Modern Man and the Ugliness of Modern Art

I recently made an album of some pictures I took on my recent research trip to several Italian cities. While I would work during the week, I spent the weekends playing the tourist at various historic sites, especially many of the old Churches. When I returned, I made an album of a selection of the photographs that I had taken and was showing them to some relatives at a recent family gathering. They were suitably impressed by the photos, especially many of the Churches, and some remarked that one did not see artwork and architecture like that today. I was forced to agree.

This exchange reminded me of a couple remarks made by the Archbishop Fulton Sheen. In the first, he speculated on why modern art and architecture was so ugly. He suggested that in religious ages, art and architecture was more beautiful because men believed in a spiritual world that they could represent materially. The material was used to represent the spiritual, and the former was dignified by the comparison. In the modern age (or rather, the second pagan age), artwork and architecture is often so ugly because there is nothing to represent materially. All that is left is the weird, and so much modern art has given up on the search for beauty and simply tries for the strange and unfamiliar.

Many of the Churches that I saw and photographs I took inclined me to agree with the late archbishop. The first image here is of the Florence Duomo. The second is of the world trade center in New York City.
If a picture is typically worth a thousand words, then these are worth far more. The former twin towers were little more than large concrete rectangles, The Florence Duomo far more.

It may be protested that this consists of a remarkably small sample size. Very well, the reader is invited to consider on his own whether there might be something to this, and whether myself and my relatives, untrained artists all of us, are right in agreeing that modern art and architecture is far worse than medieval. One wonders then why "medieval" has become almost a synonym for "backward" in the modern world.

If so, then surely this represents an indictment of the modern world. A material world that cannot believe in the spiritual is a far poorer world. And human sense rightly revolts against it.

Some do not. While traveling Italy, I met a young Scandinavian woman on a bus trying to find her way to a hostel. We began talking about our travels and I mentioned my fascination with all of the old Churches. She responded dismissively, "oh, when you've seen one Church, you've seen them all."

First of all, this is hardly true. It is the ugly buildings of the modern city that all look alike. The sheer variety all the all old Churches makes me think of the remark by C.S Lewis, "how monotonously alike all the tyrants of the world, how gloriously different all the saints." Second, it reminded me of a story told by Fulton Sheen. He told of a tourist at the Louvre who, on exiting commented contemptuously to a security guard who was standing by that he (the tourist) saw nothing to admire in those paintings. The security guard responded, "Listen! These pictures are not on trial; you are!"

It was not only that art has become ugly; it is that the modern materialist, like my Scandinavian acquaintance, also gradually loses his ability to appreciate beauty where it may be found. Chesterton wrote in Orthodoxy, that right or wrong, materialism gradually destroyed the modern man's humanity.

What was true of that tourist is true of the modern world-- and of us. The modern world is on trial and the case for the prosecution, the ugly artistic consequences of our materialism alone, is a strong one indeed. The judge is just, the verdict coming. If the modern world does not reject its materialism, it will find, not only will it have lost the ability to produce beauty, but, it will also have lost the ability to appreciate it, with devastating consequences for its ability to enjoy heaven and the new creation that began with Easter.

The Resurrection: Surprised by Hope

This week are only a few brief reflections on one of the reasons the Resurrection matters, based largely on NT Wright's book Surprised by Hope.
The other day, while reading through NT Wright's book, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven and the Resurrection, a few pages he wrote stood out. The book itself is a marvelous reflection on what Christians ought to think about life after death and why, and why what we think about the next life matters so much in this one. After spending a couple early chapters discussing the historical basis of Christian beliefs on life after death (or as he says more appropriately, life after life after death), Wright turns to drawing out the meaning and importance of those beliefs in the rest of the book. Before he gets there, however, he offers a few brief reflections on why people do not want to believe in the Resurrection.

By way of example, he offers the following scene from Oscar Wilde's play, Salome, when King Herod hears reports about Jesus of Nazareth raising the dead. Herod is furious. "I do not wish him to do that... I forbid him to do that. I allow no man to raise the dead. This man must be found and told that I forbid him to raise the dead" (Wright 75).

