Art For God's Sake Analysis

In his book Art for God’s Sake, Philip Ryken breaks away from “… a negative view of the arts” (11) which he perceives in the church and argues for the evangelistic and philosophical value of art. He attempts to defend the arts and outline how they ought to be used within the church, but his vision falls short. Art for God’s Sake contains important ideas, but it is poorly researched and fails to develop a complete vision of what it looks like for art to glorify God.
The author establishes four rules for developing a Christian approach to the arts: the first is God both gifts artists and calls them to create, the second is that God loves art of all mediums, the third is that God has high standards for truth and beauty, and the last is that

Not only does he neglect to provide any specific instructions as to how art should be incorporated into worship, he fails to develop a model of artistic activity that encourages critical participation in the contemporary world. Ryken claims that all art should be created with the redemptive reality of Christ’s death and resurrection in mind, but he does not explore how abysmal, depressing art can enact justice in the world or capture pain in a meaningful way. If every piece of art must include motifs of hope in some capacity, then pain and injustice can never be communicated in a meaningful way. Protest pieces, graffiti art, and sad or ugly pieces of art are some of the most meaningful things that people have created. Ryken fails to affirm the value of works such as Picasso’s Guernica or Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, and in doing so he fails to recognize the power of ugliness and sadness to remind us of pain and injustice. By neglecting to expand his vision of what it means for art to glorify God, Ryken loses the power of the ugly and the tragic to mobilize us as agents of God’s justice and mercy. Ryken’s Art for God’s Sake fails to address popular arguments against the use of art in the church and contains an inappropriately limited scope of art’s role. However, the sentiments behind Ryken’s work are critical, as they represent a breaking away from the protestant focus on doctrine and logic alone. In the modern day, we require mysticism, a God that we cannot quite understand, to make sense of a world that is becoming increasingly terrifying and absurd. Today, we need a doctrine of images to nurture our hearts as much as we need a doctrine of words to nurture our