Masks of Mystery

In this book the author walks the reader through the nature of the arts, the nature of Christian faith, and the historical factors which have brought us to our current crises of faith and imagination. There is a connection between religious faith and artistic expression which rests in the archetypal images of human culture. In our era, that connection seems to be more of a disjunction. Current artistic expressions do not seem to project the same images as religious faith confesses. This is especially true in Western civilization. Both the arts and religious faith (specifically Christianity) are approached as manifestations of the activity of human beings. Only later do these activities become intellectualized in aesthetics and theology. Understanding the artist and the believer as existing human beings, the perceived disjunction can be eclipsed when we grasp the context in which the human artist and the human believer in this century find themselves at odds. The crux of the disjunction is not so much the artists' disbelief (as religious believers seem to assume) as it is the failure of traditional expressions of belief in meeting human needs and a concurrent tightening of the grip by believers on the traditional metaphors of their faith. Perhaps the resolution will come in the new metaphors of the artists and a simultaneous turning by believers to give attention to the attempts of artists to speak mystery anew.