1 Art in the Bible
ONE
Art in the Bible
What is the place of art in the Christian life? Is art—especially the fine arts of painting and music—simply a way to bring in worldliness through the back door? We know that poetry may be used to praise God in, say, the psalms and maybe even in modern hymns. But what about sculpture or drama? Do these have any place in the Christian life? Shouldn’t a Christian focus his gaze steadily on “religious things” alone and forget about art and culture?
THE LORDSHIP OF CHRIST
As evangelical Christians we have tended to relegate art to the very fringe of life. The rest of human life we feel is more important. Despite our constant talk about the lordship of Christ, we have narrowed its scope to a very small area of reality. We have misunderstood the concept of the lordship of Christ over the whole of man and the whole of the universe and have not taken to us the riches that the Bible gives us for ourselves, for our lives and for our culture.
The lordship of Christ over the whole of life means that there are no platonic areas in Christianity, no dichotomy or hierarchy between the body and the soul. God made the body as well as the soul and redemption is for the whole man. Evangelicals have been legitimately criticized for often being so tremendously interested in seeing souls get saved and go to heaven that they have not cared much about the whole man.
The Bible, however, makes four things very clear:
(1) God made the whole man, (2) in Christ the whole man is redeemed, (3) Christ is the Lord of the whole man now and the Lord of the whole Christian life, and (4) in the future as Christ comes back, the body will be raised from the dead and the whole man will have a whole redemption. It is within this framework that we are to understand the place of art in the Christian life. Therefore, let us consider more fully what it means to be a whole man whose whole life is under the lordship of Christ.
The conception of the wholeness of man and the lordship of man over creation comes early in Scripture. In Genesis 1:26-27, we read, “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. And God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” From the very beginning, therefore, man and woman, being created in the image of God (both of them!), were given dominion (lordship) over the whole of the created earth. They were the ones who bore the image of God and, bearing that image, they were to be in charge, to tend the garden, to keep it and preserve it before their own Lord. Of course, that dominion was spoiled by the historic, space-time Fall, and therefore it is no longer possible to maintain that dominion in a perfect fashion.
Yet, when a man comes under the blood of Christ, his whole capacity as man is refashioned. His soul is saved, yes, but so are his mind and body. As Christians we are to look to Christ day by day, for Christ will produce his fruit through us. True spirituality means the lordship of Christ over the total man.
There have been periods in the past when Christians understood this better than we have in the last few decades. A few years ago when I started to work out a Christian epistemology and a Christian concept of culture, many people considered what I was doing suspect. They felt that because I was interested in intellectual answers I must not be biblical. But this attitude represents a real poverty. It fails to understand that if Christianity is really true, then it involves the whole man, including his intellect and creativeness. Christianity is not just “dogmatically” true or “doctrinally” true. Rather, it is true to what is there, true in the whole area of the whole man in all of life.
The ancients were afraid that if they went to the end of the earth they would fall off and be consumed by dragons. But once we understand that Christianity is true to what is there, true to the ultimate environment—the infinite, personal God who is really there—then our minds are freed. We can pursue any question and can be sure that we will not fall off the end of the earth. Such an attitude will give our Christianity a strength that it often does not seem to have at the present time.
But there is another side to the lordship of Christ, and this involves the total culture—including the area of creativity. Again, evangelical or biblical Christianity has been weak at this point. About all that we have produced is a very romantic Sunday school art. We do not seem to understand that the arts too are supposed to be under the lordship of Christ.
I have frequently quoted a statement from Francis Bacon who was one of the first of the modern scientists and who believed in the uniformity of natural causes in an open system.
He, along with other men like Copernicus and Galileo, believed that because the world had been created by a reasonable God they could therefore pursue the truth of the universe by reason. There is much, of course, in Francis Bacon with which I would disagree, but one of the statements which I love to quote is this: “Man by the Fall fell at the same time from his state of innocence and from his dominion over nature. Both of these losses, however, can even in this life be in some part repaired; the former by religion and faith, the latter by the arts and sciences.” How I wish that evangelical Christians in the United States and Britain and across the world had had this vision for the last fifty years!
The arts and the sciences do have a place in the Christian life—they are not peripheral. For a Christian, redeemed by the work of Christ and living within the norms of Scripture and under the leadership of the Holy Spirit, the lordship of Christ should include an interest in the arts. A Christian should use these arts to the glory of God, not just as tracts, mind you, but as things of beauty to the praise of God. An art work can be a doxology in itself.
