An Author Interview from Books At a Glance
Editor’s Note:
Mark Coppenger, our Assistant Editor for Apologetics, hosts this week’s Author Interview with David Covington about his new book on the relation of theology to art. Below is a somewhat abbreviated transcript of the conversation. We hope you will enjoy!
Abbreviated Transcript
We’re talking to David Covington, author of A Redemptive Theology of Art: Restoring Godly Aesthetics to Doctrine and Culture. I’m Mark Coppenger for Books At a Glance. Thank you for joining us.
David, thank you so much for joining us. I notice that you’re part of a singing group, Covington and Covington, so tell us about how you came upon this other Covington and how the Covingtons emerged as a singing group.
Covington:
Thank you, Mark. I’m delighted to be with you today, and delighted to be talking to your listeners.
I got my start in music in the early Jesus movement in Southern California. When my wife and I married and moved away, we raised our kids, and then it appeared good to us that we, who had been doing music together, just the two of us for a long time – I had been a singer-songwriter since the early days – should hit the road. So we chose the moniker, Covington & Covington as our touring name, and we threw our kiddos in a motorhome and we toured the United States for about seven years, pretty continuously. We were on the road about half of any one year. We made three or four albums and we’re still writing songs. But at the end of that time we backed off. There wasn’t a lot of money in that and we had some bills to pay so we went to work. Then the two of us decided that it would be good for us to go back to graduate school. I really wanted to learn what the Bible had to say about writing better songs. I wanted to write better songs for the Lord’s sake and for the sake of the Gospel and the ministry. She wanted to learn why people do what they do and some kind of counseling. So we actually spent five years in Philadelphia at Westminster Theological Seminary in classes together, and just had a ball. That’s where my study of aesthetics in the Scripture took off.
Coppenger:
If someone wanted to get some of your music, do you have a website?
Covington:
Yes, it’s covingtonandcovington.com
Coppenger:
Okay, let’s get to some questions.
I love the way you are so serious about theology and digging into the Word, picking up on all kinds of aesthetic aspects in the Scripture. Sometimes in our coursework at Southern Seminary I’ll give my students a list of movie titles or paintings or even pieces of music, and ask which one of these does God like best? What do you make of that?
Covington:
We assume our preferences are like God’s, at least in some ways, as if He has a “like” button he can click or not. Our preferences are rooted in God’s preferences, but they connect only through the story of Redemption, a very different one from the one imagined by anyone who would give a direct answer to your question! The Scripture teaches that our preferences are messed up and we need a Savior; and we have a Savior.
Coppenger:
I remember when I was in infantry school, way back, after being in the hot Georgia sun, we would go to the movie theater on post at Fort Benning and watch a movie for a quarter. Mainly just to cool off. One time the original M.A.S.H. was playing and of course there was a lot of irreverence. There was one place in it where I think they were playing football with some team in Japan and somebody uttered just the vilest kind of statement and the whole theater erupted. Everyone thought it was so cool, but I remember not being amused. It wasn’t like I thought it was funny but decided to stifle the laugh because I represent the Lord, or I’m so not supposed to laugh. I just didn’t even think it was funny. And it struck me that there is a change when one encounters Christ, that we are restored to the original created way that God made us. We are turned from Naugahyde to velvet or from denim to velour or something like that. But that was, I guess you could say, more of a moral sense, that wicked things are not as amusing or clever or charming. But is there a change at simply the aesthetic level and not the moral level? That whereas you used to think something was charming or beautiful or alluring, but now it seems, not morally, but aesthetically cheap or tawdry or contrived or something like that. What do you think about that?
Covington:
The Scripture is rich in describing experiences like yours which God’s people have been going through for a long time. You remember that expression in Proverbs 9 where Dame Folly shouts aloud, “stolen water is sweet, and bread eaten in secret is delicious.” We need to be changed because we really do like tawdry stuff.
Coppenger:
I was just thinking about how Augustine in his Confession talked about how they would break in and steal someone’s apples or something just for the thrill. It wasn’t because of the taste of the apples, but just the delightfulness of the wickedness of the thing.
