The Artistic Sphere: The Arts in Neo-Calvinist Perspective

The Artistic Sphere: The Arts in Neo-Calvinist Perspective. Edited by Roger D. Henderson & Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker. Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2024.


Available at: InterVarsity Press


Publisher's Overview:

While some Christians have embraced the relationship between faith and the arts, the Reformed tradition tends to harbor reservations about the arts. However, among Reformed churches, the Neo-Calvinist tradition—as represented in the work of Abraham Kuyper, Herman Dooyeweerd, Hans Rookmaaker, and others—has consistently demonstrated not just a willingness but a desire to engage with all manner of cultural and artistic expressions.

This volume, edited by art scholar Roger Henderson and Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker, the daughter of art historian and cultural critic Hans Rookmaaker, brings together history, philosophy, and theology to consider the relationship between the arts and the Neo-Calvinist tradition. With affirmations including the Lordship of Christ, the cultural mandate, sphere sovereignty, and common grace, the Neo-Calvinist tradition is well-equipped to offer wisdom on the arts to the whole body of Christ.

Contents: 

Introduction

    Roger D. Henderson and Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker

Part One: Roots

1. Geneva's Artistic Legacy: From Calvin to Today

    Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker

2. Calvin and the Arts: Pure Vision or Blind Spot?

    Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin

3. Rumors of Glory: Abraham Kuyper's Neo-Calvinist Theory of Art

    Roger D. Henderson

4. Dooyeweerd's Aesthetics

    Roger D. Henderson

Part Two: Art History

5. Art, Meaning, and Truth

    Hans R. Rookmaaker

    Looking with Historical Depth: Hugo van der Goes, Filippino Lippi and Albrecht Dürer

6. The Vocation of a Christian Art Historian: Strategic Choices in a Multicultural Context

    E. John Walford

    Ridentem dicere verum—Pieter Bruegel’s Peasant Wedding of Circa 1567

7. More than Can Be Seen: Tim Rollins and K.O.S.'s I See the Promised Land

    James Romaine

Part Three: Aesthetics

8. The Halo of Human Imaginativity

    Calvin Seerveld

    The Meaning of the Crucifixion: Grünewald and Perugino

9. Rethinking Art

    Nicholas Wolterstorff

    The Social Protest Meaning of the Graphic Art of Käthe Kollwitz

10. Imagination, Art, and Civil Society: Re-envisioning Reformational Aesthetics

    Lambert Zuidervaart

    Redemptive Art Criticism

11. Art, Body, and Feeling: New Roads for Neo-Calvinist Aesthetics

    Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin

    Chris Ofili: Contemporary Art and the Return of Religion

Part Four: Theology and Art

12. The Theology of Art of Gerardus van der Leeuw and Paul Tillich

    Wessel Stoker

13. The Elusive Quest for Beauty

    William Edgar

14. Fifty-Plus Years of Art and Theology: 1970 to Today

    Victoria Emily Jones

Adorno, Foucault, and Feminist Theory: The Politics of Truth

Chapter 7: "Adorno, Foucault, and Feminist Theory: The Politics of Truth." By Lambert Zuidervaart. In Feminism and the Early Frankfurt School. Studies in Critical Social Sciences series, Vol. 271. Edited by Christine A. Payne & Jeremiah Morelock. Leiden: Brill, 2024. 133–161.

Available at: Brill online.

Volume Overview:

The early Frankfurt School and feminism can and should inform each other. This volume presents an original collection of scholarship bringing together scholars of the Frankfurt School and feminist scholars. Essays included in the volume explore ideas from the early Frankfurt School that were explicitly focused on sex, gender, and sexuality, and bring ideas from the early Frankfurt School into productive dialogue with historical and contemporary feminist theory. Ranging across philosophy, sociology, gender and sexuality studies, science studies, and cultural studies, the essays investigate heteropatriarchy, essentialism, identity, intersectional feminism, and liberation. Set against an alarming context of growing gender and related forms of authoritarianism, this timely volume demonstrates the necessity of thinking these powerhouse approaches together in a united front.  

