The relationship of religion and art is neither one of contradiction
nor one of sameness. Between them exists a kinship and a singular reciprocal
support. Both religion and art exalt us and awaken in us aspirations to an
ideal world. But, if aesthetic feelings aspire chiefly to an artistic
representation of the ideal world, religious feeling thirsts for a living
communion with God — the foundation of all perfection. Contemplation of an artistic
composition or of the beauties of nature under the influence of an aesthetic
feeling creates in the soul only a vague, unaccountable impulse to the higher
world. However, the contemplation of the same phenomena under a religious
feeling opens up the possibility for the soul to have active communion with the
Living God, through prayer and the Sacraments. These intentional substitutions
of an aesthetic feeling for a religious one is a proud and harmful perversion,
which in asceticism is the temptation to sin called
“delight.”
Common to
religion and art is the striving to express ideas not in an abstract form (as
in philosophy and science), but in vivid, concrete forms. In religion, as in
art, a pure idea is clothed in an appropriately pure and beautiful shroud or
image through which all the spiritual/bodily feelings of a man are made to
participate in the spiritual contemplation of the idea.
Dogmatic truths
and ethical conceptions are clothed by the Church not only in highly artistic
word images and the beautiful dress of sacred music, but are also symbolized in
the splendor of its liturgical services and rituals. Not one of the ancient
religions was a stranger to symbolism. The most perfect religion, Christianity,
is therefore an exceptional treasure-house of symbolic images, which, embedded
in the muteness of silence (expressing “the mysteries of the future age”),
makes the invisible visible.
The philosophy
of history teaches us that religion was the original cradle of art. The opinion
that religion and art are hostile to each other in principle is a mistaken one.
This hostility begins only when the substance of religion is perverted (for
example, in Manichaeism, which considers matter an evil substance), or when the
form of art is not suitable to the religious idea. The hostile attitude towards
all aspects and forms of art inhibited their adaptation to the service of the
church and in time led to iconoclasm.
The Christian
Church does not deny art. Christianity is the religion of the Incarnate God,
Christ, in whom was manifest “all the fullness of the
Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9). Sanctifying the body and condemning only sinfulness
in the flesh, Christianity sanctified also the various forms of art for use in
Christian church services, condemning only the sinful use of art. The sin of
art, therefore, begins where art forgets its divine origin and turns to serve
evil.