We talk about seeing things as God sees them and another thing I throw at my students sometimes is the notion of whether God could actually create something ugly. And I suggest that the Blobfish is ugly, and God made the Blobfish, so God makes ugly things. Can God make ugly things? We talk a lot about beauty – is beauty best understood in the eye of the human beholder or is that fish beautiful, in a sense?
Covington:
The question of beauty has been made much of and I found it much easier in my studies of the Scripture to try to apply it to human aesthetic experience, to think in terms of glory. The Blobfish might possibly be glorious and reflect God’s glory in ways that don’t seem classically beautiful to us. Perhaps God has more than one kind of glory, the kind that seems beautiful to us. Maybe he has a sense of humor and he makes his creatures to have a sense of humor, too.
Coppenger:
I can’t go any farther without bringing up the question of triads. You don’t get long into this book without threes. You see a lot of things in threes and then threes within threes and so forth. But you do mention some fours. You talk about Creation, Fall, Redemption and Consummation. Scripture is for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training. And then you have twos in the Bible like sheep and goats, and so forth. So tell us about the threes.
Covington:
On the one hand we want to say if God who himself is a Trinity, made the creation for his glory, you might expect that the creation would have lots of triads in it. I’ve appreciated John Frame’s approach to triads. Chiefly that these are aspects of each other and perspectives on each other rather than parts – that helps a lot, because if you try to break things into parts you’re going to get into trouble. But as you say, there are fours and there are twos and there are sevens and all kinds of other things. So, in reflecting on this, it seems to me that essentially we have a perspective of God’s constancy throughout all of Scripture and throughout all of redemptive history and the triad seems to fit God’s constancy. God also is at work bringing redemption. He’s changing things, he’s doing a new thing, he says. And he’s going to do a really new thing when our Lord returns in glory. And the narrative arc readily fits most of the other numbers. For example, the classic example that you cited just now, Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Consummation – there it is; that’s the narrative arc. It fits from that perspective, of the person of God, and if you read through chapter 14 of the book, you’ll see that we make much of those two perspectives, what I call the snapshot perspective, which is systematic theology and then the historical perspective or the narrative perspective that shows God’s constant freedom and work in history to do exactly as he pleases. In general, triads fit creation because a Trinitarian God made it. They especially fit the snapshot perspective, while other numbers fit a narrative perspective. I want to leave room for both.
Coppenger:
In the movie, Chariots of Fire, Ian Charleson’s character says, “Aw, Jenny, the Lord made me fast, and when I run I feel His pleasure.” Eric Liddle feels God’s pleasure when he runs; is that like us and Art, at its best? In terms of your own experience, when you’re writing songs, or when you’re performing, do you feel God’s pleasure, is there a resonance with your Creator and Savior?
Covington:
I really appreciate you bringing that remark outside of the realm of Art and into the realm of just ordinary everyday experience. The implication that he makes and that we want to make is that our pleasures are somehow bound up in His pleasures. And we can find pleasure in His pleasure. That’s actually true, but it’s not the only thing that is true. Sometimes God does things for reasons of his own in our lives in which we do not take pleasure at the time they happen. Maybe in this life we will not see the rich sweetness of what God was working at that time, and maybe we will. But for us to follow God and let his pleasure guide ours – on the one hand, it’s a struggle, but on the other hand it can be an enormous sweetness, far bigger sweetness than someone who is simply seeking to satisfy his own desire for pleasure can possibly feel. When I turn inward on myself and seek my own pleasure, seek to satisfy my own autonomous aesthetic sense, it’s going to keep shrinking. But when I turn outward, when God changes me and turns me to look for his pleasures then the sky is the limit.
Coppenger:
I think that the longer you live in the faith, these things that you do not delight in, but having seen so many times that God works wonderful things out of reversals and anxieties and so forth, there’s a sense where you could say, “this is tough – give me more Lord.” Because you just get smart to what splendor he has in his work even when it’s unpleasant at the moment. I appreciate what you’re saying that we don’t always take pleasure in with the Lord is taking pleasure in at the very moment it happens.
