The Artistic Explanation of God

The concept of God being found and described in art is a very interesting concept. God can be much easier understood and explained by the concepts of art. This is not a common idea, although it actually makes a lot of sense. In Joseph Kupfer’s essay The Art of Religious Communication he discusses his ideas of God in relation to art. His essay discusses all of the different ways in which God can often be looked at through art in a much more realistic way. Often in the world of art things can be explained in ways that other things cannot be. In Kupfer’s essay, he explains God’s existence and transcendence, as being something only understood though art. Art has a way of explaining things that science and logic cannot.

In the first section of The Art of Religious Communication Kupfer explains why “religious belief and interpretation of experience are better expressed artistically than argued for rationally” (310). Often when people try to explain God rationally they run into many problems because, as Kupfer explains, God cannot be understood through rational argument. God is not a being that fits into the realms that science is because “God’s existence is unlike anything the existence of anything else” (Kupfer 311). Trying to explain the existence of God through rational arguments will always fail. Rational arguments must have limits, so when the thing being explained is limitless, the arguments will always fail. In explaining any other thing, the existence of the item is not the same as its qualities. “The shape, weight, or color of something presupposes that it exists” But with God men often try to explain his existence using his attributes (311). It is obvious why this fails. The existence of God is the even more basic than the ...

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...is defined, the rest of the essay would be much easier to decipher.

The Art of Religious Communication was a very intriguing essay, which explained the existence of God in a totally new philosophical way. Kupfer’s use of poems and artistic representation of God is a fairly new concept. He took something else that we know, art, and used it as a visual to explain God. Usually God is explained using rational arguments and logic, which often fail. This happens because it is not possible to explain God using logic, which Kupfer clearly explains in his essay. Looking at Kupfer’s essay, and his reasoning for God’s existence was a refreshing movement away from the ideas of most philosophers.

Works Cited

Kupfer, Joseph. "The Art of Religious Communication." Philosophy: Contemporary Perspectives on Perennial Issues. Fourth ed. New York: St. Martin's, 1994. 310-20. Print.