This, Wright says, is the bluster of a tyrant who knows his power is threatened. Who, he continues, was it who do not want the dead to be raised? The tyrants and bullies, whether, social, political, or intellectual. "The Ceasars who would be threatened by a Lord of the world who had defeated the tyrants last weapon, death itself... And this is the point where believing in the resurrection... becomes of matter of rediscovering hope in the 21st century. Hope is what you get when you realize that a different worldview is possible, a worldview where the rich, the powerful, and the unscrupulous do not after all have the last word (Wright 75).

The tyrants who would insist that "dead men don't rise" are of various sorts, they take the form of people or places like Stalin or China who would ban religion. They might take the form of some intellectual bully (college professors are a common one) who insists that no "modern" person could possible believe Resurrection (though this belief is not modern at all, but very old and outdated, Homer and pagan Greece and Rome thought as much). All such and others would try to deny to the modern world the sort of hope the resurrection provides, because people without hope, are people who are easier to control. People with hope can transform the world.

But the hope of the Resurrection cannot be brushed aside. This hope is not optimism or a warm, fuzzy feeling of the sort that may be provided by a smooth talking politician or a sufficiently large alcoholic libation. Hope is the determination in a future world, with death defeated, a future world that begins here and that we are called to begin here. It is not "going to heaven when you die;" It is bringing the Resurrection and the new creation to the present world. To paraphrase Fulton Sheen, the Resurrection is not something that has happened, it is something that is happening, and something for us to participate in.

Happy Easter

No, they're not "special"

Contrary to greeting card sentiments, I do not think that the Eucharist is meant to make us "special."

Last week, we were going to a First Communion, and I wanted to give a card. And of course I wanted to find a good one. So we (yes, I made him come look with me) went to look for a card. The first place we looked only had one left that I didn't like very much. So the next day we tried another place, which had a bunch to choose from, and one annoying thing in common. There is a very great over-use of the word "special" in these cards. "For a special boy" dominated the fronts of many of the cards, or sometimes something about "your special day" or, to really overdo it: "For a special boy on his special day." Yes, some cards did actually have an otherwise meaningful sentiment inside, and I found a couple that I really liked. I give extra points to cards that actually use the words "Eucharist" or "Sacrament" as well.

I know that I should not place too much importance on how greeting card sentiments are written, or have too high an expectation of knowledge on the part of those who write them. Some of the sentiments in the cards, though, did seem to have been written by someone with at least some understanding of the doctrines around the sacrament of the Eucharist. Some even sounded as if they may have been written to be Catholic, with reference (or at least implication) to the Real Presence of Jesus. The people who write these cards seem to know that a) receiving the Eucharist for the first time is a big deal and b) it's a big deal because of what it has to do with Jesus/ God's Grace, etc. They must know at least that.


So why this apparent need to assign "special"ness to the recipient? Why cloud the meaning of an otherwise meaningful sentiment about receiving the Grace of the sacrament with a "you're special" statement stamped first and foremost? The main problems I see with this are a dislocation of the significance from the sacrament itself to the recipient, and also an invention of personal achievement on the part of the recipient.

There seems to be a strong need to emphasize individual specialness in our culture, as in, being inherently and independently "special"n in one way or another, or just in a general sense. If we are "special," whatever that is supposed to mean, we are such because that is the way God has created us, but it does not come from the reception of a sacrament itself, as if it's a personal achievement of some sort; that's not what the sacraments are for. We do gain something from every sacrament that was not there before we received it, but to use an over-applied term like "special" really cheapens the value of the sacrament. To use it in the context of conveying a message to a child, it is particularly misleading to him. A child will not realize that in this context, "special" is (hopefully) meant to imply being imparted with God's grace, but to him it means "I am special, I have achieved something because of how special I am on my own, all by myself." I don't think this is what we should be teaching our children when they receive the Eucharist. Instead of saying "You're so special you get to have communion with everyone else now," we should be saying, "This is God and his grace you are receiving, this is why you need it, and why it will now help make you a better person."

So I guess what I am getting at is that we seem to think that we are already inherently great persons, and do not need God in order to achieve this personal greatness which we already assign to ourselves. This error we convey to our children when we emphasize specialness over God.

