ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned to challenge the common Protestant assumption that the role of the arts within Christian faith cannot pretend to any deep basis in the biblical foundations upon which such faith is based. So used are one to hearing the claim that Christianity is a religion of the word that it is very easy to assume that this is the only lens through which scripture should be read, not least when one recall the attack on images in the second commandment and the apparent abandonment of refined architecture and music with the move away from the Jewish Temple. The chapter then focuses on literary work of art, the incarnation functioning as a visual image for God, and music a potential vehicle for divine presence. That perspective is then widened to detect similar patterns across all of human experience, with the arts containing real sacramental potential for such encounters.
