Michael Amaladoss

Michael Amaladoss, S.J

In unravelling the complex topic, “Art and biblical imagery – theological perspectives (India)” , I wish to take the following orientations: First of all, I am talking as a theologian, though I am also an artist, being a trained musician and also interested in the other arts. So I will be speaking about the arts in the context of God-experience, seeking it, living it, remembering it, expressing it and sharing it. My approach will not be merely cultural or historical. Secondly my reflections will concern art and life in the Indian context of today. It will touch on the interpretation of the Bible today. This would mean correlating the Bible to contemporary reality. Thirdly, the Bible is a book. The Bible is telling us a story of God’s interactions with humanity. Therefore biblical imagery will be predominantly narrative, literary and imaginative. God’s action covers the whole of history. Though the Bible concerns specially the time between creation and Jesus’ going up to heaven, it foresees the gift of the Spirit and the second coming of Jesus in eschatological times. The Bible narrates to us the story, not only of God acting in history to create and to save, but also of God manifesting himself and sharing his life. It recounts further how people react to this divine initiative, praising, thanking, asking forgiveness and petitioning, not only in words, but in action, individually and collectively. The biblical imagery is not lifeless but alive. The events of such divine-human interaction and the accompanying emotions can be represented, lived and celebrated through the symbols of all the arts: music, poetry, drama, dance, painting, sculpture and architecture. My canvass therefore is vast. But I shall limit my remarks to some general perspectives.

The Arts at the Second Vatican Council
As a framework to my theological reflections, I would like to quote, right at the start, a relevant observation by the Second Vatican Council in its document on The Church in the Modern World.

Literature and art are very important in the life of the Church. They seek to give expression to man’s nature, his problems and his experience in an effort to discover and perfect man himself and the world in which he lives; they try to discover his place in history and in the universe, to throw light on his suffering and his joy, his needs and his potentialities, and to outline a happier destiny in store for him. Hence they can elevate human life which they express in many forms according to various times and places… New art forms adapted to our times and in keeping with the characteristics of different nations and regions should be acknowledged by the Church. They may also be brought into the sanctuary whenever they raise the mind up to God with suitable forms of expression and in conformity with liturgical requirements. (n.62)

It is surprising that in this text art is seen purely as a human effort at self-expression. It does affirm that art is a part of human life in a spiritual context and that art forms of all cultures need to be recognized. But God is mentioned almost in passing towards the end. There is no indication that Godself is an artist as God created the world in all its beauty. There is no awareness that the Bible, as the word of God, is God’s self-revelation and is an artistic narrative. It has stories, poems, poignant images of human life, emotional scenes, imaginative and symbolic visions. It is an artistic and literary text that has been the source and inspiration of hundreds of paintings, plays and musical commentaries.

Art and God Experience
I would like to start my reflection with the affirmation of the possibility of the use of art for God experience. There may be a tendency in the modern and post-modern world to reduce the Bible to a myth that cannot lead us to God-experience. I do not know how much Indian society today is affected by modern and post-modern trends that are more characteristic of Europe. But a focus on it will help us to clarify the role of art in religious experience. During the period of the Enlightenment, rationalism and scientific materialism, characteristic of modernity in Europe, would claim that reason is the only means through which we can gain or communicate any knowledge or experience and that reason has access only to the material world to which our senses can relate to. Against this we have to affirm that the humans are not merely rational animals. They have also imagination, intuition, emotion and energy through which they can reach out to the world, to the other living beings, including the humans. These means of communication also operate in the human-divine world in which we live. In and through the sensible world we can reach out to transcendent human and divine realities. The material world becomes the symbol of a transcendent presence. Our experience of the divine is not merely a rational logical conclusion from our sense experience of the material world. It is intuitive, symbolic and interpretative. We need to affirm this in the context of much of modern and post-modern thinking in the European philosophical context. I am not going to enter into any philosophical argument in order to prove this. An artist, especially a religious artist, does not need such proof.

