important differences about the theological significance of music in church. And I shall further argue that neither is wholly adequate to its satisfactory understanding. But to bring these matters to the fore it is first necessary to describe a wider context.
I
It is interesting that music enjoys a more central and abiding place in Christian worship than the other arts. This is reflected in the fact that music is to be found in the worship of even the most austere of traditions. In Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican services, it is prominent. So, often, is poetry, painting, and sculpture, as well as ceremony and ritual amounting almost to dance. In the severest Presbyterian tradition, by contrast, imagery and the ‘fine words’ of ‘vain repetition’ have been expunged. So too has choreographed ceremonial. Yet even here music remains significant, most notably in the singing of the metrical psalms highly distinctive of that tradition, as it is in the role of the cantor in Gaelic services. This near universality of music in the absence of the other art forms lends special importance, in my view, to the question of the role of music in worship. Only the Quakers, perhaps, have eliminated it altogether, and even here there is no reason why a Friend should not contribute to ‘the Meeting’ with song.
These brief observations disguise the fact that in many of these traditions (the Orthodox may be an exception) the position of music is unsettled. Visits to Anglican, Presbyterian and Catholic churches uncover striking differences. These differences are not merely historically contingent, but arise from debated opinions, and these debates about the contemporary use of music in church are marked by a number of dichotomies. ‘Traditional hymns’ are set against ‘worship songs,’ ‘choir and organ’ against ‘music bands,’ the ‘popular’ against the ‘classical.’ What do these dichotomies, often embodied in competing hymnbooks, signify? To answer this question we need to record some of their contrasting characteristics. ‘Classical’ church music is complex and hence difficult. It requires skill and practice and is accordingly ‘exclusive,’ or thought to be so. That is to say, those who do not have the necessary skills and have not given the rehearsal time it requires, are excluded from performing it, and confined to listening. This is the case with respect to even the most familiar hymns. While it is true that the relatively unmusical can master the tune fairly easily and rapidly, singing the best harmonies is closed to almost everyone present. Still more marked, of course, are the anthem and the voluntary, in which those who do not have the requisite skill cannot directly participate at all.
These facts explain, at least in part, the tendency in many places to prefer the simple ‘chorus’ or song, which is attractively accessible to even a very unmusical worshipper. Its advantage is that it not only permits, but encourages ‘participation.’ Something of the same point applies to the ‘music band.’ Instead of being the exclusive preserve of the highly professional organist, accompaniment is extended to a wide range of instrumentalists of mixed, and not infrequently limited, musical ability. Taizé chant is another good example; short, simple, pseudo-plainsong lines are repeated until everyone is thoroughly familiar with and drawn into the singing of them. Anyone who has taken part in these will confirm that they can generate a powerful sense of ‘the whole people of God.’
Why is participation like this to be welcomed? The answer, I think, is that people are bound together by singing. It is a signal, and important fact, that music is able to co-ordinate a large number of voices in a way that is difficult for speech. Simple experiment shows that to get people to repeat spoken words together is not easy. The spoken choruses in, for instance, T S Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral are hard to get right, and even the most familiar ‘responses’ to ‘versicles’ (e.g. “Lord hear our prayer”/“And let our cry come unto you”) can result in a kind of cacophony of voices. Once they are set to music that is easily learned, however, a unity of sound emerges that is otherwise difficult to achieve.
It is not hard to bring a theological dimension to this observation. Worship should be the worship of ‘the Body of Christ.’ Is there a better way to realise embodied unity than by getting people to sing together and thus joining many voices in one synchronised sound? The answer seems obvious, and once we have entertained it, we are easily drawn into a particular theology of church music. It is, in fact, a theology of the church – in more impressive language, an ‘ecclesiology.’ With One Voice is the title of a (relatively) recent hymnbook. The theological aspiration is clear, though in this particular case it has ecumenical overtones also. The central characteristic of the church is fellowship, being part of one Body. Furthermore, this sort of fellowship is demonstrably attractive to many, and accordingly anything that promotes it, especially in the context of worship, can play an important part in mission to the ‘unchurched.’