Nonetheless, while the concept of the lordship of Christ over the whole world would seem to include the arts, many Christians will respond by saying that the Bible has very little to say about the arts. More specifically, some people say that the Jews had no interest in art because of what the Scripture says in the Ten Commandments. But that is just what we cannot say if we read the Bible carefully. Still, because many Christians make this challenge, their view deserves to be considered and answered in some detail.
NO GRAVEN IMAGE
Those who feel that art is forbidden by the Scripture point first to the Ten Commandments: “Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, nor any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them; for I Jehovah thy God am a jealous God” (Ex 20:4-5). Isn’t it clear, they say, that man is forbidden to make likenesses of anything, not just of God but anything in heaven or on the earth? Surely this leaves no place for art.
But before we accept this conclusion, we should look at another passage in the Law, which helps us to understand what the commandment in Exodus actually means. “Ye shall make you no idols, neither shall ye rear you up a graven image, or a pillar [that is, a standing image or a statue], neither shall ye place any figured stone in your land to bow down unto it: for I am Jehovah your God” (Lev 26:1). This passage makes clear that Scripture does not forbid the making of representational art but rather the worship of it. Only God is to be worshiped. Thus the commandment is not against making art but against worshiping anything other than God and specifically against worshiping art. To worship art is wrong, but to make art is not.
ART AND THE TABERNACLE
One major principle of interpreting Scripture is that Scripture does not contradict itself. This is why it is important to note that on Mount Sinai God simultaneously gave the Ten Commandments and commanded Moses to fashion a tabernacle in a way which would involve almost every form of representational art that men have ever known. Let us look at this in more detail.
While Moses was on Sinai, God gave him specific instructions concerning the way in which the tabernacle should be made. He commanded Moses to gather from the Israelites gold and silver, fine cloth and dyed ram skins, fine wood and precious gems, and so forth. Then God said, “According to all that I shew thee, the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the furniture thereof, even so shall ye make it” (Ex 25:9). Where did the pattern come from? It came from God. This is reaffirmed a few verses later, where God said, “And see that thou make them after their pattern, which hath been shewed thee in the mount [or, as the Hebrew says, ‘which thou wast caused to see’]” (Ex 25:40). God himself showed Moses the pattern of the tabernacle. In other words, God was the architect, not man. Over and over in the account of how the tabernacle is to be made, this phrase appears: “And thou shalt make…” That is, God told Moses what to do in detail. These were commands, commands from the same God who gave the Ten Commandments.
What were some of them? There were, of course, many, but we will concentrate on those concerned with the art in the tabernacle, the very place of worship itself. First, we find this statement about the art in the Holy of Holies: “And thou shalt make two cherubim of gold; of beaten work shalt thou make them, at the two ends of the mercy-seat” (Ex 25:18). What are cherubim? They are part of the angelic host. What is being commanded? Simply this: A work of art is to be constructed. What kind of art? Representational art in the round. A statuary of representation of angels was to be placed in the Holy of Holies—the place where only once a year one man, the high priest, would go—and it was to be done by the command of God himself.
Some may say, “Yes, but this is very special because these are angels that are being pictured. There is a sort of religious subject matter. It’s not ordinary art representing things on the earth.” True enough. But we find that just outside the Holy of Holies lampstands are to be placed: “And thou shalt make a candlestick of pure gold: of beaten work shall the candlestick be made, even its base, and its shaft; its cups, its knops, and its flowers, shall be of one piece with it: and there shall be six branches going out of the sides thereof; three branches of the candlestick out of the one side thereof, and three branches of the candlestick out of the other side: three cups made like almond-blossoms in one branch, a knop and a flower; and three cups made like almond-blossoms in the other branch, a knop and a flower: so for the six branches going out of the candlestick” (Ex 25:31-33), and the description goes on. Thus we have another work of art—a candlestick. And how is it decorated? Not with representations of angels, but with representations of nature, flowers, blossoms, things of natural beauty. And these are to be in the tabernacle at the command of God in the midst of the place of worship.
Later in Exodus, we find this description of the priests’ garments: “And upon the skirts of it thou shalt make pomegranates of blue, and of purple, and of scarlet, round about the skirts thereof” (Ex 28:33). Thus, when the priest went into the Holy of Holies, he was to take with him on his garments a representation of nature, carrying that representation into the presence of God. Surely this is the very antithesis of a command against works of art.