Secondly, religions, including Christianity, believe that God has manifested himself to us in various ways, through historical events, saints and prophets, etc., both personally and in community. The Bible and other religious scriptures are only reports of such manifestations including also the human response. Christianity (and Hinduism) further believe that God has entered human history in a human form. Jesus “is the image of the invisible God” for us, as Paul tells the Colossians. (Col 1:15) In the words and deeds of Jesus we encounter God. In experiencing Jesus, we experience God. Jesus presents himself as the ‘way to God’ (cf. Jn 14:6). Jesus is the symbol of God. The mystery of the incarnation legitimizes both the symbolic self expression of the divine and the human response to it. As a matter of fact, Jesus as God-man lives both dimensions.

Thirdly, most religions claim that the mystics have a special personal experience of God in contemplation, even if sometimes, at its height, it is apophatic or beyond words. In Christianity it starts with John and continues with Gregory of Nyssa, Ephrem, Denis the Areopagyte, Bernard, Meister Ekhart, Theresa of Avila, and John of the Cross – to mention only a few well known names. Besides this, most religions also believe that we, as a community, can encounter God in the rituals of worship and celebration. Art can mediate both types of experiences, namely God’s self revelation and the human response. It can lead people to a deep contemplative encounter with the divine. It can also enable a community to experience and celebrate divine-human encounter at key moments of the life of an individual and of a community through appropriate ritual. These are the sacraments and the liturgy. All the arts can collaborate on such occasions.

The Role of the Biblical Imagery
As suggested above, Christian God-experience is dialogical. It is human response to divine self-manifestation. The Bible is a story of such divine-human encounter. God’s action is seen as creation, sharing life, forgiveness and reconciliation, and fulfilment. The human response is seen as praise and thanksgiving, repentance and prayer for their needs, experiencing God’s love and life in themselves and in their lives. Our own God-experience is born out of a correlation between the divine-human encounter in history and our own search for such an encounter in the present. The stories in the Old Testament are seen as types which find full realization in the life of Jesus, reported in the New. God’s action in the Old and the New Testaments become, in their turn, types of God’s action in the history of humanity and the world. In personal prayer or in the liturgy we recall God’s saving deeds in the Bible. This can be done through reading, painting, dramatization, singing, dance, etc. Modern digital media can also be used. At a second level, we relive, symbolically and ritually, an event in the life of Christ and seek to become part of it and make it real today. We can see this happening in the Eucharist. God’s saving deeds are remembered through the readings from the Bible. The imagery and stories evoked in these readings lead us to the central action in which we re-enact the Last Supper. For the believers, this is no longer a simple imagery. We believe that Jesus is present there in that liturgical action, actually leading the community and we participate symbolically and ritually in the action of Jesus on the last day of his life, which has a universal presence and relevance. The Second Vatican Council’s Document on the Liturgy, as a matter of fact, affirms the presence of Christ in the person of the minister, in the Eucharistic species, in the sacraments, in the word and in the praying and singing church (cf. 7). This presence is mediated by symbols and symbolic actions. Symbols, it may be noted, are not limited to objects, images or words, but also extend to symbolic actions like washing, anointing, imposition of hands and eating together.

In such a context, biblical imagery can be understood in a broad sense. It need not be limited to what is narrated and expressed in the Bible in a typological manner. It can apply to every human situation in which the biblical type is once again realized or actualized. God is experienced not only by Moses and Elijah and Jesus. God can be experienced by every person, mystic or not, in the day to day events in which they seek to find meaning in their lives in the context of the Bible. There is a double hermeneutic here. The Bible is interpreted in the contemporary context to throw light on current experience. In the process, current experience is also interpreted and acquires meaning in the context of the Bible. In this sense, biblical imagery need not be limited to the Bible, but can include all the events of our lives provided they are re-read in the light of the Bible. For instance, the marginalized ‘publicans and sinners’ whom Jesus encounters can be seen and experienced today in all the groups of people who are oppressed and marginalized like the Dalits and slaves and the poor in general. The glory of God’s creation can be seen, not only in Palestine, but also in India and China. No human experience is foreign to the Bible. The term biblical imagery, therefore, need not be interpreted in the literal sense as referring to the events narrated in the Bible, but can be taken to indicate contemporary events that we re-read and interpret in the context of the Bible.

Because biblical imagery is not taken with historical literalism but as typological they are contextualized. The aim is not historical accuracy with regard to natural background, physical features, dress, etc. The focus is on the meaning of the event, which is then set in the artist’s own life context. At times the meaning may seem more important than any normal representation. We see this in the icons of the Eastern churches.