Though there is evidently much to commend such a theological interpretation of the role of music in worship, it is equally evident that the theology of church it implies runs the danger of being inward looking. The fellowship of the body of Christ can indeed be construed as essentially a matter of ‘belonging,’ of being joined together. But once we are joined ‘with one voice’ we have to ask where, exactly, God fits into the picture. More precisely, where does the worship of God fit in? The same issue arises, in my view, with respect to the debate that was prompted by the reforms emanating from Vatican II. Along with a change from the Tridentine Latin mass to mass in the vernacular, Catholic priests were instructed to celebrate the sacrament facing westwards towards the people rather than eastwards with their backs to the people. At the time, and especially in Anglican circles ‘eastward’ versus ‘westward’ celebration of the Eucharist was hotly debated. The debate is now exhausted by and large, because the ‘westward’ tendency has proved to be the dominant one. Yet there is still point in rehearsing the arguments. Westward celebration confirms the unity of priest and people in one way – being in fellowship, but it also turns them towards each other, reaching out for, and receiving strength and confirmation from each other. No doubt this is a good thing. On the other hand it also turns attention inwards, and can thus generate what I believe to be a real danger in many cases – the worship of the community by the community – a phenomenon which the founder of sociology, Emile Durkheim, thought to be a defining characteristic of religion, of course. By contrast, eastward celebration unites priest and people in a different way. Collectively they turn themselves to God, away from themselves both individually and communally, and if the priest is at their head, his (or her) role is to enable them to look past that headship, through the cross on the altar, upwards to God.
This ‘God-oriented’ disposition has its counterpart in the theology of church music, whose role, accordingly, is not to bind the faithful, but to provide them with a means of transcendance, transcending, that is to say, not merely their individuality, which the ‘fellowship’ conception can also be said to do, but the limitation of the merely human. How does it work? Wherein could its ability to do this lie?
II
The answer is (in Presbyterian language) ‘Divine Service’ – music as worship. What does this mean precisely?
‘Thou desirest no sacrifice, else would I give it thee: but thou delightest not in burnt offerings.’ So says the Psalmist (Psalm 51:16, BCP). The prophet Isaiah has the same thought, but in a more powerful form.
Your countless sacrifices, what are they to me? says the Lord. I am sated with the whole–offerings of rams and the fat of well fed cattle. I have no desire for the blood of bulls, of sheep and of he-goats when you come into my presence. Who has asked you for all this? (Isa.1:11, REB)
It is worth reflecting on this complaint. The ancient Jews sacrificed the best they had. That is to say, they sought to make an offering to God, and what they chose had to be costly if it were to be truly a sacrifice. Inevitably, these were things both rare and highly valued, things that people living in a poor and harsh environment would be delighted to receive – marrow and fatness, as the Psalmists elsewhere refer to it. Of course, the error, if that is what it is, is that God is a spirit, and hence in no need of food and drink. The sacrifice of the ancient Jews was one-sided; they gave something up, of course, but God received no corresponding benefit. How could He, since He could have no use for that which they gave up? The unblemished sheep burnt on the altar was lost to those who gave it, certainly, but was not thereby gained by God.
This one-sidedness is often reflected in ordinary language. To sacrifice something is commonly taken to mean simply giving something up, and no attention is paid to the side of the recipient. Indeed, sometimes there is no hint of any recipient. The beneficiary of the sacrifice is the sacrificer, who forgoes some (usually relatively mundane) good for the sake of greater one. Clearly, however, this cannot be the case with religious sacrifice, which is standardly offered to God. But if the act of sacrificing is indeed a matter of offering something to God, it is not enough for us to give something up; God must correspondingly receive.
Plato in the dialogue Euthyphro identifies a problem here, which we might call the seeming pointlessness of latria or divine service. Since God (or ‘the gods’ in Plato’s case) cannot lack anything, there is no deficiency that even the most devoted service can supply. How then can there be any point to latria, or worship? It is in my view a good and telling question, and it illuminates one aspect of the theology of the Incarnation and of the Eucharist. Clearly, God does not need the burnt offering of sheep and goats or unblemished pigeons. Yet we should not overlook the fact that there is something important expressed in these and other practices, namely the desire to offer God the best that we have to offer. The standard of ‘best’ in these ancient examples is a decidedly human one, and a rather lowly one at that. The summit of human desires is being taken to be the standard of that by which God will be pleased. Arguably, however, the lowly character of animal sacrifice does not mark it out from other more elevated attempts – gold, frankincense or myrrh, say.
