Culture longing for revelation

I received the latest edition of Image today which contains an excellent interview with Godfriend Cardinal Daneels, Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels.

The opening summary of Danneels' career and thought suggests that he "argues for an incarnational model of the relationship between faith and religion, in which God the creator has entered the world integrally in order to divinize it." Danneels has written that "culture becomes a kind of blueprint of revelation: not the object of worship, but of divinization. Creation awaits re-creation and culture longs for revelation, as the stem for the flower."

In the interview Danneels says that "ultimately the one who is the object of our faith can't be fully grasped with concepts. In theology and catechesis there is room for symbolism and poetry, which are means of saying much without pretending to say all." He returns to this theme later in the interview saying that "symbols and narratives ... are not matters of clarity and correctness, but of suggestiveness and waking enthusiasm and appealing to intuition and the senses."

Jesus was the greatest artist, he says, pointing to "something greater, something deeper - to the truth." "Such beauty disarms us when we find it. It shows us our own possibility and opens us to what lies beyond ourselves."

In the interview he discusses the work of four artists that he thinks have this effect on us through their art: Jan Vanriet; Michel Ciry; Father Maur; and Arcabas. Vanriet's, Danneels suggests, is a "purely evocative art" that "suggests everything and shows little." Michel Ciry's work is "intense," "it burns, as in the Emmaus story." "Father Maur," he says, "invites us to see in another way" with the Spirit as "the ordering principle." Finally, Arcabas' works are, he thinks, very accessible, full of warm colours, and reminiscent of the paintings of Fra Angelico.