Cornelius Van Til believed that the goal of education was to “bring the growing personality . . . into the best possible relation to its environment.” And of course, whatever else we see and experience, God himself is our ultimate environment, for “in him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). In Van Til’s terms, Christian education should bring the epistemological increasingly into harmony with the metaphysical. In other words, education should lead and encourage the student in the cultivation and enjoyment of mature Christian consciousness.
As we read in Confession 4.1, God created the world “for the manifestation of the glory of his eternal power, wisdom, and goodness.” And this makes sense. God is self-sufficient, glorious, and independent from all eternity. The first commandment, which prohibits having other gods before him, is simply the primary expression of this glorious independence of God into the moral life of the creature. And if all of creation insists upon recognition of God as God, how much more must the human being, a self-conscious bearer of the image of God, cultivate both himself and his world in his enjoyment and glorification of God. That is, man “was created in the image of God and he was to become more fully expressive of that image.” Van Til thus recognizes that in a special way the doxological purpose of creation is concentrated in the image-bearer.
Education is implicated, and perhaps art education in particular, when we recognize the importance of consciousness in the self-realization of the human being in his doxological program. Van Til says that “man was to gather up into the prism of his self-conscious activity all the manifold manifestations of the glory of God in order to make one central self-conscious sacrifice of it all to God.” Every component of human culture should be the cultivation of the glory of God in the things that he has made. But the image-bearer, being self-conscious, self-aware, and will-driven, must also cultivate himself, in order to present himself as a living and spiritual sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God (Rom. 12:1). Education is the task of guiding and assisting young people in their own cultivation of the glorification and enjoyment of God, and training in the arts offers something special to this end.
Van Til hints at an example: “the flowers of the field glorified God directly and subconsciously, but also indirectly and consciously through man.” Flowers glorify God directly: that is, they glorify God without the interruption of discursive thought or the possibility of not glorifying God. They do not bother with how, when, or why to glorify God. They simply unfold according to the design of their kind and by the providence of God. As such, they declare the glory of God in a startling variety. And if providence is the bedrock of their effort, God glorifies himself in what he has made. The self-conscious creature—man—may examine these non-verbal songs of praise, and in response, exalt the Lord self-consciously. The sight of flowers will evoke in his heart a spontaneous, natural appreciation for all the creaturely elements—color, shape, dimension—and for the intentionality of the creator displayed through them. He will marvel, and to that inner aesthetic enjoyment he might add verbal expression: “How beautiful! Praise the Lord!”
The image-bearer may do something more. He may gather flowers together and arrange them. That is, he may cognize the elements and the relationships between them; he may propose various combinations, make assessments, and on purely personal, aesthetic grounds, he may judge one such product completely—artistically satisfactory, in other words. He thus converts his spontaneous aesthetic reactive glorification of God via his own self-conscious artistry into something richer, while simultaneously cultivating his own personal aesthetic potential unto the glory of the aesthetically maximal God.
Tomorrow our faithful image-bearer may design another bouquet, perhaps a better one. After a few of these, he might move to a more sophisticated medium. As he refines his skill, he will distinguish the aesthetic elements from the flower, and perhaps develop pigments of his own design, made from the cultivation of other created materials. He may explore shapes and dimensions and the aesthetic potential of spatial relationships. He may decide to represent actual dimensions pictorially (to reduce three dimensions to two), in order to manipulate them for aesthetic ends. And so the culture of aesthetic expression and experience flourishes by the exercise of joyful, self-conscious vice-dominion.
