IMAGO DEI - Finding the Image of God in Human Beings
Iain McKillop
Lichfield Cathedral -1st of the series of Lent talks 6/3/2014
(WORDS IN CAPITALS RELATE TO THE POWERPOINT IMAGE)
CREATION OF MAN & WOMAN 13th C English Manuscript Musée Marmottan Paris “God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, in our likeness… ‘…in his own image’ he created them;
male and female he created them”. Genesis 1:26-27
This series of Lent talks explores the ‘Imago Dei’: the image of God in us and how we interpret and live out the idea that human beings carry the image of God in our created make-up.
The mystery of how we are in God’s image is harder to try to define today than in past Church history. The educated 21st Century mind is rightly not content with literally accepting Scripture or simplistic, outdated, unscientific, paternalist or sexist interpretations. Psalm 8:5 says “you have made us little lower than heavenly beings and crowned us with glory and honour”. That seems to be saying we have high status in Creation, but we are material, not divine beings. Whatever God is, God's substance and existence are very different from us, despite any links in our nature.
The world today (and through history), shows many behaving as though they are the gods who rule the world, but we recognise that our leaders, and we who follow, are far from holy, heavenly beings.
ZEUS/ POSEIDON National Archaelogical Museum, Athens
It might be easier to imagine humans as being in the image of God if we visualised gods as in Roman, Greek and Norse mythology - human-like figures with godly powers, on a god-like scale. They attributed to gods many of the character traits and failings we see in humans –
JUDGEMENT OF PARIS – Jacob Jordaens
the Jealousy of Venus, the changeability of Mercury.
EUROPA AND THE BULL Reni Abduction of Ganymede
the lust of Zeus,
THOR WITH THUNDERBOLT
the violent, implacable temper of Thor,
Throughout Christian Church history, huge problems have developed when well-meaning Christians imagine the Christian God like that, and give him too human characteristics. Anthropomorphic metaphors for God in Scripture like ‘I am a jealous God’ (Ex.20:5; 34:14), God’s anger, implacability, vengeance, have often been imagined too literally or associated too much with human failings.
HANGING AND BURNING OF SAVONAROLA 1498
Churchmen and politicians interpreted such characteristics to justify murderous crusades, the torture of heretics, consigning some to hell-fire or expelling as ‘anathema’ those with whom a particular church doesn’t agree. In supposedly ‘defending the faith’ church-people have justified all sorts of inhumanities towards those who don’t think of God as they do. Today’s fundamentalist terrorists speak in similar terms.
On the pretext of God having given us the earth to use, ‘rule’ and ‘subdue’ (Gen 1:28), some Christians justify destruction or pollution of the environment of which we are meant to be God’s stewards. Even today we’re rarely squeaky clean! The recent Anglican hiatus over issues of women bishops and same-sex marriage are rooted primarily in disagreement over what it is to be human.
By following too narrow understandings of Scripture or truth many fail to fully love their fellow creatures with either god-like or humanitarian love. Look at how some Christians criticise the beliefs and practices of other Christians. Many of us fail to recognise the image of God in those we don’t like or with whom we don’t agree, rather than fully valuing or loving them.
These examples and many more have diminished not just the Church but also the image of the God we represent. How far is today’s Church worldwide and locally truly witnessing to the image of God that Jesus revealed? We are supposed to be giving a true picture of God to all. When we fail it think we diminish the image of God in us.
WILLIAM BLAKE – A FALSE IMAGE OF GOD JUDGING ADAM
William Blake was convinced that the church of his time was worshipping false images of God. If the true God was humanly ‘angry, jealous, vengeful, changeable, interested in just one sort of righteous faction – one particular type of church, as some Christians superstitiously believe, rather than the being the God of the whole world’, I’m not sure that sort of limited God would be worth our worship. Jesus represented a far bigger God.
History shows that too many times churches or individual Christians make God in the image they want: - too violent, scary, unapproachable, judgemental, or too liberal or weak. If we reduce God to our level, the God by whom we interpret what it is to be human, stops being the true God shown to us by Jesus and by a holistic reading of Scripture. Christ’s incarnation showed what God is like when in human form. The God Jesus revealed elevates both our view of God, and what human beings in his image can be. So it’s also important to represent Christ truthfully because he’s the model we should be aspiring to follow.
