The Power to Promote Faith and Instill New Meaning

Excerpts from Chapter One: A Mighty Change of Heart
Section Two: The Power to Promote Faith
​and Instill New Meaning
Herman C. du Toit, Ph.D.
From his book, Masters of Light: Coming unto Christ through Inspired Devotional Art

Healing the Sick at the Pool of Bethesda, Carl Bloch

---

The process of coming unto Christ is accompanied by a renewal of self, and of seeing others and the world around us, in a new light―the light of the eternal Gospel. “Therefore if any man be in Christ he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). 

Images can have the power to mediate between concepts of God and man. According to Colum Hourihane, former director of the Index of Christian Art at Princeton University, “One of the most important functions that an image can have is its mediation between the physical or earthly and the unseen or spiritual.” Hourihane’s observation implies that art can have an instrumental function, meaning that art can actually do something for us. And in so doing it has the capacity to effect some positive change in our disposition both in the way we see ourselves and the the world around us. 

In recent years, it has been reaffirmed that good art has the capacity to edify, touch sensitive hearts, and construct new meaning in the mind of the viewers. Art often does this by non-discursive means―in ways that cannot be expressed by the spoken or written word. Elder M. Russell Ballard noted: “Inspired art speaks in the language of eternity, teaching things to the heart that the eyes and ears can never understand.”  

Not only can inspired art evoke profound changes in the hearts and minds of viewers, it also has the capacity to reveal new truths and open new vistas of understanding.  An artwork cannot force itself upon the viewer; we need to open ourselves to its meaning and allow its veracity to work upon us; we need to “behold” it, in the full sense of this word. 

Artworks are able to communicate new knowledge and even new ways of seeing through a process often referred to by novelists and moviemakers as “the willing suspension of disbelief.” Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the nineteenth-century British poet, coined this phrase to describe the manner in which the challenging representations of an artwork can find acceptance in the viewer’s mind and even enlarge a person’s understanding, in spite of previously held contrary views or disbelief. We can think of the “willing suspension of disbelief” as putting aside our doubts and skepticism in order to embrace a new truth that was alien to our understanding. Coleridge also referred to our openness to accepting newfound perspectives presented by a narrative, a poem, or a work of art, as “poetic faith.”  We do this willingly without duress or compulsion when we take in an artwork that is challenging to our current understanding of things, or one that is asking us to consider a truth that may be difficult for us to accept.  Inspired artworks provide us with the opportunity to grasp more fully the glorious truths of Christ’s mission and of His role in our personal salvation.   

No artwork can fully represent deity, or faithfully recreate the events of Christ’s mortal ministry with the details and veracity with which they must have occurred. The mortal inadequacies of the artist, along with the temporal limitations of technical virtuosity, put limitations on what can be achieved by the artist’s hand. However, when inspired art engages willing minds and hearts, these deficits can be overcome through the willing suspension of disbelief on the part of the viewer. It is then that the artist and viewer come to a unity of faith. 

Inspired art has the power to invite the Spirit. When an inspired artist creates a work of art with the prayerful and sincere intention to communicate concepts of a sacred nature, as a testimony of Christ, it is highly likely that the Spirit will communicate these things to a suitably prepared and receptive viewer. Not only will the viewer recognize the truths depicted in the artwork, but the Spirit will bear witness to the viewer of its veracity. It is even possible that the viewer will be edified beyond the artist’s expectations and in ways that the artist could not previously have anticipated. Such is the power of reverently viewed art produced by an inspired artist as an act of sincere devotion. 

​Doubts flee as we see the wondrous truths that lie beyond the painted brush marks of an inspired painting, or as we receive the messages of eternity that lie within the impassive white marble of a finely wrought sculpture. When we are able to apprehend these things, and know they are true, by implication we are coming unto Christ. 

Book published by Cedar Fort Publishing and Media, Springville, Utah (2016)