Biblical imagery reinterpreted
We need not, therefore, understand biblical imagery as referring strictly to the images in the Bible, but interpret it to mean anything in the material and human world that can be understood in the context of the Bible. Thus, for example, Job is the type of everyone who is suffering in some way and questions God. Such an image can evoke a range of emotions from pathos to anger. The sinful woman washing the feet of Jesus with her tears can represent every repentant sinner and can be represented in Indian or Chinese dress in local historical and cultural situations. The Good Samaritan can be every person who goes out to help another in need. The ‘publicans and sinners’ around Jesus can be all the oppressed and marginalized people in the world. We could think of the Indian poor or the Dalits and Tribals. So my suggestion is that the term ‘biblical imagery’ should not be interpreted in a narrow sense. It is true that much of Christian art evokes events in the Bible and in the life of Christ. Miracles are illustrated and parables are narrated in various symbolic media. But Christ’s saving power can extend to any human situation. Therefore there is nothing human that cannot be evoked in Christian art.

We can go one step further. While the focus of Christ is largely the human, though he speaks about the birds of the air and the flowers on the field, we can widen the field if we focus on God. God is the creative artist. God’s creation is beautiful and sings of the glory of God. The whole of creation can become the mediation of divine beauty, goodness, power and creativity. We cannot approach God through our senses. Philosophical arguments that seek to prove God as the cause of the universe are not too popular today. But we cannot deny that the raging sea, the gushing stream, the starry sky, the penetrating light, the elevating musical sound, the gentle and silent breeze, the cooling and nourishing rain, the life-giving warmth of the sun, even the mysterious darkness – all these indicate to us the presence and power of the divine. They are not rational, logical demonstrations, but symbolic representations of the divine. Artists can certainly use any of these to take us beyond ourselves to contemplate the Absolute. The Bible does use some of these symbols to evoke the divine presence.

The Bible and the other Scriptures
Focusing on natural and human situations to evoke the divine presence leading to divine experience I dare to suggest that this is not peculiar to Christianity and the Bible. Cosmic religiosity and the scriptures of other religions do the same. So biblical imagery becomes a way of reaching out to other religious imagery. The Bible does not have a monopoly of what we call biblical imagery in so far as its focus and purpose is concerned. We touch here an interreligious dimension that may be interesting for us in India, especially when we explore the dimensions of inculturation, which is inter-cultural and inter-religious. In this we can talk of religious imagery in general without adding the adjective ‘biblical’.

Biblical imagery and God-experience
Biblical imagery, in the wide sense that I have already mentioned, is used in art in the context of communicating and evoking God- experience. Now let us examine how this does happen. Let us take for granted that we are reflecting in a religious context. Art can set a decorative context, with its shapes, colours and rhythms, for evoking a spiritual experience. Architecture, for example, can create a space, with an interplay of light and shade and also of colour, that can lead the people who are there to transcend the present world. A Hindu temple, for instance, creates a sacred universe with its many images, but leads one to focus on the central shrine, the garbhagriha, the womb, which is normally dark, but can be lit during an arathi, leading one to contemplate the central image and the saving activity that it images or represents. A gothic church draws your eyes and your mind upwards so that you transcend the earth towards the heavens. The ascent is further helped by multi-coloured rose windows depicting various persons and stories from the Bible. A byzantine church takes you to the heavenly court, with the Holy of holies hidden by a veil. A Muslim mosque, with its pure lines and arches, empties your mind of all worldly images to focus on the ‘emptiness’ of God. Some modern churches have an ingenious play of light and shade and shapes that elevates your mind.

Next to the interplay of light and space comes music. Music in the early church was mostly recitative (of the psalms). Only later hymns were introduced. In the beginning musical instruments were forbidden since they were thought to remind people of pagan worship. Later they were allowed not only to accompany, beautify and solemnize the text, but also to evoke a mood or emotion on their own. According to the Second Vatican Council’s document on the Liturgy, the role of music is: “making prayer more pleasing, promoting unity of minds, or conferring greater solemnity upon the sacred rites” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 112). But in the Indian tradition music itself is seen as a means of expressing emotions – actually the nine rasas. It can be a direct means of communication and sadhana helping one to concentrate. It can be more powerful when it is combined with a chant like a bhajan. A bhajan involves words, a melody or raga or rhythm or tala. While the words involve the imagination and intellect, the melody channelizes the emotion and the rhythm attunes the body, so that it becomes a good way of integrating the body and the mind in the act of concentrating.