The Resurrection and History

We continue to celebrate the Easter Season by considering the Resurrection. Last week’s post was some simple reflections on Updike’s famous poem on the Resurrection; this week briefly considers some historical evidence for the Resurrection; the next couple weeks will consider other aspects of it and why it matters.

St. Paul famously wrote in his letter to the Corinthians, “if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is in vain,” while centuries later John Updike echoed him saying if He did not rise in His body, “the Church will fall.” Unlike every other religion and mythology, Christianity is unique in being based on a single historical event, without which it cannot survive (1); here then, I will consider briefly some evidence for that event sketching an argument developed by modern scholars such as N.T. Wright and William Lane Craig.

A good sketch of evidence for the Resurrection will have two parts, 1. Establish 3 facts (the empty tomb, appearances of the risen Christ, and the origin of Christian belief, and 2. Establishing that the best explanation of those facts is that the Resurrection really occurred.

I. The Three facts:

A). Jesus’ Burial and discovery of his empty tomb three days later.

1. The discovery of the empty tomb in multiply attested in early, independent sources. The pre-marken passion source, Paul’s letter to Corinthians mentions it, Matthew is an independent source since he includes the guard at the tomb, which is not in Mark.

2. Mark’s story is simple and lacks significant legendary development. (esp. compared to later Gnostic gospels which are real legends.

3. The empty tomb was discovered by women. Women were not regarded as reliable witnesses, so their presence indicates the account is probably legit, since no one would invent women as discovers of the empty tomb.

4. The earliest Jewish allegation that the disciples had stolen Jesus’ body (Matt. 28.15) shows that the body was in fact missing from the tomb. The only reason to put that story there was if the Jews were really claiming that Jesus’s followers stole his body, by which they admitted the tomb was empty.

5. The disciples could never have preached the Resurrection unless the tomb were really empty. No one would have believed them

- For these and at least 3 other reasons, Gary Habermas found in a survey that 75% of scholars admit the empty tomb. “Experience of the Risen Jesus” Dialog 45 (2006):292.

B. Appearances of the risen Christ on multiples occasions to multiples individuals.

1. “The list of eyewitnesses to Jesus’ resurrection appearances which is quoted by Paul in I Cor. 15. 5-7 guarantees that such appearances occurred. These included appearances to Peter (Cephas), the Twelve, the 500 brethren, and James.”

2. The gospels account for multiples appearances, including to the women. The latter are probably reliable for the reason given above. They would not have been made up.

3. The appearances were physical. Paul in Corinthians implies this, Jesus invites Thomas to touch his side, Jesus eats a fish. If the appearances were not physical, the disciples would not have said Jesus was raised, they’d say they saw his ghost.

- Even the radical skeptic Ludemann agrees that these appearances happened. He simply disagrees on the best explanation of them, by arguing that they are simply hallucinations.

C. The Origin of Christian Belief: The Disciples Came to Believe, in Spite of Every Reason Not to, That Jesus Was Really Raised From the Dead (This section is largely from NT Wright).

1. The ancient world always used the word “Resurrection” to mean a physical bodily resurrection. And they universally, from Plato, to Homer, through ancient Greece and Rome, agreed that Resurrection in this sense did not happen.

2. The sole exception was the Jews, who came to believe there would be a Resurrection of all the just, at the end of time.

3. Among the early Christians, however, this belief underwent some remarkable changes: a. Resurrection moves from the periphery to the center, b. Early Christians came to believe one man has been raised ahead of time, c. Early Christians came to believe that the Messiah has been raised, d. Resurrection becomes something Jesus’ followers could contribute to in the present life.

4. Finally, in early Christianity, as opposed to Judaism and paganism, there was virtually no spectrum of belief of life after death.

5. Beliefs in life after death, being very important and precious to people, tend to be very conservative. For Christians to 1). show such changes and 2). agree almost completely, this demands explanation

Part II- The explanation of these three facts.

The most probable explanation of these three facts is that Jesus of Nazareth really did rise from the dead leaving behind an empty tomb. It easily exceeds other explanations in explanatory scope, power, and other criteria for best explanation.

