This is the redeemed imagination podcast, a podcast, of the Anselm Society on re enchanting the church. Hello, welcome back to the redeemed.
Imagination podcast. This is Brian Brown and I'm excited to share with you the next in an ongoing series of bonus content drawn from our 2019 imagination, redeemed conference in Colorado Springs. If you like to Attend the conference next year, you can learn more at Imagination, redeemed.com imagination, redeemed is a gathering of people who long for God's Mysteries to be illuminated more clearly on the stage of our world to find his handiwork
everywhere to see his people filled with the kind of stories songs and ideas that awaken them to their parts in the great drama. In 2019, we focused our conversation on three acts. The first was corporate worship and sacred art. The second, the life of the church and art created for it. The third, the sacred theater of art for a non-Christian audience in that third act, the Perpetual rehearsal of God's drama concludes as we bring the gospel
to the world. As we take the sacred theater outside the church into the Fallen World As We Live and create in the ruins doing full Justice to their darkness. And to the light, that will swallow it up. We bring the Divine to the ordinary because there's No, such thing as ordinary. Our speaker for this portion was Junius Johnson. Professor of historical theology at Baylor University My talk today is going to have five
parts. There's an overture and then a for movement Symphony, and there are some Tempo markings and things that will indicate to you as we go into various parts as well. So bear with me over sure. Like in the ruins My Point of Departure is a famous line industrious Keys, the idiot Beauty will save the world. What sort of people do? We have to be both to come up with this thought and to be entranced by it. The answer these questions is to set out on a diagnostic of
culture. First, Let It Be noted that this notion that beauty will save the world is only compelling for those who feel that the world is in need of Salvation, it would be a non-starter for the denizens of Heaven. Unless it were a world other than their own that were to be saved. We confess by are very attraction to this saying that we are whatever else we may be a people of longing. Briefly, our whole notion of
beauty is founded upon longing. For The Human Experience of beauty is nothing other than a moment in which a creature we encounter reminds us of God. It is nostalgia, in the etymological sense, a longing for home and it is possible, even though we have never seen that home because our home is indelibly, written on our hearts, Children born in Exile, know that they are Exiles and to the extent that they do not reject who they really are the home.
They never knew Burns in their hearts and summons them with pounding waves of sorrow and yearning. And so we learned that we are Exiles and the eyes, we lift to the hills, searching for salvation are red and puffy with crying and weary with staring into the distance straining for any sign of Hope. But this is only half of the power of that, quote, the other half stems from mysterious way. The world Beauty itself affects us.
We hear this word industrious Keys, famous phrase, We Come, perhaps, as close as we ever do to feeling with dependencies, felt when mr. Beaver, Whispers Aslan is on the move. This means the beauty is no stranger to us. It is Elusive and insufficiently common but we know it and we love it and we want it. And it is really on this point that the entire interpretation
of this passage depends. Let's pass it has often been understood, especially when taken out of context is usually, is as a call to aestheticism, who will worship of Art For Art's Sake, if we make and consume beautiful things, we will find Salvation. But this is a domestication of this passage for by rendering the beautiful something under human control by making it the result of what we can make and a product, we can consume we hide from the Transcendent
magnificence that threatens at every moment, to break over our lives like a mighty wave. But note how this domestication was accomplished. It is precisely by Shifting. The Thing referred to by the word beauty to something internal to the creaturely world. The products of our own hands or the creatures we see around us but these are beautiful in a derivative sets.
They are beautiful because they are like God what is really gripping Us in those moments is the Divine they remind us of This error then does not just domesticate the passage. It also abuses it by turning that which is to be the occasion for worship of God into the object of worship itself. The beauty that gives our hearts like the name of Aslan is not a
beautiful creature. No one on being first arrested, by this remarkable claim Beauty will save the world thinks that a beautiful human or a beautiful Symphony will as beautiful, save the world. Nothing that is merely. One thing in this Splendid Cosmos can save it for nothing in the cosmos is proportioned to the cosmos and power. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. No, it is the beauty these things point to a Transcendent and dangerous beauty that will save the world.