The author of Psalm 51 continues the passage quoted with the thought: ‘the sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit: a broken and contrite heart, O God, shalt thou not despise’. What this indicates is that the properly spiritual is called for. Yet even having accepted this fact we may wonder whether we have reached the theological heart of the matter. Surely, if there is a gulf of inordinate proportions between human imperfection and divine perfection, the truth is that we have nothing to offer God. Even our most heartfelt contrition will not do. The conviction that this is so, to my mind, intensifies the meaning of the Incarnation. Sacrifice is that which bridges this gulf. Nothing of ours is good enough. Hence God replaces the sacrificial lamb, with the Lamb of God – His incarnated self in short -- and henceforth humans are possessed of a fit sacrifice, under the forms of bread and wine, by which the chasm is transcended.
Now this understanding has much to commend it in my view. Yet it still leaves something out of account. If the conception of worship as a form of fellowship is insufficiently focussed on God and runs the constant risk of being a strictly human ‘lovefeast,’ the understanding of Eucharistic worship just sketched runs the opposite risk of leaving no place for human engagement. God sacrifices Himself to Himself in an unending act of self-communion, and we have no part in the affair. How are we to counter this alternative danger?
The answer, I shall suggest, is that in the celebration of sacrifice, there is still the possibility of human participation in the active pursuit of perfection as well as the passive receipt of divine gifts. Celebrations of the Eucharist (as of other liturgies), it should go without saying, have style as well as content. The parallel with human relationships (which Jesus regularly invokes in the Gospels) is instructive here. We can give gifts, compliments, praise and so on, graciously or ungraciously. The content of the given is the same, but the style of giving makes all the difference.
These reflections provide us, I think, with some insight into an alternative theology of church music. Its role is, so to speak, to provide us with a fit mode of giving. This may in fact explain something of the singular importance of music in worship that I noted earlier. Although philosophers of music have not infrequently striven to make sense of the idea that music has content and meaning – the familiar candidates are emotion and representation – it is a case hard to make out for what appears to be the most purely formal of the arts. But in the present context, the formal character of music is precisely what there is to commend it; if it can add nothing to content, if its sole contribution is beauty of style or manner, then this is just what we want.
In short, the role of music is to fashion and inform the giving not the gift. If so, it can play this role whether or not a human audience is present. I have focussed on the Eucharist. But something of the same may be said of all acts of prayer. St Paul remarks, with characteristically profound religious insight that ‘the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express’ (Romans 8:26). It is a happy fact that we have music – our music – as a vehicle for those ‘groans.’
III
This account of the matter would not be complete, I think, without some attempt to integrate the two theologies of church music that I have been trying to articulate. Clearly, if there is a ‘high’ role to be given to music in the second of them, there is a no less indispensable role for the first. It is plausible to claim, and certainly I have no desire to deny it, that what I have called the power of music to form and bind the fellowship of Christians into one voice, is highly significant for the important role it can play in worship. Christians do indeed find a striking and compelling mode of unity in the singing of ‘hymns and sacred songs.’ But the two conceptions are not in fact in opposition. The Church as the Body of Christ is not merely a fellowship of the like-minded, but a communion, and while communion narrowly interpreted can be taken to mean a simple matter of ‘being one,’ the communion that matters is not with one another, but with God together. Accordingly, we need to conceive of music as a vital instrument (though not the only one) that at one and the same time unites us in a way that allows us to give back to God the gifts of God in a style appropriate to their giving. There is without question much more to be said before this idea can be said to have been made out convincingly. But for the moment, I hope that enough has been said to make the attempt to do so one worth undertaking.
*This is a slightly revised version of an essay first published in the Scottish
Journal of Theology 57(2) 139-145 (2004). The permission of the Editor to reprint
it here is gratefully acknowledged.
"A Pre-Appearance of the Truth": Toward a Christological Aesthetics(1)
In 1985, Eberhard Jüngel wrote that “the almost wholesale neglect of aesthetics in current theology betrays the fact that things are not at their best with the contemporary theology of hope.” (2) What this statement means will hopefully become clearer in a moment. For now, it is worth noting that in the years since Jüngel made this statement, the field of theological aesthetics has been far from neglected. And yet, apart from the pioneering work of Hans Urs von Balthasar, the subject of theological aesthetics has received scant attention from self-consciously dogmatic theologians—much less Protestant theologians. (3) Whether this is a sign of a general torpor in dogmatic theology or a sign of what has come to be called the “ghettoization of aesthetics” (4) from other disciplines within philosophy and theology, is hard to tell. Most likely, both aspects contribute to the problem.
