I Once Knew a Guy Named Dave
L. Penseur
July 1, 2001
It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God, edited by Ned Bustard, (Square Halo, 2000), 290 pp. In art school I longed for a compelling discussion of the nature of art and its relationship to the created order. But at a private secular institution, where almost any mention of faith was met with disdain, I found that such discussions were hard to come by. It was a godsend (quite literally) when at last a campus minister handed me a book by aesthetician Calvin Seerveld. I was encouraged to find someone who was thinking deeply about issues of art and faith. I later discovered several other thinkers working out of the Reformed tradition (H.R. Rookmaker, Nicholas Woltersdorff, and Francis Schaeffer) and learned about the French Catholic theologian Jacques Maritain, but within the larger Christian community, the arts were not a matter of compelling interest. For a young artist attempting to faithfully work out his vocation, it was often a lonely journey. It Was Good: Making Art to the Glory of God is a sign of how things have changed. Edited by Ned Bustard, this collection of 13 essays by artists, theologians, an art historian, and a pastor covers a broad range of topics centered on the practice of making art from a foundation of Christian faith. Each essay stands as a testament to someone who has charted the lonely course of living a life of faith while pursuing a life committed to the arts-in a culture that is often hostile towards the former and ambivalent about the latter. Unfortunately, ambivalence about the "usefulness" of the arts has been even more pronounced within the church than in our culture as a whole-and too often ambivalence has given way to open hostility (several contributors to the book were counseled by Christian ...
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