I have to ask this: you said you went to Westminster, so I have to go to the Westminster Catechism and ask about icons. One of the articles says that you should not make any representation of any member of the Trinity. So, a painting of Jesus, an icon, that may be charming, but it’s not where you need to go. Now, Luther would push back, but what do you think? Is it okay to draw or make a painting of Jesus?
Covington:
Images intended to represent God himself are rather a special case. Distinguishing reverence from worship may be harder than we thought. So, yes, the Westminster Divines played it safe; that’s good. On the other hand, Greek and Russian Orthodox icons can be used devoutly. My wife and I were in Russia doing the very first Christmas that was celebrated after the fall of the Soviet Union. We were there for an arts conference and we toured churches and we saw hundreds of people in the churches and many of them were revering the icons. I even saw a man kissing an icon and I thought, these people have been prevented from doing this, and yet they’ve remembered and somehow – I don’t know whether it’s superstition or reverence – but something very deep is happening here that perhaps God alone understands. But I can see the depth and we came away deeply moved by the faith of the Russian people in connection with their Orthodox icons. I believe it is possible to deal with an icon superstitiously; I’m not sure that it is impossible to deal with it faithfully. We actually used a pastel rendering of Jesus on the cover of one of our albums. I think our faith has room in it for reverent appreciation that distinguishes from superstition or idolatry. We need the help of our pastors and elders to apply the Scripture wisely to our cultural moment.
Coppenger:
You mentioned John Frame, earlier. He thinks, as I recall, that the Westminster Divines on this point maybe overreacted to the superstitious treatment icons have been given. I guess there are rocks on both sides. I like the way you put it.
Speaking of what’s appropriate and what’s not, I read that you enjoyed the work of jazz pianist, Monty Alexander. When I was a teacher at Wheaton, the Dean of the Conservatory, Harold Best, was keen on jazz. The administration was not so keen on jazz. I taught aesthetics on each of the Arts and jazz had sort of unholy beginnings down in New Orleans, but does God like jazz?
Covington:
I remember hearing Francis Schaeffer describe God’s revelation of his glory as being unity and diversity, together. Unity does not have dominance over diversity, nor diversity over unity. Now, I suspect there’s something in jazz that, taken by the faithful listener, can reflect a harmonious and even delicious integration of God’s unity and God’s diversity. There is structure, there is clear form, there is tremendous freedom, there’s a lot of discipline and there’s just incredible room for expression in it. And I think we’re looking at unity and diversity there.
Jazz, like all other cultural expressions, is infused in every aspect with values that are “about” God; it’s not morally neutral. Wisdom for a cultural moment might suggest we keep hands off of jazz. A dear friend of ours, long since gone to be with the Lord, made a promising start in the New Orleans jazz scene in the late thirties, early forties. He came to Christ and quickly found the subculture dangerous to his faith. He quit jazz entirely. In later years, he moved to California and grew into a different liberty of conscience; he took up piano again, and we had many evenings of rockin’ worship music with him at the piano in our home. As we treasure our freedom of conscience before God, let us also treasure the same freedom of conscience that our brothers and sisters enjoy, and not find fault with them for objections to jazz or other cultural expressions may have been appropriate for a season, though it has now gone by. We can also seek to persuade them, from Scripture, that “to the pure, all things are pure, but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure….” (Titus 1:15)
Coppenger:
In the book you talk about metanarratives as weapons of cultural warfare. Can you elaborate on that? How do we go about becoming biblical cultural warriors?
Covington:
But our warfare is not against flesh and blood; it’s against bad beliefs that we and others love, and the evil forces that entice us. Tolkien and Lewis used metanarrative weapons very differently: Tolkien showed the heroes’ steadiness and consistency, and courage. Lewis showed his heroes’ changes, their temptations, sins and repentance. Can both attract readers? Clearly! I suspect, though, that our flesh resonates more easily with the metanarrative that our biggest danger is outside ourselves, in our situation, than with the one that locates our greatest danger in ourselves, our sin. The language of cultural warfare makes sense, I think, best when it starts in my own soul rather than me and my people against you and your people.