But there is something further to note here. In nature, pomegranates are red, but these pomegranates were to be blue, purple and scarlet. Purple and scarlet could be natural changes in the growth of a pomegranate. But blue isn’t. The implication is that there is freedom to make something which gets its impetus from nature but can be different from it and it too can be brought into the presence of God. In other words, art does not need to be “photographic” in the poor sense of photographic!
It is tempting sometimes to read the Bible as a “holy book,” treating the historical accounts as if they were upper-story situations that had nothing to do with down-to-earth reality. But we must understand that when God commanded these works of art to be built, some artist had to make them. There are two sides to art. It is creative, yes, but art also involves the technical details of how things are to be made. In Exodus 37:7 we are given something of these technical details: “And he made two cherubim of gold; of beaten work made he them at the two ends of the mercy-seat.” The cherubim on the ark didn’t suddenly appear out of the sky. Somebody had to get his hands dirty, somebody had to work out the technical problems. The very thing that a modern artist wrestles with, these artists had to wrestle with. We shall see more of this as we discuss the temple.
THE TEMPLE
The temple, like the tabernacle, was not planned by man. Once more, the Scripture insists that the plan derived from God. David, the chronicler says, gave Solomon “the pattern of all that he had by the Spirit” for the various parts of the temple (1 Chron 28:11-12). And verse 19 reads, “All this, said David, have I been made to understand in writing from the hand of Jehovah, even all the works of this pattern.” David’s experience with God regarding the temple was not just an upper-story religious experience. Part of his experience involved the propositional revelation of how the temple should be made. David knew how to build the temple because God told him. In fact, David said that God made him understand in writing what the temple was to look like. We are not told by what means this writing, this propositional revelation came, but we are told that David by inspiration of God had such a writing which gave him the pattern of the building.
What, therefore, was to be in the temple? For one thing, the temple was to be filled with art work. “And he [Solomon] garnished [covered] the house with precious stones for beauty” (2 Chron 3:6). Notice this carefully: The temple was covered with precious stones for beauty. There was no pragmatic reason for the precious stones. They had no utilitarian purpose. God simply wanted beauty in the temple. God is interested in beauty.
Come with me to the Alps and look at the snowcovered mountains. There can be no question. God is interested in beauty. God made people to be beautiful. And beauty has a place in the worship of God.
Young people often point out the ugliness of many evangelical church buildings. Unfortunately, they are often right. Fixed down in our hearts is a failure to understand that beauty should be to the praise of God. But here in the temple which Solomon built under the leadership of God himself beauty was given an important place.
The chronicler goes on to say that Solomon “overlaid also the house, the beams, the thresholds, and the walls thereof, and the doors thereof, with gold; and graved [carved] cherubim on the walls” (2 Chron 3:7). We talked above about the cherubim in the Holy of Holies; they were art in the round. Here is carving, bas relief. There was bas-relief everywhere you looked. And there was also art in the round: “And in the most holy house he made two cherubim of image work” (v. 10).
Then in verses 16 and 17 we read, “And he made chains in the oracle, and put them on the tops of the pillars; and he made a hundred pomegranates, and put them on the chains. And he set up the pillars before the temple, one on the right hand, and the other on the left.” Here are two free-standing columns. They supported no architectural weight and had no utilitarian engineering significance. They were there only because God said they should be there as a thing of beauty. Upon the capitals of those columns were pomegranates fastened upon chains. Art work upon art work. If we understand what we are reading here, it simply takes our breath away. This is something overwhelmingly beautiful.
In 2 Chronicles 4, we are told how Solomon made a huge altar and also a “molten sea” (a pool or bath) that was about fifteen feet in diameter and, according to some estimates, may have had the capacity of just under 10,000 gallons. Under this sea and holding it up was “the likeness of oxen, which did compass it round about, for ten cubits, compassing the sea round about. The oxen were cast in two rows, cast when it was cast. It stood upon twelve oxen, three looking toward the north, and three looking toward the west, and three looking toward the south, and three looking toward the east: and the sea was set upon them above, and all their hinder parts were inward” (2 Chron 4:3-4). Here again is representational art in the round placed in the temple. Angels are represented by the bas-relief of cherubim, inanimate nature is represented in carvings of flowers and pomegranates, and animate nature is represented in the form of cast oxen. Representational art of non-religious subjects was thus brought into the central place of worship.
