How do the three words “Christian,” “sex,” and “art” fit together? This is a vital question in our time, not only for the Christian doing art but also for the Christian encountering art.

Our culture confronts us with art products which have to do with sex and which are unacceptable to our moral sense as Christians, and we call these products “pornographic.” We are also confronted with some art products that offend the social standards of the larger society to which we belong. These products have usually been called “obscene.”

If we want to talk about what obscenity is and is not in art, we might look for an example of sex in art in the Bible. When we do, our minds go to one book: The Song of Solomon. If we look at that book, we have to admit that in the Scriptures themselves there is artwork about sex, and, furthermore, there are points in chapters 4 and 7 that are so potentially explicit that most translations muff them.1 Nevertheless, we would not call these passages pornographic or obscene. We could call them “erotic.” So we’ve already suggested some differences in terms—“pornographic,” “obscene,” and “erotic”—terms that are mistakenly used as if they were interchangeable. To begin with, we may deal with obscenity as communication which is offensive to the moral sensitivities of a society. It is not only about sex, but about expressions of violence, torture, physical dehumanization. Anything, in fact, which produces a typical reaction of moral disgust.2

We must also note at the onset that the question of sex in art not only involves pictorial art, it involves art in literature, dance, and even music as well. This makes the issue more complicated, and it is still further complicated by two additional factors in our society. One is that the mass media (a phenomenon specific to our age) has raised the public availability of all types of art to new levels—worldwide levels. The other complication is that in the U.S., and even in so small a country as Britain, national culture has become so fragmented; the way in which people read a work of art is affected not so much by their nationality as by their particular subculture, which has its own style, its own images, and its own linguistic connotations.

Consequently, the context in which we must approach the question of sex in art is analogous, really, to the Tower of Babel. Post-Babel people who are in conversation or controversy on the subject of sex in art are often not talking to each other: they are talking past each other. We no longer share a single meaning system. What may be acceptable to one group can be profoundly offensive to another. This is a very common problem today. In fact, problems of political correctness are now becoming so complex as to make communication, in some cases, almost impossible. No matter what one does as an artist, she’s going to upset somebody. And something that might be pornographic to some art partakers may well be merely erotic to others.

Fundamentals for a Christian View of Sex in Art

Despite all these complications, I think that Christians should be able to develop some kind of consensus on the issue of sex in art, within a Christian worldview. We have got to work at that together. I say this because Christians nowadays often tend to react to pornography, for instance, with expressions of emotional disgust. This is understandable, of course, although it seems to me that they are reacting to the artwork’s obscenity rather than its morality, and that the moral issue is often imposed on top of that. (There’s a lot of inconsistency when it comes to sex in art, and we need to bear that in mind.) Other Christians want to show that they embrace the tolerance of our culture, so they will demonstrate a kind of codified toleration for the same artwork that disgusts others.

At the same time, inconsistent and emotional responses to art continue to cloud the issue. Reactions to nudity in art are an excellent example. I subtitled a recent book on the subject “Goya Got over Andy Warhol,” because though both Goya and Warhol present frontal nudes, Christians generally object to the latter artist and not the former. When we actually ask a lot of card-carrying Evangelicals—and other folks who object to that kind of thing—they can’t actually give us a reasoned answer as to why one artist’s nudes are offensive and the other’s are not. There’s no rationale. It’s some kind of instinct. And if all we’ve got as Christians is a critique based on a sort of inarticulate instinct, we’re never going to convince people outside of the faith that our attitudes are anything more than irrational prejudice. What’s more, we will never ourselves be able to produce worthwhile erotic art without having a guilty conscience—and that’s a serious phenomenon.

John Donne, a seventeenth-century English poet, wrote an amazing erotic poem in which he likens his beloved to the newfound America; he works through her charms in considerable detail in the poem. It’s erotic but not pornographic. A different kind of experience overwhelms us:

