Speak the Truth in Beauty: A review of 'Echoes of Eden'

Rants about the state of evangelical art are a dime a dozen---exceeded in number perhaps only by the kinds of art-as-tract material they critique. Sadly, many of those critiques are justified (even if the ranting tone may not be). Many evangelicals treat the arts not as genuine goods in and of themselves, but instead as only one more way to point people to the gospel. Art certainly does glorify God and may be an element of people's journey to faith in Christ. Whether it is a book on Finding God in The Lord of the Rings or the kitschy "art" itself, we have a long ways to go. At the same time, critique can only take us so far. We need a clearly articulated, theologically robust aesthetic, and we need to work hard to put that aesthetic into practice.

Jerram Barrs' Echoes of Eden aims to provide both that clear aesthetic and a pattern to follow. In the first half of the book, Barrs develops a theology of art; the second half looks at an array of literary works to see what that theology looks like in practice.

Echoes of Eden opens with a theology of creation and sub-creation. Barrs draws heavily on both the creation narrative in Genesis and the promise of eschatological restoration to argue that artistic activity as a subset of human vocation in general, is good in and of itself. Citing Tolkien, Barrs describes human artistry as "sub-creation" and argues that it is an essential aspect of the imago dei. Accordingly, he takes issue with any insistence either that art is a frivolity to be set aside or that it is valuable only if evangelistic. God's creation was good, even before there were people to observe it. Indeed, there are beautiful things in this universe we have never seen and never will---sunsets on faraway planets and a thousand other splendors known only by their Creator---that have no apparent evangelistic purpose. Beauty is not an accident or a merely incidental element of our world. Rather, it is an attribute of the Triune Godhead, one so fundamental to the divine nature that it spills over in uncountable ways into the creation. People create because creating is a God-like thing to do, and we are God-like beings.

To buttress his argument, Barrs leans heavily on others who have written on the relationship of art and literature to Christianity, including John Calvin, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, G. K. Chesterton, Francis Schaeffer, and Dorothy Sayers. He rarely makes it more than a page or two in the first half of the book without citing one or another of these theological and literary greats. He draws on Lewis in particular, especially his article "Christianity and Literature"¹ and his book An Experiment in Criticism. For Barrs, like his heroes, art is a necessary way of getting beyond ourselves and seeing the world as God has made it. It ought not be the mere reinforcement of what we already know, but something that challenges us and makes us grow in both understanding of and wonder at the world and people and God.

Barrs is not content merely to describe art, though. He also carefully considers artists. He argues strongly that we should see not treat artists as prophets speaking from some place of elevated insight simply by dint of their being artists. Rather, we should value them as craftsmen and craftswomen doing their work well---just as with any other vocation. To some, this might seem a demotion, but Barrs is intent to elevate all those other vocations along the way:

Sometimes Christians will insist that the only work that is truly worthwhile, pleasing to God, and spiritual is the work of serving the proclamation of the gospel across the world. This view suggests that if we were all truly earnest Christians, we would leave our 'secular" jobs, in which we are simply making a living, providing for our families, and ruling the world, and we would all join the "sacred" work of mission. But if we stop and think about Jesus's life, we see that he was doing so-called secular work as a carpenter or a fisherman for many more years than he was a preacher and teacher. It would be blasphemous to suppose that during these years Jesus was living in a manner that was not fully godly and completely pleasing to his Father in heaven. (21)

Accordingly, the vocation of the artist is not the calling of the visionary, but of the ordinary person diligently carrying out an ordinary calling.