To some extent, it could be said that the oxen were functional since they held up the “sea.” But what function would the following have? “And it [the molten sea] was a hand-breadth thick; and the brim thereof was wrought like the brim of a cup, like the flower of a lily” (v. 5). The sea was not to be plain, but to be carved with lilies simply to be beautiful.
In 1 Kings 7:29, we have an additional detail. It comes in the description of the panels on the ten bases of brass in the temple: “And on the panels that were between the ledges were lions, oxen, and cherubim.” God is saying, “I’ll even have lions in my house, carved lions, oxen and cherubim.” Not for a pragmatic function, just for beauty.
We could, of course, continue to multiply the references to art in relationship to the temple. For example, 1 Kings 6:29 reads, “And he carved all the walls of the house round about with carved figures of cherubim and palm-trees and open flowers, within and without.” This sounds much like what we have looked at above, but it brings into focus something different. Here cherubim, palm trees and flowers are put together. In other words, we have representational art of both the seen and the unseen world. I don’t believe cherubim is a figure of speech. Cherubim have form and are real. In fact, I am looking forward to seeing them some day. Yet, we may well ask, “How can you make a representation of something in the unseen world?” The answer is simple: It’s easy if God tells you what they look like. The making of cherubim has something to do with propositional revelation. Ezekiel, for example, saw cherubim twice (Ezek 1:4-25; 3:12-13). There is nothing at all problematic in picturing cherubim if God shows you or tells you what they look like.
We saw how with the tabernacle the artist was required to solve certain technical problems. The same is true for the art in the temple: “In the plain of Jordan did the king cast them [the various art works that were to be in the temple], in the clay ground between Succoth and Zeredah” (2 Chron 4:17). Just as Michelangelo chipped with his hands the marble from the great Italian quarries, so the Hebrew artist cast the bronze in a particular geographical place, a place where the clay was just right to make a good form from his model. These Hebrew artists were not different from men today; both live in the same world and have to deal with all the technical realities of the various forms of art.
SECULAR ART
So far we have been concerned with art that is involved specifically with the worship of God, whether its subject is angels or nature. And it is clear that since all this art was God-commanded, specifically religious subjects are not necessary for art. The factor which makes art Christian is not that it necessarily deals with religious subject matter.
In 1 Kings 10 we learn something about the secular art of Solomon’s day, for here Solomon’s throne is described. “Moreover the king made a great throne of ivory, and overlaid it with the finest gold. There were six steps to the throne, and the top of the throne was round behind; and there were stays on either side by the place of the seat, and two lions standing beside the stays. And twelve lions stood there on the one side and on the other upon the six steps: there was not the like made in any kingdom” (1 Kings 10:18-20). Every time I read this description I am intrigued. I would like to have seen this magnificent work of art—“ivory overlaid with the finest gold” and guarded by two lions by the side of the throne and twelve lions on the stairway to the throne.
Some scholars who have wondered why the two lions and the twelve lions are mentioned separately have suggested that the two lions at the top were alive and the other twelve were cast. We cannot be sure whether that is the case or not, but just imagine it, for a moment: Imagine yourself Solomon, sitting up there with the two lions roaring away on either side of you, chained securely, no doubt, but what a throne! What a piece of secular art!
JESUS’ USE OF ART
If anyone is still troubled concerning the Bible and representational art, then he should consider what the Bible says about the brazen serpent that Moses lifted up in the wilderness. You will recall that while the children of Israel were wandering in the desert they complained to Moses about the lack of bread and water. God then sent “fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much of the people died” (Num 21:6). So the Israelites came to Moses, confessing that they had sinned and asking Moses to pray that God would take the serpents away. God then replied to Moses’ prayer: “Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a standard: and it shall come to pass, that everyone that is bitten, when he seeth it, shall live” (v. 8). Moses obeyed this command and those who looked upon the “serpent of brass” lived.
The striking thing is that Jesus used this incident and this work of art as an illustration of his coming crucifixion: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth may in him have eternal life” (Jn 3:14-15). What was Jesus using as his illustration? A work of art.
But then perhaps someone will say, “Yes, but they smashed it. Hezekiah broke it up in 2 Kings 18:4.” That’s true. In fact, God was even pleased with its destruction. But why did Hezekiah smash the brazen serpent? “And he [Hezekiah] brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made; for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it.” Did he smash it because it was a work of art? Of course not, because God had commanded Moses to make it. He smashed the work of art because men had made it an idol. What is wrong with representational art is not its existence but its wrong uses.
