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I. The Psalmist as Artist in Psalm 19
The heavens declare the glory of
God;
the skies proclaim the work of his
hands.
Day
after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display
knowledge.
They
have no speech, there are no words;
Their voice is not heard.
(Yet) their
voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
If this passage teaches
nothing else, it tells us that all creation has “stuff of revelation
in it.” It is profoundly
theistic—there is no mixing of Creator and creature here. The heavens and skies speak about God;
they are not identified with God (v. 1).
During the day, speech gurgles
out of the rocks. During the night,
knowledge is displayed
(v. 2). The creation does not have an audible
voice; it cannot be heard with the ear (v. 3), but nevertheless, it goes
out to the ends of the earth (v. 4).
In other words, all of
creation has “the stuff of revelation” within it.
In our Reformed tradition,
we distinguish between two kinds of revelation: special revelation and
general revelation. Special
revelation refers to God has revealed to us in His Word. General revelation refers to what God has
revealed to us in the world and in each other. According to the above text, general
revelation is all around us, yet while its voice goes throughout the earth,
it does not speak audibly. Peter Craigie writes,
The
poet conveys something of the subtlety of nature’s praise of God; it
is there, yet its perception is contingent upon the observer. To the sensitive, the heavenly praise of
God’s glory may be an overwhelming experience, whereas to the
insensitive, sky is simply sky and stars are only stars; they point to
nothing beyond.
We must therefore learn
how to listen if we wish to understand the stuff of revelation in the
world. We must develop the
perception to see something beyond when we look at stars and skies. The Psalmist gives us one example of how
the stuff of revelation is in the sun:
In the
heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun,
which is like a bridegroom coming
forth from his pavilion,
like a champion rejoicing to run his
course.
It rises
at one end of the heavens
and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is hidden from its heat.
Here there is no sun god
(though it may be that the Psalmist is borrowing from Egyptian sun god
imagery). The heavens here are a tent for the sun,
which leaves its tent like a bridegroom longing for his bride, the earth,
and travels its course like the earth’s champion running its victory
lap. This description of the sun is
the essence of art as it relates to the external world. The psalmist has seen the stuff of
revelation in the sun, understood its relation to our life on earth and written
it beautifully that we might learn from his insight.
Yet the question
remains, how does one move from hearing to listening, from looking at a sun
to seeing the stuff of revelation? In other words, do human beings have the
natural ability to understand this revelation of God or do we need some
assistance? Can human beings, in and
of themselves, look at stars and see “something beyond”? Already the psalmist has hinted at the
answer by telling us that creation does not speak audibly. Yet, the psalmist continues:
The law
of the LORD is perfect,
reviving the soul.
The
statutes of the LORD are trustworthy,
making wise the simple.
The
precepts of the LORD are right,
giving joy to the heart.
The
commands of the LORD are radiant,
giving light to the eyes.
Our souls are dead and
need reviving; God’s law is perfect to revive it. We are simple and need wisdom;
God’s statutes are trustworthy to provide it. Our hearts are feeble and weak, but the
precepts of the Lord are right to give us joy. Our eyes are dull and sightless, but the
commands of the Lord are radiant to give our eyes the light they need to
see. Craigie
summarizes this for us nicely:
In
this hymn of praise, it is not the primary purpose of the psalmist to draw
upon nature as a vehicle of revelation, or as a source of the knowledge of
God apart from the revelation in law (or Torah, v. 8); indeed, there is more than a suggestion that the
reflection of God’s praise in the universe is perceptible only to
those already sensitive to God’s revelation and purpose.
Human beings have been
entirely affected by the fall, becoming sinful in our minds as well as in
our wills. We cannot fully
understand God by looking at nature.
Paul himself writes,
For since the creation of the world
God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine
nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been
made, so that men are without excuse.
For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor
gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish
hearts were darkened.
God’s qualities
are clearly evident in creation, and there is a sense in which we all understand
something about God from His creation, yet our human nature is turned
against Him, so while we know him, we don’t glorify him; we willfully
exchange truth for lies so that our thinking becomes futile. Yet Psalm 19 tells us that God’s
word gives us the light for our eyes to see. God’s special revelation understood
by His Spirit is the corrective for our inability to see beyond the
stars. John Calvin wrote it this
way:
For
as the aged, or those whose sight is defective, when any books however
fair, is set before them, though they perceive that there is something
written are scarcely able to make out two consecutive words, but, when
aided by glasses, begin to read distinctly, so Scripture, gathering
together the impressions of Deity, which, till then, lay confused in our
minds, dissipates the darkness, and shows us the true God clearly.