GREGORY OF NYSSA
Christians describe God as perfect in every way, and so much greater than our minds can conceive. Gregory of Nyssa believed that we should not even use concepts of God when we pray, because they reduce our perception of the infinite, invisible God to something tangible. This can weaken our relationship with the full magnitude of the God who created us, surrounds and indwells us. Gregory recommended that we sit and pray in silence, contemplating the presence of God as infinite & unknown, because that is the closest to understanding God that we can attain.
THOMAS MERTON QUOTE
Thomas Merton believed that we should live ‘as if we are seeing God face to face’, but he warns that in doing so, we should not imagine anything or conceive an image of God: “On the contrary, it is a matter of adoring him as invisible and infinitely beyond our comprehension, and realizing him as all.” (Thomas Merton, Hidden Ground of Love 63-64).
The incomprehensibility of God challenges Christian artists, minister and students of theology, because our ministry tries to create metaphors to help people understand God better and know God is close to them.
PRODIGAL SON, GOOD SHEPHERD
At the same time Scripture and Christian tradition give so many metaphors for imagining God’s nature, his parent-like love, shepherd-like guidance, longsuffering, forgiveness, holiness, perfection, creativity, omnipresence and power. Most of all we have the revelation of himself in Jesus.
We are also taught to partially comprehend God in the better parts of human beings: love, care, justice, protection etc., which parallel God’s nature. When Jesus said “Whenever you have cared for one of your fellow creatures you have done it for me.” (Matt. 10:42; 25:40-45) was he in part implying that in serving and recognising glimpses of God in one another we are respecting others and the high image of God in them.
Sadly most of us are fallible human beings who sin and fail to reflect God perhaps more than we succeed. I should be able to say “If you want to know what God is like look at his Church!” Unfortunately if you said that at present you’re more likely to promote wrong impressions, even sometimes be sacrilegious. But that is what we should be working at! We are meant to reveal God by being the people God created us to be.
LEONARDO DA VINCI - VITRUVIAN MAN
As an art-historian as well as an artist and studier of theology I’m fascinated by how people of faith through history attempted to define what is means to be ‘in the image of God’. Some thought it physical: the perfection of our proportions, the beauty of the human body reflecting the beautiful qualities and perfection of our Creator. Others saw it in our moral nature – humans having an internal moral drive to fulfil God’s law..
ORIGEN
Origen of Alexandria thought that the image of God is seen in our highest human faculties. The ‘nous’, the pure, human mind or complex human soul was for him the clearest reflection of the divine image. (cf Origen, Against Celsus VII.66.)
Others explained God’s likeness as our spiritual nature; sharing a characteristic with God which enable us to communicate with the divine in the spiritual realm.
AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO
Augustine (354-430) partly recognised God’s image in our natural tendency to draw towards God, as though at some time we were separated from him. He was influenced by Platonists who taught that people search for another half of ourselves with whom we are yearning to reunite. That’s the source of Augustine’s famous statement: “God made us for himself and our hearts are restless until we find our rest in him”.
Augustine believed that that our inner character reflects God. The human soul, he thought, both mirrors and longs to seek and understand God. He suggested that Christians contemplate the pure human soul to recognise elements of the image of the Father who we reflect. The Trinity he thought were mirrored in the three parts of our nature: Body, Soul and Spirit / ‘mind’, ‘will’ and ‘understanding’ / reason, intelligence, and interior spiritual nature. Augustine believed that our body, soul and spirit complement each other, working together to animate us, just as the Trinity work together and complement each other as a whole.
Our understanding of personality has thankfully expanded hugely since Augustine, but perhaps his instinct was true that we reflect our Creator in our wholeness and complexity.
JOHN GARRETT C 17THENGRAVING OF ALTE MEDIAEVAL & PROTESTANT THEOLOGIANS
Other theologians through time have continued to speculate. I don’t personally think that it matters that we should be able to define this mystery of how we reflect God. What truly matters, I believe, is that we keep in mind that we are meant to resemble our God, in whatever ways that’s true. That gives us an aim, individually and corporately, to live up to God’s holiness and activity. We are meant to live, work and use the earth keeping true to this high understanding of what it is to be human.