The reference another quote from the idiot. This beauty can turn the world upside down because it made the world in the first place, it can save the world because it is greater than the world. So, let us gather these thoughts into a coherent image. It is not the case that we fall, like, in the rolling fields of bliss, stopping to pluck a flower whose subtle beauty is evidence that we live in a world
in which all is well rather. This is a dark and foreboding landscape gray with a half light whose Source we cannot discern the vegetation. What little of it there is is twisted and malformed the air is stale and taste of Ash in decay. The water is stagnant and like the vegetation while it will sustain life. It can only be said to nourish it by something like equivocation, we are not alive,
we merely exist. From this nightmare landscape rise, the bones of the ruins of magnificent buildings, the former glory of our people now lost the ravages of time and the insufficient strength of our own memories. We can read nothing of this LastPass other than the mournful refrain. We were great once. Judy is a distant light. The sign we have loan for a first flower of spring, the post an Unbound and undi formed head
from the ground. So long believed in capable of supporting such robust and healthy. Life is simultaneously long-desired and unhoped-for, because we dared not dream anything. So rich could ever truly exist again. But there's a rub. Something is wrong? Not with the light that beauty is that we can and do try to shift the wrongness, we feel to displace the McCobb.
Dread that oppresses us to that light in order to preserve the deceptions with which we nourish our anguished Half-Life, know we are what is wrong and this to Right. Light discomforts fills us with nausea and Dread This is not the hope we had hoped for. As the light grows, its intensity becomes a problem. It is too strong, too sharp it. Blinds us and its warmth Burns us and still it goes brighter.
Surely this Supernova will ignite the world and cleanse Us by consuming us it is too high a price to pay until we get this right. We will always mistake the beauty that comes as our greatest friend for our greatest enemy. We won't recognize it in his humility and so we will withhold our Allegiance and if we fail to recognize it in its humility, we will not love it when it has grown to its full Glory, but we will have only practiced loading it at that point. No Rehabilitation is possible.
We are unsuited for the light and so we must go into the darkness. Well, I suppose that you recognize the story, The Light first shines and utmost, obscurity and secrecy. It is a word spoken by an Angel to a teenage girl, in a country of no consequence on the
backside of the world. As it grows, the true lovers of beauty reveal themselves coming, one by one to Adorn it John the Baptist still in the womb Simeon, the prophet and on the prophet and then in groups the 12, the 500 and then in masses, but none of them know how the world was to be saved. So none of them recognized in the darkness of the cross. The silence between the tuning of the orchestra and the first magnificent notes of the symphony, no one knew they had
been listening to an overture. Till it was over. A Christian like the artist does not create this beauty in the world, she only Bears witness to it. She looks like a fool through the long years when the light has not yet emerged or in the shadows of the ruins from which the light cannot be seen. When standing in the direct illumination of the light she is odious.
A traitor, she has cited against her own people with the invading power that would destroy us. All When she extends a hand, to raise the lowly, when she weeps with the mourners, when she visits the sick and buries the dead, when she continues these duties, even while the same plague that killed those, she buries ravages her own skin. She is an enigma and the perplexity. One thing, she must not be silent when then she cannot be is ignored.
She of the previous paragraph is in the first instance, the Christian. But in the second instance, it is also the artist who has the courage to look beyond what is acceptable to Brave that harsh glare of the light of beauty and bring back some kernels of Truth. The artist to is something of a profit and cameos that have Dostoevsky that he'd not Mars was the true prophet of the 19th
century. Our task is to reconcile these two figures, the Christian and the artists but also to determine what to make of their Collision in the world outside. Side of the Holy Cloister of the community of Salvation first movement that goes in Whispers, Allegro con Brio. Theme conception the moment of Mystery. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. We are not told how that first coming forth from nothing.
The moment, when for the first time, it becomes true that something besides God is lies outside, our chain of explanation, but we do know this, the earth created in that moment was both formless and void. That is to say it lacks definition shape and it like content, these two words form and content were destined to become Staples of the philosophy of Art. And while there is a tendency to identify art with form, that is to say with a meaningful arrangement of elements.
Every artist knows that the idea that art can be separated from the question of content is an artless fiction. It matters what you depict to such an extent that the form must bow in some particulars to that which is depicted even when a brilliant artist finds a way to pair of form with content that at first seems inimical to it, this must be According to some principle implicit or explicit but discernible that can mediate between form and content.
If the result is to be judged to be art, And so, Genesis 1:1 is not the Exemplar of artistic creation. It is, but the stretching of the canvas over the frame. But in verse 3, the unexpected happens, God speaks perhaps for the first time, and this speech is the exemplary moment of artistic creation for by means of this speech. God begins to form the world and is to say to give it form.
But speech is theologians going back to at least Augustine have reminded us and externalization of an internal. This is the Exemplar of all artistic creation, the artist conceives in the mind and then what is conceived is externalized. The end result of this
externalization is the art. This is because all human making is in the image of divine making, we do what we have been made to do and we do what we see our father doing analogous to divide making, then human making begins with conception in the soul of the artist. A conception of any sort is a great mystery, a Wonder. We can never fully explained. We may, for instance, understand something of the biology of human conception. But the fact that such a thing
should be possible. That all the two individuals could come together in just this way to produce another individual. This lies outside the realm of scientific explanation precisely, because it is not a question of fact, but a question of meaning One who fails to Marvel before this mystery has succumbed to the temptation to believe. That information is knowledge. And that facts are truth. In artistic conception because the antecedent causes are even more opaque to us.
