So it begins again:
The marvellous thing is that this holiness is nothing we can earn. We don't become holy by acquiring merit badges and Brownie points It has nothing to so with virtue or job descriptions or morality. It is nothing we can do in this do-it-yourself workd. It is gift, sheer gift, waiting there to be recognised and received. We do not have to be qualified to be holy. We do not have to be qualified to be whole or healed.Art can be a helpful escape, a place of solace from the world's burdens. It can be a vehicle to articulate our hurts and burdens. Panacea. Solace. Grace. We participate in someone else's rage as articulated in art in order to give voice to our own. I think about Sting's "The Mothers of the Disappeared." That serves well. Are can give voice in image, song or through the written word. There is a scriptural basis for L'Engle's thinking in this. Such people as Moses come to mind for her.
In a very real sense, not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God contuinually chooses the most unqualified to do his work, to bear his glory. If we are qualified, we tend to think that we have done the job ourselves. If we are forced to accept our evident lack of qualification, then there is no danger that we will confuse God's work with our own, or God's glory with our own.This speaks of being "a slave to Christ." Humility. Service. Discipline. Talent.
How are these ideas related for us? How do they seem oxymoronic or contraditory?
Posted by tripp at October 28, 2004 11:17 AMIt seems like maybe there is an attempt here to fit everything into the doctrine of justification. Holiness here is then what is imputed to us by God. This however, does not take into account responcibility to live out of this justification. What is often termed sanctification (or analogously among Orthodox Theosis), which requires action and responce and responsibility.
It seems to me that art and its relationship to prayer has more to do with sanctification than justification.
It seems to me that for art to be holy the artist needs to be acting in the realm of sanctification (assuming of course the truth of justification). There is a holiness that is imputed that begins the spiritual journey for without it there is no possibility of engagement with God (at least that is the story most Protestants have told since the reformation and the story L'Engle is telling here.) but there must also be the holiness that comes from discipline and choice and action. It seems to me art plays in this realm and not the realm of justification.
I as an artist (so this is not entirely a theoretical concept) know that the quality of my work (and thus its impact on others) is directly related to my care for technique and skill and their development. However, there is this thing called tallent that is a gift (justification?).
I am not sure where this is going any takers?
Could someone give me a quick thumbnail definition of sanctification vs. justification?
Posted by: Megan at October 28, 2004 12:44 PMIn eastern Christianity they are the same thing seen from different angles. It is someone who has been saved, is being saved, and will one day be saved.
In western Christianity justification is what happens to get you saved, sanctification is what happens to keep you saved (Arminian) or because you're saved (Calvinist).
Posted by: Clifton D. Healy at October 28, 2004 01:14 PMFrom a Lutheran perspective Justification is the act of God through faith (baptism?), apart any good deeds, that gets you saved. Sanctification is the process of living into this having been saved. Lutheran Pietists (out of which my tradition comes)insisted that it was as important a concept as justification, where as "orthodox" Lutherans saw sanctification as icing on the theolgogical cake so to speak.
Posted by: Larry at October 28, 2004 02:12 PMOK, that's helpful. Thank you, gentlemen. On with the show.
Posted by: Megan at October 28, 2004 03:25 PMI think that talent may very well be the gift, but so is the discipline. It is a gift that returns again and again. The problem with the justiifcation/sanctification dichotomy is that it is not a dichotomy. There is grace. There are different ways of experiencing that grace, but the grace is the same.
Or am I loony?
Posted by: AngloBaptist at October 28, 2004 04:45 PMAs a working artist, I recognize the discipline as something that I choose, not something that is foisted upon me. If I choose it, I get my work done; if I don't choose it, my work languishes. But I definitely experience it as a conscious, sometimes challenging, choice -- not a gift whereby suddenly I *feel* like doing my work. Discipline is doing it whether or not you feel like it.
Posted by: Megan at October 28, 2004 09:37 PMThat is true, Megan. I experience the same thing as a pro-am musician. But the flip side for me has always been this compulsion to express myself creatively and that has most often led to music...occasionally the written word.
Discipline nurtures vocation.
Posted by: AngloBaptist at October 29, 2004 05:28 AMDoes "compulsion to express" equal "discipline" to you? It doesn't, to me.
"compulsion to express" gets one making music, or theatre, or painting, or whatever one's art form may be.
"discipline" gets one making it regularly and striving for excellence.
Expression isn't excellence. Believe me, I've read enough self-expression plays to know, by orders of magnitude...
Posted by: Megan at October 29, 2004 09:04 AMI agree with you. They are not the same. And that is sorta what I am interested in...how they are not the same. It is almost as if, heh, sanctification was the discipline and justification was the compulsion, but that is an incomplete analogy.
Posted by: AngloBaptist at October 29, 2004 01:07 PMaren't all ananlogy's incomplete? Otherwise they'd be tautology's... no?
In any case I think it's a damn good one. Very Lutheran of you.
We might be rubbing off on each other. :-)
Heh...It seems we may be rubbing off. Agreed.
Oh. No.
Should we let the others know?
Posted by: AngloBaptist at November 1, 2004 09:42 AM
hmm..this is quite interesting
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