A few weeks ago I learned the
distressing news that a couple I know is divorcing; the husband has pursued
pornography, and beyond, for a decade. His sin has not only ravaged his
wife’s life, but in violating that covenant he orphaned four young children
from a faithful fatherhood. He stands as part of a devastating trend of
infidelity leading to divorce in evangelical churches.
Not long after hearing that,
I learned, chatting with a friend and his college student daughter, that her
Bible and ethics professor had recently shown her college (an ostensibly
conservative, Reformed institution) class pornographic clips from movies to
teach the class that we can find “redemptive value” in all art.
Hearing this made me think
back to the divorcing couple. The husband was a graduate of a Christian college
that set a high premium on “engaging and redeeming culture”; it downplayed any
sort of antithetical approach to culture as backwards moralism at best, anti-cultural
bigotry at worst. Professors soberly and enthusiastically argued that
“film is both messy and redemptive, we need to grapple with the complexities of
life in this world, including sin.” The neo-Kuyperian project of
“redeeming culture” (which itself raises some serious theological issues) is
not confined to the halls of academia: David Taylor, an “arts pastor” recently
featured at the Gospel Coalition, argues in Christianity Today that it is
possible for mature Christians to “redemptively” portray and view nudity in
film. [1]
These reflections connected
to a lecture on art that I attended last spring. The speaker was a thoughtful
Christian scholar. In her lecture she commented that Christian art should not
be opposed to “nakedness” but rather to “nudity”. She argued that there was a
distinction between tasteful nakedness in art and an objectifying nudity,
referencing several examples of classical and Renaissance art in relation to
the former, and pornography to the latter–a stance similar to H.R. Rookmaker’s.
[2] This fine distinction left me and many of my college students
dubious; I remembered all too well my own teenage struggles with lust, and the
fact that classical and Renaissance art of naked women had not been helpful in
the pursuit of purity. But was that just me? Was I overly sensitive, or
perverse beyond the ancients and my contemporaries? Was I somehow missing
a “redemptive understanding” of nakedness or nudity in art or film? These
questions forced me to examine what Scripture has to say on nakedness and
redemption and what a history of nakedness in art might reveal.
God created man and woman in
his own image. He created them beautiful in their whole being, including
physical form. He declared this aspect of man’s being, “good, very good”, along
with the rest of creation. Adam and Eve were naked, without sin. Yet in
the Garden, after their sinful rebellion, Adam and Eve realized their
nakedness, creating fig leaf coverings for themselves. This awareness is
unique to the humans, as animals continued in their “naked” state unperturbed.
God declared the fig leaves insufficient, and in an act which theologians see
as a picture of redemptive history, killed animals, providing Adam and Eve with
adequate coverings of skin through a bloody act. After this point, Scripture’s
testimony over and over again is that nakedness in contexts outside of marriage
and necessity is shameful, spiritually destructive, a denial of the reality of
sin and God’s holiness.
Where God displays His
redemptive activity in contexts of extra-marital nakedness He clothes His
people. Ezekiel 16 exemplifies this pattern in Scripture: God graciously
redeems and clothes His bride, covering her nakedness and making her beautiful.
Her God-given covering is not a denial of beauty, but rather a redemptive
rescue and restoration to appropriate, glorious, public beauty, after she had
been an object of abandoned, uncovered shame. The bride, however, turns to play
the whore, prostituting herself, taking off her beautiful clothes, giving her
naked beauty, now rebel, distorted and cheap, to any passer-by. Her disrobing
outside of marriage is an outward expression of her inner rejection of God’s
redemption. She calls men to join her in violating God’s perfect law.
The disrobing, redemption-rejecting
woman of Ezekiel stands in stark contrast to the bride of the Song of Solomon,
whose nakedness is truly beautiful. It is reserved for her husband, given to
him alone–a “step that does not establish deep intimacy, but one which
presupposes it.” [3] Even in the literary description of the marital
sweetness and joy of the inspired Song a poetic modesty remains. [4]
There is also a glorious foreshadowing here of the relationship of Christ
and His Bride, the church, who is clothed as well–by His redemption.
When we come to the New
Testament, we see our Incarnate Lord ministering to prostitutes, freely
offering His all-sufficient grace for their redemption and restoration to true,
covered, clothed, and ordered beauty. When Christ, as the King of glory,
takes His bride, the church, to Himself, even in the heavenly glory of paradise
restored (Rev. 19), we see the saints clothed in the white robes of His
righteousness, their clothing illustrative of the necessary covering for
redeemed mortals.