My thesis is that the subject of theological aesthetics must be approached from a starting point in christology—that is, from the second article of the creed as opposed to the first or third articles of the creed (e.g., creation, divine perfections, ecclesiology, pneumatology). This does not mean an aesthetics of the first or third articles is not necessary or profitable, only that it cannot be sufficient on its own or in abstraction from christology. Moreover, an aesthetics which only focuses on the person of Christ apart from his work—on the cross apart from reconciliation—will not suffice. A proper christology must hold the person and work, the being and act, of Christ together, and all dogmatic theology in general must begin from this christological unity of person and work. By bringing the two together in this theological exploration of beauty, I argue that Jesus Christ as the mediator, as Deus pro nobis, establishes the parameters for theological aesthetics. To put this another way, theological aesthetics is not interested in God or Jesus as beings in abstraction from becoming, but instead in the God who justifies as the one who raised Jesus from the dead, and in Jesus Christ who interrupts us in the word of the cross as the one who gave himself over to death “for us and our salvation.”
In this paper, I intend to explicate the basic contours of a christological aesthetics which takes its bearings from the divine work of justification as the “heart of the Christian faith.” (5) In other words, rather than argue for my thesis directly, I hope to clarify the inner correspondence between the aesthetic relation and the justifying relation, between the appearance of the beautiful and the appearance of salvation, thus demonstrating indirectly the latent possibilities for a christological aesthetics.
This paper is a sustained reflection on the theology of Eberhard Jüngel and consists of two parts: the first is an overview of Jüngel’s theological ontology of justification, while the second part involves a close reading of his essay on aesthetics with attention given to his definition of the beautiful as the “pre-appearance of the truth.” Finally, I conclude with some remarks about how Jüngel might prompt us to think anew about beauty.
I. JÜNGEL’S RELATIONAL-ACTUALISTIC ONTOLOGY OF JUSTIFICATION
Eberhard Jüngel is a differentiating theologian. As he himself states, “I believe, therefore I differentiate.” (6) This is perhaps nowhere more evident than in his doctrine of justification. Jüngel writes that theology “differentiates first and foremost between God and world, between creator and creature,” which is precisely the case in justification. At its most basic level, the doctrine of justification for Jüngel is the explication of the divine event which the Christian faith proclaims in the gospel—viz., the event of the cross. (7)
This event is twofold in nature in that it concerns God and humanity, and it is ontological in that it concerns the being of the Creator who re-creates and the being of the creature who is re-created by God. As Jüngel states, the doctrine of justification is equally relevant to the doctrine of God and anthropology.(8) To quote Jüngel:
The doctrine of justification deals equally with God and human beings: with the God who justifies and sinners who are justified. To put it more accurately: it deals with the event of divine justification of unrighteous human beings who are becoming righteous through this event. (9)
In the justification event, the primal differentiation between God and humanity involves the further distinction between divine activity and human reception. God acts, and humanity receives. More specifically, the triune God acts in Jesus Christ and from this christological event humanity becomes the recipient of a new humanity. Thus, the revelatory movement from God to humanity results in a corresponding justifying movement from old humanity to new humanity.
The event of justification involves an essential threefold distinction between the historical, existential, and eschatological. (10) Within each of these three dimensions, the movement from God to humanity and the corresponding movement from old humanity to new humanity occurs. Moreover, each dimension implies the other two in a kind of perichoretic relation. The historical event originates in the event of incarnation, in which God assumes our old humanity in Jesus Christ in order to actualize the being of new humanity, and encompasses Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. The existential event takes place in the event of interruption, in which God disrupts humanity in the proclamation of the kergma, the “word of the cross,” and brings humanity into a new existential relation by placing the human person outside herself (extra nos). Finally, the eschatological event takes place in the event of consummation, in which old creation becomes new creation in the light of Jesus Christ’s revelation in Easter glory. All three events—incarnation, interruption, consummation—form the event of reconciliation. In making these distinctions I am merely making explicit what remains implicit in Jüngel’s own theology. (11) Finally, it is essential to remember that the three dimensions are not parts of a larger whole; but rather each dimension is a whole in itself. The distinctions are totus-totus, not partim-partim.
