Years ago, the progressive rock group Kansas had a huge hit with an unlikely song, a spare and beautiful ballad that suggested “all we are is dust in the wind.” This little hymn of hopelessness reflects the way many of our contemporaries see themselves. It leads us to ask, Who are we and what kind of world do we live in? Is there any meaning to our existence?
Many profess a philosophy of “nothing but.” Humans are nothing but the evolutionary product of molecules in motion. Love is nothing but the romanticized response to the reactions of bodily chemistry and the need to propagate the species. Religious convictions are nothing but empty fantasies and wishes in search of fulfillment. As a result, meaning simply doesn’t exist, except as we create it for ourselves. We’re simply dust in the wind.
“Nothing but” philosophy is known as naturalistic reductionism, and it has become pervasive in our culture. It rests on the belief that only science can tell us the truth about ourselves and our world, and that when it comes down to it, the story it offers is a small and meager tale.
The Christian, of course, holds a different set of convictions about reality. We have an alternative story to tell—a hope based on the meaning invested in us by our Creator. But those who don’t share our presuppositions about reality are often disinterested in what we have to say. Our spiritual narrative feels out of step with the world, a voice crying in the wilderness.
Jeremy Begbie is research professor of theology at Duke Divinity School. His book Abundantly More: The Theological Promise of the Arts in a Reductionistic World finds an unexpected ally in the arts for those who want to counter the prevailing reductionism of our time.
Counternarrative to Reductionism
In Abundantly More, Begbie pushes readers to move beyond seeing the arts as merely entertainment or distraction or tools for propaganda. He suggests a fresh and largely neglected value of the arts. They offer a counternarrative to the naturalistic reductionism that permeates disciplines like science, philosophy, and psychology.
The arts point us toward the complexity of reality—its subtlety, its spiritual foundations, and its multivalent meanings. The arts have the “capacity to draw upon and generate multiple and potentially inexhaustible levels of meaning, and in this way to offer a resistance movement of sorts . . . to the dominant drives of modernity’s reductive imagination” (xiv–xv). They have much to reveal to us about the complexities of who we are and our place in the universe.
The arts point us toward the complexity of reality—its subtlety, its spiritual foundations, and its multivalent meanings.
Of course, artists probably don’t need to have this explained to them. Whether consciously or unconsciously, this is what art has always been about. This is a book for others to gain an appreciation of the value of art.
Unexpected Value of the Arts
The arts help us to stop and pay attention to things we might otherwise ignore. They help us reflect on the meanings inherent in a moment, holding it before us for inspection and contemplation so we might glimpse its depths.
Great artists pull back the curtain to reveal there’s more in a moment than what we initially see and hear. For example, Rembrandt and van Gogh encourage us to take a second look so our vision can be expanded. Bach and Górecki ask us to listen and let the music speak to us in our deepest places. Hopkins and Wordsworth speak to us of a world that’s “charged with the grandeur of God,” as did the psalmist of old.
The power of poetic expression to carry a multitude of layers of meaning is perhaps the reason so much of the Bible employs this form, from the Psalms to the parables to apocalyptic prophecy. Poetic language “opens up” in such a way that it creates a deeper subjective receptivity to God’s revelation.
‘Muchness’ and Abundance
The arts open up reality for an inspection which reveals there’s more going on than what can be discerned under a microscope or through a telescope. Through the arts, the partially hidden “muchness” of our world and our experience come more clearly into view.
When we read a novel or poem, listen to a symphony or popular song, or view a painting or piece of architecture, we’re confronted with what Begbie refers to as “abundance.” The arts remind us that our world is the creative artistry of a God of abundance, a God whose fullness cannot be fully contained by our thoughts or our language.
Perhaps one of the failures of modernity is the lack of imagination. The arts remind us the apparent complexity of existence isn’t simply apparent. It is, indeed, the nature of the way things are. Life is full of complexity, nuance, subtlety, and a multivalence of meanings.
Things aren’t less but more than they appear to be at first blush. The universe isn’t simply a machine but something more like a complicated and glorious poem.
More than Dust in the Wind
As Begbie says, the arts can set us free of the deadening effects of reductionism. They open us to new experiences, new emotions, and new perceptions about reality—all of which point toward a creation that’s far more abundant in meaning than the reductionist would allow
The arts serve as a reminder that our world is the creative artistry of a God of abundance, a God whose fullness cannot be fully contained by our thoughts or our language.
They ask us to contemplate something beyond mere existence—something larger and more beautiful and more complex. They remind us we’re more than “dust in the wind.”
Begbie is cautious about treating naturalistic reductionism in a simplistic or caricatured manner. He strives for philosophical precision in his prose. Therefore, the nonacademic reader may have to put in more effort than he or she would prefer. But those who are willing to read carefully will be rewarded with a more expansive understanding of how the arts can help us see beyond the limitations of reductionist philosophies.
This book is the work of a seasoned theologian who has thought much about what the arts can reveal to us about our world and ourselves. Abundantly More shows evidence of wide reading and careful analysis as he posits the question of how our engagement with the arts might help us respond to a reductionist view of our existence.
The Gospel Coalition