In contrast to both the
positive testimony of Scripture to being clothed and its warnings against
nakedness, ancient near eastern literature, like the Epic of Gilgamesh, reveals
a promiscuous culture which often moved in the direction of celebrating an increasingly
naked display of the human form. In the midst of, and in response to the
surrounding near eastern cultures, God repeatedly warns His covenant people
against intermarrying with surrounding unbelievers. But, why would they? Why
would young Hebrew men be drawn to the fertility cults? What was going on
in the sacred groves, and around the pole statues of the naked goddess Asherah?
Why were the sons of God drawn to the daughters of men at these cultural
festivities?
The more I study ancient near
eastern art and culture, the more it appears the cultural and artistic ethos
tied to nakedness was very similar to the neighboring Greek culture which
produced all that fine naked sculpture. Andrew Stewart, Chancellor’s Research
Professor of Greek Art and Archaeology at the University
of California, Berkeley, explains the aims of Greek nude
sculpture:
…if one had asked a Greek
sculptor what he really aimed at, he would probably have replied beauty…
perfect beauty can only come about through the exact commensurability
(symmetria) of every limb and feature to every other… They served his own and
his immediate client’s fantasy of “the most beautiful.” This fantasy was no
disinterested Apolline affair. Projected upon the naked male body, the
canon represented the first step towards the sculptor’s ultimate goal: to
seduce the eye of the normative spectator, the citizen male. Winckelmann
was right: this art was fundamentally homoerotic… The Greek sculptor’s
dedication to naturalism, his obsessive investigation of the male body’s
minutae, exploited this unrestricted climate.
[Praxiteles created] the
first monumental naked Aphrodite, caught unawares as if by a voyeur, her sex
appeal enhanced by devices ranging from the modesty of her posture and gesture
to Praxiteles’ use of the finest crystalline marble for her body and the
subtlest polychromy for her skin… the female nude [sculpture] soon became
second only to the male in popularity. [5]
Stewart describes an
“unrestricted climate”, a description which correlates well with the literature
of the period and is certainly also congruent with earlier, still influential,
Homeric epic. This unrestricted climate bears striking parallels to the
ancient near eastern cultures celebrating fertility via free sex around naked
goddesses. While Praxiteles created his artwork some three centuries
prior to the New Testament, the “climate” was substantially the same when Paul,
led by the Spirit, preached the gospel of Jesus Christ to the Greeks.
Many of the temples were flourishing centers of prostitution; their ads
and billboards were semi-naked/naked statuary of gods, goddesses, and demi-gods
whose tales flaunted promiscuity. God’s redemptive response revealed in the New
Testament stands in harmony with the Old. Knowing man’s heart and sin, God
inspires the gospels and epistles to substantially include the message of
salvation from sexual sin, and sanctification in sexual morality. It is the
reordering and transformation of promiscuous sex and nakedness to true beauty
and holy intimacy.
As a result, perhaps we
should not be surprised that the pastors and theologians of the patristic age
opposed nudity in art; it was not a cultural element open for “redemption” by
Christians. Clement, critiquing the popular acceptance of nudity in the Greco-Roman
art of cosmopolitan Alexandria
in the late 2nd century, states:
…of what are your other
pictures? Small Pans, naked girls, drunken satyrs, and phallic symbols –
all painted naked in pictures disgraceful for filthiness. And more than
this: you are not ashamed in the eyes of all to look at representations of all
forms of licentiousness that are portrayed in public places. Rather, you
set them up and guard them with scrupulous care. [6]
Chronicling and reflecting on
the immodesties of theatre, public festivities, and art in his day (considered
redemptive by the pagans) Augustine wryly observes: “if this is purification,
what is pollution?” [7]
In terms of broad acceptance
within the life of the church, nakedness in art first blossomed as a result of
the Italian Renaissance–a movement that drew heavily on the revival of
Greco-Roman paganism, flaunting this syncretism. The movement developed with
the aid of powerful families, like the Medici of Florence, who functioned as
patrons (and suppliers of wine and women) for gifted artists like Michelangelo.
The artists, in large part through Medici influence and an enthusiastic upper
class, brought nudity in art boldly into public life, including the life of the
Roman church; the art both reflected and contributed to a promiscuous culture.
Savonarola’s moral thunderings against a pornographic culture deeply irritated
the bohemian Medici. Martin Luther was disheartened and disillusioned a
generation later by Rome’s
rampant immorality. Italian church culture was by this point awash with the
unabashed nudity of new, stunning, works of art in good part due to the
patronage of the Medici pope, Leo X.