In order to emphasize the connection between justification and aesthetics, I will focus upon the present-tense, existential dimension of justification. Humanity exists in what Jüngel calls in one essay a “web of relations” (12) and in another essay a “well-ordered richness of relations.” (13) Human being is relational being. Jüngel understands humanity as essentially constituted by a threefold relation: “a relation to self, a relation to the world, and a relation to God.” (14)14 A great deal depends on which relation is primary. If the emphasis is on the relation to self, this leads to humanity becoming incurvatus in se—curved in upon itself—resulting in relationlessness, which Jüngel defines as the essence of sin. (15) If the emphasis is on the relation to the world, this leads to human beings who are defined by their actions. This is the characteristically modern pursuit of self-realization that eventually falls back into relationlessness.16 The only proper relations to self and the world come from the primary and definitive relation to God. In this relation, human beings are truly established by God as beings-in-becoming.
Whereas human attempts to realize themselves—to become something new out of their own resources—result in a distorted relationality, in the relation to God human beings are justified and thus made truly human, truly relational. Human ontology is therefore relational in its threefold orientation and actualistic in that it depends upon the divine act of justification. In other words, God is what God does, and likewise humanity is what God does in Jesus Christ; or rather God is what God determines Godself to be, and humanity is what God determines humanity to be. God justifies humanity in that God justifies Godself. Jüngel thus presents us with what I call a relational-actualistic ontology. Both God and humanity exist in a wealth of relations which constitute the being of each: God in gracious activity is Deus pro nobis and humanity in passive receptivity is simul iustus et peccator. (17)
Within this existential web of relations, the event of justification is an event of interruption. Human beings are not only relational; they are also lingual beings. Jüngel not only presents us with a relational ontology of divine action; he also offers a dialogical ontology of divine address: “Defined theologically, we are those who, having always been addressed by God, are, on the basis of this being addressed, always newly to be addressed.” (18) The “word of the cross,” according to Jüngel, is the definitive form of divine address. In the gospel proclamation, the historical event of God’s “self-communication, self-disclosure and self-revelation” (19) in Jesus Christ becomes the existential “justifying word from the cross” which “speaks to us creatively” (20) by interrupting sinners in their movement toward relationlessness and thereby establishing an “eschatologically new humanity.” (21) The gospel is a word which disrupts the continuity of human life in order to allow God to establish a new identity—an interruption which is also liberation.
In this moment of interruption, which Jüngel calls the “existential distancing of the ego,” (22) the human person experiences a death of the self. (23) According to Jüngel, “The word of God which addresses man about God has, then, an annihilating effect, for the sake of something new. Evangelical theology may not remain silent about the fact that it is destructive.” (24) Jüngel identifies this destructive, interruptive event of the word as the event of truth. In the revelation of truth, there occurs an interruption of human life which is both deadly and enlivening, both negative and positive, both a No and a Yes. Created life must be interrupted in order to be re-created. God must distance us from ourselves in order for us to become our true selves. Jüngel writes: “Without a fundamental extra nos faith knows of no deus pro nobis and certainly no deus in nobis.” (25) Or to quote Luther, as quoted by Barth in his Epistle to the Romans: “When God makes alive, He kills; when He justifies, He imposes guilt; when He leads us to heaven, He thrusts us down into hell.” (26)
The existential dimension of justification is thus highly dialectical in nature. As a liberative event, it is both freedom-from and freedom-for, both death and life, both No and Yes. To use Jüngel’s terms, justification is a displacement from the self and toward God. Out of this dialectical event between God and humanity, Jüngel defines the justified human person in correspondingly dialectical terms: old and new, outer and inner, sinful and righteous. These particular theological pairs are what Jüngel calls “elemental distinctions,” (27) and they correspond to particular theological relations: old/new is an eschatological relation, while inner/outer and righteous/sinful are soteriological relations. These elemental distinctions and corresponding relations arise out of the event of existential interruption. It is important to remember that these distinctions are (1) ontological in nature and (2) totus- totus, not partim-partim. (28) Just as justification encompasses three frameworks and is wholly in each, so too the human person is constituted dialectically and is wholly in each. Lastly, justification is dialectical in another sense as well. Within the existential framework, the event of justification is both anamnestic and proleptic: the newly constituted justified person looks backwards and forwards, back to the historical framework of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection and forward to the eschatological framework of Christ’s consummating revelation in glory. The event of justification elementally interrupts in order to fashion ontologically new human creatures who are elementally differentiated and thus exist in a new existential-relational matrix.