We are before the deepest mystery for here. Above all do we imitate the creative act of the God who calls things that are not into existence. Artistic creation is ex nihilo, not in an absolute sense, but in an analogous and therefore, real and important sense. But note that Genesis 13 is the exemplary moment of artistic creation. And even though it is NEX knee, hello for God, doesn't make light out of anything. Nevertheless it is preceded by something my context.
I spoke earlier of God, stretching the canvas in verses 12 and it is this canvas. There's the context from the art of God that is to follow. It is also this canvas the created our that is the context for the humid artists only now that canvas has been filled with Wonders, by the Divine hand. The artist is placed in the world and this world feels her
senses and echoes in her soul. But an echo is an echo of something and we are in a position to indicate, what that something is, it is the very speech of God in creation, which itself describes the very being of God In terms that are not God. Thus, the artist's soul is filled with Whispers And Echoes of the Divine being glory and beauty. And it is out of this, overflow of the heart Wells up to Artistic conception, it is only because creation is full of the speech.
And glory of God, that the soul of the artist is fruitful Development externalization. Wordsworth famously said, in the preface to lyrical ballads, The Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. This is, of course, false, but it has captured the imagination of so many generations of poets and lovers of poetry because it Ted does touch upon something that Rings true. With the experience of the artist that the work of art. Once conceived in the soul,
cannot be contained. There it is like a fire shut up in one's bones, it must be released into the world. Indeed, there is no art until the concept has been externalized. The concept in the sold is the plan of the art but it is mere form, without matter until it has been realized in the world of extra mental reality.
The soul must have a body It is here that the artistic struggle unfolds, as inherent talent, and long years of training labor to bring into existence, what has been conceived a labor that always falls short in important ways and that nevertheless can manage to produce something that astonishes and for, all of its shortcomings is also so, right. The concept drives at externalization because it was always meant to be brought to the public. It must out.
It must be offered for inspection and assimilation. For once externalize, I may stand before it and in that moment, I am not safe. My life values and beliefs are on the line. In this moment of aesthetic appreciation. I am asked to understand what the artist understood and there is the possibility that should I catch even a glimpse of that. That my life will never be the
same. The making of heart is an intimate and Powerful. Concourse between Souls this complements, the previous reflection on the fact that human creative agency is grounded. In the Divine Act of Creation in that Transcendent frame, the artist creates because God's very Beauty. And the images of that beauty that creatures are whisper and echo in the artist's Soul giving rise to new creative
conceptions. In the imminent frame, the artist creates because the beauty conceived in the soul is of such a sort that it must out analytic to. It's very power is the need to be expressed because it is a beauty that is pointed at existence outside of the Mind as its own true mode. Not to create would be to transgress the concept to fail to respect.
The demanded is placed on you just by virtue of being the one to think of it. As artists it is your idea, but it does not belong to you alone, it was given to you to give to others. Second movement. Indelible logging March of food a day Adagio acai? What is just been this court discussed is true of all artists regardless of the extent to which there has been an explicit
turning of the Soul towards. Not just the presence of a light but to its meaning and this is something of a scandal to some who feel that we who do not just see the light but are also of the light ought to have the upper hand in our ability to express it and witness to it such as these May. No doubt allowed to a non believing artists whom I shall henceforth referred to as an artist of Babylon or Babylonian artist. The exalted privilege of saying
truth. Things about that light but they find it intellectually troubling to think that an artist, a Babylon, could speak the specific truths of the faith better than a Christian artist. But how could it be otherwise when we are speaking of the Lord who causes his rain to fall on the just and the unjust? Who berates the Wayward Prophet with the word of a donkey who makes even Cyrus of Babylon?
His Messiah for a Time. We see time and again in both Testaments at the word of the Lord goes out into all the Earth and we know that that word does not return void. And yet, we must go deeper than this. It is not only the case that the artist of Babylon can penetrate as far as the Christian artist. He is indeed capable of saying more than the Christian artist. This is because the Babylonian artists, he's in a fundamentally different way than the Christian
artist. And so when he penetrates to the truth in appears differently to him without thereby appearing falsely and so are the same object is seen, what is seen is not the same for the aspect that that light shows to us observers varies greatly between its admirers and is despisers. It is here. I think that we must pause, but while the Babylonian artist gazes upon and witnesses to the light, he is also in flight from that light.
