Saturday, August 4, 2007

Naked Art from a Christian Worldview?

Should nakedness be considered artistically appropriate from a Christian worldview? The issues around this type of question showed up in Scott's blog, Generations Of, recently in response to a post by Dr. George Grant on his blog. Dr. Grant has this to say when questioned about the appropriateness of nakedness in Christian art:

The human form poses particular difficulties because it is itself a remarkable and glorious aspect of Creation. Alas, our own thinking has been skewed so grotesquely by both Modernity's Bacchanalian Aesthetic and Antiquity's Apollonarian Aesthetic that we are often left us with only a pornographic context for the nude form.

Scott responded in this manner:
Yes, indeed, God made the human body as a great thing of beauty, but the body is a holy thing, being created in His image, image-bearers as both male and female. But we were also covered by Him on account of sin. That which reflects the intimacy of holiness between God and his created people, our bodies and their design for intimate communion between husband and wife, were covered by God due to the corruption of sin.

I agree with Scott. I think God's providing Adam and Eve clothing as a means to hide their public display of nakedness, which became shameful after their sins, is indicative of what our view of nakedness in public should be. I respectfully disagree with Dr. Grant that it was an aesthetic from Modernity or Antiquity which corrupted our thinking in regard to nakedness. Our minds' view of nakedness was permanently altered in the Garden of Eden through the sins of Adam and Eve.

God has provided a context in which beholding the beauty of God's creation through nakedness is appropriate,and I believe that to be restricted to the marriage bed.

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