Coppenger:
You mention other authors’ accounts of this aesthetic transformation.
Covington:
I’ve just been reading C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle, where he hints at his own transformation p.170-171, the difference between the New Narnia and the Old Narnia. Sharon and I read together this morning from Revelation 5, where she pointed out how repulsive she found it to actually envision a “Lamb, standing as if it had been slain, with seven horns and seven eyes….” We considered together that John, who actually saw this, was not repulsed, but rather awe-struck. Some aesthetic overhaul had been accomplished along the way, presumably “in the Spirit.”
Coppenger:
Talk to us about the distinction between propositional senses and dumb senses?
Covington:
All our senses are distorted from birth; all are redeemed in Christ. Maybe by exercising our redeemed sniffers, tasters, senses of pitch, rhythm and musical dynamics, we can discover more about our sin and God’s glory than we thought.
Coppenger:
Are there people out there who lift up the sort of Christ honoring, God resonating, work in the art.
Covington:
Naturally, I have a few favorites of my own. Among them, David Wilcox from North Carolina. But, at the same time, I want to make room for a reception of works produced by nonbelievers that really have something rich and precious and valuable when received in gratitude to God and in honor to the creators of the art. We may have to take issue with some things, but look and see how God is glorified in this work created by a non-Christian. I want to do both.
Coppenger:
Do you have an appreciation for Wolterstorff?
Covington:
Certainly. Not sure I understood all he wrote in AIA, but I got one key point; he drew a courageous line in the sand, saying NO to various pietistic and evangelical formulae for subordinating aesthetics to church doctrine and politics. A bit like Abraham Kuyper before him. He gave courage to Christian artists. We owe him a great debt for this, at least.
Coppenger:
Does veering in day-to-day life away from pietistic externalism risk pietistic internalism?
Covington:
Sure! So we pursue God’s simplicity. Having fun? Thank God. A child who joins the family meal also joins in the family prayer. Let our gratitude grow as our grace grows. God made the world, and treasures its pleasures for His own sake.
Coppenger:
At the end of your chapters you have discussion questions. Do you want to pick up on any of those questions and tell us how you might answer those questions?
Covington:
Yes. I think this was the last question in the whole discussion group: how has your appreciation of God changed this year? Where do you need to look next? How can you talk to Him about that? Therein is something really close to my highest hope for Redemptive Theology of Art, and that is by changing a few of the key opening moves of the dance steps that aesthetics belongs with truth and with power to bring glory to God, we can start some conversations. We can get better acquainted with the people immediately around us. We can know them; we can see what God is doing in their lives. We can see how God has actually been working, redemptively, yes in their aesthetic senses, yes in their understanding of God and cognitive grasp, and then just in the ordinary power to do good in day-to-day life. To love God, and love neighbors, and do what’s next better than you did that yesterday – I need to know that about my brothers and sisters, and this conversation is a fulfillment of my highest hopes for the book, that there could be growing conversations to the glory of God.
Coppenger:
Is there room in our Christian lives for simple pleasures?
Covington:
I hope so! I enjoy higher delights than ever before, even in simple things. I read aloud to my wife nearly every day; she insists on novels, calling it a “purge.” I get that. She’s a biblical counselor! I look forward to getting away from my desk so I can get to the real fun, my outdoor work. I hope to write a lot more songs before my time’s up!
Coppenger:
Is there anything that you want to add, before we bring this to a close?
Covington:
Just a parenthetical remark about the year. I’ve had seasons that were longer than a year when I didn’t seem to be making progress and when I was actually kind of in the tank, where my hope was floundering in my faith was just clinging on by fingernails. Sometimes it was longer than a year. So I would encourage listeners to look at a longer term.
Coppenger:
We’ve been talking with David Covington, author of A Redemptive Theology of Art: Restoring Godly Aesthetics to Doctrine and Culture. Be sure to pick up a copy; I’m sure you will be as blessed as I have. Thanks for being with us, David.
Covington:
It’s been my pleasure.
