Relating Art, Truth, and Apologetics

By Rachel Shockey

***The following article contains excerpts and concepts from my master’s thesis, “The Intersection of Apologetics and the Arts: The Power of the Arts to Convey Truth and Change Lives.” The full thesis can be found here. This article is in response to a question we received on social media about how Christian artists can give evidence and reasons for belief in their artistic creations.***

Traditionally, Christian apologetics has been understood to mean a logical defense of Christianity in the form of debates, speeches, writing, and verbal evangelism, to name a few common methods. According to philosophy professor and apologist, Douglas Groothuis, the study of apologetics “depends on theology”¹ for the articulation of biblical truth claims, leans on an understanding of philosophy to address the deep questions of the skeptic, and is incorporated into evangelism as a means to remove barriers to belief such that one may be willing to consider the claims of Christianity. However, it is my belief that the general definition and understanding of Christian apologetics should be expanded to account for the place the arts can have in effectively conveying the truth and giving reasons for belief in Christ. Although there has already been some modern shift toward acceptance of such an expanded definition of Christian apologetics and evangelism, the history of art within the church has included attitudes ranging from encouraging to hostile.²

I believe that the arts are necessary and effective at reaching the hearts and minds of non-Christians in our current, twenty-first-century culture. Our culture has lost a sense of reality and truth, preferring to subjugate the truth to feelings and preferences. This can pose a difficulty when trying to help skeptics see the truth of Christianity. When a skeptic experiences the ultimate love, truth, beauty, holiness, and miraculous power of God, many are convinced of the truth of Christianity. I believe that the arts can create opportunities and environments wherein people can have meaningful faith conversations, experience God, and come face-to-face with reality.

In our individual pursuit of truth, if we are honestly seeking answers to life’s major questions, we are more likely to be ready to think deeply and thoughtfully about reality and how our worldview compares. We receive knowledge about reality not just by listening to debates and speeches, or by reading a book or article on philosophy, theology, or apologetics, but also through the conceptual and propositional experiences that can be gained through the arts.

Discovering Truth Through the Arts

An individual’s discovery of God’s truth can happen at any time and in any place and through whatever means God’s Holy Spirit chooses.³ Just as the death of a loved one can compel us to think of our own mortality, the meaning of life, our origin, etc.—in the same way, the arts can help us to think deeply about reality. The arts can touch our beliefs, thoughts, and emotions in powerful ways because they compel us to enter into a narrative where we may discover things about ourselves, about others, about reality, and about truth.

Professor and philosopher John W. Bender argues that “the power of fiction lies in its ability to create ‘worlds’ or situations and give us a sense of what it is like to inhabit them.”⁴ The arts can help to break down our philosophical barriers to truth and present us with the whole of the human experience, both good and evil. Therefore, the arts may not provide a superior “road to faith, but it is, in fact, a road, and there is a population of people for whom the best approach” to faith in Christ may be “along that route.”⁵

The Image of God and God’s Use of the Arts

It is also worth exploring what the Bible says about the arts. First, when God created humankind in his image, he gave us some of his attributes like imagination, creativity, an appreciation for aesthetics, and the ability to create something out of what he has already created.⁶ Thus, at the root of all humankind is God’s image, and therefore we all have the capacity to create and imagine.

Second, Jesus used parables—a form of narrative—to teach people something about God’s nature and our own. Jesus used stories to captivate the minds and hearts of the listeners and to expose them to God’s truth. Groothuis argues that God designed us with the ability to imagine because it is an important way for us to receive truth:

[Jesus] believed that objective truth is knowable (realism), that factual evidence is crucial in supporting truth claims, that noncontradiction is a necessary test for truth, that the truth Jesus reveals has experiential effects, that the imagination is a key organ for receiving truth (his use of parables and figures of speech) and that one’s ability to know truth is closely tied to one’s moral rectitude.⁷

The apostle Paul demonstrated that he understood this when he gave his famous sermon on Mars Hill and used a pagan altar (art) “to an unknown God” to argue for the truth of Christianity.⁸

Third, it is important to remember that “Christianity is not just involved with ‘salvation’ but with the total man in the total world.”⁹ Thus, the arts should reflect this and not just things that we would deem as “religious.” As theologian and philosopher Francis Schaeffer explains, “God’s creation—the mountains, the trees, the birds and the birds’ songs” are not religious and the “Christian message begins with the existence of God forever and then with creation. It does not begin with salvation.”¹⁰ The implication here is that artists should portray the whole of the human experience and should not be concerned that their work is solely “a vehicle for some sort of self-conscious evangelism,”¹¹ because these non-religious things could draw us to truth and ultimately toward God. Likewise, even works of art that are created by non-Christians and reflect the artist’s worldview may reveal that their view contradicts reality. Thus, this kind of art can still be used by God to reveal truth.

