What Do Renoir, Monet, Cezanne, and Mancini Have To Do With Theology?

My wife and I went to see the Renoir exhibit at the Philadelphia Art Museum the other day. We were amazed at the beauty and detail that Renior expressed in his works. The exhibition included an audio tour in order to inform the viewers of the history behind certain paintings. What I found to be most interesting was the fact that Renoir spent time with Claude Monet and Paul Cezanne. The tour narrator told us that Renoir would go out to a particular field or garden with Monet and the two would paint together. This was where impressionism was born. It came from the mutual friendship of two masters of art. Later in the tour we learned that Renoir would go to the mountains of France with his good friend Cezanne. Renoir and Cezanne would paint side by side just as Renoir and Monet had. As I considered the paintings that Renoir painted with Monet and compared them with the paintings he painted with Cezanne I realized that there were two very distinct styles at work. The influence of Renoir on Monet and Monet on Renoir was evident in the similarity of their works. The same was true of Renoir and Cezanne. As I thought about this I realized that it is no less true in the realm of Christianity and especially in the realm of theology. The Bible says, “A companion of wise men will be wise,” and “The righteous should choose his friends carefully for by means of a wicked man he is led astray.”

The interaction of two men walking closely with the Lord should encourage the way in which they do theology. The influence that we can have upon one another is unimaginable. Our problem is that we so often look at theology as something that is private and not meant to be discussed too often. We have a serious dislike of theological discussion in our American, protestant churches. But if we would look at our theological work in the way that Renoir, Monet and Cezanne looked at painting we would see that we should want to meet with men who are gifted in the realm of doctrine, preaching, and evangelism and would want to learn from them and build on their work. This was very much the case in the lives of the Puritans. Sinclair Ferguson has pointed out, in a lecture given at the dedication of the Puritan Resource Center, that there was a spiritual brotherhood among the Puritans that is really lacking in the church in our own day. This lecture can be purchased here.

I am not saying that spending time together, talking through theological issues means that we will have sound theology (Many heretics spend time together mulling over their heretical teaching). But I am emphasizing our need to carefully choose our friends and then spend time with them praying and working through biblical matters that have eternal consequence. Masterful art work, as is seen in the case of Renoir, was not done in a vacuum. In fact, it was not just the time spent with Monet and Cezanne that helped propel Renoir to greatness. We also learned on the tour that Renoir was permitted to come into the Louvre and set up an easel and try his hand at painting some of the greatest paintings in the world. Renoir was, to coin a now common phrase, “standing on the shoulders of the great men before him” and the great men of his time.

This idea of standing on the shoulders of the great men who went before was also demonstrated in the art work of Antonio Mancini. Mancini was an Italian master painter of the mid-nineteenth to early twentienth century. In one of his late paintings Mancini painted himself in the corner of a canvas leaving most of the canvas unpainted. But then he scribbled in the names of two dozon or so men who influenced his art work. When you look at the self-portrait you will see an outstretched finger pointing to the names he scribbled on the left side of the canvas. Mancini did not see himself as a man doing art in a vacuum. Again we can learn from this that we need to build upon the theological work that men who were filled with the Holy Spirit did in generations before us. We sould always test our conclusions against the work of the great men that God has given the church. Though they are not absolutely inerrant in their conclusions we should recognize that they are there to encourage us in our work and we should be ready to give them credit for the influence they have upon us. We should not seek to be men coming up with novel ideas in the realm of theology. If what we find something new in Scripture it should come from the illuminating work of the Spirit and should be in accord with the rest of Scritpure and the work that the Spirit has done in the men who have gone before us.