Hildesheim Doors 1015 God introducing Eve to Adam
In some ways we know all creators leave signs of their character, and aspects of themselves in what they create. If humans ARE the pinnacle of God’s creation, it’s almost inevitable that qualities of our perfect God are found within us.
St. Paul suggested this at the beginning of Romans when he talked of the created world displaying some of God’s invisible qualities. (Rom.1:20). Psalm 8:3-4; Isaiah 40:12, 15. 17 and Job 38 imply this too. When I look at you and you look at me what qualities can we recognise of God? More importantly, how can we demonstrate our God-likeness in our lives?
I’m not sure that we’re even meant to speculate about the mystery. Perhaps we’re just meant to take the Genesis statement as true and discover what it means to be in the image of God by ‘living’ life fully and righteously. How different the world and the Church would be if we all aim to live by imitating what we know of God, particularly if we imitate the image of God that we see in Christ, following his teachings and his way of life.
DOGMATIC SARCOPHAGUS Vatican Museum
There is a wonderful visual image for ‘growing into the image of God’ in the representation of Adam and Eve on several early Christian sarcophagi like this in the Vatican Museum. They are represented as fully formed adults, but the size of children.
It’s thought that this is a visual representation of the teaching of several Early Church Fathers that humans were created perfect but not yet complete. Like children they had to grow into full maturity by discovering what it means to be truly human. In other words, we discover what we are meant to be by living to the full the lives we are given.
IRENAEUS OF LYONS (c130-c200) taught that humans were designed to grow into the likeness of God. Christ, Irenaeus wrote, made this completion possible: “The Word became man in order to make us what he is himself”.
TERTULLIAN emphasised that human beings are ‘made and not born’: we become Christians by a process of formation that he called ‘paedea’. This was a classical idea that a person is formed by the drawing out of their true selves, developing what they are called to be through life and education. Tertullian claimed that the goal of creation, human life and Christ’s creative work of salvation, was to grow human beings to maturity. Maximus the Confessor, the 7thC Greek theologian, emphasised that our aim is to grow into the likeness of Christ through life, prayer and spiritual discipline. Our physical and interior lives are the time we practise Christ-like living with the help of God’s grace. We observe Lent as a special season for extra Christian exercise and formation!
In life we’re meant to find what God is like and live reflecting him in our nature.
MODENA CATHEDRAL c1119 Creation of Adam and Eve
Notice here how the sculptor has made Adam a literal replica of the Creator.
Eve has the same features but without the beard!
MICHELANGELO Creation of Adam – Sistine Ceiling
Michelangelo’s Adam similarly mirrors the features and pose of the father only is much younger!
The Creation story in Genesis uses two Hebrew words ‘tzelem’ and ‘demus’ translated differently as ‘image’ and ‘likeness’. These are not synonymous but both carry the sense of either ‘similarity’ or ‘correspondence’ between God and humankind. ‘Image’ has its roots in the idea of a ‘shadow’-‘tzel’. ‘Likeness’ is derived from ‘domeh’ meaning ‘similar’. Together they imply that we don’t physically ‘resemble’ God so much as reflect or mirror God in the way that the ‘shadow’ of a person relates to its original. But exactly in what ways we embody God’s image and likeness aren’t specified. I think this is deliberate. We find out how to live, act and think in God-like ways by living. Each of us has to discover it for themselves in the light of Scripture and revelation. Being told that we’re ‘in the image of God’ gives us something to grow towards, and a profound guide by which to measure our actions.
ECCLESIASTES 3:11
Our imaginative and creative response to this mystery may be one way we are meant to grow. Our minds may be designed to reach beyond our present state, to develop and expand. Ecclesiastes 3:11 implies that something inside all human beings reaches to understand things way beyond our capabilities. We reach to understand God, yet our limited minds can never fully comprehend. Similarly we’ll never fully reflect God because we are fallible. Many people regularly struggle with desires to be more perfect than we are, to understand more, to live better. Though these are frustrating, this may be what leads to human advance. We’re driven to improve ourselves, to reach beyond our circumstances, our knowledge and our world. If we didn’t have the imprint of God and the longing to be more like him within us, human beings might not have advanced as far as we have. We wouldn’t have the capacity and drive, which the Church is meant to have, to build the Kingdom of God. Christ’s call to us to advance God’s kingdom implies that he knows that you and I have the potential to do so, with his Spirit’s inspiration and power and God’s image inside us.
