Christianity Today

Tim, I think it's important to remember that the New Testament is not an almanac or an Encyclopedia Britannica. Just as it doesn't include extensive commentary on the arts, so also does it exclude extensive commentary on urban development or medical science or political philosophy or educational institutions or agricultural policies. It's just not interested in those topics, not because they're not important but because the Scriptures are principally concerned with tracing out the history of the early church's encounter with Jesus Christ. Because a topic is absent from the NT doesn't mean Christians shouldn't care about it. In actual fact, Christians care a great deal about the topics I mention above, including the arts, and we have 2000 years worth of debate about their relative importance. About the first Christian "art"? You're right in saying that it appears first in the catacombs. I have a list of recommended books on my blog. They'd be a good place to start reading further.

I think it's a terrible shame that we have no record of Jesus creating art, nor of his immediate followers and disciples creating art. One struggle I have personally in the ongoing and important conversation about reconciling the arts with Christian worship is that we don't see the arts arising immediately alongside the preaching and proselytizing efforts in the New Testament record. There are epistles and there are records of speeches and sermons, but very little in the way of what we today would call "Oh, that's art." David, when did the "first" Christian art appear, and what do you think it was? Was it the graffiti down in the catacombs? The stylized fish drawn in the dirt with the big toe? Would those possibly be the earliest examples of Christian art? What humble beginnings, if so.

Maryann, thanks for the kind word. As I read the history of the church's relationship to the visual arts, in particular in sanctuary or liturgical settings, it strikes me that it's never been a simple or un-contested relationship. One thinks, for example, of the Second Council of Nicaea (787 AD), of the divergent paths that Western and Eastern churches take (say, in the early Renaissance period, where the West takes a "naturalistic" path and the East remains on a "symbolic" one), the tensions between Abbot Suger and Bernard of Clairvaux in the 12th century and their different visions for art in liturgical contexts, and then the more recent 20th century debates over what constitutes appropriate ecclesiastical architecture and whether film or video ought to be brought into liturgical use. All this to say, I don't pretend that the issues I raise are easy ones. But I do think they're important, and perhaps more Protestants are entering in to this question with a thoughtful care.