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?

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
    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
    Redemptive Art Criticism

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

"Knowing" in Ordinary Saints: Living Everyday Life to the Glory of God

"Knowing," chapter by Calvin G. Seerveld, in Ordinary Saints: Living Everyday Life to the Glory of God. Edited by Ned Bustard (Baltimore: Square Halo Books, Inc., 2023) pp. 71-74.


[231 pages, ISBN 9781941106297]

Find it on: Square Halo Books

Over forty writers celebrate Square Halo’s twenty-fifth anniversary with essays on such topics as knitting, home repair, juggling, traffic, pipes, chronic pain, pretzels, and naps.

God Picks up the Pieces: Ecclesiastes as a Chorus of Voices

God Picks up the Pieces: Ecclesiastes as a Chorus of Voices. By Calvin G. Seerveld, Sioux Center: Dordt University Press, 2023. 

[138 pages, ISBN 978-0-932914-16-3]

Find it on: Tuppence

A fresh literary translation from the Hebrew of the biblical Older Testament book of Ecclesiastes, introduced and arranged as script for oral choral presentation, with comment on its meaning.

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