Come, Madam, come, all rest my powers defy,
Until I labour, I in labour lie.
The foe oft-times having the foe in sight,
Is tired with standing though they never fight.
Off with that girdle, like heaven’s zone glistering,
But a far fairer world encompassing.
Unpin that spangled breastplate which you wear,
That th’ eyes of busy fools may be stopped there.
Unlace yourself, for that harmonious chime
Tells me from you, that now ‘tis your bed time.
Off with that happy busk, which I envy,
That still can be, and still can stand so nigh.
Your gown going off, such beauteous state reveals,
As when from flowery meads th’ hill’s shadow
steals.
Off with that wiry coronet and show
The hairy diadem which on you doth grow;
Now off with those shoes, and then safely tread
In this love’s hallowed temple, this soft bed.
In such white robes heaven’s angels used to be
Received by men; thou angel bring’st with thee
A heaven like Mahomet’s paradise; and though
Ill spirits walk in white, we easily know
By this these angels from an evil sprite,
Those set our hairs, but these our flesh upright.
Licence my roving hands, and let them go
Before, behind, between, above, below.
O my America, my new found land,
My kingdom, safeliest when with one man manned,
My mine of precious stones, my empery,
How blessed am I in this discovering thee!
To enter in these bonds, is to be free;
Then where my hand is set, my seal shall be.
Full nakedness, all joys are due to thee.
As souls unbodied, bodies unclothed must be,
To taste whole joys. Gems which you women use
Are like Atlanta’s balls, cast in men’s views,
That when a fool’s eye lighteth on a gem,
His earthly soul may covet theirs, not them.
Like pictures, or like books’ gay coverings made
For laymen, are all women thus arrayed;
Themselves are mystic books, which only we
Whom their imputed grace will dignify
Must see revealed. Then since I may know,
As liberally, as to a midwife, show
Thyself: cast all, yea, this white linen hence,
Here is no penance, much less innocence.
To teach thee, I am naked first, why then
What needst thou have more covering than a man.3

Donne was a devout believer, but I don’t think contemporary Christians are capable any longer of producing that kind of literature. We would be frightened. Maybe I’m wrong, but certainly we have problems producing erotic literature for our generation that is really true to the biblical vision of sex. Our generation desperately needs that vision.

A Characterization of Art

There are two things we Christians must initially do to develop some consistency in our approach to the issue of sex in art. We’ve got to talk about the nature of art, and we’ve also got to talk about the nature of sex, and see how these two are going to interact. To move ahead we need not a definition but a characterization of art. So, here we are: A work of art is the arrangement of raw materials in creation aimed at expressing some experience of insight into an aspect of life’s meaning implicit in the subject. The subject can be immense or it can be trivial. Art achieves its effect in an oblique way by creating a part of an imaginary world, and it aims at provoking and enabling the recipient to discover and to be initiated into an experience analogous to that of the artist. In so doing (and this is a vital part for our discussion), it leaves the recipient free to choose an appropriate response.

I hope that certain implications of such a characterization of art become clearly relevant straightaway. One is that if we are to appreciate the way in which sex can be properly treated in Christian art, we’ve got to explore a typically Christian vision of what sex is about, which we will get to in a minute. A second implication is this: If art is an oblique communication, then it won’t do to criticize the material as if it’s simply giving information. This is a serious issue, especially for us evangelical Christians who tend to have a tradition of prepositional faith, a faith which involves receiving the information and believing it, rather than getting involved in personal relationships. For example, the plots of many operas, such as Tristan and Isolde, involve love affairs which can only be described as adulterous. It might be objected that such a thing should not be portrayed in an opera by Christians. But the question to be asked about Tristan and Isolde is, What does this work suggest? Not, What does it state? but What does it suggest? Does it suggest that adultery is commendable or fun or desirable? Or is adultery portrayed as wrong, even tragic?

In some romantic tales, it seems that erotic desire makes adultery a moral obligation. In Tristan and Isolde, the relationship is portrayed and suggested to be an enormous unavoidable accident, intended by fate. This obviously isn’t a Christian idea. Some art goes even further, suggesting that adultery entails no moral struggle. It is mere fun. And I’m not only thinking of modern cases. I think some Restoration drama is like that.

For art to be effective, it must be suggestive. It has to be illusory. Art works by at least two basic principles: illusion and allusion. There’s a kind of riddle quality about art. This is because it has to allow us to enter into it for ourselves. It gives us clues and we have to work them out for ourselves and then enter in. Art therefore has to produce, in a sense, an illusion of reality. Essentially it offers us a kind of “let’s pretend” situation. It creates a situation which we know isn’t true, but we pretend is. It may be realistic; in a sense, it has to be realistic within the terms of the world that it’s creating. But above all it must not be real—it must not be actual. The illusion must be maintained.

