“If you ask 10 students at Denver Seminary who their favorite prof is, 11 would say Tafilowski,” a fellow student told me.
We had been in Tafilowski’s Systematic Theology class, having our minds blown in one of those courses you hear about from students who have come to love school, often thanks to one or two rare teachers. It was my fourth systematic theology course, and fortunately, my second time really loving it and having my mind blown (The first was in undergrad with Dr. John Clark).
One thing Dr. Tafilowski did in many of his classes was sprinkle in artworks which told their own sort of visual story, or communicated something that words alone could not. For example, he put up a picture of Michaelangelo’s David statue and pointed out that the head and the hands were huge and the weiner was tiny.
“This isn’t an accident,” he said. “Renaissance anthropology wanted to emphasize that man is a thinking/reasoning, and working creature, and is not governed by his passions. Thus the smaller genitals and the giant hands and head. They didn’t all just have tiny members back then.”
(He was also the funniest professor I’ve ever had by a mile, which helped)
In a different class, he put up this photo of the Pantocrator and asked us what we observed.
I had seen the painting before, but never gave a whole lot of thought to the intentionality behind some of the decisions made. For example, Christ’s face seems to be divided in half: One half is angelic and clean, the other is haggard, weary, worn. One eye looks slightly up while the other is aimed slightly down. This is because one eye is looking “up” to heaven, where He came from, and one down to earth, for His humanity.
His right hand is making the symbol of the Trinity: two elevated fingers represent the Father and Holy Spirit, while the other two come down and touch the thumb, representing the two natures of the Son: God joins with humanity.
All of this was just from my professor popping the image on the screen and us looking at it long enough to spout off observations. The message quickly sank in: art is not just to make things pretty — especially in Christian historical art — but to communicate something, often in ways words alone cannot.
Not only that, but God is the creator of beauty and creativity et al. So to relegate theology to simply what can be written about in words is a silly concept. Why not expand it to art, photography, dance, theater, et cetera? I mean, how many of us have been moved by the theological imagination present in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings? (Amazon additions excluded)
I mean look at the rebellious Caravaggio, or Michelangelo and Da Vinci’s masterpieces for the church. The theology and storytelling packed into these works is astounding, and perhaps something we’ve lost with our sleek, clean western, ultra-modern church buildings.
If you have an interest in theology, I encourage you to dive into some church art throughout the years. Even the architecture of ancient cathedrals served theologically significant purposes: Many are laid out in the shape of a cross not only to point to Christ, but to create a central point where all parts of the building seem to converge, and at this point is where there is often a crucifix, and there the Eucharist is served.
If you think theology is just about reading big words in boring books, dig deeper in and find a whole world of fascinating art that has been created to communicate these ideas!
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Day 50 of 100 Days of Blog
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