- Art is a gift of God’s common grace in which all humans may meaningfully participate. This implies that that Christians may participate in art for arts sake. They may even see art as a vocation for glorifying God.
- Beauty is not relative. From a Christian perspective, there is such a thing as real, objective beauty and real ugliness. Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. This does not mean, of course, that we will always agree on what is beautiful.
- Art does not have to agree with Christian truth and Christian morality in order to be good art. That is, good art does not have to be consistent with the Christian worldview. Its message can be contrary to that worldview and still be good, valuable, and enriching as a work of art.
- The Christian artist should never abandon his Christian convictions in doing his art. Though a Christian artist does not have to do explicitly religious art, he will not teach through his art things that are inconsistent with the Christian worldview or portray that which is evil as though it were good.
- Good art does not always have to be beautiful to be good art. Good art can express truth, for example, by portraying ugliness, and thereby be good art because it expresses truth about that ugliness; or the ugliness in the art may genuinely express the artist’s view of reality and thus teach us something helpful about the artist.
- Good, valuable art need not be religious in its content. That is, art need not have overt Christian content or be designed for evangelism or to teach morality (though it can do these things if the artist wants it to). Rather, it can be designed purely for entertainment and pleasure.
- Good art can be representational, abstract, or symbolic—the Bible contains all three!
SOURCES
Michael Horton, Where in the World is the Church: A Christian View of Culture and Your Role in It (P&R).
Fransis A. Schaeffer, Art and the Bible (IVP).
Gene Edward Veith, State of the Arts: From Bezalel to Mapplethorpe (Crossway).