Chris,
Very interesting blog entry. I’m currently writing an essay on the state of the arts in evangelical culture (I’m about 40 pages into it). Basically, I contend that the union of Christian art with worldly populism, through Christian rock, burger king logos, etc. is what ruined any attempt for truly authentic Christian art. To me, the most authentic Christian art out there, believe it or not, is Jack Chick tracts, because of their brutal acceptance of every hard doctrine the Scripture preaches, as well as their tendency to confront (I’d say overconfront) the “world” in everything they put out. But then, I tend to see art as fundamentally destructive, particularly popular art. Peter Watkins, a British film director from the sixties, made a film called Privilege (which you should check out, as it predicts the rise of the Christian rock scene). Watkins thesis is that the government uses popular art as a means of anatheszing the populace and keeping them from making meaningful social changes to the way the world is. So, even though I’m an agnostic, I’ll always respect Chick tracts and A Thief in the Night, for daring to be confrontational in a truly shocking way. I just don’t think Christian fiction or art is going to do this anytime soon.

Best wishes,
John

P.S. I revised my chapter on your books, partly based on your suggestions and my dissertation director’s. It’s almost ready to be published in dissertation form, so let me know if you want me to e-mail you a copy.
4:07 PM, October 07, 2009

The sidebar is the easy one, the header is part of the them and I wish it was as simple as changing the address — unfortuntely not, owing to the way the page is put together. For now, though, Bruce’s link to the working feed is correct: http://www.chriswalley.net/blog/?feed=rss2

Oddly, the feed for comments works fine.

I’m glad that the port seems to have gone well, and that previous entries and comments made it over. As far as one person taking credit for the work of many a la assembly-line fashion, similar things appear to be the case for most comic strips (at least in the U.S.), with _Calvin and Hobbes_, _Peanuts_, and _The Far Side_ being notable exceptions. What about writing? Could one person take the credit for the writing of others? (Would it help to have someone else write the boilerplate and formulaic parts of a manuscript?)

For a different style (and perhaps philosophy) of painting, I point to Bob Ross (known on PBS stations as the painter who does happy little trees). Check out the Wikipedia page on him for more.

Boaz

I would say the real ‘painter of light’ was Turner. I don’t like all of his paintings by any means, but the light in them is real.

I’m not convinced there’ll be darkness in heaven. It’s possible to have light without darkness – “God is light – in him there is no darkness at all”. Before there was anyone or anything but God, there would presumably be nothing but light. Of course, we can never get back to that. There will always be darkness in the past (perhaps in our memories) and hell (tho’ I can’t imagine we’ll see that). But perhaps God’s perfect light will indeed be even more perfect because it is contrasted with them.

An aside – interestingly, I think many of the ‘old masters’ had a team of people working on their paintings. The main guy did the interesting bits. Still sounds a bit like cheating, though.