Gaining Knowledge Through the Arts

As discussed by multiple authors in Contemporary Philosophy of Art, it can be reasonably argued that the arts can be a source of propositional and conceptual knowledge. Philosophers have often said that the arts only deal with emotions, are concerned with values, and suggest perspectives but are not a source of knowledge.¹² Unfortunately, this is one of the “[legacies] of the Enlightenment” in which it is believed that “empirical science alone can furnish us with useful knowledge about the world.”¹³ For the purpose of this article, I will use the following definition of knowledge: “If one believes a proposition and the proposition is true, and one is justified in believing it true, then one has knowledge.”¹⁴ Working from this definition, one may come to test propositions through the worlds and situations created by the arts. Within these worlds or situations, we may “acquire a hypothesis” and be “presented with a certain possibility” about which we may come to know “how things would be” if the hypothesis were true.¹⁵ This would be considered “conceptual knowledge.”¹⁶ Further, what we learn from these fictional worlds have real world implications. Some examples of skills we can learn, from novels, for instance, could be strategy, perception of environments, and empathy. A reader of a novel may acquire a hypothesis and test it in this fictional world to determine if that hypothesis is true. Thus, “it would seem . . . that readers acquire factual beliefs and propositional knowledge from fiction in the way that scientists gather knowledge about the fabric of the universe.”¹⁷ Further, those who dismiss art as a way to gain knowledge do so because their belief “arises from two common philosophical dispositions: our ability to say (and penchant for saying) what art is not, and a persistent essentialist hope that whatever it is, its nature is singular and definable.”¹⁸ Clearly, any attempt to narrowly define art or obtain knowledge from every piece of art would be fruitless. In fact, Bender provides a vivid illustration of art as an “epistemic vehicle” when he describes it as “a complex intentional object suspended in an even more complex inferential web, some strands of which lead to knowledge.”¹⁹ So, how is one to approach art and what knowledge is to be gained when so many messages within the various art forms contradict and some pieces may present conflicting messages within themselves?

Bender argues that we evaluate the truth claims of art as we would with any other philosophical truth claim. We should “critically examine the ground on which they are held, and more broadly estimate their likelihood of truth, by calling on our own relevant knowledge and experience and checking for coherence and other epistemic virtues.”²⁰ Thus, we seek to identify those strands that lead to truth. This ties nicely into apologetics because one of the particular strengths of the arts are their ability to present moral knowledge.

I would like to close by offering a challenge to both the Christian artist and the audience or viewers, which is part of the complexity of the arts in general: 1) while the artist should be concerned with the excellence of their art form, they need to realize that their creations can provide knowledge that can assist those who are searching for truth and 2) the audience should thoughtfully approach the arts in search of the strands that lead to truth. Thankfully, there is a growing number of Christian artists in the world that see the need for Christians to recapture the arts and allow God to use their skills for his glory and to help reach the hearts of those who do not know him. It is my hope that Christian artists would be inspired by this article to use their gifts to create environments, experiences, and art that can touch the hearts and minds of our post-truth culture. And it is my hope that the Church would seek ways to encourage the use of the arts in their evangelism.

Notes

1. Douglas Groothuis, Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith (InterVarsity Press, 2011), 168–69, Kindle.
2. For more information about this, please read my thesis. Rachel Shockey, The Intersection of Apologetics and the Arts: The Power of the Arts to Convey Truth and Change Lives. www.rachelshockeystudio.com/ahopian-to-exhibit-and-thesis
3. Shockey, The Intersection of Apologetics and the Arts.
4. John Bender, “Art, Science, and Knowledge: Knowing the World Through Art” in Contemporary Philosophy of Art: Readings in Analytic Aesthetics, ed. John Bender and Gene Blocker (Prentice Hall, 1993), 562.
5. Rebecca Hans, “That Hideous Strength and Till We Have Faces: C.S. Lewis, Evangelism, and the Role of Story,” The Journal of Inkling Studies Vol 7, Issue 2 (October 2017): 8, accessed July 23, 2019. Italics in original.
6. James W. Sire, Apologetics Beyond Reason: Why Seeing Really is Believing (InterVarsity Press, 2014), 67, Kindle.
7. Groothuis, Christian Apologetics, 793.
8. See Acts 17:22–31.
9. Francis A. Schaeffer, Art and the Bible: Two Essays (InterVarsity Press, 2006), 86. Kindle Edition.
10. Schaeffer, Art and the Bible, 87–89.
11. Schaeffer, Art and the Bible, 89–94.
12. Bender, “Art, Science, and Knowledge,” 557.
13. David Novitz, “Fiction and the Growth of Knowledge” in Contemporary Philosophy of Art: Readings in Analytic Aesthetics, ed. John Bender and Gene Blocker (Prentice Hall, 1993), 585.
14. Louis Arnaud Reid, “Art and Knowledge” in Contemporary Philosophy of Art: Readings in Analytic Aesthetics, ed. John Bender and Gene Blocker (Prentice Hall, 1993), 563.
15. Bender, “Art, Science, and Knowledge,” 561.
16. Bender, “Art, Science, and Knowledge,” 561.
17. Novitz, “Fiction and the Growth of Knowledge,” 587.
18. John Bender, “Art as a Source of Knowledge: Linking Analytic Aesthetics and Epistemology” in Contemporary Philosophy of Art: Readings in Analytic Aesthetics, ed. John Bender and Gene Blocker (Prentice Hall, 1993), 594.
19. Bender, “Art as a Source of Knowledge,” 594.
20. Bender, “Art as a Source of Knowledge,” 603.