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1 Corinthians 16
19 Greetings from the churches in Asia.
Aquila and Priscilla, together with the church that meets in their house, send greetings in the name of the Lord.
Isaiah 61
21 Your people will live right
and always own the land;
they are the trees I planted
to bring praise to me.
22 Even the smallest family
will be a powerful nation.
I am the Lord,
and when the time comes,
I will quickly do all this.
World Scripture and the Teachings of
Sun Myung Moon
Chapter 4
God’s Creation and Human Creativity
Creativity and Art
Artists, scientists and inventors take after the creativity of God. The universe was created beginning with an idea in the divine Mind, followed by the expenditure of energy to make that idea a reality. Likewise, artists and scientists give all their heart and effort to create a new existence that manifests the images and thoughts in their mind.
This section focuses on the arts, and so includes alongside scripture some selected passages from famous artists reflecting on the meaning of their art. Yet, creativity is not the sole possession of these elite personages; we find creativity in the athlete who plays exuberantly for the love of sport, in the merchant who finds better ways to market his wares, and in children as they dance and sing. Father Moon, who has established ballet companies and art schools and who himself loves to sing duets with his wife, is cognizant of the role the arts can play in creating a God-centered culture.
Topics include: art as harmony of opposites, art’s emotional core and emotional power; the muse, or spirituality of art; and the problem of art and values.
1. The Spirituality of Art
All art is concerned with coming into being.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 6.4 (Hellenism)
Life is art.
The whole life of man is Self-Expression.
The individual is an expression of God.
We suffer if we do not express ourselves.
Precepts 1-4 (Perfect Liberty Kyodan)
We composers are projectors of the infinite into
the finite.
Edvard Grieg
The sole and end aim of figured bass should be
Nothing else than God’s glory and the recreation
of the mind.
Johann Sebastian Bach
True art is made noble and religious by the
mind producing it… the endeavor to create
something perfect; for God is perfection, and
whoever strives after perfection is striving for
something divine.
Michelangelo
Be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in
psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and
making melody to the Lord with all your heart.
Ephesians 5.18-19
And whenever the evil spirit from God was upon
Saul, David took the lyre and played it with his
hand; so Saul was refreshed, and was well, and
the evil spirit departed from him.
1 Samuel 16.23
Men can be evil—more evil than their animal
brothers can ever be—but they can also rise
in the ecstasy of creation. The cathedrals of
England stand as monuments to man’s worship
of what is above himself.
One does feel proud to belong to the human
race when one sees the wonderful things human
beings have fashioned with their hands. They
have been creators—they must share a little the
holiness of the Creator, who made the world
and all that was in it, and saw that it was good.
But He left more to be made.
Agatha Cristie
In eloquence there is magic, in knowledge
ignorance;
in poetry wisdom, and in speech weariness.
Hadith of Abu Dawud (Islam)
If I create from the heart, nearly everything
works; if from the head, almost nothing.
Marc Chagall
Let our artists be those who are gifted to discern
the true nature of the beautiful and graceful; then
will our youth dwell in a land of health, amid fair
sights and sounds, and receive the good in every-
thing; and beauty, the effluence of fair works,
shall flow into the eye and ear, like a health-giv-
ing breeze from a purer region, and insensibly
draw the soul from earliest years into likeness and
sympathy with the beauty of reason.
Musical training is a more potent instrument
than any other, because rhythm and harmony
find their way into the inward places of the
soul, on which they mightily fasten, imparting
grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly
educated graceful.
Plato, The Republic (Hellenism)