In the older churches you may find paintings on the walls and ceilings. There may be many statues. They can be illustrative and at the same time informative and educative if they picture events from sacred history or the parables of Jesus. They invite you to reflect on the sacred events. The images may not be merely representative, but symbolic. Then they provoke interpretation and promote meditation. Some of these images can be prophetic calling you to a change of heart. At a deeper stage some images can lead you to contemplation, concentration and absorption. The purpose of these images depends partly on the artist and partly on tradition. A single image can lead you from illustration and decoration to contemplative absorption.
In modern times the role of images can be taken over by the media – photo and film projected on to a screen. Other mediations like drama and dance are also possible. With these media one can create an event that involves you. Of course, one can simply be a spectator. But one can also get involved, emotionally, if not physically. In an African liturgy the whole community, including the celebrant, sings and dances. This is true of all the arts, as a matter of fact.

Art experience and God experience
In Indian aesthetic tradition art experience is understood as the twin brother of the experience of Brahman (Brahmananda sahodara). The experience of Brahman is that of oneness with Being. This need not be necessarily monistic. It involves the integration of the total personality and its union or communion with the Absolute. It is not necessary here to go into the metaphysical details of this experience. Anyway art is not metaphysics. Art experience is seen as the integration of the self in itself and in communion with the Self who is within us – the ‘I’ of the ‘i’. The phenomenal world and the self do not disappear, but integrated in a higher unity that transcends the phenomenal world. There is a progressive interiorization of the ‘self’ to the Centre from where it embraces everything. Swami Tyagaraja, a South Indian composer of Music, sings: “Music gives one the fruit of sacrifices and contemplation, renunciation as well as enjoyment. Thyagaraja knows that they who are proficient in sound, the mystic syllable ‘Om’, and the music notes – which are all of the form of the Lord – are liberated souls.” ‘Om’ is the first evolute of Being and the last step in the way to it. That is why in India music was considered the purest form of art.

With regard to the visual arts, for example, the makers of the temple images shaped them after deep meditation on the form of the Lord so that those who are gazing at it would be able to interiorize the form of the deity. At the level of pictures there were the mandalas or special meditation pictures in which the lines helped the meditator to focus and gather his or her senses. Sometimes the images were reduced to geometric shapes that were called chakras. The Tibetans had special meditation pictures that helped them to focus on the life of the Buddha leading them to nirvana.

Art is also part of the liturgy which is a network of symbols. As in Drama or dance, the symbols are symbolic actions. For instance, in Baptism, the focus is not on the water as a symbol but on washing with water which can be a symbol of purification as well as energizing. The symbols of the Eucharist is not merely bread and wine, but the act of eating and drinking together that nourishes life, but also builds community. While in a drama such actions are merely symbolic, in the sacrament they become performative, that is, they accomplish what they symbolize. Here the symbol reaches its highest potential. As they are practised today these symbolic actions have lost their significance and their performative force at the level of the community.

Art as Sadhana
People sometimes speak of art for art’s sake. This is of course possible. But in our context we are speaking of religion leading to God-experience. The symbols of art are mediations of God experience. Symbols need to be interpreted in this spiritual context. This is possible only if we have the eye of faith. Many people witnessed the miracles of Jesus. But only people with faith saw the hand of God in them. People with an eye of faith will experience the same phenomena like other people. But they will see in them the loving and empowering invitation and action of God. The same thing is true also when people look at religious art. One can see them merely as illustrative. It requires the eye of faith to interpret them and live them as experiences of God. Good examples will be the Canticle of Creatures of St. Francis and the Contemplation to Obtain Love of St. Ignatius of Loyola. St. Francis saw the same creation that all of us see. But he sees them all as praising God. Even what we think of material nature is seen by him as animated by the divine spirit. He feels a fellowship with the whole of creation. We find a similar experience in St. Ignatius. For him the love of God for us is not something abstract. He contemplates God present and active in all the creatures in order to be at the service of the humans. This challenges us to offer ourselves to God so that God’s will may be operative in us too.