II. “A PRE-APPEARANCE OF THE TRUTH”: BEAUTY IN THE LIGHT OF JUSTIFICATION
When we turn to Jüngel’s aesthetics, many of these same soteriological concerns carry over. Jüngel begins his treatment of the beautiful by clarifying his relational ontology. After speaking of the threefold relation to self, world, and God, he then goes on to differentiate within other elemental distinctions. (29) The distinction between good and evil is a moral relation; the distinction between holiness and sin is a religious distinction. But the important distinction for our purposes is the one between beautiful and not beautiful, which constitutes the aesthetic relation. (30) The aesthetic relation speaks of the human person’s “relation to the so-called artistically beautiful, that is, to the work of art.” (31) The aesthetic relation brings the perceiver of the beautiful and the beautiful itself into relation. Before exploring the aesthetic relation in more detail, we need to look at what constitutes the beautiful. (32)
A basic ontology of beauty, according to Jüngel, begins by locating the beautiful in its twofold relational matrix. There are always two frameworks at play in the beautiful: the framework “from which [the beautiful] emerges” and the framework of perception “from which the perceiver encounters [the beautiful].” (33) For the sake of simplicity, I call the former the objective framework and the latter the subjective framework, and together these two frameworks constitute the beautiful appearance. The beautiful is distinguished from the chaotic in that the objective framework arranges life’s diversity into an ordered, perceptible structure. Within this objective “natural framework” (34) the diversity of reality “is concretized into a real perception” in order to allow for the possibility of a “meaningful perception” (35)—i.e., a meaningful subjective relation. Thus, objective beauty-in-itself always includes the subjective-existential dimension of beauty as beauty-in-relation- to-the-other. The subjective “framework of perception” enables the objective “something” in the beautiful to be “perceived as true.” (36) The objective dimension and subjective dimension together form the essence of beauty.
In the same way that the distinctions in justification are totus-totus—such that the whole is in the part—so too the distinctions in aesthetics are totus-totus. The beautiful is defined by its twofold relation to the objective and subjective framework—respectively, “the historical life-context” from which the work of art arises and “the life-contexts of the potential perceiver”(37)—which is in fact a relation to two “wholes.” Each dimension is itself a whole, and not simply a part. Nevertheless, because there are multiple “wholes” and not simply the totality of being, these various frameworks are finite and penultimate—not the ultimate reality.(38) Consequently, the beautiful does not remain fixed within these frameworks, but instead it “falls outside the frame.”(39) Essentially, Jüngel asserts that the beautiful is not confined wholly within one framework but instead, in a way, transcends each context—not in order to be altogether without a framework (that would be chaos), but in order to produce a “new framework” by establishing a new aesthetic relation.(40) Beauty thus “has a semiotic quality”(41) in that it represents the objective and subjective frameworks, and thus orients both toward an altogether different framework; beauty looks inward and outward, while looking steadfastly toward the future:
[The beautiful] ‘somehow’ represents for the perceiver both the whole framework from which it emerges and also the framework from which the perceiver encounters it. In the beautiful, a part appears for the whole: it stands pars pro toto. . . . In this way the larger whole can certainly represent the context of a shattered existence, a meaningless life, and thus precisely that missing wholeness of human existence . . . . In any case, when the beautiful is received as such, it allows us to ‘see’ the normal context of life ‘anew’. By interrupting the previous framework of reality and thereby denying it the right to be the final and true reality, the beautiful gives the latter reference to a future, to a future which makes whole, which is represented in an anticipatory way in the beautiful itself.(42)
In this passage, both the essential similarities and essential differences with justification are present. The similarities include: (1) the twofold reference, objective and subjective, which corresponds with the historical and existential dimensions to justification. Beauty emerges from a particular framework in the same way that justification emerges from the event of the cross, and both beauty and justification include within themselves the existential reference to the one whom beauty grasps and one whom God justifies. (2) The beautiful, like the event of justification, interrupts the “framework of reality.” In the same way that God addresses human beings in the gospel proclamation, so too, Jüngel writes, human existence “is addressed by the beautiful.”(43) This being-addressed by the beautiful is an interruption which, like justification, says both No and Yes: it denies the pseudo-wholeness of our present existence and affirms instead a different existence, one which is truly whole. The interruption of beauty thus results in two further similarities to justification. (3) In that the beautiful interrupts, it also “captivates”: “the perceiver is captured for a freedom from his or her natural and moral bondage.”(44) There is a close correspondence between Jüngel’s description of what he calls “aesthetic freedom” and Luther’s notion of Christian freedom. Both are a kind of bondage—one to the beautiful and the other to God—which result in a freedom from what Jüngel calls “the kingdom of forces and the kingdom of laws.”(45) Aesthetic freedom, like its Christian counterpart, allows its captives to “forget about themselves” and instead rejoice in the fullness of life.(46) Finally, (4) the beautiful “produces a new framework” by orienting reality toward an eschatological future. Beauty interrupts the double wholeness of the historical and existential dimensions not only to bring freedom but also to bring a vision—even a taste here and now—of the eschatological totus in which our fragmented human existence will be made truly whole. This final aspect clarifies Jüngel’s earlier statement that aesthetics and a “theology of hope” are closely related; beauty and eschatology are intrinsically connected. Beauty in Jüngel’s theology thus involves the threefold framework found in his exposition of the doctrine of justification.