This the artist knows in his soul, even when he denies it publicly and privately the self-deception fails. And at the last day, when that light has been fully revealed, you will hear him confess. Just this, that he knew the light and hated it, even while he loved it and therefore, that he read from it, but was always looking over his shoulder because he could not stand not to gaze upon it.
This Relentless pursuit in which the pursued cannot escape and indeed both launched two and long as not to escape, I would describe as a haunting. Haunting requires presence. If nothing whatsoever is present in the house is not haunted. And yet haunting also requires that this presents be of a specific mode. I am not said to haunt my house, except in a non-literal, poetic sense.
Haunting basis itself upon absence insofar as the hunter has been punitively removed and certainly does not remain in its fullest form. And yet does for all of that abide, there is dense something unnatural about hunting for what ought to be present is present but in a diminished mode that often increases rather than diminishes that realities power. The bodily presence of my friend is much less effective than the haunting presence. This is where the auditor
Babylon finds himself. The inspiring spirit that engenders conception in the artist's, soul is a hostile Spirit and the strictly etymological sense. It is an enemy Spirit, not because it as yet holds any animosity to the Babylonian artists soul, but because that Soul has made an enemy of it and its own animosity, but make no mistake. Should the soul persist? It will find it has made a real enemy of the spirit.
Babylonian artist is, as I have just indicated pursued and his art not only reflects this Pursuit, but is itself part of the pursuit indeed. It is the Chief Cornerstone of the assault. Thus, for the Babylonian artist, The Whispers And echoes in the soul that are the ground of the first conception of the work of art. Take out a Sinister sound. They are at times ominous. Infuriating. Terrifying, unnerving.
At best, when it is the image of God, that Echoes In The Soul, a sense of the Macabre is, never far away. I worse when it is God himself, the danger is of gothis. Is mmm, who knows? But that a massive? Hell might not drop from the sky or a statue. Come calling for dinner to drag one down to Hell. Now, there is a lighter side to haunt it. Surely the spirit of her beloved departed is welcome in this house her warmth that her scent, maybe God.
But yet the way she conditions a room by her, very presence, May linger. Should she continue as a haunting? This is surely to be desired. Yes, but even our Pleasant ghost stories are never far from a terrible turn. The living and the dead do not live easily together for the one is a challenge to the other.
There is nothing natural about haunting just as there is nothing natural about death, neither ought to be haunting is of its nature liminal and therefore transitory it is no path to Eternity. However, cheap or expensive would be held to be My jewelry major. Let us know, bring this explicitly back to the beauty of God is witness to, in the Babylonians art first.
Let it be said that any lingering discomfort, we have with the profundity of expression in the majesty and mystery of God. President such art needs to be recognized as a failure to get the nature of God, right? God is trying to save as many as possible. And that means extravagant Grace, both common Grace and the grace of Salvation. There is a wideness to God's mercy and whatever else art is. It is divine mercy.
And let's go further. The specific charism of Babylonian art is to reveal the face of the Lord of Mercy as it appears to those who have not found favour through the grace of his son. Three moments, I'd like to consider here. First, this means the ability to ask questions, more urgently, I think here of Andrew Lloyd Webber's, Jesus Christ, Superstar, which obsessively, ask the question, who is Jesus, each character?
Who asked this question? Mary Magdalene, Simon the Zealot herot pilot and most hauntingly Judas in their questioning in perplexity. They cannot decisively answer the question about Jesus identity because the composer and Lyricist themselves cannot answer this question and so they have no answer to put into the music.
But what they do have, is an experience of how urgent this question can be, they know the desperation of sensing that it is just possible that everything hinges on a question to, which they are not willing to give an affirmative answer, but to, which they are also not prepared to give a negative answer. If the question of Jesus did not haunt their souls, they could not have written the show. The question, who is Jesus would be too uninteresting to be fruitful because simply answered
as just another man. But what they wrote doesn't just witness to the power and compelling Us in the person of Christ. It does do that and also expresses an urgency that is not foreign to the people who bear his name. To be a Christian is to have faced the same question. We may have answered it given into the Event Horizon of his singular, indecisive excellence.
But at one point was not. So every Christian begins as a Babylonian, so the Babylonian artist helps to reveal our own past and illumines our current condition. Secondly, the charism of the Babylonian artist also has to consider finality for God's spirit will not continue forever. With humans. Christ is believed to be the coming judge. God's mercy may be wide but it still marks off a path. It is so far from including every path that it is called
narrow by the savior. The Babylonian artist who stands under threat of judgment and final rejection who course Disaster by rushing headlong towards the throne of grace. As an enemy of Grace, is able to depict the Tripper inducing Majesty of the king in a way that the Christian as Christian
cannot. But when I look under severe face of God, I know that it is. Not the last expression, I will see on that Most Blessed face, a Babylonian knows in his soul, in that same place where art is conceived, that he is the object of the terrible displeasure. He sees there, Third. And finally, it also very importantly, the Babylonian has something to say about Hope. At the Christian does not for the Christian. Hope is an anchor for the soul. A promise, whose fulfillment is sure.