In contrast to Italy, the Northern Renaissance showed restraint
in art, particularly in regions dominated by Protestantism; even the art of the
substantially tolerant early Dutch Republic had a vastly greater inclination to modesty
than exposure-tolerant Italy,
France and Poland. The Northern cultural
modesty, largely concurrent with post-Reformation Protestantism, dissipated in
time through the growth of Enlightenment culture which drew heavily from the
Renaissance and ancient Greece
and Rome. In
contrast to the Enlightenment acceptance and promotion of public, naked art,
the legacy of European and North America Puritanism, reflecting Scripture’s
tenor, celebrated private nakedness reserved to marriage and sought to defend
and promote public modesty, understanding that both need to be rooted in and
reflective of the gospel of grace in Christ.
21st century, Europe and North America have an increasingly pornographic art, film
and pop culture. But this is as old as pagan fertility cults, technology added.
The new twist comes from the church where some argue that wherever there is a
glimmer of created order or common grace, there is potential for finding
“redemptive value”. This is rationale for not only engagement, but also
participation. People, of course, qualify such a break from Scripture and
church history: “these are complex issues, this is the domain of the mature and
wise.” They seem to fail to notice, however, that their argument is
ironically similar to that of the “adult” billboards along our freeways.
Scripture and history
indicate that nudity in art (and now film) is not actually the domain of the
mature, the wise, or those engaged in “redemptive activity.” Rather: “we
dress because we sin… [it is] a reminder that man is an unholy fugitive, in
hiding from God and from his own fellows” [8] and a picture of the need for
bloody atonement for sin, and clothing by the righteousness of Christ. As
such, “whether it be in a nudist colony, at an orgy, in primitive society, or
in the nursery, public nudity is only possible for those unconscious or
aggressively heedless of their sinfulness.” [9] It is far more likely
that the attitude of the acceptability of nudity for “the mature” in art, film,
and pop culture is contributing to the rising tide of infidelity and divorce in
the church.
This latter analysis coheres
far better both with the teaching of Scripture and the reality of human
existence. Rather than redemptive, promotion of nudity in art and film by
Christian educators and leaders is destructive; it is folly, not wisdom. Wisdom
says “And now, O sons, listen to me, and be attentive to the words of my mouth.
Let not your heart turn aside to her ways; do not stray into her paths,
for many a victim has she laid low, and all her slain are a mighty throng.
Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death.”
(Proverbs 7:24-27) Jesus says, “Whoever causes one of these little ones
who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone
fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” (Matthew
18:6)
To reject nudity in art and
film is no denial of artistic ability, nor of created beauty. It is a
realistic, careful, humble acknowledgment of God’s redemptive work in Christ
and His precepts for a grace transformed, holy, happy life in a fallen world.
This includes the need for covering nakedness. Real redemptive activity
seeks to preserve and rescue from sin by pointing men and women to Christ and
His Word. Knowing this redemption, Paul, by the Holy Spirit, declares:
“Do you not know that the
unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom
of God? Do not be
deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men
who practice homosexuality… will inherit the kingdom of God.
And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were
sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the
Spirit of our God… you were bought at a price, therefore glorify God in your
body and your spirit, which are God’s.” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11)
Notes
[1] W. David O. Taylor,
“Violence, Profanity, and Nudity: A Dialogue” in Christianity Today (posted
online 8/03/2004 at
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/movies/commentaries/2004/violenceprofanitynudity.html?start=1)
[2] H.R. Rookmaker argued
similarly in his Modern Art and the Death of A Culture, stating that the
“erotic and sexual have a place in art, as they have in life… we cannot simply
say that the nude in art is impure.” Rookmaker, Modern Art and the Death
of a Culture (London: IVP, 1970), 239-240. Rookmaker does not seem to
understand that Scripture’s precept is that the positive, celebrated, and
normative place of nudity in life is a private intimacy within the covenant and
commitment of marriage; art by contrast is an intrinsically public venture.
This is why I believe recourse to arguments for necessity of nudity for
scientific or medical purposes, or forensic evidence cannot apply to art/film.
In medical and forensic situations there remains an awareness of the value and
propriety of privacy, whether in the physician’s office, the anatomy class, the
courtroom, or legal archives.
[3] Mike Mason, The Mystery of
Marriage (Portland, OR: Multnomah Press, 1985), 117.
[4] I would recommend Ian
Hamilton’s (Cambridge Presbyterian Church, Cambridge, UK)
and Ian Campbell’s sermon series on the Song of Songs (PRTS Conference 2010)
for a balanced exposition of the Song: both avoid the twin errors of spiritual
allegorizing on the one hand, and sexual allegorizing on the other.
[5] Andrew Stewart, “Greek
Sculpture” in The Oxford History of Western Art,
ed. Martin Kemp (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2002), 15.
[6] Clement of Alexandria in The
Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 2 (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994), 189.
[7] Augustine, City of God, 43.
[8] Mason, 116.
[9] Mason, 117.
