“Just as God has made the material universe, He also created humanity, and the whole gamut of human actions for his greater glory and our blessing. God therefore delights in all human pursuits that are undertaken to praise Him, not simply in our intellectual and “spiritual” practices…The connection between the human artist and the Creator God, the ultimate Artist, can be found only in beauty. True art and music are a reflection of the soul that is journeying into the heart of God and is a mirror of God’s beauty and light.” (Edith M. Humphrey, Abbot Tryphon)
“Creating is the art of believing. The artist believes in the truth of what is occurring before she sees the result. It is an act of faith.” (Jonathan Jackson)
“Artists have long understood the beauty of the relationship between the nurturer and the nurtured…Human persons create genuine works of art only when they are themselves works of art.” (Valerie Bell, Father Thomas Hopko)
“Civilization once looked to art as the means of passing on wisdom from one generation to the next. The act of writing was invented, after all, to convey the sacred: Permanent things must be passed on in a permanent way, hence the hieroglyphs on Egyptian tombs. But a civilization that no longer believes in permanent things, one that holds to no objective truths, resorts to deconstruction, not construction..” (Philip Yancey)
“the discipline of creation is “an effort toward wholeness…How much more, now, do artists wrestle with the constant call to make our work about us—our platforms and presence and sales numbers and likes and followers? We, all of us, live in a culture that urges us to cultivate and curate idols of ourselves. This is true of the person working in a cubicle as much as it is for the artist, but it’s especially easy for those of us in public careers to be propelled away from wholeness rather than toward it, as we splinter off bits of ourselves to construct the idol versions…But before the Renaissance no artist even signed his work. Art was not individual expression; it served a corporate purpose, such as worship.” (Madeleine L'Engle, Tim Stafford)
"The fallen artist pines for human applause. The spiritual artist groans for secret communion with the Creator. He knows this only happens through kenosis, or self-emptying. Our society says the ultimate artistic virtues are entertainment, money, and fame. In this view, the artist is a means to a materialistic end: profit and power. In contrast to this, the ultimate virtues of the spiritual artist are sanctification and transformation.” (Jonathan Jackson)
“But before the Renaissance no artist even signed his work. Art was not individual expression; it served a corporate purpose, such as worship.” (Tim Stafford)
“A person’s willingness to be God’s artwork may not necessarily be conscious—or it may not necessarily even be consciously “Christian.” It may derive from the person’s love for and obedience to God’s Law, written on their hearts.” (Father Thomas Hopko)
“Without the Eternal Poet’s presence, art is transcendent only to the point of overcoming the mundane; it cannot impart the transfiguration of the Divine. It is possible for art to possess a false light, in which its beauty lures one beyond himself toward an idol. When art itself is worshipped, instead of valued as a sacramental gift whereby man can glorify God, it becomes a mirage.” (Jonathan Jackson)
“I do believe that creativity involves transcendence. Many a philosopher and theologian has stated that we most resemble the divine when we create. Imagine then, the power we tap into when we say yes to our creative gifts.” (Vinita Hampton Wright)
"Fairy stories share with religion the belief in objective morality, which is the fruit of the knowledge of the union of the natural with the supernatural and therefore the communion of the one with the other. This moral perspective is condemned by the materialist and the relativist, which is why such people are equally skeptical of the respective value of fairy stories and religion, seeing both as intrinsically untrue." (Joseph Pearce)
“The value of myth s that it takes all the things you know and restores to them the rich significance which has been hidden by the veil of familiarity...the story of Christ is simply a true myth: a myth working on us in the same way as the others, but with the tremendous difference that it really happened […] it is God's myth where the others are men's myths.” (C.S. Lewis)
“The whole purpose of God, His loving creative purpose, is that human beings should flourish. So the sciences, the arts, everything that is good and wholesome is part of the legacy of Christ…it is God’s loving intention, His creative purpose that human beings should flourish. This is the gift of Christ to world…” (Father Gregory Hallam)
“Great art, whether story, painting, music, or drama, distills the essence of reality. It makes us see the truth and feel the emotion that we bury under the routine, schedules, deadlines, humdrum, hurry, and clamor of our everyday lives.” (Thomas Williams)
“To unbelievers, the parables remain bewildering. To those with simple faith, these stories using common images reveal truth in ways they can grasp, as they were able.” (Orthodox Study Bible,Mark 4:33)