However, delayed it may be But the Babylonian hopes groundlessly. What I mean is not that his hope has no ground for it is. In fact grounded in the same place is Our Hope in the God who makes a way, but because the Babylonian resists, or even denies this ground, his hope is not set upon it by detached. And the Babylonian Soul recognizes the precarious nature of this free-floating hope. And in that recognition knows itself to be in Mortal peril.
And yet, and this is what we can learn so much from The Hope. Abides. Babylonian hope is always in the process of Disappearing, but as expressed in art, it never, in fact, disappears. The Artist May Despair and despair is to lack. Hope day Sparrow to be away from home, and the artistic expression of this may be on the
road to suicide. But the art itself, always contains something of Hope because it is itself, an expression of hope it is. Minimally The Last Cry for understanding of the anguished soul. I no longer believe, there's anything worth fighting for. And yet I leave you this art by Testaments as evidence of my struggle. Evidence. Yes. And more than evidence it is also itself, giving meaning to the struggle. And so does most extreme at the very point when hope does indeed
vanish. Abandon every hope ye who enter here. We see a witness to the good of that hope to its power and a plea that this hope not be groundless that it all not have been meaningless or in vain this is image. Beautifully is like Tchaikovsky's Symphony begins in darkness and reaches for the light for every modality frantic gentle triumphant timid.
It is where it began in the same Darkness, but worse Britt has found that none of its tactics have grasped the light and so it ends in despair the lingering dying. No, to the basis is an image and a cry of dereliction. The relinquishing of Hope. And indeed of life And yet The Listener is not often, I think convicted at the end of the symphony that there is no hope and that life is to be
relinquished. Whatever may have been following the composer a few short days later instead we come away so bird but with the flame of Hope lit within the hope we have glimpsed there that the artist reaches after and ultimately turns away from draws us on cause us to seek it may even reinvigorate our search. You know, what?
A minor key. A major objection of risers to all of. This are not these elements present also in the work of Christian artists How can I draw such a neat delineation between the Christian artist and the Babylonian quite simply, I do not know such neat division exists. Then how is there any meaning to the distinctions? I've been making precisely for
this reason. Every Christian artists not only begins as a Babylonian artist but also remains one I mean, this in two senses in the first sense, I mean, what I said earlier that every human is born in Babylon and only becomes a citizen of the New Jerusalem, subsequently there for the songs and Babylon, are our songs and those experiences are not just those of our fellow humans, but are our very own But I also mean it in a present sense, for we have not left Babylon, we have
only been called out of her, indeed, it is best to say that we are being called out of her. Whatever progress we may have made away from the city of mud. We have not completed the journey, and so, I write both as an ambassador of the New Kingdom and as nurturing and in completely severed, allegiance to the Old Kingdom, And here there is a mandate the Christian can and should draw on the experience of Babylon. But her commitment is with the New Jerusalem.
This means that we may dip into the urgency of not knowing who God is the terror of being rejected by Beauty itself and the doubt that hope can at all have any meaningful sense. But we cannot abide in these places. The artist aims at faithful externalization. And so witnesses to the light, the Christian artist must therefore reach the part of her soul.
Where such witness is most true because most in accord, with the light of Truth, They drove it in dwelling and imitation, Allegro Vivace. Scherzo indwelling the temple, receive ye the Holy Spirit. In creating God, created a space outside of himself from which he nevertheless would not be absent. The cosmos was not flowing into existence. It was placed. And the First Act, we see God, doing after creation is completed a completion that includes Sabbath Rest.
By the way, is to walk in the garden that he has made to Delight in the diurnal. Rhythm of this world. Enjoy the cool of the day. Got interesting to Creation in his first moments because he's made a place where he Wills to be present. Likewise Christ enters into creation at the Incarnation and in a more intimate way. But what do I mean when I say the creation is outside of God, except that it is external to his personal identities.