There is nothing
“defective” in God’s revelation, wherever it may be
found. There is a lot that is
defective within us, requiring that we interpret our worlds in light of the
glasses of Scripture. Nevertheless,
when we do understand general revelation rightly, it has all the force and
authority of the God who revealed it.
Calvin also writes,
If
we reflect that the Spirit of God is the only fountain of truth, we will be
careful, as we would avoid offering insult to him, not to reject or condemn
truth wherever it appears. In
despising the gifts, we insult the Giver.[9]
Why does the revelation
of God in Scripture have this ability to function as the spectacles through
which we understand the world? The
Psalmist continues:
The fear
of the LORD is pure,
enduring forever.
The
ordinances of the LORD are sure
and altogether righteous.
They are
more precious than gold,
than much pure gold;
they are
sweeter than honey,
than honey from the comb.
By them
is your servant illumined;
in keeping them there is great
reward.
Whereas in verses 7-8,
the psalmist remarked on the ability of the Word to revive us and give us
the sight to see, here the text describes for us the value of Word when
feared. Special revelation has more
value than gold, sweeter than honey and provides great reward. It is notable that all the genitives in
vv. 7-11 are possessive (law, statutes, precepts commands, ordinances of
the Lord), except for the “fear of the Lord” in verse 9. The fear of the Lord is an objective
genitive (we are to fear the Lord); it tells us how the law is to be
received, with fear and reverence.
The psalm ends by
reconsidering the reality of human nature, and thus the need for illumination
through the spectacles of special revelation.
Who can
discern his errors?
Forgive my hidden faults.
Keep
your servant also from willful sins;
may they not rule over me.
Then
will I be blameless,
innocent of great transgression.
May the
words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
be pleasing in your sight,
O LORD,
my Rock and my Redeemer.
Upon reflection on the
laws perfection, the psalmist then is struck anew by his own lack of
discernment and the need for illumination.
We are blind even to our own errors and need forgiveness not only
from willful sins, but from hidden faults.
Only in forgiveness will he be blameless, and only in freedom from
sin’s rule will our words and meditations be pleasing to our Rock and
Redeemer.
The psalmist puts no
trust in his own abilities; he is dependent upon God’s graciousness
even for his perception. Craigie summaries the psalm nicely: “The psalmist
moves in climactic fashion from the macrocosm to microcosm, from the
universe and its glory to the individual in humility before God. But the climax lies in the microcosm, not
in the heavenly roar of praise.” Just as the sun illumines the daytime, so
God’s law illumines the human soul.
“There could be no life on this planet without the sun; there
can be no true human life without the revealed word of God in the Torah.”
Of course, this is not
to say that non-Christians can understand nothing of the truth. Our surrounding world is as filled with
truth as it is with error. Many
works of art generated out of the “secular world” demonstrate
truths in beautiful ways. All human
beings are created in God’s image, and thus have within them the sensus divinitatis. We can learn much from any legitimate
work of art, lest we despise the Spirit of God where His work is
present. Yet to recognize the truth
there as truth, we need the spectacles of Scripture—we need a divine
perspective on the world around us.
II. Implication for the Arts
(Particularly Photography)
Art may well be informed
by special revelation as well as general revelation. Paintings may be made, for instance, of
the crucifixion of Christ.
Literature could be written describing the reign of David. However, when a photographer takes a
picture of a flower, his photograph is a recording of God’s
revelation in nature. Art is a
matter of shaping the stuff around us in a way that has an aesthetic effect
and a message to convey.
In art, we imitate the
God who created the world. Genesis 1
describes God’s creation ex nihilo of all that exists on day one of creation. Most of God’s activity, though, was
a matter of shaping and sculpting, not creating out of nothing. We therefore show ourselves to be created
in His image when we shape and sculpt what God has revealed to us in the
form of art. And, if imitation is
flattery, then art is praise.
Yet not all art is
praiseworthy. There are pieces of
art that “look” at stars, but they don’t see clearly
“something beyond.” The
psalmist was an artist who looked at the sun and saw clearly its function
in God’s creation and then described it poetically and
beautifully. Art, therefore, is not
a matter of mere “looking.”
A picture of a tree may be just that—a mere documentation of a
tree’s presence in time and space.