When we turn to the differences between aesthetics and justification, we arrive at the heart of the matter. Justification as articulated by Jüngel is an ontological event in which we are existentially interrupted in order that God might create us anew as creatures who correspond to God. Jüngel speaks of this ontologically effective event as the event of truth: the event of God’s self-revelation and self-communication in which God communicates to us a new reconciled identity oriented both historically and eschatologically. In contrast, the beautiful interrupts, but it is not ontologically effective. The beautiful points toward the future, but it cannot make the future a reality in the present. And yet the beautiful is not merely a sign. Jüngel makes the fascinating statement that “the beautiful is—not unlike that which the ancients understood by a sacrament—a signum efficax,” an effective sign.(47)(48) It does not generate the actual whole, but only the appearance. It does not effect the ontologically new, but only offers a vision of the new world that arrived in Jesus Christ. The beautiful is not the direct appearance of the whole; it is not the full coming of truth into the world, which can only be identified with the eschatological revelation of God. Consequently, “the beautiful is only the pre-appearance of the coming truth. In the beautiful, truth establishes itself only indirectly. In this respect the beautiful certainly carries within itself the promise of truth to come, a future direct encounter with the truth.”(49)
The concept of the beautiful as the “pre-appearance of the truth” is essential to Jüngel’s argument and he connects it with the corresponding concept of beauty as pars pro toto—a part for the whole:
The beautiful announces the coming direct encounter with the truth. . . . [As] the pre-appearance of the truth, the beautiful in fact stands—pars pro toto—representatively for the whole context of reality which it interrupts. For the truth pertains to the whole.(50)
The last statement is illuminating: the truth pertains to the whole. We might say, justification pertains to the whole. That is, the event of Christ’s death and resurrection is the whole. Jüngel writes elsewhere: “the sacrifice of Christ was not a pars pro toto substitutionary act, but rather in him the whole continuity of life was directly present.”(51) The coming of the truth in Jesus Christ is the coming of the wholeness which is absent or missing in our present existential situation, and what is absent or missing is precisely the ontological wholeness created by the justifying word of the gospel and consummated in the eschatological reign of God. In distinction from the totus in Christ, the beautiful as pars pro toto represents the eschatological wholeness—the coming totality—by interrupting the framework of reality for the one who perceives beauty. To be more precise, the beautiful interrupts the two frameworks—or perhaps the twofold framework—of the objective and subjective. However, the beautiful only interrupts; it cannot liberate. The work of art does not bring about the future reality; at best it can only effect the appearance of this future wholeness. Justification is both a No and a Yes, and this Yes is ontologically effective. The beautiful, however, is only a No, but it is a No which is at the same time the pre-appearance of the Yes. The beautiful makes evident what is absent, but it cannot fill this absence.