But in Incarnation, that is no longer true for now, one who is personally, God, is also a creature. And so, a part of creation and we must not miss that. The insurance is also, by means of a conception, the most singular and wonderful conception there is The entrance of God into Creation in this way. Changes, everything. yet once more God enters into Creation, in a special way this time in the person of the Holy Spirit when he comes to indwell believers, it is this entry that
is of greatest interest here. The interests of the Holy Spirit Into the Heart of the individual believer may be called a conception. It is known as mysterious as his witness by the fact that we can give no account of it. What is the mode of presence of this Divine person in us? We can only call it personal and idea of which we have an implicit understanding that we cannot ultimately explicate but there's more the Holy Spirit by virtue of his name is linked
with that quality. God, that grounds empowers and surrounds our worship. Namely the beauty of holiness. Indeed, as very God, the holy spirit is the Eternal beauty of which all creaturely beauty is the beautiful. Reminder. What occurs? Then when the spirit comes to enjoying a Christian, is the beauty is conceived in the soul of that.
Christian not indeed the beauty of artistic conception, but that beauty to which artistic conception Witnesses and so, there is an analogy between what happens when the soul receives the Holy Spirit and what happens, when the soul of the artist conceives, a work of art Like the conception of a work of art is entrance of the holy spirit is personal. That is to say individual, the Holy Spirit indwells each Christian in a way that is particular and that as such is
unique. I may call it mine. But as with the work of art entrusted to me, it is mined in a sense quite other than the exclusive Mastery, we usually associated with ownership. This possession is neither exclusive nor mastering. And in fact, we would do well, to say that it is mine, not because it belongs to me. But because I belong to S and here we move in the direction of the song of songs, I am my beloved and my beloved is mine. This leads directly to the next point of likeness.
For like the artistic conception, the Holy Spirit conceived in my heart is not meant for me alone, but for me to bring to others. This is true in the salvific economy of God, but we are called to Bear witness to the goodness of the Lord. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, And what greater goodness. Have we seen that impersonal indwelling But this is also true in the created order where it is
easily. Imagine that the God who spoke personally with Adam and Eve would also speak personally with Cain and Abel. Seth, and so on Down the Line, had we not sent but then those encounters would give Seth something to share with me about God, that lay outside of my own experience. Seth's encounters with God, would be private in the sense that they were unique to him, but not in the sense that they were closed off to others.
Rather my access to them would be through his recounting of them, his telling me of the ways, he personally had seen the goodness of the Lord. And thus this is to be restored eschatologically at the end of all things for each Christian Bears, a name written on a white stone, that none knows. But God and the one to whom it is given Revelation 2:17, there is a secret that each state has with God. That is the grounds of a unique praise.
We each have to offer God, but that is also a private experience out of which we will enrich others. Well, as you listen to my song of Praise, You Will Marvel at it and at the relationship out of which it arises for. It is so different to your own. And yet harmonious and complementary indeed, how can this not be? So if the martyrs will wear on their bodies, the marks of their martyrdom, as crowns of Glory. The story of the things we
suffer for his name. Sake will be written Upon Our glorified bodies and will constitute an art vegetable by all the redeemed. Let's recapitulate this theme once. More before moving on, for there is another important internalization of a Divine person, the life of Faith. Namely, the faithful reception of Christ in the Eucharist. Eucharist nourishes.
Holy Spirit indwelling, according to its two modes, as a memorial of Christ's death, Eucharist in Flames, us with love for the one who has done these things and gratitude for the things done. And so, softens our hearts The softening of the heart, makes the spirits work of recreation. Sanctification easier. It makes the heart of more suitable, dwelling place for the spirit because the heart has become more malleable to this work of recreation and
sanctification. And as the very presence of the whole Christ, in the Eucharist, we are transformed by direct personal encounter with the one who is our Exemplar in the direction of the true image of that image, we were always meant to be Eucharist changes us more into Christ and in so doing makes us more truly Who We Are. He is fire and we are lesser fires kindled from him sin, weakens our Flames to, We Are by
smoldering coals. But when the original Blaze draws near our own flame leaps up in response, renewed, by this transfer of heat, the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist transforms, our very being The point of the last section is to underscore that the conception by which the Holy Spirit comes to dwell in a Believer is not just analogous to the conception of a work of art in the sense that both our conceptions but also because both conceptions a mat
externalization that is indeed true of all conception insofar, as we ground, our understanding of the word conception and our use of it to cover biological conception, what is conceived in? The room is meant to go forth from the room and into the world, as with artistic conception In the case of the indwelling of the holy spirit, externalization is necessary. What has come to dwell in? You must be brought forth for public view.
It must be offered to another, that the other may have a chance to see something of what you have seen and having seen it to never be the same again. in short, the externalization of the indwelling of the holy spirit that which is analogous to the creation of the work of art is Witness and so, when I say that a Christians witness is her art, What I mean in the first instance is not that we have a responsibility to witness
to the truth in our art. But rather that the witness that we bear to, the hope that has been conceived in US is itself art. If we get this right, we will have no need to obsess about Evangelistic strategies, cultural relevance and sensitivity or accessibility because the externalization of internally can see, beauty is itself, beautiful. The beauty of the art, that is our witness brings with it. Its own compelling us, its own self evidence, a compelling, - it never crosses over into
compulsion. Beauty is not in need of apology, because it captures us before we have had a chance to think about it. All of this, of course, presupposes that our witness is in fact, beautiful. And yet, we know from experience and history that this is not always the case. How then do we ensure a beautiful Witness? Well, how does the artist proceed in externalizing? The concept.