Chapter Opening:

"So far as we know, Theodor Adorno (1903–1969) and Michel Foucault (1926–1984) never met. Nor, for the most part, did they read each other’s work. Yet their critiques of Western society are strikingly similar—so similar, in fact, that they have drawn comparable criticisms from Jürgen Habermas and Axel Honneth. They have also received analogous defenses from feminist Critical Theorists, such as Amy Allen and Deborah Cook, who challenge Habermas and Honneth’s criticisms." [continue reading]

Kunst D.V. (Neo)calvinistische perspectieven op esthetica, kunstgeschiedenis en kunsttheologie

Kunst D.V. (Neo)calvinistische perspectieven op esthetica, kunstgeschiedenis en kunsttheologie, eds. Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker and Roger D. Henderson. Amsterdam: Buijten & Schipperheijn Motief, 2020. ISBN 978-94-6369-070-6 [Dutch]

Selected Chapter Titles:

"Verbeelding, kunst en civil society: een nieuwe kijk op neocalvinistische esthetica" (pp. 223-46), and "Verlossende kunstkritiek: Earth’s Lament van Joyce A. Recker"(pp. 247-52) [Dutch translation by Arend Smilde and Marleen Hengelaar-Rookmaaker] by Lambert Zuidervaart

"De aureool van de menselijke verbeelding" (pp. 169-192), and "De betekenis van de kruisiging: Grünewald en Perugino" (pp. 193-7) by Calvin G. Seerveld

"Calvijn en kunst: zuivere visie of blinde vlek?" (pp. 51-60), "Kunst, lichaam en gevoel: Nieuwe wegen voorde calvinistische esthetica," (pp. 253-271), and "Chris Ofili: Hedendaagse kunst en de terugkeer van religie" (pp. 272-278) by Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin

Find it on: Buijten & Schipperheijn

Kunst D.V. is a handsome, hefty volume (374 pages, untranslated) in the Dutch language. After a succinct introduction there are four sections. The editors and Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin explicate the roots of the Calvinian faith-thought tradition toward the arts found in Jean Calvin, Abraham Kuyper, and Dooyeweerd. Then Hans Rookmaaker, E. John Walford and James Romaine exemplify how art history can be done in a perspective sensitive to a Christian world-and-life vision. Calvin Seerveld, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lambert Zuidervaart, and Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin show how their communal focus on aesthetic theory can contribute to understanding imaginative and artistic realities. Finally the "theology of art" tack is introduced by Wessel Stoker, William Edgar, and Victoria Emily Jones. The many colour reproductions are of excellent quality, the notes are substantial, and various of the authors take issue with the characteristic ideas of the other writers for a lively, open-ended, up to date introduction to the important contribution made by thinkers regarding art and aesthetics in the line of Reformational Christian philosophical reflection.

— Calvin G. Seerveld

On Being a Reformational Philosopher: Spirituality, Religion, and the Call to Love

Lecture to the ICS "Scripture, Faith, and Scholarship" seminar. Lambert Zuidervaart. November 14, 2014.

• Watch the videos below.

• Read the paper in the ICS Institutional Repository.

Outline:

A Christian philosopher continually seeks to align the spiritual orientation of his or her philosophical practices and their results with the scriptures-within-worship of the Christian community, insofar as this authoritative touchstone discloses the God of love—preferably doing this within a religiously inflected tradition of scholarship—while remaining vigilant in the pursuit of alignment and open to having one’s philosophy spiritually reoriented by God’s self-disclosure.

Christian philosophy is a spiritually oriented response, both in practices and in results, to the God of love, faithful to the scriptures-within-worship, and ever open to the surprising ways in which God calls and guides and inspires us to follow Jesus along the pathways of love.

How Not To Be an Anti-Realist: Habermas, Truth, and Justification.

Zuidervaart, Lambert. “How Not to Be an Anti-Realist: Habermas, Truth, and Justification.” Philosophia Reformata 77 (2012): 1-18. Also in Truth Matters: Knowledge, Politics, Ethics, Religion (McGill-Queen’s University Press, forthcoming).

This essay proposes a way past the debate between realist and anti-realist conceptions of truth in analytic philosophy. Responding to Alvin Plantinga’s paper “How To Be an Anti-Realist,” I propose a new account of propositional truth, one that emphasizes the interdependence between mind and object. I develop this account in interaction with Jürgen Habermas’s “pragmatic realism.”

