What we need to concern ourselves with is what both Kevin Vanhoozer and Nicholas Wolterstorff call “fittingness.” Wolterstorff defines fittingness as “similarity across modalities.” Modalities are different forms of expression—literature, music, rhetoric, architecture, drama, visual arts, etc.
For a couple weeks I have been developing the idea that in order to disciple people through corporate worship, our corporate worship must be shaped by the means God has given us for such transformation—Scripture. This means both that our liturgies must be shaped by Scripture and our music must be shaped by Scripture.
There has been something of a recovery in recent years of Scripture-formed liturgy, but Scripture formed music is still resisted. Sure, the content of our songs should conform to biblical teaching, but certainly there is nothing about the music itself (or poetry) that Scripture can shape.
On the contrary, last week I argued that since Scripture itself communicates truth, and thus forms believers, through various aesthetic devices, art matters to God. Certain aspects of Christian piety are expressed only through art as it shapes propositional content, and thus we must give careful attention that the art forms we employ today correspond to the art forms in God’s inspired Word.
What we need to concern ourselves with is what both Kevin Vanhoozer and Nicholas Wolterstorff call “fittingness.” Wolterstorff defines fittingness as “similarity across modalities.” Modalities are different forms of expression—literature, music, rhetoric, architecture, drama, visual arts, etc.
What he means by fittingness is that the character of one aesthetic expression can be similar to the character of another aesthetic expression, even across kinds of art forms. Far from being something only philosophers of aesthetics can do, we observe these kinds of similarities across modalities instinctively. This is why we can describe the character of music, for example, using terms more regularly associated with other art forms such as the visual (like color) or the tactile (like soft or hard) or qualities of taste (like sweet) or spatial measurement (high, low, short, or long). Music is not really blue or soft or sweet or low, but we naturally recognize similarities across these modalities.
And Wolterstorff also cites studies that show that these kinds of judgments are consistent across cultures. We can naturally recognize universal similarities with regard to emotional expression, mood, and tone. Because art communicates most naturally by reflecting common human experience, especially human physical expressiveness, with a bit of effort we can fairly instinctively discern what art forms across modalities similarly express joy, lament, sobriety, reverence, or fear, and even more nuanced meanings and moods that cannot be precisely defined with words.
