Making good : creation, creativity, and artistry

381 Pages·2014·1.57 MB·English

by  Hart

M AKING GOOD
Creation, Creativity, Artistry
and
Trevor Hart
Making Good
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Making Good
Creation, Creativity, and Artistry
Trevor Hart
Baylor University Press
© 2014 by Baylor University Press
Waco, Texas 76798-7363
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission
in writing of Baylor University Press.
Scripture quotations from the New Revised Standard Version Bible are copyright
1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of
Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Cover design by John Barnett, 4 Eyes Design
Cover art: St. Joseph Portrayed as a Medieval Carpenter from the Merode Altarpiece
c. 1425 (oil on panel), Master of Flemalle (Robert Campin) (1375/8–1444) /
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA / The Bridgeman Art Library
eISBN: 978-1-60258-990-2 (ePDF)
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hart, Trevor A.
Making good : creation, creativity, and artistry / Trevor Hart.
380 pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60258-988-9 (hardback : alk. paper)
1. Christianity and art. 2. Creation (Literary, artistic, etc.)—Religious aspects—
Christianity. 3. Imagination—Religious aspects—Christianity. 4. Creationism.
I. Title.
BR115.A8H38 2014
261.5’7—dc23
2014010727
For the staff and students of
St Mary’s College, University of St Andrews, 1995–2013,
the congregation of Saint Andrew’s
Episcopal Church, St Andrews,
and the clergy and people of the Diocese of
St Andrews, Dunkeld and Dunblane
Oremus pro invicem
Yours Lord is the greatness, the power,
the glory, the splendor and the majesty;
for everything in heaven and earth is yours.
All things come from you,
and of your own do we give you.
Contents
Preface ix
1 Grammars of Creation 1
2 Creation, Imagination, and Artistry 11
3 Comparability and the Conscription of the Creaturely 31
4 Creation, Incomparability, and Otherness 59
5 Cosmos: A World (Not) of Our Own Making 85
6 Ethos: Give and Take in the Order of Signs 109
7 Response-able: Reality and Its (Mis)representations 127
8 Art, Mimesis, and Transformation 151
9 Origination, Image, and Autonomy 177
10 Imagination, Alterity, and Contradiction 197
11 Creativity, Art, and Originality 217
12 Creativity, Collaboration, and Accountability 249
13 Creativity, Gratuity, and Utility 285
14 Creativity, Christ, and Correlation 313
Appendix: Figures 341
Bibliography 345
Index of Names 363
vii
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Preface
Books are odd things. Some take far longer to write than others or find
themselves shunted temporarily into a siding to permit other projects to
overtake them. This book brings to a head scholarly work conducted gradu-
ally over a period of eight years, its origins lying in a period of research leave
taken during the academic session 2005–2006. It was always conceived as
the first of three volumes, and work on the other two has continued along-
side it and will hopefully follow it into publication duly.
I have entitled the larger project A Poetics of Redemption, because the
whole will reflect the shape of the Trinitarian drama of God’s engagement
with the world as Christians understand it (following the “moments,” as
they are sometimes called, of creation, incarnation, and the outpouring of
the Holy Spirit), and because the project’s particular concern is with the
significance and impact of various acts of human poesis in shaping both our
appreciation of and our participation in that drama. Thus, this first volume
is not a full-orbed doctrine of creation as such, but an attempt to situate
accounts of human “creativity”—in the arts and more broadly—within the
theological context provided by a Christian account of God’s identity as
Creator of heaven and earth. In it I shall argue that, despite some perfectly
proper and theologically astute concerns about the metaphorical appro-
priation of the verb creō and its cognates to refer to human aspiration and
achievements, in the final analysis such appropriation need not be mischie-
vous but may properly be redeemed in a manner that, by looking forward
already to the horizons of Christology and eschatological fulfillment, both
maintains the vital distinctions between God and the creature and reckons
ix