Art creation and enjoyment, and growth in aesthetic richness and sophistication, are righteous and godly callings of Edenic commission, and so also is the pedagogical perpetuation of that acquired richness, namely, art education. The blessing-commission of procreation implies the goodness of maintaining the accumulation of vice-kingly wisdom—that is, the bequeathal of cultural wealth. The design of the image-bearer, which is heralded in the cultural mandate, indicates that the individual is fulfilled in the corporate, and the corporate is expressed in the individual. That is, self-realization is as much a social goal as it is an individual one. In fact, the creation account of Genesis 1 makes no mention of individuals but only of a species, a male and female corporate organism that as a whole no less than as individuals is, displays, and exercises the image of God. Such is the balance of the individual and the corporate in Edenic anthropology; its righteous fulfillment would have tolerated “no monotonous repetition,” as Van Til notes. Instead, “there would be an inexhaustible variety.” In the society envisioned in Eden, “individuality would be at a premium,” and “no one could develop his individuality at the expense of others.” Implicit in Genesis 1 and 2, therefore, are programs for the production of art, the enjoyment of art, the building of art history and tradition, and the pedagogical celebration of a full artistic life.
In terms of curriculum, then, notice that art history and the practice of art are one. Art history is not just a story but rather the inculcation of a cumulative aesthetic culture, the primary expression of which is a twofold lived aesthetic: greater sensitivity in artistic experience and subtler artistic productivity. Clearly then if art history is the display of a corporate and cumulative aesthetic culture, it cannot be content with mere description. It requires the inculcation of aesthetics itself, in other words, training in the making and enjoyment of art.
The point here is that the beginning of the fine arts may be understood as plain and primal, but also profound and personal, affective appreciation of creation as such, as God’s handiwork. It takes Psalm 19:1–6 as its charter and undertakes to cultivate both external doxological phenomena and the internal aesthetic character of God’s image-bearer. So says Van Til:
If man was to perform this, his God-given task, he must himself be a fit instrument for this work. He was made a fit instrument for this work, but he must also make himself an ever better instrument for this work. He must will to develop his intellect in order to grasp more comprehensively the wealth of the manifestation of the glory of God in this world. . . He must will to develop his aesthetic capacity, that is his capacity for appreciation . . .
Naturally, the accumulation of this culture includes the incorporation of new members—children!—into that great stream of adoration for the glories of God in his handiwork. This incorporation includes the articulation of its content—art history—and the privilege of participation in a history of aesthetic practice and enjoyment— the creative task itself.
A positive Christian ethic and cultural vision begins from the recognition that in a manner of speaking the great commission (Matt. 28:19–20) is issued for the sake of the cultural mandate (Gen. 1:28–31). That is, the gospel celebrates not religious escape but the beginning of re-creation. Therefore, to be a Christian means “to think more of this world than anyone who is not a Christian could think of it.” Regeneration installs the mind of Christ in the new believer, and that mind sees its own virtues in the things that have been made, and says, “it is good.” However, while it is true that being a Christian activates the cultural outworking of re-creation, which is a distinctly positive program, nonetheless its first expression must be negative. There can be no resurrection without crucifixion. For this reason, while we wait for our Lord’s return, “the whole Christian church is based upon the antithesis idea.” Education must recognize that “everything is dark unless the current of God’s revelation be turned on.”
For the young person most especially, progress in art education is progress in self-understanding. The visual arts are inseparable from the development of personal taste and from the incorporation of one’s own work into a standing heritage. In the arts, things are generated by or with authorial meaning and are preserved by interpretive enjoyment. The development of individual skill is a basically personal, religious, or even spiritual undertaking, and the process of creative decision making is unquantifiable engagement with one’s self as a participant in cultural dialogue.
Art educator Susan Patton, author of Teaching Art from a Christian Perspective, says that when “a child first grasps a crayon and rubs it across the surface of a paper, he has . . . just made his first mark on the world!” The person and the personal are essential, and in an educational context which favors behaviorism, training in the visual arts is a powerful answer to the externalism of academic quantifiables, because in art more than in any other discipline, the person and the development of the person are front and center. Patton says, for example, that arriving at “conscious incompetence” is a key marker in art-learning. Art instruction, therefore, involves inculcating humility.
The Art Teacher’s Survival Guide, by H. D. Hume, opens with these encouragements: “We know why students so often look forward to their art classes: it is a change and it is fun!” “Research has shown that students who participate in the arts . . . perform better in other fields of study,” and “[a]rt is such a personal thing! If a student feels you do not approve of what he or she has made, it is almost as if you have said, ‘My, what an ugly face you have.’” How much more, we might say, will the Christian, reconciled by grace to the Creator, take joy in learning art; find personal fulfillment and growth through aesthetic development; and plumb, with the joy of the glorification of the Creator, depths of self-understanding and self-reflection otherwise difficult to reach.
