Philip Graham Ryken. Art for God’s Sake: A Call to Recover the Arts. Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, April 2nd 2006. 64 pp.
5 out of 5
Purchase: Amazon
Want to read a book that lays the foundation for a Christian view of art? This is a book worth reading concerning this topic. It is written by Philip Graham Ryken. Ryken is the president of Wheaton College which has been compared to as the Evangelical Harvard. In under a hundred pages Ryken establishes a Christian worldview of art. I read this aloud with my wife as part of our night’s devotional read and we both enjoyed it. In addition I enjoyed it enough that half way through the book I had to order it online as a gift for an artist in our church.
There’s a lot of good discussions in this short book. Ryken lays our four fundamental principles for Christian theology of arts and among them is the principle that art is for the glory of God. This of course is the title of this book. The author examines Exodus 31 through various chapters in the book to extrapolate a biblical worldview of art and the calling of being an artist. This chapter is the one in which God worked through Bezalel and Oholiab to artistically construct the Tabernacle. I enjoyed the author’s study of the Scriptures.
I also learned a bit about art as a result of reading this book, being a non-artist myself. I also appreciated the book’s explicit call for God’s aesthetic standard include goodness, truth and beauty and while we cannot sugar the dark reality of sin around us nevertheless a focus on darkness and evil can also shortchanged what is reality (grace, hope and love). There’s also a helpful discussion about how artistry can become an idolatry and how to avoid idolizing art. Overall I appreciated the nuances in this book. It also make me appreciate art more (which I was hoping to experience as a result of reading this book) but happily it also made me appreciate the artists’ calling and challenges they face as well. The conclusion of this work also preached Christ; love that! Overall I recommend it for people to read and also to give to the Christian artists you know.
The Domain for Truth 
Hello.
Thank you, for recommending this book. Shall take a look later. Glad, that you and your wife enjoyed reading it together.
One thing that I find interesting is, how little the Gospels say and how much is left to the imagination. Having been a student of the Bible for some 23 years, I think, it is that freeness to the imagination that establishes itself as the receptacle of and promoter of the artistic instincts of humans.
Thank you for reading this review, glad for your comment! Wow, how did you find our review?
Hi. You’re welcome. 🙂
How did I find your review… as in how did I arrive at your post? That would be , thanks to browsing through “WordPress Reader”. And how, as in what I think of it? I like it. It’s simple and it’s easy on the minds of readers.
Thanks again!
Thanks for the review! I would enjoy reading this book as a former-amateur artist. Art can be simple/ornamental or can be used to propagate a philosophy/ideology. Art was used by the Roman Catholic church as part of its many idolatries so many early-Protestants were opposed to all forms of art, even ornamentation and some of that thinking survives today. Yup, I am for using art/creativity for God’s glory instead of the fundamentalist anti-art mindset.
Glad to hear that you are for art for God’s glory rather than embracing fundamentalists’ anti-art outlook. What kind of art did you use to do, I might have forgotten if you told me before…
I did any kind of drawing and painting using many different mediums. Fun stuff. But the detailed drawing and painting I did was VERY hard on the eyes. Maybe once I retire I’ll try watercolor painting using mostly broader brushes.
Ok- this former art teacher needs this book!!!
The kids and I would look at Duchamp’s urinal and I’d ask them if it was art— naturally I thought such contemporary ‘work’ stupid— we talked about edifying and spoke of the definition of aesthetic— criteria.
We spoke of Robert Maplethorpe and why his photography of nude male homosexuals would require age limits for viewers at galleries— I argued against the nonsense of art for art’s sake— as 20th century art and beyond has tried to feed us a bunch of crap— heading to Amazon now 🤗
Wow you sound like quite an art teacher with such prompts for class discussions! What’s your favorite book on art you would recommend me?
Brunelleschi’s Dome by Ross King but I’m a sucker for anything renaissance — also by Ross King, Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling
Thank you.
I think I’ll put this on my goodread’s want to read list.
Awesome! Do you use Goodreads more than WordPress?
I don’t think so, but it’s hard to say. I’m trying to use goodreads to develop better reading habits but so far I haven’t been very successful.
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Thank you for the review. As a Christian Artist, I am ways looking for good books about Art Theology.