POETRY
We have been concerned thus far solely with representational art, but the Bible is concerned with other art forms as well. The most obvious is poetry. When we think of poetry in the Bible, we think immediately of the psalms. But there is much Jewish poetry elsewhere, and not all of it concerns specifically religious subjects. For example, 2 Samuel 1:19-27 is a secular ode, a poem by David to the praise of Saul and Jonathan as national heroes.
Later in 2 Samuel we are told that David wrote his psalms under the leadership and inspiration of the Holy Spirit:
David the son of Jesse sayeth,
And the man who was raised on high sayeth,
The anointed of the God of Jacob,
And the sweet psalmist of Israel:
The Spirit of Jehovah spake by me,
And his word was upon my tongue. (2 Sam 23:1-2)
Acts 2:25-31 confirms the fact that David was a prophet. So we might paraphrase David as follows:
“Yes, I was a prophet. I was a forth-teller of God. And how did I write? Well, I wrote my poetry under the leadership of the Holy Spirit.” We must not think that David was a prophet only when he wrote prose, for his poetry is just as inspired. How then can we say, or have even the slightest inclination to feel, that God despises poetry?
Interestingly enough, we have in the Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament Scriptures that dates back to the second or third century B.C., a record of a psalm that is not in our Bible. There is a question, of course, whether it is a real psalm of David, but it sounds like David. We do not need to think that everything that David wrote was “inspired by God” the way what is in the Bible is inspired. So even if this is a genuine psalm of David it is probably not inspired in that sense. Certainly not all art is God speaking as a muse through the artist. Rather, it is the mannishness of man that creates. The artist as a man does not disappear, leaving the muse alone to speak. We can consider the following psalm from the Septuagint, therefore, to be David writing a piece of poetry as a piece of poetry.
and youngest in my father’s house.
I tended my father’s sheep.
My hands formed a musical instrument
and my fingers tuned a psaltery.
And who shall tell my Lord?
The Lord himself, he himself hears.
He sent forth his angel
and he took me from my father’s sheep.
And he anointed me with the oil of his anointing.
My brothers were handsome and tall,
but the Lord did not take pleasure in them.
I went forth to meet the Philistine
and he cursed me by his idols.
But I drew his own sword and beheaded him
and removed reproach from the children of Israel.
That certainly sounds like David. David pictures himself as a young boy out on the hillside tending his sheep. And what does he do? He is the artist. He takes a piece of wood and shapes it to make a harp; “my hands formed a musical instrument.” As we shall see, the Bible says that David as a craftsman later made the instruments that were used in the temple worship.
But David was also a musician. His “fingers tuned a psaltery.” Like a man tuning his violin, David prepared his instrument for playing. The writing of poetry, the making of a beautiful instrument, the tuning of it so that its music can be filled with beauty—David did all these things as a spiritual exercise to the praise of God.
There is something exciting here. How can art be sufficiently meaningful? If it is offered up merely before men, then it does not have a sufficient integration point. But it can be offered up before God. David says, “And who shall tell my Lord?” That is, “Who shall tell my Lord that I made a beautiful instrument, who will tell him that I tuned the psaltery, who will tell him that I have written this poetry? Who will tell him about my song?” Then David responds, “The Lord himself, he himself hears.” Nobody had to go and tell God. God knew. So the man who really loves God, who is working under the lordship of Christ, could write his poetry, compose his music, construct his musical instruments, fashion his statues, paint his pictures, even if no man ever saw them. He knows God looks upon them.
So you might say to David, “David, why do you sing? Just to amuse yourself? Only the little white-faced sheep will hear.” And David will reply, “Not at all. I’m singing and the God of heaven and earth—he hears my song and that’s what makes it so worthwhile.”
Art can of course be put into the temple. But it doesn’t have to be put into the temple in order to be to the praise of God.
One of the most striking secular poems in the Bible is the Song of Solomon. Many Christians in the past have felt that this poem represents the love of Christ for his church. The poem can in fact be interpreted in this way. But we must never reduce it solely to the picture of this relationship. It depicts the relationship between Christ and the church because every proper relationship between a man and a woman is an illustration of the relationship between Christ and the church. The fact is that God made the love of a man for a woman to be representational of the love of God for his people, of the bridegroom for the bride, of Christ for his church. But in the Song of Solomon God takes a poem that expresses in great antiphonal strength the love of a man for a woman and a woman for a man, and places it in the Word of God. This kind of poetry, just like the psalms, can also represent something wonderful. How beautiful a praise to God this poem is! In one way, its placement in the Bible is parallel to the sort of secular art that we noticed on Solomon’s throne, but it is more significant because this poem is put into the Scripture as Scripture itself.
