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Book Reviews
401
Steven Félix-Jäger,Spirit of the Arts: Towards a Pneumatological Aesthetics of
Renewal (New York, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). xiv + 240 pp. $119.00
hardcover.
Spirit of the Arts: Towards a Pneumatological Aesthetics of Renewal undertakes the ambitious project of providing an apt theological model for the artistic productions of the renewal movement. Steven Félix-Jäger devotes the first two chapters of his book to overcoming the disdain for the arts that lingers in the renewal movement and developing his proposed model of “universal outpour.” Each of the six following chapters applies this model to a different art-form and proposes “the way forward” for the creation of theologically and aesthetically rich works of art. Before concluding, Félix-Jäger explores dance, music, orality, visual art, cinema, and architecture, drawing out the theological dimensions of how these artforms help us to reimagine what it means to move, love, speak, see, and dwell in this world. To keep these reflections moored in actual renewal communities and their art, the author anchors each chapter to case-studies of exemplary artists and pieces. The result of this effort is an intriguing book that suggests not only that theology can inform the arts, but that the arts can inform theology by providing an epistemology of their own that is capable of deepen- ing our relationships with ourselves, our communities, and our God.
A theological model, Félix-Jäger explains, is a “rootmetaphor” or constructed vantage point that organizes our perceptions and directs our inquiries by grounding them in a foundational leitmotif or image. To date, he contends, much theological aesthetic literature has adopted a model of “Christ as medi- ator” or “sacrificial offering” to make sense of God, creation, and creativity. However, these Christocentric metaphors provide insufficient models for the pneumatological aesthetics of the renewal movements. Moreover, if a theo- logical model is to be sufficiently responsive to renewal aesthetics, it must be capacious enough to illumine the distinctive commitments of this movement.
Among these commitments, Félix-Jäger emphasizes embodiment and com- munity as normative concepts. The faith of the renewal movements is not a bare intellectual ascription to a set of doctrines, but an embodied mode of being in the world. Moreover, this way of being is uniquely intelligible within “spirit-filled” communities that image the relationality of the Trinity and form revelations into standards of truth. Thus, Félix-Jäger turns to Peter’s Pentecost declaration, as recorded in Acts 2:16–17, and hones in on the apostle’s quotation of Joel,todevelopametaphorresponsibletothesevalues:“Inthelastdaysitwill be … that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daugh- ters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.” This foundational image captures several pivotal points:
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© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/15700747-04003010
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the spirit of God is poured out on flesh—embodied beings; and it is poured out onall flesh—a community of faith that is potentially universal in breadth.
Within this theological model, the artistic productions of the renewal move- ment are cast as the continuation of the prophecy, vision, and dreaming con- stitutive of the community of faith that has been called together by the Holy Spirit. From this vantage point, artistic creation stands to excel a mimetic exer- cise in which a Cartesian subject reproduces an object of experience. Concern- ing its origin, the creativity of the renewal movement is premised on the artist’s intimate connection to God and Creation that is mediated by the Spirit. Félix- Jäger carefully emphasizes the affective embodied forms of knowledge that are required for the production and appreciation of renewal artwork. Finally, this model suggests that art is not merely mimetic but is performative. Not only do communities create art, but art also creates communities. At stake, then, in the cultivation of great art is the cultivation of theologically and spiritually vibrant communities; that is, the enduring vitality of the spiritual outpour which was begun on Pentecost and declared by the apostle Peter.
In this respect, Spirit of the Arts recalls, in a theological setting, one of the most intriguing convictions of Frühromantik—the vital connection between Einbildungskraft(imagination),Bild(image), andBildung(development). Jena Romantics, like Friedrich Schlegel and Novalis, imagined a direct connection between aesthetic production and social development.The expansion of imag- inative capacity would correspond to the expansion of social possibilities. The artistic image itself betokened the possibility of a new kind of community. Similarly, in his chapter on visual art, for instance, Félix-Jäger proposes that works of “visionary art” encapsulate different ways of seeing the world and the divine. By consequence, they bear the promise of a different way of being in the world. One of the most striking benefits of Félix-Jäger’s contribution, then, is the kinship that his book intimates between contemporary writers on the- ological aesthetics, like Alex García-Rivera, and earlier philosophical thinkers, like the Jena Romantics.
In the introduction, Félix-Jäger posits that Pentecostals and charismatics can and must join the conversation of the broader creative public. The kin- ship between theological and philosophical aesthetics that this book evinces lends plausibility to that claim. In this respect,Spirit of the Artsmight be taken as the promissory note for a much broader project that will be the work of a diverse collection of interlocutors that hail not only from the renewal move- ments that are the subject of the book but from an array of other theological and disciplinary backgrounds. An eclectic assortment of philosophers, theolo- gians, and practitioners already provide the sources for Félix-Jäger’s book. The questions that the book raises ought to inspire a similarly eclectic range of
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readers. The chapter on music, for instance, might as easily inspire responses from theologians, who wish to interrogate his theory of eros and worship, as ethnographers, who wish to study more carefully how worshippers consume this aesthetic material. Each chapter offers similar possibilities. For this rea- son, Spirit of the Arts is a worthwhile read not only for specialists but also for students in advanced seminars on theology, theological aesthetics, ethics, and the study of religious practices.
Bryan Ellrod
Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia [email protected]
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