HELEN OPPENHEIM QUOTE
Despite our limitations, we are designed to be able to find God in this world and develop a relationship with him in our lives. The Theologian Helen Oppenheim wrote of the Church: “We are not trying to pronounce about what God can or cannot be, but about how God can be found in our world… God’s people have the hopeful responsibility of being the presence, the findability of God upon earth…Our diversity should enable God to be found in all areas of life in the world… The word multi-faceted comes to mind… the church may be a prism breaking up the white light of God’s dazzling majesty.” Theology 93: 1990 p 133-141).
Scripture describes so often that God intends us to encounter him in this life, if only indirectly. God made human beings diverse; we’re designed to respond to God and find him in a variety of ways. Different individuals & traditions have different characters and varied approaches to spirituality. Our diversity as human beings allows more of God to be understood than if we were all clones or all felt, reacted and lived in the same way. By communally sharing our experience, we can help the world understand more about God than one individual could ever know on their own.
That’s one reason for valuing the stranger or other religious pathways - to see if we can learn from their insight. Those who are different from ourselves shouldn’t pose a threat; they can enlighten us.
Partly an aim of these paintings exhibited here over Lent is to provide different ways to consider the relevance of Christ to us. They explore the nature of God that was shown in Jesus’ Passion and Resurrection. They also ask us to contemplate prayerfully what Jesus’ self-sacrifice means for Christians today, called to mirror Christ, the human image of God.
As the leaflet explains they are painted partly in response to my struggle to recognise the image of God in the inhumanity of war.
TIEPOLO
I first visited Wurzburg in Germany on an art pilgrimage to see the great Tiepolo ceiling in the Prince-Bishop’s ‘Residenz’,
STATIONS
the famous life-size Rococo Stations of the Cross
RIEMENSCHNEIDER
and particularly the sensitive works of one of my favourite religious sculptors, Tillman Riemenschneider, ‘the German Donatello’.
BOMBED WURZBURG PICTURES
I wasn’t prepared for the memories of sorrow I encountered. I’d never been taught about the horrific bombing of Wurzburg and the death of so many of its inhabitants in 1945. I’d heard of course of Dresden, like the Blitz of Coventry, London and so many cities.
2ND BOMBING PICTURE
What shocked me wasn’t just the massive loss of innocent lives and the sadness, but the selectivity of history, and the needless waste. I felt ashamed for those who sanctioned the city’s decimation and those who had to obey orders. We should be ashamed at the beautiful places and artefacts destroyed by war. But it’s more shameful to accept or sanction innocent suffering.
3rd BOMBING PICTURE WITH CROSS
Would our military leaders consider today causing a fire-storm like Wurzburg which destroyed a mediaeval and renaissance city, with no military or industrial significance, destroying over 5 thousand lives and 21,000 homes in 17 minutes? Afghanistan, Iraq and continued nuclear capability suggest that we might.
WURZBURG versus FATHER FORGIVE THEM
The destruction of Wurzburg was about revenge, asserting power, without conscience over thousands of innocent lives. How different the world might be if we worked to heal as Christ healed and forgave as Christ forgave? How different might contemporary international and interfaith relations be if after the horrors of 9/11 the West had followed a Christ-like model of forgiveness, reconciliation and healing rather than revenge and vindication?
The image of God in us is partly awakened when we live according to a holy conscience and reflect the nature of God in our actions.
ICON OF LUKE THE EVANGELIST PAINTING HODEGETRIA
We need to think creatively rather than reactively to change the world for good. Some theologians think our creativity reflects God’s nature. – We have the imagination to think outside the limits of our experience. Inventors, scientific discoverers, artists, economists, theologians do this, but so do parents and teachers who help those for whom they are responsible to grow beyond their own experiences.
CHRIST IN GETHSEMANE
If a creator is reflected in their creation, I wonder how my painting reflects my own character and reflects God. Most things artists paint are partly self-portraits. My subjects reflect my worldview or understanding. The style in which I paint reflects my character; the subjects have been chewed over and explored deeply through the long process of painting, they are part of my way of thinking and understanding my faith.