I had problems with my oldest son, who is a violinist and a perfectionist. When he was learning to play the violin, if he got a note slightly wrong he would stop. And I used to say, “Michael, this is unforgivable. Don’t break the illusion. Ninety percent of your audience won’t know it’s the wrong note. Keep going.” This is the essential thing. If we introduce the real world into our illusory world, we’ve messed it up. This is vital for our subject, I think. It’s true in all sorts of ways. The stage, particularly, has conventions that preserve this illusion. A preoccupation with realism seems to me a sign of artistic decadence. It’s like a confession of failure. It puts the actual in place of the possible.

Some material elements are very real but we can’t use them on the stage. Imagine trying to stage a violent mugging and having the actor throw real nitric acid in the face of the victim, just like in real life. It wouldn’t work. It would be very realistic, but we certainly wouldn’t be able to find an actor who would or could play the part of the victim every night! Or suppose we were trying to portray warfare, so we sprayed the audience with real bullets from a machine gun. That would not be conducive to box office returns. Furthermore, that sort of realism is an admission of failure. We haven’t, in such a case, been able to create a proper illusion. I am arguing that the portrayal of the sex act is of such an order. It needs to be implied rather than portrayed.

There is a kind of art that intends to be sexually arousing, and when sexual arousal occurs, the art is introducing an involuntary response in its recipients. That’s a serious issue, and it leads to a crucial question. If art works by provoking or stimulating the recipient into sharing the artist’s experience, are all experiences of equal value? Indeed, are some appropriate? For instance, in this age we’re beginning to get wary of modern films that make us feel violence is a natural, and therefore acceptable, way to deal with situations that get on our nerves. In short, we have to consider the values that are encouraged in our emotional response to the work. What kind of value is attached to sex in a work of art? This approach will help us to further distinguish between the erotic and the pornographic, as hopefully I can show.

A Christian View of Sex

It’s this question of values that brings me back to the second major part of this subject, namely the distinctively biblical Christian meaning of sex—and there is a distinctive Christian meaning. (There are plenty of books written about this. I would recommend the work of Lewis Smedes on this subject, for some fundamentals of a Christian view.) There are several factors that are particularly significant for our discussion of the distinctively Christian meaning of sex. One is that, in Scripture, sexuality is more significant than sexual experience. The founding narratives of Genesis chapters 1-3 stress the significance of the difference between the sexes and their different functions, more than how the differences are expressed physically. In particular, the chapters emphasize that sexuality is a function of our humanness as made in the image of God. The two are directly related: human beings are made in the image of God and they are made sexually differentiated. The two are intimately connected.

This means that the founding documents of our faith suggest that sex is something more than simply a kind of physical conjunction like dogs copulating in the street. This leads to the conclusion that sex—like everything else in human nature—is therefore symbolic. If a human being is made in the image of God, and if that image is fundamental to his being, then human sexuality is part of the image of God. We may conclude from this that sexual behavior is symbolic in that it reflects something about God’s nature. One might even say that sex, in this sense, is sacramental.

In Scripture, sexual union is frequently used to illustrate the love of Yahweh for His people, especially to illustrate the exclusive, even jealous, nature of His love. Indeed the very nature of the act of intercourse involves exclusivity. On the other hand, it also involves a self-abandonment which is physically total. Sex is symbolic, therefore, of a mutual commitment in which the two parties commit the control of their personal lives to each other, not simply commit their lives to each other but commit the control of their lives to each other. And it’s this fact, as much as the biological drive, which makes the sex instinct so powerful.

It is interesting to note further that in the second chapter of Genesis, where the creation of the man and the woman is in closer focus, the dominant significance of human sexuality is more societal than personal. In this chapter, there isn’t even a hint that the purpose of sex is reproduction. When we look at the history of Christian thinking about sex over the centuries, we find that the morality of sexual behavior was often linked with whether it was going to produce babies or not. But if we look in the second chapter of Genesis, that isn’t the predominant purpose at all. In fact, Eve’s reproductive function isn’t mentioned until after the Fall when, as Phyllis Trible points out, Adam first calls her “Havah” (Eve, the life-giver). If sex is connected with anything up until then, it is connected with being stewards of God’s earth. This shifts the balance of interest quite profoundly. It becomes evident, looking at Genesis as a whole, that sex was not meant to dominate the life and the interest of human beings. For the Christian, sex has a religious significance, but it’s not a religion.

