The expression of faith through art

‘Pictures can reach parts of the theological imagination that words cannot.’ Jane Williams considers the representation of faith through art.


Advent is a time of looking forward. We anticipate Christmas, the great celebration of the birth of Jesus, God’s present to us. And we also look even further forward, to the time when Jesus returns to bring everything to completion, the time that is usually called ‘the Second Coming.’

Our understanding of Christmas has almost certainly been shaped by pictures, whether we are conscious of that or not. Most of us ‘know’ that Jesus was born in a stable, complete with animals hanging adoringly over the wooden partitions, gazing with love at the new baby. But that is an image that artists have given us; Luke 2.7 says that Jesus’ first cradle was a manger, ‘because there was no place for them in the inn.’ It does not actually say that the manger was in a stable: it might well have been out of doors or even in a cave, such as the one in the Church of the Nativity in Manger Square in the Holy Land. The great medieval and Renaissance artists, whose depiction of the birth feature on so many Christmas cards, had generally not been to the Holy Land, so they moved the scene to their own landscape, and so made it part of our mental furniture too.

We all ‘know’ that three wise men visited the Holy Family not long after Jesus’ birth. But Matthew 2.1 just says ‘wise men’, with no indication of how many. It is because Matthew 1.11 tells us they brought three gifts that painters have chosen to depict three wise men, carrying one gift each.

In order to picture something, painters have to make theological decisions about how they will portray the scene. Will they emphasise Mary’s exalted role, by painting her in royal robes, or will the stress be on her ordinariness, and God’s choice of a humble birthplace? Will Bethlehem look like the artist’s own town, or be deliberately exotic and different? One of the many things I love about paintings is that they take us back to the text of the Bible to see how the painter has chosen to interpret the words on the page; and that gives us the chance to think again about how we would do it.
Pictures can reach parts of the theological imagination that words cannot. ‘The Word became flesh and lived among us’ can remain an abstract concept, but a painter shows us a real child, even if surrounded with symbols of his calling; they show us a young woman, who loves this baby, whom we know she will lose to terrible suffering.

Of course, pictures can also set up unexamined theological assumptions, too. If we have grown up with medieval European depictions of Jesus and the Holy Family, then we can forget that Jesus is equally at home in all cultures. We may have imported a stable from the Middle Ages into our Christmas pictures, and perhaps need to be challenged to see the ‘manger’ in a garage or at the edge of a shanty town, and to see the Holy Family wearing all the aspects of the human family, whom Jesus came to make his own. Modern artists are picking up the work of theological interpretation, and helping us to see Jesus, truly ‘living among us’, as the Gospel of John says.

The Second Coming is harder, though, because here we are being asked to picture what we do not yet know or see. But here, too, paintings can help us pay attention to our hopes and fears, and make us more truthful in our response. If we picture the return of Christ in the terrifying visions of Bosch, for example, it may give us the opportunity to remember that the One who is returning is the same as the baby lying in the manger. Past, present and future are in those hands.

I have just written a book of meditations for Advent and Epiphany, using a picture to guide each day’s meditations. The attention to each image felt like a deep refreshment of spirit, giving me a change to re-focus, re-imagine and open up my heart and mind again to Jesus, in whose image I am made.

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