6. Religion and art.

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.