Art will not have such an effect on the observer, if the artist has not imbued it with the spirit of faith in creating it. The observer’s sadhana will respond to the artist’s sadhana. I had briefly referred to this when speaking about the Hindu sculptor making a sacred image in the traditional way. In the Indian yoga tradition this can be explained as the mutual communication of energy. The creation of the artist is not merely a material object. It embodies his spirit and energy. This is what attracts the observer who is prepared to receive the energy communicated. Such an involvement of the artist can be expressed in the art itself. Let us take an event in the life of Christ. One can evoke the Jewish historical situation in painting the event shown by the natural background, the features of the people, their dress etc. One can also represent the event in a European or an Indian context. We know many pictures like that. One can make a further statement by putting Christ not merely in the midst of a group of ordinary Indians, but in a group of Dalits, Tribals or migrants. One can paint the picture in the form of a mandala so as to make it an object of meditation and concentration. One can also set the event in an interreligious context. The same theme – a biblical image – can move from being a simple representation to indigenized image, to theological statement, to an object for contemplation. The biblical image acquires various avatars. We can see this as a process of interiorization. Art can also become prophetic and transformative in this way.

We can note the same structure in music and dance. Music, vocal or instrumental, can simply accompany a procession. It can also be an expression of emotions like joy, sorrow and sympathy. A song can evoke an event or a story. A repetitive chant or bhajan can help meditative concentration. This can lead to an integrative sound like ‘OM’ or silence. Similarly, dance can be processional. It can describe an event. It can express various emotions. It can tell a story. It can help contemplative concentration. The height of contemplation can be reached when one dances oneself and is not merely an observer. An experience of raslila in Brindavan has made me realize the heights of self-forgetful ecstasy to which music and dancing can lead devotees. It can also be a collective experience. Some charismatic groups may offer similar experiences.

In this context we can also evoke the theme of art and healing. Many of the illnesses of the humans are psychosomatic. The practice of art by promoting psycho-physical integration through coordination and contemplation can also heal such illnesses. Such psycho-physical healing may eventually lead to spiritual healing too.

Conclusion
As we have noted, the Bible is the story of divine-human encounter. While the story is set in Palestine it is meant to be repeated and relived in every human and cultural situation. The biblical imagery refers to every person everywhere- in different geographical, historical and cultural situations. We are therefore called, not simply to recount the events of biblical history in words or in images, but to relive them in our own time. Our art would reflect the way in which we relive it. This is what is called evangelizing indigenization or inculturation of the Gospel. The Second Vatican Council said, with reference to the liturgy: “The liturgy is made up of unchangeable elements divinely instituted and of elements subject to change. The latter not only may be changed but ought to be changed with the passage of time, if they have suffered from the intrusion of anything out of harmony with the inner nature of the liturgy or have become less suitable” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 21). What is true of the liturgy is also true of the religious or sacred art that is connected to it. We have to rediscover and reappropriate the biblical imagery not as something that happened thousands of years ago, but as happening in our own lives here and now. Purely as historical narratives, the bible stories can retain their original historical context. But in speaking to us they can also adopt a contemporary tone and idiom. This was what happened throughout European history. The biblical figures appeared, not in a Palestinian context, but in a European context. It is therefore unfortunate that we are hanging on to the European imagery instead of changing it to an Indian one. This would be particularly true if we are focusing, not on historical illustration, but on contemporary application to our concrete life situation. It is true that many of the Indian artists, Hindu and Christian, are sensitive to this. But we have not educated the people to use such art. Western biblical images will continue to remain merely illustrative. People will not connect with them as relevant to their lives. Bhajans are used in prayer sessions. But it is rare to see people meditating on a picture. If this is not done then it remains merely decorative and illustrative. Artists who have made valiant efforts to indigenize such art are not appreciated, much less used. I have been present at various prayer sessions at conferences. Even when the song and the music are Indian the images will often be European, even though they are all armed with video cameras. If the videos are Indian they are often illustrative and, perhaps, educative, but hardly ever prophetic and transformative. They are not really biblical. This will be true both of the songs and the images. Unless we indigenize our art, it will remain merely illustrative with no real impact in peoples’ lives. Maybe we should say that unless we are ready to use the indigenized art of our Indian artists, art will remain peripheral in the lives of people.