BOTH SERIES
The pictures are intense, perhaps rather melancholic, but they celebrate what it is to be human. They’re also very realist in their depiction of Jesus’ suffering and love, which is how I understand faith. I try to be truthful and spiritual, not idealised. The pictures grow partly from a thirst for justice, longing for a better world, praying hopefully for changes that I know I haven’t the power to influence.
“NOT MY WILL BUT YOURS, FATHER”
As you probably guess, I get really involved in my paintings, developing and changing them through months of contemplation and thought. The long process of creating is a visual form of listening to the subject, thinking through what I believe, and contemplative prayer. This series is especially close to my heart because they came from a yearning for justice, peace, and an end to the idea that violence, war and death can resolve problems.
SEVEN LAST WORDS
Some people, especially my partner, frequently ask me why I paint religious themes so persistently when more commercial images would be far more lucrative. I suppose I consider faith, art and life as so important that I want to use the limited life I have left to concentrate on the most important things.
I felt an inner need to get these paintings right, not just for self-expression, and as a memorial to the innocent who die daily in war, but because I hope that the pictures might encourage others to contemplate, to pray and learn peace and pastoral care for the world. The paintings are a visual prayer for Christ’s example to be reflected in our world and in the Church.
Painting a religious subject is not just illustrating a Bible story; we’re trying to understand and convey its inner meaning. That’s especially true when painting the Crucifixion and Resurrection, which to me are the most important themes in the whole of art.
RESURRECTION PAINTINGS
How you and I relate to Christ, his death, resurrection and the gifts he offers are a major source and inspiration for life. Knowing their meaning enlivens us spiritually, motivates us, and can help us best reflect the nature of God in our lives. The story of Salvation can drive us to work towards building the Kingdom of God, even in a limited way, in this world where so many are in pain or injustice thrives.
Living in the light of Christ’s Redemption, Resurrection and promise can enliven the image of God in us. Too much past Church teaching was about resigning ourselves to pain and injustice now, hoping for greater things in heaven. But Christian Resurrection life starts now. God didn’t create life on earth to be a painful preparation for heaven. He created life to enjoy and make the most of now, to fulfil us, while we learn, and work to improve the state of life for all. True Christianity, as Christ taught it, isn’t about ascetic rejection of pleasure, as though there’s something wrong in what God has given us, to tempt us towards evil. Rather, we’re to grow into God’s likeness by enjoying the full life God has given to us and finding and relating to God within it. Christ died, rose from death and gives us his Spirit’s to strengthen us for our lives. Whatever heaven is we will discover later; now we practice living righteously in ways that bring the image of God alive in us and in our world.
LAST WORDS
Living un-God-like lives has led to war or human suffering. And that’s where the image of God relates to these paintings. Christ is described in the letter to the Colossians as “the image of the unseen God” (Col. 1:15). Hebrew calls him “the exact representation of God” (Heb. 1:7), Jesus himself said those who have seen him know the Father (John 14:6).
He represents to us the perfection of living in the way God designed us to live.
“FATHER INTO YOUR HANDS I COMMIT MY SPIRIT,”
Reflecting him can help us love humanity enough to give up our priority and not assert ourselves above us.
“SON BEHOLD YOUR MOTHER, MOTHER BEHOLD YOUR SON.”
He tells us to look after one another in our needs.
“FATHER FORGIVE THEM, THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING.”
His example calls us to love and forgive all, not exact retribution for evils. He encourages us to forgive, even at the expense of our own life and rights, to be servant of all, not demanding mastery over others. What would have been Christ-like responses to evil in the run-up to the two World Wars we are preparing to commemorate? How would Christ have responded after 9/11? How do we reflect God in our reaction to terrorist organisations strengthened as a result of Iraq and Afghanistan. What god-like response should we be making to Syria, the Ukraine or ethical dilemmas of today?
FORGIVENESS OF PETER
The only hope for improving our world as I see it is a return to the type of self-sacrificial love and humanitarian sensitivity expressed in the theme of these paintings. – Christ “did not insist on his equality with God, but gave up his life for the good of others” (Phil.2:6)… God focuses on forgiveness and healing, not revenge or violence. Such self-sacrifice is rare, even among Christians. How can we more fully show God in ourselves, our churches and society?
In the image of God we are meant to take greater loving pastoral responsibility for our world, to support growth, not damage others.
