In the world of visual art, it is the kind of work that Daniel A. Siedell calls museum art, in his book, God in the Gallery: A Christian Embrace of Modern Art.15 As Siedell points out, the high arts are both a cultural and an institutional practice, a living tradition that exists
not only invisibly in the hearts and minds of its practitioners and participants but also embodied, mediated in and through its visible public institutions. And it is in fact this public or outward manifestation that produces the private and inward experience of art. What art is, then, is defined through a public network and not merely by private assertion or opinion.16
In general, Siedell is speaking about modern or contemporary visual art and the structures, critical language, and traditions that surround and support it. According to Siedell, such art operates for the serious viewer in many ways like icons do for the Orthodox Christian. Like an icon, he suggests, a work of art is a kind of hypostatic union “between sensuous material and rational ideas.”17 This union of form and content, he argues, is the source of high art’s power. Similar arguments can be made about the effects of serious music, drama, poetry, and other artistic disciplines, as found in such visible public institutions as concert halls, theaters, and literary publishing houses.
Not all art has such lofty goals, however. As Nicholas Wolterstorf helpfully notes, there are many purposes for art.
Works of art are instruments by which we perform such diverse actions as praising our great men and expressing our grief, evoking emotion and communicating knowledge. Works of art are objects of such actions as contemplation for the sake of delight. Works of art are accompaniments for such actions as hoeing cotton and rocking infants. Works of art are background for such actions as eating meals and walking though airports.18
Some art is actually intended for commercial purposes, to participate intentionally in the world of commerce. Art in this category is not just the overt advertising that is ubiquitous in our culture, but also includes such things as mass-market music and movies; most (but not all) architecture; and fashion design, industrial design, and all the other fields that include the word design in their titles. Sometimes, the line between commercial art and high art is hard to discern, as when a dancehall poster by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec becomes more prized than paintings by many less well-known artists, or Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring is used as the soundtrack for an animated film, or the work of popular musicians like Bob Dylan or the Beatles become the subject of scholarly dissertations.
Generally, however, the commodification of art becomes problematic when works that are created for the purpose of contemplation are treated as simply as objects to be bought and sold in the marketplace. In this situation, discomfort arises in those who value art for reasons that are unconnected with money. Artists whose works sell well, or who allow their works to be used to sell other products, are sometimes accused of selling out, of compromising their principles for monetary gain.
Religious institutions rarely are involved in this kind of overt commodification, but they nonetheless often confuse the true value of the arts with their monetary price. Alternatively, they abuse the notion that art is priceless, expecting artists to donate their time and talents even when that would create an undue hardship. While there are, of course, successful artists who command many thousands of dollars for each of the many works they might sell in a year, most professional artists struggle to get by, taking any commission that comes their way, even if the effective hourly rate is below minimum wage. Asking such artists to donate their time and work can severely compromise their ability to pay their bills. Even Michelangelo was nearly bankrupted when Pope Julius II refused to pay him what he had promised for the Sistine Chapel.
Money, in itself, however, is only a marker for an attitude that sees no intrinsic value in artistic activities or objects. The problem of turning art into a commodity arises in churches when how much it costs, how much revenue it can raise, or how it can serve as a symbol of a congregation’s social status, outweighs the emotional, spiritual, and communal values that the arts can bring to a congregation and to the individuals that comprise it. In the church, art becomes a commodity when it is seen as a hook that will bring in new members, as a decorative addition to a worship service, or as a way to communicate the cultural sophistication of a congregation.
Art becomes a commodity when stained glass windows are ordered from a catalog with no sensitivity to the particular building and the congregation that worships there; when a church hires professional singers for the entertainment of the congregation rather than teaching its own members to sing as an offering to God; or when an exhibition series is started with the hopes that commissions on the sale of paintings will generate income for the church rather than for its promise as a ministry to artists. When the value of the arts is connected too closely to their monetary potential or liability, the loss is often the ability to experience an artwork directly. What is lost in the transaction is the experience of allowing an artwork to enter through the senses and illuminate the lives of those who come into contact with it.
Demonizing Art: Art as Idolatry
There has always been an iconoclastic tendency within Christianity, a fear that any image might be or become an idol. Often, the source of this diffidence towards images has been cited as the second commandment, as found in Exodus 20:4–5 and repeated in Deuteronomy 5:8–9, in which the Israelites are told not to make pselet for themselves, “whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them.” The meaning of pselet has been variously rendered as idol, carved or graven image, or simply image. In modern Hebrew, the word means statue. But however we understand pselet, the context seems to make it clear that representational images are forbidden.
I say seems because—as is true of many things in the biblical record—this ban is not as clear as it may appear on the surface. As the beginning of verse 5, which reads “You shall not bow down to them or worship them,” points out, the real issue is not representation in itself, but rather idolatry. At the time that the commandments were recorded, the primary function of statues was to depict the gods and goddesses of the state religion. From the point of view of the Israelites, there may have been no other reason to make a representational object except for purposes of worship.
Further evidence that all representation was not forbidden in the Mosaic code comes in at least two places. The first is the mysterious incident in Numbers 21:4–9, in which God sends poisonous serpents to punish the people for complaining. Moses is then instructed to make a bronze snake and put it on a pole, so “everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” Whatever other notions may be implicit in this story, it is clear that God explicitly commands the making of something that looks as much like a snake as possible. If we could see it today, we would certainly call it art, just as we do other representational images from that period. And it is clear that the biblical witness does not understand this artful representation of a snake as an idol.
The second piece of evidence against a total ban on visual representation is in God’s instructions on the design and construction of the Tent of Meeting in Exodus 25–27. These instructions include sculptural renditions of cherubim on the cover of the Ark of the Covenant; almond flowers of pure gold on the branches of the lamp stands; and images of cherubim worked into the fabric of the curtains. A few chapters later, these descriptions are repeated in a report of what was actually done under the direction of Bezalel and Oholiab, God’s chosen leaders of the work.
The issue in the second commandment, then, is not art, as we understand art today, or even representational images, but rather idolatry. It is not the making of images, as such, that is forbidden, but making them for