Social Justice and Human Rights Conference

Social Justice and Human Rights. Organising Committee: Lambert Zuidervaart, Thomas Reynolds, Kathy Vandergrift, Shannon Hoff, Allyson Carr, Matthew Klaassen and Lyle Clark. April 2012.

• View session videos, descriptions and summaries

Social Justice and Human Rights was a two-day interdisciplinary, interreligious and cross-sectoral conference presented by the ICS Centre for Philosophy, Religion and Social Ethics in partnership with Emmanuel College. Thirty-six presenters hosted seventeen sessions including keynote addresses by Nicholas Wolterstorff and Melissa Williams.

Theodor W. Adorno

Zuidervaart, Lambert. "Theodor W. Adorno," The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.). Substantive revision of an entry first published in 2003.

This essay summarizes the life and work of one of the most important philosophers and social critics in Germany after World War II. It discusses his social philosophy, aesthetics, epistemology, and ethics. An earlier version appears as an appendix in my book Social Philosophy after Adorno (Cambridge UP, 2007), 183-201.

Religion in Public: Passages from Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.

Zuidervaart, Lambert. “Religion in Public: Passages from Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.” University of Toronto Journal for Jewish Thought, 1 (April 2010).

Read it in the ICS Institutional Repository: hdl.handle.net/10756/345910

Do religious communities have important contributions to make in public debates about politics, economics, and social policy? Or, as Richard Rorty once argued, does religion serve primarily as a public “conversation-stopper”? This essay provides a normative account of religion, the state, and their relationship: religion should have both critical and utopian roles toward the state, I argue, and it should both support and disturb civil society. Religious truth, properly understood, is not at odds with democratic communication; religion need not be a “conversation-stopper.”

Art in Public: An Alternative Case for Government Arts Funding.

Zuidervaart, Lambert. “Art in Public: An Alternative Case for Government Arts Funding.” Published online in The Other Journal, Issue 15 on Aesthetics, July 3, 2009.

Why should governments provide funding for the arts? This essay explores three mainstream political answers and provides a reformational alternative. My more complete account is in the book Art in Public: Politics, Economics, and a Democratic Culture (Cambridge UP, 2011).

Unfinished Business: Toward a Reformational Conception of Truth.

Zuidervaart, Lambert. “Unfinished Business: Toward a Reformational Conception of Truth.” Philosophia Reformata, 74 (2009): 1-20. Available for download at: http://www.philosophia-reformata.org/content/archive.

Read it in the ICS Institutional Repository: hdl.handle.net/10756/250091

This essay presents my general conception of truth and shows how it relates to Herman Dooyeweerd’s conception. I propose that truth is a dynamic correlation between (1) human fidelity to societal principles and (2) a life-giving disclosure of society. This proposal puts the notion of propositional truth in a wider context, and it links the discursive justification of truth claims with our practically bearing witness to the truth.

Ethical Turns: Adorno Defended against His Devotees.

Zuidervaart, Lambert. “Ethical Turns: Adorno Defended against His Devotees.” Symposium, 13 (Spring 2009) 22-39. Available for download at: http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/symposium/vol13/iss1/2/.

This essay examines Theodor W. Adorno’s politics and ethics. Taking issue with sympathetic readings that overlook both his radical structural critique and his political limitations, I argue for a return to questions of collective agency and social ethics. I suggest that a democratic politics of global transformation is required in order to do justice to Adorno’s insights. The essay is a revised excerpt from Chapter 6 in Social Philosophy after Adorno (Cambridge UP, 2007).

Earth’s Lament: Suffering, Hope, and Wisdom.

Zuidervaart, Lambert. “Earth’s Lament: Suffering, Hope, and Wisdom.” Published online in The Other Journal, Issue 14 (January 27, 2009).

Read it in the ICS Institutional Repository: hdl.handle.net/10756/294559

This essay is a revised version of the ICS inaugural lecture I gave in 2003. It proposes a philosophy that is committed to truth and passionate for comprehensive wisdom, one that expresses suffering out of hope for God’s future.