The art is judged by the artist to be successful, precisely to the extent that has faithfully and meaningfully captured. The Contours of the inner conception. The outer form is bound to the inner concept. Or externalization to be truly externalization and not merely cheap imitation that which is to be externalized, must form a rule that governs. The artistic process Likewise
with witness the form. This of the indwelling spirit, both its inherent form as the third person of the Trinity and the form distant drilling takes specific to this particular Christian must guide. The witness that is offered to it. Violence done. In the name of the faith, is not a compelling witness because it is transgress, the form of the indwelling spirit as God, the spirit compels, no one, but romances running the risk of
ultimate rejection. As God in Me, the spirit, does not compel my transformation but offers powerful and compelling because beautiful arguments internally towards a more Sanctified me. And we must keep in mind. That's a production of great art requires the exercise of the skills involved in making the art. The Masterpiece is the product not merely of one conception, and process of making. What if all the making? The artist has done up to that point.
We must be exercised in the spiritual disciplines in faith and prayer and meditation on scripture and repentance to be able to paint a compelling Witness. However, it also follows from what I've said that the Christian does have a responsibility to witness by her art. And so, a Christians witness is her. Art must also be taken in the sense that this is the case now. Where is this responsibility grounded? How do I get off saying? You artists have a responsibility to witness the
truth in your heart? It is grounded in the fact that the Christian has the personal opportunity and obligation to refer the beauty conceived as the beginning of the work of art to the beauty as well as in her soul. In. So doing she recognizes not just the what but the Winds of the beauty that will become the art. Even this is not enough for why? Mushy compare these two beauties
at all? Surely the knowledge of the Winds is not required for sterilization, for the artist of Babylon. Does not have or has fooled himself into thinking. He does not have, it's not much. But the truth is they crucially beauty is not just from Christ as its Alpha but also towards Christ as its Omega, the creature cannot be understood. Well, either as creature or as beautiful apart from the recognition of the fact that it exists to refer to another and it's whole Glory lies in the way
unique among all creatures. It does this. Thus insofar as every artist logs to and has an obligation to the art to capture as much as possible to the concept in the external product. The Christian artist must connect, the beauty of the artistic conception to the beauty of the Spirit dwelling within her. But then the externalization that is the Christians art is always also an externalization of the indwelling spirit.
And so also witness your witness is Art in your art is Witness Fourth Movement. Sacramento, remediation. Allegro con spirito. IMA behold. I have made all things new. It is time now to speak of the Salvation of the world pointed to, by Dostoevsky, with which we began this journey. We need to speak especially of the means, by which the Salvation will be accomplished. No worldly power can save the world as I stated at the outset. It is only the blood of the god, man.
Yes, blood inescapably. And without appeal that can save the world and yet that blood is not poured out, formless lie. When Christ externalizes, the healing of the Nations that he has conceived internally, he does this by the pouring out externalization of his blood inscribing, his death on the
world as his art. this takes visible form, not only in the cross, but in the cup, He blesses at the beginning of his passion, world-saving power has been poured out from God into the sacraments water and blood flowed from his side. And these sacraments are now also the art of God. But the truth constituted by these sacraments is also as a whole and in each individual member the arch of God. We are through Sacramento agency, the increasingly accurate externalization of God's idea of us.
We only imperfectly resemble it now, but much less imperfectly after Grace than before. If the word of God does not return void, neither is the art of God to be thought to return void. Rather it accomplishes. What it was sent out to do And we have already discussed what work it is that art accomplishes in a scene. And what seen it challenges? And often transforms the viewer. Let us say, art be makes the world. Christian's Dan is the art of God, transform the world around
them. We transform it not aimlessly or after our own image and likeness. That's the logic of Babylon. But rather into the true image of the Holiness of God, we do this, in two ways epistemologically. That is how the water start of and ontologically, how the world is histologically. How it's thought of we transform the world first, in our own minds, by referring each creature to the divine Simpler.
And so, coming more and more to see the way that all things image God, and to restore to each creature its ability to point to God. But we also train the world to see itself differently as he creatures differently. This last we do Above All by your heart, both as artists and as Witnesses. The take just two examples a cathedral such as the Majestic and beleaguered. No speedometer pocket has given Generations or Babylonians.