Please Note- none of these arguments assume the Bible was written early or that it was written by the first generation. I only claim that it is sufficient, when treated as a historical source, to establish the facts listed above.

Further Reading:

- Beginner/Popular Level:

NT Wright, Surprised By Hope Rethinking Heaven and the Resurrection, chap. 3-4.

NT. Wright, http://www.ntwrightpage.com/Wright_Jesus_Resurrection.htm

William Lane Craig, The Son Rises

Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ

William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith, chap. 8.

- Academic

NT. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God.

(1). Of course, we cannot confuse the existence of the event with evidence for the event. If the Resurrection were shown not to have occurred, then Christianity would fall, but it might have occurred and there could simply be little evidence for it (though I think the evidence remarkably good).

The Cross of Christ: Embarassment or Reason to Boast?

The Cross of Christ: Embarrassment or Reason to Boast?

Here begins the first a several blogs posts for the Easter season on the Resurrection. This is simply some brief reflections on a favorite John Updike poem.

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that–pierced–died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

—John Updike, “Seven Stanzas At Easter,” 1964

In Galatians 6:14, St. Paul said, “may I boast in nothing but the cross of Christ.” For a Christian the cross is a tremendous source of pride and cause for awe, as we boast in a God who took on human flesh and became man, thereby committing the greatest act of humility the world had ever seen. Similarly, He took the full force of all the world’s evil onto himself, defeating sin and death in the greatest act of love the world had ever seen.

Though St. Paul boasted in the cross, for much of modern society and many people, even some claiming the name of Christian, the cross is not a source of pride, but a source of embarrassment. It was of those that John Updike wrote warning lest they be embarrassed by the miracle.

Modern embarrassment with the idea of a God who took on flesh, died, and then rose in glorified flesh essentially dates to the so-called Enlightenment and rise of materialism toward the end of the eighteenth century. Modern people “knew” that dead men did not rise as their silly unenlightened ancestors, bless their fruit of the looms, had believed. This change affected even theology as 20^th century theologians began to reject the reality of the Resurrection. Rudolph Bultmann, (I think) remarked that no one who had seen the heavens through Galileo’s telescope could be expected to believe in the literal Resurrection. Consequently, he turned the Resurrection into a metaphor, a sign of the call to authentic existence in the face of death.

A modern material mind cannot believe in the Resurrection, it believes that dead men do not rise. Yet, the modern mind, still does not become wholly irreligious. Like Bultmann, it may try to retain some “spiritual” (though the belief is really very unspiritual) metaphorical meaning, thereby “mocking God with metaphor.” The modern mind, like the pagan antique mind, cannot accept a literal, physical Resurrection. God as matter is repellent to it.

It is a strange thing that the more materialist the word becomes, the more disgusted with matter it becomes. A literal resurrection is foolishness to the gentiles, but a “spiritual” religion such as Buddhism or the eastern paganisms are perfectly acceptable. This disgust with matter may come from the fact that in a material universe, the universe is simply, as one writer put it, the random product of time plus chance. There is nothing to give it purpose or meaning, and hence nothing to dignify it. And so matter and the material world becomes a prison.

This embarrassment with the crucifixion, however, is nothing new; rather it goes back to the beginning. Paul in Corinthians wrote that ‘we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles.” Peter himself confessed Our Lord as Messiah, but then objected to the Crucifixion and was denounced as Satan. Indeed, disgust with a God become man who suffered, died, and rose, goes back further still. One of the speculations about Satan’s fall, was that God revealed to him the episode of the cross and Satan objected. Satan refused to adore a God who would so humble himself and become man. He was too enlightened.

To the Christian, however, the cross is not an embarrassment. Rather, the love and humility of God become man, the Incarnation, Crucifixion, and the Resurrection are not a cause for embarrassment, but a source of pride, and indeed, the only real source of pride in the whole universe. Children boast on the playground that “my daddy can beat your daddy.” The Christian can similarly boast, with St. Paul, that Our Father, the God become man in Jesus, has fought and beaten the entire forces of evil, sin, and death, and Resurrexit.

Happy Easter