Planets and Art

Some more things on the art subject....

I recently "read" (more like "skimmed") Michael Ward's book called Planet Narnia.  In it he argues that Lewis used each of the 7 medieval planets as inspiration for each of the books in the Narnia series.  He says that Lewis did this because he believed that each of the mythological characterizations for the planets represented an aspect of God's character.

If we took this standard idea than we would have 7 major characteristics of God (well, 6 really because the Moon is the border between the sinful world and the unfallen worlds), and if these followed the planets we would have:

Sun = glory, majesty

Mercury = messenger of the Word

Venus = beauty, creativity, life

Moon = separation from God

Mars = War

Jupiter = joy, cheerfulness (joviality)

Saturn = God of Ages/Time, Ancient of Days

It seems as though the goal of any good art project would be to accurately reflect God's character in any of these individually or combined.  All of the stories in the Bible also reflect these characteristics, so that if you were to say, write a story that imitated the life of King David (with different characters and situations, of course), that could potentially be a great story.

This seems to open up creativity in a way that doesn't stifle the idea of taking one or two of God's characteristics and setting them up as supreme.

Don't Know Much About...

Art.  But that won't stop me from saying something about it anyway.

It seems as though a lot of evangelicals are thinking more about art.  This is probably mostly due to the great work of Francis Schaeffer, and others who took up his mantle in dealing with culture.  It also seems as though a lot of evangelicals, especially the highly-learned, educated, and respectable ones, have come to a conclusion about Christian art that it should all reflect a particular aspect of God's character.  I have heard them advocate that all art should reflect God's creation week, since our human creation is a reflection of God's creative ability.  I have also heard that all art should reflect a Trinitarian inter-relationship, so all good art is relational art, or dealing with issues between people.

What seems to flow from these particular opinions is more of a stifling of creative ability then an outpouring of such.  I can think of many stories that follow the theme of the creation week (rising action, climax, falling action), but aren't very edifying or uplifting stories.  I can think of lots of movies about relationships between people (scads of them, in fact) that lie more than tell the truth about human character.

What seems to be the best dividing line between "good" stories/art and "bad" is the story that it tells.  The best stories present true reality.  How do we know what that is?  It is defined in the pages of the Bible, which would ultimately be a reflection of all of God's character.  How do we know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are?  We should look to the pages of Scripture and let that define it for us.