A sense of a majesty and Transcendence that goes beyond what their philosophy as categories for. Just listening to the news, the French news doing interviews with folks on the street, as the cathedral was burning. And the things that these very non-Christian Frenchmen were saying about, what this Cathedral meant to them indicated that it's not just a national cultural Landmark, it's not just the most visited tourist site in Europe.
It is to them as a place where they're reminded of something more than they really have space to talk about their philosophy. And for a second example, consider the sacrificial actions of Christians, which once revolutionized, how Roman looked at children D, commodifying them and restoring to every baby born a chance at life. Ontologically. We transform the World by restoring broken, things to
their proper state. Principal among things to be restored or Sinners and it is at the Reformation of life that the art of Christian witness principally aims, the Call of Beauty. That our witness sounds to others is a call of like, to like deep calls to deep. The rational creature has a special place in the created order and God's purposes are, especially urgent with regard to
our race. We also transform places and objects and this can be seen in the Saints who by the Holiness of their lives have left behind an experiment in ladder, a legacy of blessing, the sometimes attaches especially to places or things. These relics we're lichter have been especially honored through the senses.
Such things may be said to have been Sanctified by the state in a broad sense because it is an extension of in continuity with the Divine work at the Saints. Life is That God works in these ways. All right of the ministry of a saint is the work that God does through the ongoing Legacy left
behind This is indeed. The only way in which Christians can be said to sanctify my participation in the sanctifying work of God, but this participation is real and so then is the participatory sanctification. Development There Is Power in the Blood witness as martyrdom. I pointed out earlier that there is no appeal from the blood of Christ. No matter the problems we may have with the notion of an innocent dying for the guilty or with blood is a necessary means to appease the wrath of God
these remain our problems. Scripture is unequivocal and the apostles knew that one could only make sense of the saving work of Christ and the context of the prescribed Jewish sacrifices It Is by blood that the world is saved and if Christ is the Exemplar of all things then in this sinful world, we have fashioned out of God's perfect one.
Every form of God's art stands under the sign of blood we can no more transform the world without the spilling of our blood in the world could be saved apart from the spending of Christ's blood. As his blood had to flow so must hours. Surely this is the mystery of filling up. What is lacking in his suffering a space remains in the suffering of Christ. It is only because he has made room for us to join him there. And so we cannot and must not flinch from the truth proclaimed
already. In the New Testament that Christian witness is etymologically martyrdom We were sent to be his Martyrs in all the world. There is no space to be found between our witness and suffering, the to coincide of every moment in a world that needs Beauty to save it. Our art then which is one form of that weakness, cannot be true to that witness and descend into mere sentimentalism, which I would add is actually a lot harder to do than you think. It cannot be superficial and
fully externalize. The spirit of the crucified who lives within us. this is the truest form of Sacramento remediation, but the sacraments only flow from the wounded side of Christ and the blood of the Christian Martyrs is the truest form of imitation of the Christ after whom we long to be Pi, patterned We sanctify this world and his people is through our faithfulness in suffering and above all through our
faithfulness unto death. The message of Hope We Carry will be challenged because it comes to those who know it to be true and yet have shut their eyes to it. We have found deep holes in which to hide themselves from the Searing, all-consuming demands of the light of life. In the face of such challenge which grows, increasingly strident, vehement and violence the more it sees us and moved. Our greatest defense of the strength of our hope is our
death. The first art of the Christian is to show the world how to live for Christ. Her last art is to show the world, how to die for her. Christ, introduced from triumphantly in order to suffer. We do not enter into my unfriendly, except through suffering. The way is not just narrow, it is a gauntlet. You said on every side, my sword and spear fireman water, instruments of torture, and degradation disease, and pestilence rejection and Scorn.
The point of these things is to terrify us out of the way. Remember, that's what the faith was called originally, as the way to appeal, to our sense of self-preservation and I love about my safety, very ones you set these trials before us. Bulk in a horror when they see as walk steadfastly forward. Raving, what to them is unthinkable. We take heart because Christ has overcome the world.
Now it's our turn We March joyfully towards the suffering because it is our honor to die for the one who died for us. And because we are back in Don, by The Beauty with which he will close us, the seven magnificent promises for those who overcome in Revelation, 2 and 3. And we're back in town by the beauty that he is. If we walk this path faithfully and transparently, then as the world's weary and watery eyes, follow our progress, it will eventually lose sight of us and
the radiance to which we walk. Your eyes will be filled with the glory of God and our art would have brought them to their lives crisis. It has we cross the vanishing point and last dying echo of us. They hear me a shout of Joy indistinguishable between Hosanna and marinara. Thank you.