Art Seeking Understanding

edited by David Lyle Jeffrey and Robert C. Roberts

Fides quaerens intellectum is the idea that living faith naturally seeks a more complete understanding of God in relation to his creation. It has motivated Christian education from the very start. Although Ars quaerens intellectum—“art seeking understanding”—is by contrast a contemporary locution, in the Christian context of this volume it is a parallel to the more familiar phrase. “Art” here includes human making of the sort associated with any craft; this volume focuses on those usually called “fine” arts, namely poetry, painting, sculpture, and musical composition.

The contributors to Art Seeking Understanding contend that art in almost any medium is typically born of a desire for some kind of understanding—perhaps of the potential in their medium, an aspect of the external world, or of the artist’s own compulsion to create. An artwork may be prompted by a desire for greater understanding of transcendent realities. A distinctive value of the collaboration represented in this book is thus the reflection of artists themselves set alongside remarks by philosophers, theologians, literary critics, art historians, and musicologists. Together, these authors argue that there is a tacit if not explicit theological dimension to art-making that reveals itself readily in religious art but also in works that may have no such conscious motivation.

The artist, like all human creatures, is made in the image of God (imago Dei), but as both Scripture and tradition suggest, artists may in fact realize more intensively than the rest of us an aspect of the divine Maker. In turn, those who appreciate art may come to acquire an understanding of the nature of the Original Artist indirectly through allowing the works of gifted artists to spark their imaginative reflection. In this way, art “speaks” to us theologically in ways that substantially enrich our knowledge of our Creator and his creation. This volume invites readers to consider how God speaks, his characteristic poetic voice, and the influence of that voice on our knowledge of the holy

DAVID LYLE JEFFREY is

Emeritus

Distinguished Professor of Literature and the Humanities at Baylor University. Jeffrey earned his PhD from Princeton University and is also the author or editor of many books, including The King James Bible and the World It Made and We Were a Peculiar People Once: Confessions of an Old-Time Baptist

ROBERT C. ROBERTS is Professor of Ethics and Emotion Theory at the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues, Houston Christian University. He also has a joint Chair with the Royal Institute of Philosophy and is a Resident Scholar at the Institute for Faith and Learning, Baylor University.

Contributors

Cristina Carnes Ananais

Jeremy Begbie

Douwe Blumberg

Katie Calloway

Phillip Donnelly

Makoto Fujimura

Barry Harvey

Thomas A. Hibbs

David Lyle Jeffrey

Micheal O’Siadhail

Robert C. Roberts

Brent A. Strawn

Abram Van Engen

DAVID JASPER, FRSE is Professor Emeritus of Literature and Theology at the University of Glasgow.

CONTENTS

Introduction

1 Literature and the Power of the Old Testament

2 On Reading the Scriptures as Literature

3 Settling Hoti’s Business: The Impossible Necessity of Biblical Translation

4 “Down through All Christian Minstrelsy”: Genesis, James Joyce, and Contemporary Vocabularies of Creation Stories

5 “In the Sermon Which I Have Just Completed, whenever I Said Aristotle, I Meant St. Paul” (Attrib. Revd. William A. Spooner)

6 Evil and Betrayal at the Heart of the Sacred Community

7 Jim Crace: Inventor of Worlds

8 J. M. W. Turner: Interpreter of the Bible

9 The Desert in Biblical Art: William Holman Hunt’s The Scapegoat

10 The Bible, Christianity, and War in English Literature

11 Teaching the Bible and Literature

Afterword

Selected Reading List

“This anthology of essays by David Jasper, spanning forty years of thoughtful engagement with the Bible, theology, and culture in its broadest sense, demonstrates the breadth and depth of David’s expertise, influence, and enthusiasm. His reflections on literature, art, ethics, translation, teaching, and much more stand the test of time while also being rooted in his own experience as a university lecturer and Anglican priest.”

ALISON JACK, Professor of Bible and Literature and Principal of New College, University of Edinburgh