East of Eden, the corporate aspect of art integration assumes that negative aspect along with the positive: “we are writing these things so that [y]our joy may be complete,” but that joy should not rest in worldly things: “do not love the world” (1 John 1:4; 2:15–17). Jacob Van Wyk puts this in practical terms with specific recommendations for a seventh and eighth grade art curriculum. He suggests that we “add more difficult and controversial works for the older kids . . . add nihilist works . . . pop/ conceptual works . . . that are more of a social critique.” That is: study overtly non-Christian art. To what end? Van Wyk says:
We want students to realize that contemporary people don’t all live among flowers and that they don’t all acknowledge God’s grace in this world. This would give teachers a chance to talk about common grace and realize that Christians and non-Christians alike produce beautiful/truthful things for us to contemplate and put in proper perspective.
Solomon requests of all things the ability to discern good from evil (1 Kings 3:1–9), and the writer of Hebrews says that “the mature” are “those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (Heb. 5:14). Isaiah characterizes evil itself as a distortion of this discernment, and even hints at an aesthetic side to it: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” (Isa. 5:20). Personal growth in knowledge and holiness, no less than artistic growth, therefore, is encouraged by the art education envisioned here.
In sum, as the antithesis of atonement and the hope of resolution are allowed to mix with the original Edenic aesthetic vision, art and art education in particular can be of extraordinary value for Christian witness, Christian cultural self-understanding, and personal growth in the Lord. Art education is, or it ought to be, training in the joy of grace and the stewardship of the inheritance of the sons of God. Indeed, a fuller participation in grace requires a fuller grasp of its contents. So says Louis Berkhof in his reflections on the significance of the covenant of grace for Christian education:
If the promises of God, which constitute the true riches of all the children of God, are to promote the real happiness and blessedness of their recipients, these must learn to understand the wide bearing of these promises and to know what treasures they include. Let us remember that, subjectively, we are no richer than our comprehension of what we possess, and that it is the true appreciation of our wealth which determines the measure of enjoyment derived from it.
In this sense, art education must call attention to the gifts of grace—the whole earth—but it must also inculcate gratitude and stewardship for the sake of participation in grace. When the riches of Abrahamic inheritance are unknown, the joy therein promised grows dim. Berkhof warns accordingly:
Many children of God are even today living in spiritual poverty, though they are rich in Christ and heirs of the world, because they have not been taught to see the greatness and splendor of their spiritual heritage. If we do not want our children to live as paupers in the spiritual penury and want while untold riches of grace and mercy are at their disposal, we must employ all the means at our command to unfold before their very eyes the treasures of divine grace of which they are heirs in Christ Jesus.
We say that the child is spoiled who lacks this character of receiving well, because ingratitude is a positive offense against the grace and person of the giver. So Berkhof speaks of the “heavy responsibility” of handling faithfully such an inheritance. “The affluent man,” he says, “has a far greater responsibility than the man of small means,” since “he may not squander his wealth . . . he must invest it to the best advantage.” And this responsibility is bolstered by a need for prudence: “Inherited riches often become a curse for the recipient because he has not been trained in the proper administration and use of money. Through lack of training the whole inheritance is sometimes lost.” Likewise for the sons of God who are heirs of his kingdom.
Gloria Goris Stronks says, “A deep appreciation of the world around us, of music, of art, or of poetry will not make one become a Christian. But Christians who have developed a knowledge and appreciation of these aspects find that their faith deepens because they have richer ways of responding to their Creator.” It will not make one a Christian, but awareness of the negative/positive tenor of a renewed cultural mandate will draw one into a greater grasp of what it means to be a Christian. Says Calvin Seerveld, “Young Christians busy with art should come to know it as a holy business; they should know that they can practice art to show their love to God, to revel in the fact that God is King of the whole earth.”