Truth Matters: Heidegger and Horkheimer in Dialectical Disclosure.

Zuidervaart, Lambert. “Truth Matters: Heidegger and Horkheimer in Dialectical Disclosure.” Telos, no. 145 (Winter 2008): 131-60.

This article examines two seminal essays from the 1930s, one by Martin Heidegger and the other by Max Horkheimer. I show that they have more in common then one might first expect and that each serves to correct the other on the question of how propositional truth connects with larger issues of life and society. I develop this dialectical critique in order to propose my own account of truth. A longer version under the same title appears in the booklet Phenomenology and Critical Theory, ed. Christina Rawls (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University, The Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center, 2008), 38-66.

Available for download at: http://journal.telospress.com/content/2008/145/131.full.pdf+html

Metaphysics after Auschwitz: Suffering and Hope in Adorno’s Negative Dialectics.

Zuidervaart, Lambert. “Metaphysics After Auschwitz: Suffering and Hope in Adorno’s Negative Dialectics.” In Adorno and the Need in Thinking: New Critical Essays, pp. 133-62. Ed. Donald Burke et al. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007.

Adorno’s Negative Dialectics challenges the assumption that contemporary philosophy needs to be “postmetaphysical.” Philosophy must incorporate “metaphysical experience,” he argues. Otherwise it cannot engage in thorough social critique, remain unswervingly self-critical, and hold open historical possibilities for a different society. Revising Adorno’s famous claim about poetry after Auschwitz, I suggest that to write suffering and hope out of philosophy is barbaric. Contemporary philosophy cannot afford self-imposed silence in an age of global destruction. Much of this essay appears, lightly revised, in Chapters 1 and 2 of  Social Philosophy after Adorno (Cambridge UP, 2007).

Imaginative Disclosure: Adorno, Habermas, and Artistic Truth.

Zuidervaart, Lambert. "Imaginative Disclosure: Adorno, Habermas, and Artistic Truth." Symposium, 8 (Fall 2004): 519-48. Reprinted in Habermas II, Vol. 4. Ed. David Rasmussen and James Swindal, London: SAGE, 2010.

The tradition of Critical Theory divides over the idea of artistic truth. This essay proposes a new convergence between "Adornian" and "Habermasian" approaches. I describe artistic truth as internal to artworks, as Theodor Adorno claims, but differentiated into three dimensions ("authenticity," "significance," and "integrity") that recall Jürgen Habermas's theory of validity. I explore how these three dimensions of artistic truth correlate with communicative claims to validity. This essay derives from Chapter 6 in Artistic Truth: Aesthetics, Discourse, and Imaginative Disclosure (Cambridge UP, 2004).

A Tradition Transfigured: Art and Culture in Reformational Aesthetics.

Zuidervaart, Lambert. "A Tradition Transfigured: Art and Culture in Reformational Aesthetics." Faith and Philosophy, 21 (July 2004): 381-92.

This essay discusses reformational aesthetics as a religious and intellectual tradition that is distinct from Evangelical and sacramental traditions. It uses debates among Hans Rookmaaker, Calvin Seerveld, and Nicholas Wolterstorff to point this tradition in a new direction, one that replaces modern notions of worldview, artworks, and aesthetics with an emphasis on public interaction, cultural practices, and interdisciplinary studies.

The Great Turning Point: Religion and Rationality in Dooyeweerd’s Transcendental Critique.

Zuidervaart, Lambert. "The Great Turning Point: Religion and Rationality in Dooyeweerd’s Transcendental Critique." Faith and Philosophy, 21 (January 2004): 65-89.

Read it in the ICS Institutional Repository: hdl.handle.net/10756/305242

This essay responds to Hugo Meynell’s objections to the purported fideism and anti-foundationalism of Herman Dooyeweerd’s philosophy. First the essay explains the context and structure of Dooyeweerd’s “transcendental critique of theoretical thought,” his attempt to uncover the “religious root” of philosophy and of other disciplines. Next I show why Meynell’s criticisms are off base, even though they point toward important problems in Dooyeweerd’s logic and in his notion of religion. Then I explain these problems and suggest ways to address them.