Therefore, when we look at the biblical vision of sex, we have to confess that something has gone profoundly wrong in our makeup. In our culture’s man-woman relationships, women have become radically vulnerable. All the way through history, women have been dependent on the man’s conscience for their status. So, as in Genesis 3, we find that to be a woman is to be in some way emotionally dependent: “to him will be your desire and he will dominate you.” That’s the problem.

All this means relationships—and we’re not only talking marital relationships but also social relationships—have become distorted. And that fact makes it outstandingly difficult to judge the portrayal of sex in art. Clearly, sex is a creation of God, as Paul expressed it, and it is therefore to be received with thanksgiving. Also, as we have seen, Scripture proclaims that there is an erotic art which is acceptable to God. I mean, if He talks about it, we can’t argue, can we? With these issues in mind, we return to the question of the difference between the pornographic and the erotic in a Christian view.

The Primacy of Relationship

It has to be accepted, of course, that human nature is capable of using anything pornographically, but that does not preclude there being a right place for the erotic. We must not let sin hold goodness ransom. Otherwise we wouldn’t enjoy anything. To begin with, Christian erotic art will be more interested in the sexual relationship than in the act. I came across an outstanding example of this in the Tate Gallery in London some years ago, and I’ve never forgotten it. It was a picture of a nude man and woman, a charcoal drawing, and it was life-size. The woman was lying on a couch, naked. On the other side of the couch a man was kneeling on the ground facing the woman. The man was also naked, and his penis was showing (not erect, incidentally, which was probably significant for the purpose of the picture). The point is that the expression on the man’s face was brilliantly portrayed as one of sheer adoration, and I have never forgotten that.

Again, if we were going to look at that piece of art as information, we might well be thoroughly offended. We might say, “We mustn’t have nude pictures.” But if we look at the relationship depicted in the artwork, the stress of the whole picture falls on the way in which this man adores the woman. This special relationship is what absolutely illuminates itself in the picture. And this perfectly illustrates the point that I’m trying to make here. If we ignore that question of meaning and relationship, then what happens in practice (and we can see it happening in our culture) is that sex actually gets boring. And when sex gets boring, it has to be brought to life by the introduction of novelty—that’s a crucial problem in our society. That is what put us on this unending quest to bring sex back to life by finding new ways of doing it. In contrast, Christians should know that the secret of really enjoying sex—and I can say this after forty years of marriage—is to have a living relationship with your partner. That’s the point. Somehow we’ve got to relearn that, both for notions of sex in art and for sex in life.

Good Art versus Pornography

Secondly, our art must aim at being good art. One of the chief complaints we can have about pornography, as can be inferred from what I’ve said, is that pornography is bad art. It violates this principle. Pornography presents the recipient with erotic stimuli which arouse real-life response; it introduces the very thing which breaks the illusion. And this intrudes a reality into the “let’s pretend” world. In a way, pornography is a kind of physical version of what propaganda is to the mind. It pre-empts the necessity for the recipient to work things out, and so make choices about a response.

We may add here, also, that no artwork exists by itself. It has a context, and the context in which we encounter the work has to be taken into account. I mean, if we went into a home where there was one Goya nude on the wall—well, okay. If we found that there were Goya nudes all over the place and that the bathroom wall was covered with them, I think we would feel differently about a Goya nude.

That’s some of our problem today, because what we have is a culture that is saturated with erotic stimuli. On its own, any single stimuli might be quite innocent, but when they’re all over the place we’re up against something different. And what is happening in our culture is that people are being subjected to a succession of erotic stimuli. I sometimes think a lot of the prevalent sexual disorders—pedophilia and the rest of the problems that shock us—are the product of a sexual instinct that has been prodded into overactivity to the extent that it’s become explosive and expresses itself indiscriminately.

A Redemptive Character

Thirdly, sex in art from a Christian standpoint should be redemptive in character. By “redemptive,” I mean that it will want to restore a vision of sex as God originally brought it into being. One important factor in this is privacy, by which I mean the business of implying or suggesting rather than exposing. In some ways, art suggests that privacy is in human beings what holiness is in God. It’s the determination to have an inner being which is totally the property of the person and is only made available to others by deliberate choice on particular, special occasions. If sex is private in this sense, then making images of it public and indiscriminately available violates its true nature and undermines its true value.

