Art, Empathy and the Divine

Abstract

Religious art can reconfigure our conception of God’s omniscience. This should be seen in terms of divine understanding, with empathy and love required for God’s understanding of human beings. §I surveys reasons to think that God can empathize with us. §II and §III consider different ways that religious art has attempted to represent such empathetic relations. There are images of Christ’s suffering that elicit empathy in the viewer, and there are depictions of God’s empathetic understanding of humanity. §IV and §V consider the epistemic roles of art and how religious art can reconfigure how we think of God’s omniscience.