A work of art, a photograph, does not merely document. It sees the stuff beyond and expresses it
for the viewer to see as well. Much
in the way God shaped, molded and sculpted his creation from chaos to
order, the artist shapes, molds and sculpts the creation through his medium
to create a work of art.
This is just as true in
photography as it is in any other art medium. Every photograph takes three dimensional
space and compresses it into two dimensions. Furthermore, the photographer must
choose, based on his artistic goals,
- The perspective or angle of view (since a
photographer can only stand in one place when photographing a subject)
- The length of the lens (which changes the
relationship between the size of objects in the foreground and
background)
- The film (which varies in terms of “speed,”
color portrayal and grain)
- The depth of field (which determines how
much of the photograph will be in focus)
- The shutter speed (which can either display
or “stop” motion)
- The number of exposures on a frame (photographers
can take multiple exposures on a single frame to create patterns,
change the relationship between objects, etc.)
- The exposure (photographers can decide to
overexpose or underexpose their images)
- The use of filters (changing the color of a
scene, the contrast of a scene, etc.)
Furthermore, film is
essentially “limited” in that it cannot record all the light
that the human eye can see. It can
only record a fraction of the visible spectrum. The result is that photographs contain
more contrast than what the human eye sees when looking at the same scene. Consequently, depending on the
photographer’s decisions, a photograph of a scene may show the
foreground properly but the sky in the background may appear pure
white. The same photographer may photograph
the same scene in such a way that the sky is exposed brilliantly but the
foreground looks nearly black.
Photographers can use this reality to hide distracting details in a
photograph, silhouette a tree behind the sun, and achieve many other effects.
All these factors and
more can be used at the disposal of the photographer to shape the external
world through the medium of photography into a work of art that looks
beyond the subject to the “stuff beyond”—God and his
revelation of Himself, ourselves and His creation. To do this in a distinctively Christian
manner, we need to have as our filter God’s special revelation, to
portray properly the “stuff beyond” in our photographs. At the same time, God’s general
revelation ought never to be diminished in importance. When it is understood correctly, it may
speak just as authoritatively as any other revelation of God.
III. The Pressing
Questions
Yet more questions need
to be asked. For instance, what can
photographs express? How can a
picture of a flower express something about God, our world or
ourselves? These questions are too
large for us to answer fully, as this will lead to many philosophical
debates over things like the role of the artist and viewer in the meaning
of a photograph. At the very least,
we can say that the photographer shapes and composes his image to say
something beautifully and the viewer does contribute something to its
meaning for himself.
Let it be further said
that to the spiritual viewer of a work of art, one may react to an image
both emotionally and spiritually.
One may be spiritually affected merely by seeing an image of a
silhouetted tree at sunrise, since he has been profoundly moved by the
awesomeness of the beauty of God’s creation. The mere expression of beauty may evoke a
spiritual response. Another viewer
may well react quiet differently, yet also spiritually. One viewer may feel a sense of isolation
in the picture (a lone tree with no companions), yet also profoundly moved
by the warm colors of the sky—the red and yellow tones reflecting
God’s comfort in the midst of loneliness.
Of course not every
image needs to evoke a “spiritual” response in the sense that
we leave the image with some insight into God and his character. In fact, most of my images don’t do
this for me. Many times I am merely
struck by a pattern or tone or splash of color in an image. These things may not in and of themselves
be directly spiritual; however,
the appreciation of beauty in any form I believe is a spiritual exercise. Freeman Patterson, a professional
photographer, says that a photographer to becoming an artist
requires
caring—passionate caring about ultimate things. For me there is a
close connection between art and religion in the sense that both are
concerned about questions of meaning—if not about the meaning of
existence generally, then certainly about the meaning of one’s
individual life and how a person relates to his or her total
community/environment. This is not to say that every work of art is or
should be a heavily profound statement, indeed many may be very
light-hearted, but rather that consciously and unconsciously an artist
engaged in serious work is always raising or dealing with the question: “What
really matters?”
In other words, there
need not be any direct statement about God for a work of art to be
spiritual. Rather, art is by nature
spiritual in that the creation of it mimics and therefore praises the
Creator. Our engagement in a photograph
as a work of art allows us to see the Created world in a new and different
way. We are struck by form and
beauty that originates from God; we are fascinated by shapes and lines,
textures and colors that all find their source in God himself. As such, photography as art is
inescapably spiritual.
IV. Example Images
(to be added soon!)
SJS
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