I’m inclined to think that the enormous prevalence of impotence among men in the Western world has something to do with this, and I doubt whether Viagra is really the cure. The promulgation of explicit sexual imagery makes available to others what properly only belongs to two people in private. If there is ever to be a proper, Christian eroticism again, as in John Donne, it will always preserve some element of privacy and, hence, of mystery. Of course it will also imply a respect for womanhood as sharing in the divine image—not as something to be possessed but as someone to be adored, to be approached in an attitude of worship. I love to introduce the old prayer book assertion, “With my body, I thee worship,” into any marriages I conduct. This means, of course, that the woman’s body may be portrayed as a pleasurable subject, but never as an object of pleasure.

To summarize: The difference between erotic art and pornography, and the distinctive qualities of a Christian view of sex in art, lie in the following: (1) in the extent to which the dominant effect and intention is to induce sexual arousal: pornography focuses on it; (2) in the focus on the relationship involved rather than sexual gratification: pornography is preoccupied with the latter; and (3) the degree to which it is redemptive and rescues our sexual life from improper exposure and from the idea that sex is an activity with no meaning beyond the physical experience: pornography aims to make sexual intimacy freely accessible without the claims of privacy and commitment.

Finally, there is one further point to make about the redemptive in Christian art. Christian art—even a Christian approach to sex in art—can redeem the imagination. This element of imagination often seems to be neglected in discussions of a Christian approach to art. Because Christians are under the inspiration of the Cross and the Resurrection, and because of the fact that we worship a rescuing God, Christian art has to be something that sees itself as liberating people’s imaginations so that things which otherwise would be unthinkable become possible. I would suggest that each of us read through the parable of the good Samaritan again as an example of that. The story actually liberates the imagination of the questioner, so that at the end he can visualize the possibility that a Samaritan might be a neighbor. In that sense, the story liberates him. Of course whether he wants to be liberated is another matter, but we’re all up against that problem.

The preceding article is an edited and enhanced version of a speech John Peck delivered in November 1998 at Regent University, Virginia. The text of that speech can be found at www.regent.edu/acad/schcom/csfc/journal/peck.html.

Endnotes: 1. Song of Solomon 4:13, for instance, describes the bride’s anatomy. Euphemistic wording was chosen in many translations, but her charms are more forthrightly treated by the New Revised Standard Version: “Your channel is an orchard of pomegranates. . . .” Likewise, early verses in chapter 7 describing the bride’s body are treated with perhaps undue reticence by most translators. 2. Just how complex the issue of what is and what is not obscene can get is illustrated in this 1954 summary of then-current English law regarding obscenity’s definition: “Action may be taken against any matter thought to be corrupt, whether or not that was the intention of the author, under the Obscene Publications Act of 1857. Not only publications, but lending and showing of photographs, manuscripts, etc., have been held to constitute an offence within the meaning of the Act. The meaning of ‘corrupt’ in this context remains undefined and the question of what sort of publications do in fact corrupt remains without a reliable answer.” [G. Rattray Taylor, Sex in History, Thames and Hudson (dist. by Vanguard Press, New York), 1954, p. 311.] American attempts at defining obscenity have been even more convoluted, resulting in the 1873 Comstock Laws which, among other things, prohibited distribution of “any obscene, lewd, lascivious, or filthy book, pamphlet, picture, paper, letter, writing, print, or other matter of indecent character.” The problem came when Anthony Comstock himself was designated the arbiter of just what artworks fell under this definition. It wasn’t until 1933, for instance, that James Joyce’s masterpiece, Ulysses, was legally printable in the United States. Not until 1959 was D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover legally allowed in the United States. One Supreme Court Justice unintentionally illustrated the problem with defining obscenity in the famous quote: “I know it when I see it.” 3. John Donne, “Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going to Bed,” in John Donne: The Complete English Poems, ed. A. J. Smith (New York: Penguin Books, 1972), 124-126.

First published in Cornerstone (ISSN 0275-2743), Vol. 30, Issue 121 (2001), pg. 15.
© 2001 Cornerstone Communications, Inc.
Electronic version may contain minor changes and corrections from printed version.