At the end of his essay, Jüngel turns to a comparison between revelation and beauty:
According to the self-understanding of Christian faith, there is only one single appearance of truth which—despite all parallels to the beautiful preappearance of the truth—follows another law. That is the revelation of God. . . . The revelation of God in Jesus Christ shatters all beautiful appearance. It must shatter the beautiful appearance, because it is not a pre-appearance of the truth, but is the truth itself . . . [and] this truth occurs fundamentally as a crisis.(52)
The difference between revelation and the beautiful is finally the difference between a part and the whole, between sign and reality—but it is also more than that. Revelation as Jüngel speaks of it here is the cosmic transformation in which “nothing more will appear. For then being in glory will replace appearance.(53)” In other words, revelation described here is the eschatological revelation of God. If we think of the three frameworks of justification,(54) the beautiful concerns the historical and existential, or the objective and subjective, while revelation concerns the eschatological. The beautiful can only represent the eschatological dimension as an effective sign, a pre-appearance, a part for the whole. Since it is only an appearance and not the thing itself, the beautiful remains part of the created totality(55): “the beautiful, the work of art, is essentially finite and transient.”(56) But revelation is the consummation of creation and therefore the end of all transience. According to Jüngel, revelation
will mean that our life will then be a wholly uninhibited life, a life heightened in its truth; then, together with our being, being as such in totality will itself be present and lucid. Then truth and beauty will be identical. Because the truth will not then need first to interrupt the context of life in order to appear, humanity will be redeemed for ever.(57)
Thus far in this paper I have focused on the existential movement in justification and the corresponding aesthetic relation. The existential dimension is anamnestic and proleptic, looking backwards and forwards. The event of revelation, however, concerns the movement from the existential to the eschatological. This involves corresponding movements from appearance to being, from the ephemeral to the eternal, from cross to resurrection. There is also an important movement from indirect revelation to direct revelation. The historical and existential dimensions mediate the presence of God through creaturely forms: the historical dimension of justification includes the indirect revelation of God in the human flesh of Jesus and in the shame of the cross, while the existential dimension mediates revelation through the kerygmatic word of the cross. Something similar can also be said of the beautiful, which is one such creaturely medium, though unlike justification it is the pre-appearance of the truth and not an ontologically effective realization of the truth. Nevertheless, “one can only be more or less close to the truth within our reality: one cannot perceive it directly. Perception . . . is always dependent upon mediation.”(58)
Within our present reality, therefore, revelation is by definition indirect and mediated; in the eschaton, revelation is direct and unmediated. Thus, if Christ is the indirect form of God’s revelation, then the beautiful is the indirect form of Christ—an indirect form which anticipates the coming direct revelation. As Jüngel states, “the beautiful announces the coming direct encounter with the truth,”(59) and likewise, “revelation is by definition an aesthetic event.”(60) Revelation is aesthetic precisely because, apart from the eschaton, revelation occurs in time and space, and therefore revelation is not a direct appearance but only an indirect pre-appearance. The beautiful is not an event of revelation in history but instead a pre-appearance of revelation: it announces the revelation of Christ’s resurrection, but it does so only by way of the cross (via crucis). Beauty anticipates the whole, but only by way of the part—pars pro toto.
III. TOWARD A CHRISTOLOGICAL AESTHETICS
In conclusion, how might Jüngel’s theology prompt us to think differently about aesthetics in light of christology? Here I will necessarily be brief. First, a christological aesthetics connects beauty with truth. The beautiful is that which one perceives as true, or as related to the truth.(61) Beauty and truth are related in a way not unlike the ways justification and revelation or cross and resurrection are related. There is a clear distinction—the beautiful is not itself the true—but there is also an important relation of remembrance and anticipation, of anamnesis and prolepsis, in which the beautiful draws upon the past and orients toward the future while addressing us in the present as the pre-appearance of the truth. Sometimes the beautiful anticipates the truth by way of negation (via negativa), so that the beautiful interrupts us in our existential context in order to expose the untruthfulness of our existence.
In relating beauty and truth, I do not mean that the work of art must somehow look back to the incarnation and forward to the parousia in any explicit way. The work of art is not “about” christology or eschatology, nor is the value of art in how well a work corresponds to something external to itself; rather, the aesthetic relation functions like the justifying relation in the way the beautiful addresses each person.(62) I also especially want to prevent the reduction of the beautiful into a mere sign of something else, so that the beautiful becomes a means toward some other end rather than a perfectly valuable end in itself. A work of art is not an instrument or a tool, nor is it a kind of preparation for grace. The identity of the beautiful as a pre-appearance does not mean that the appearance of justification nullifies its value.(63) These are significant concerns against which Christian theology must stand resolute.
In order