How often do Christians think of sexual matters as something second-rate. Never, never, never should we do so according to the Word of God. The whole man is made to love God; each aspect of man’s nature is to be given its proper place. That includes the sexual relationship, that tremendous relationship of one man to one woman. At the very beginning God brought Eve to man. A love poem can thus be beautiful. So if you are a young man or a young woman and you love a girl or you love a boy, you may indeed write beautiful love poetry. Don’t be afraid. That too can be a praise to God. And when the two people are Christians it can be a conscious doxology.
Before passing on to other art forms, I would like to simply reemphasize that even though it uses a different poetic form than English does, Hebrew poetry demands strict literary discipline. In fact, Hebrew poetry is probably much harder to write than Anglo-Saxon poetry. And just as an artist, a craftsman, was required to work with precision as he cast the bronze statues or carved the bas-relief on the walls of the temple, so the Hebrew poet had to be careful with the technical aspects of his poetry and strive for technical excellence. And in the striving for excellence comes a way to praise God too.
MUSIC
Music is another art form which the Bible does not ignore. One of the most fantastic pieces of musical art must have been the song the Hebrews sang after they were rescued from Pharaoh’s army. Exodus 15 gives us that song. Think of this great host of Israelites—hundreds of thousands of people—gathered on the far side of the Red Sea and singing an antiphonal song—a work of art. “And Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a timbrel in her hand; and all the women went out after her with timbrels and with dances. And Miriam answered them, Sing ye to Jehovah, for he hath triumphed gloriously; The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea” (Ex 15:20-21). Here we have the men singing the stanza (these are given in Ex 15:1-18) and the women led by Miriam singing the chorus. Think of the joy of deliverance from oppression and think of what a scene this music-making must have been.
But there was also music in the temple. We are told in 1 Chronicles 23:5 that “four thousand praised Jehovah with the instruments which I made, said David, to praise therewith.” Four thousand! A song rang out from four thousand at once. And the chronicler adds, “And David divided them into courses [divisions] according to the sons of Levi: Gershon, Kohath, and Merari” (v. 6). In other words, David divided the singers into parts, making what we would call a chorus. And art breaks forth with all its beauty, all its strength, all its communication and all its glory.
From the time of Hezekiah comes a scene I love to picture. Hezekiah had had the temple cleansed and the worship reformed according to the law of God which had been set aside for so long. And then, while the sacrifices were being offered, Hezekiah “set the Levites in the house of Jehovah with cymbals, psalteries, and with harps [notice the various instruments], according to the commandment of David, and of Gad the king’s seer, and Nathan the prophet; for the commandment was of Jehovah by his prophets. And the Levites stood with the instruments of David, and the priests with the trumpets” (2 Chron 29:25-26). Then Hezekiah commanded that the offerings be burnt upon the altar: “And when the burnt offering began, the song of Jehovah began also, and the trumpets, together with the instruments of David king of Israel. And all the assembly worshipped, and the singers sang, and the trumpeters sounded; all this continued until the burnt offering was finished” (vv. 27-28). A tremendous use of music and art, again all at the commandment of God through his prophets.
I suppose my favorite piece of music is Handel’s Dettingen Te Deum. I have a record of this music (Fontana 875-015-CY) in which all the instruments are playing, and I want to tell you it is marvelous. I’ve played the grooves off of it. Every time I read this section in 2 Chronicles, I think of the Dettingen Te Deum and of the fact that what was going on in the time of Hezekiah must have been ten times greater. Trumpets, cymbals, psalteries, harps, all the various instruments of David—music upon music, art upon art—all pouring forth, all pointing up the possibility of creativity in praise of God, all carried to a high order of art at God’s command. And when you begin to understand this sort of thing, suddenly you can begin to breathe, and all the terrible pressure that has been put on us by making art something less than spiritual suddenly begins to disappear. And with this truth comes beauty and with this beauty a freedom before God.
