Art and the Role of Human Making in Knowing the Divine Maker

Among artists, art-making has been considered a form of knowing or thinking, which raises the question of whether engagement with art-making might influence the way we think about key theological ideas, particularly the idea of the divine maker and the role of human making in knowing this divine maker. The roundtable seeks to draw out the theological ideas that art-making might help illuminate and how it might do so by considering the relationship of making to action and contemplation, how art-making is distinctive as a kind of making, which theological concepts and doctrines might be especially served by approaching them in conversation with art-making, and how engaging with art-making illuminates the concept of God as maker. Thus, the panel offers a new way to engage art in the context of theology, not only in terms of imagery and narrative, but as an embodied practice that may generate new theological insights.