Communion, Covenant, and Creativity: An Approach to the Communion of Saints Through the Arts

This book is a follow-up to a previous volume by the same three authors, Baptists and the Communion of Saints: A Theology of Covenanted Disciples, though it does not require familiarity with the first study. The present book offers new perspectives on belief in the "communion of saints" by interpreting it through the idea of "covenant," with its two dimensions of relations with God and with each other. Giving attention to the creative arts of painting, music, poetry, and story writing, the authors explore "indications" of a hidden "communion of saints" through embodiment, memory, and connectivity. Included are studies of the work of visual artists Paul Nash and Mark Rothko; musicians John Tavener, Elgar, and Brahms; and writers Thomas Hardy, T. S. Eliot, and James Joyce. Theological reflection on these hints of communion offers a vision of an ongoing communion of prayer with the saints, alive and dead, which does not depend on a dualistic idea of a disembodied soul existing after death but which affirms the Christian tradition of the resurrection of the body. Communion, covenant, and creativity are thus linked to develop a Christian aesthetics based on a mutual indwelling between the triune God and the world.

Brian Haymes was Principal of Northern Baptist College in Manchester, Principal of Bristol Baptist College, and President of the Baptist Union of Great Britain. He is co-author of Baptists and the Communion of Saints: A Theology of Covenanted Disciples.


Richard L. Kidd was formerly Principal of Northern Baptist College, Manchester.

Paul S. Fiddes is Professor of Systematic Theology in the University of Oxford, and Principal of Regent's Park College, Oxford. He is a minister ordained in the Baptist Union of Great Britain. Among his many previous books are The Creative Suffering of God (1988), Past Event and Present Salvation (1989), Freedom and Limit (1991), The Promised End (2000) and Participating in God (2000).