We should note that with regard to the temple all of the art worked together to form a unity. The whole temple was a single work of architecture, a unified unit with free-standing columns, statuary, bas-relief, poetry and music, great huge stones, beautiful timbers brought from afar. It’s all there. A completely unified work of art to the praise of God. Surely this has something to say to us about architecture, and we ought to be asking the Lord how we can produce this kind of praise to God today.
DRAMA AND THE DANCE
Two more art forms are mentioned in the Scripture. The first is drama. In Ezekiel we read, “Thou also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and portray upon it a city, even Jerusalem: and lay siege against it, and build forts against it, and cast up a mound against it; set camps also against it, and plant battering rams against it round about. And take thou unto thee an iron pan [or, flat plate] and set it for a wall of iron between thee and the city: and set thy face toward it, and it shall be besieged, and thou shalt lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel” (Ezek 4:1-3). What was this? It was a simple drama. The “tile” had the skyline of Jerusalem drawn upon it as a simple backdrop, so that the people could not miss what Ezekiel was portraying. Jerusalem was to be besieged, and the warning was taught to the people by the command of God, in a drama.
Let us notice: It is not that every use of any of these art forms is automatically right, but that they are not wrong per se. Ezekiel was asked to enact this drama each day for over a year. For these long months he portrayed a work of drama before the backdrop in order that Israel would understand that God was going to bring down judgment.
The second art form, the dance, is mentioned in Psalm 149:3 in which Israel is encouraged to praise God: “Let them praise his name in the dance: Let them sing praises unto him with the timbrel and harp.” Some may reply, “Well, in the margin of my Bible it says that maybe it isn’t the dance but rather the ‘pipe,’ and I like that better.” But I doubt that translation. Psalm 150:4-5 says, “Praise him with timbrel and dance: Praise him with stringed instruments and pipe. Praise him upon the loud cymbals: Praise him upon the high sounding cymbals.”
Two historical portions of the Bible show that God was pleased with people dancing: Exodus 15:20 says that Miriam as prophetess went out “with timbrels and with dances.” And in 2 Samuel 6:14-16 we are told, “And David danced before Jehovah with all his might; and David was girded with a linen ephod.” Imagine David bringing the ark of God into his city—a very high moment indeed among the Jews. The ark which had been outside is now being brought in, and David is filled with joy as he worships God. It is interesting, by the way, that David was clothed with an ephod. This means that he was not dancing naked as was common among the heathen. Nonetheless, when David’s wife saw it she didn’t like it (v. 16). Yet God liked it, and David’s wife was reproved for reproving David.
ART AND HEAVEN
Revelation 15:2-3 reads, “And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire; and them that come off victorious from the beast, and from his image, and from the number of his name, standing by the sea of glass, having harps of God. And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvelous are thy works, O Lord God, the Almighty; righteous and true are thy ways, thou King of the ages.” Art does not stop at the gate of heaven. Art forms are carried right into heaven. Is there any platonic separation here? Not a bit.
In the art museum at Neuchatel are three great murals by Paul Robert which for over eighty years have borne testimony to all the people of Neuchatel that Christ is coming again. One of the murals testifies to the fact that Christ has a relationship to agriculture, another to the fact that Christ has a relationship to industry. But the third one is the greatest. It depicts the relationship between Christ, the intellectual life and the arts. Paul Robert, a Swiss artist who was a real man of God, understood this relationship very well.
In the background of this mural he pictured Neuchatel, the lake on which it is situated and even the art museum which contains the mural. In the foreground near the bottom is a great dragon wounded to the death. Underneath the dragon is the vile and the ugly—the pornographic and the rebellious. Near the top Jesus is seen coming in the sky with his endless hosts. On the left side is a beautiful stairway, and on the stairway are young and beautiful men and women carrying the symbols of the various forms of art—architecture, music and so forth. And as they are carrying them up and away from the dragon to present them to Christ, Christ is coming down to accept them. Paul Robert understood Scripture a lot better than many of us. He saw that at the second coming the lordship of Christ will include everything.
But he also knew that if these things are to be carried up to the praise of God and the lordship of Christ at the second coming, then we should be offering them to God now. In the same picture he portrayed the city of Neuchatel, the beautiful lake and the art museum itself: The art museum of Neuchatel and its works of art should be to the praise of Christ now. The reality of the future has meaning for the present!
Do we understand the freedom we have under the lordship of Christ and the norms of Scripture? Is the creative part of our life committed to Christ? Christ is the Lord of our whole life and the Christian life should produce not only truth—flaming truth—but also beauty.