What shadow of God do you recognise in yourself? How might you reflect him better in how you live, what you do or create, your family, work, your society, the environment you create around yourself? We have Lent and beyond to focus our creative minds and imaginations to better live out God’s likeness in us.
“MY GOD, MY GOD WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?”
The true nature of God is seen in self-sacrifice as much as creativity. Perhaps the most powerful should be the most self-sacrificial. It is healing and holy to love and forgive, even amid confusion and pain.
How different is this image of the leader as a suffering servant from prevailing attitudes in society, where self and ego, fame, money, strength and asserting yourself over others, often dominate.
LAST WORDS / NEW SONGS
If we recognise that we are in the image of God then ALL in our world are in the image of God too. We need to feel this equality more: ALL have the same value as you and I.
Believing that human beings are in the image of God, should make us live up to that image. Though we are complex beings, we are not just automatons, determined to act or think by our nature or nurture, our psychology or environment; we have the potential to achieve the state for which God designed us. We don’t have to give in to selfish, baser drives of our ego: with Christ’s Spirit inside us we have the potential to selflessly serve others as Christ exemplified. We don’t have to be driven by self-preservation, excluding or destroying those who are different to ourselves; we carry in our make-up the potential to be as loving and inclusive of the stranger as was Christ. Jesus taught that everyone is our neighbour, to be loved and valued as though we see the image of God in all he has made.
I hope these pictures might help us to contemplate and pray for the needs of the world and of ourselves in this light.
Iain McKillop
Lichfield Cathedral -1st of the series of Lent talks 6/3/2014
(WORDS IN CAPITALS RELATE TO THE POWERPOINT IMAGE)
CREATION OF MAN & WOMAN 13th C English Manuscript Musée Marmottan Paris “God said, “Let us make human beings in our image, in our likeness… ‘…in his own image’ he created them;
male and female he created them”. Genesis 1:26-27
This series of Lent talks explores the ‘Imago Dei’: the image of God in us and how we interpret and live out the idea that human beings carry the image of God in our created make-up.
The mystery of how we are in God’s image is harder to try to define today than in past Church history. The educated 21st Century mind is rightly not content with literally accepting Scripture or simplistic, outdated, unscientific, paternalist or sexist interpretations. Psalm 8:5 says “you have made us little lower than heavenly beings and crowned us with glory and honour”. That seems to be saying we have high status in Creation, but we are material, not divine beings. Whatever God is, God's substance and existence are very different from us, despite any links in our nature.
The world today (and through history), shows many behaving as though they are the gods who rule the world, but we recognise that our leaders, and we who follow, are far from holy, heavenly beings.
ZEUS/ POSEIDON National Archaelogical Museum, Athens
It might be easier to imagine humans as being in the image of God if we visualised gods as in Roman, Greek and Norse mythology - human-like figures with godly powers, on a god-like scale. They attributed to gods many of the character traits and failings we see in humans –
JUDGEMENT OF PARIS – Jacob Jordaens
the Jealousy of Venus, the changeability of Mercury.
EUROPA AND THE BULL Reni Abduction of Ganymede
the lust of Zeus,
THOR WITH THUNDERBOLT
the violent, implacable temper of Thor,
Throughout Christian Church history, huge problems have developed when well-meaning Christians imagine the Christian God like that, and give him too human characteristics. Anthropomorphic metaphors for God in Scripture like ‘I am a jealous God’ (Ex.20:5; 34:14), God’s anger, implacability, vengeance, have often been imagined too literally or associated too much with human failings.
HANGING AND BURNING OF SAVONAROLA 1498
Churchmen and politicians interpreted such characteristics to justify murderous crusades, the torture of heretics, consigning some to hell-fire or expelling as ‘anathema’ those with whom a particular church doesn’t agree. In supposedly ‘defending the faith’ church-people have justified all sorts of inhumanities towards those who don’t think of God as they do. Today’s fundamentalist terrorists speak in similar terms.
On the pretext of God having given us the earth to use, ‘rule’ and ‘subdue’ (Gen 1:28), some Christians justify destruction or pollution of the environment of which we are meant to be God’s stewards. Even today we’re rarely squeaky clean! The recent Anglican hiatus over issues of women bishops and same-sex marriage are rooted primarily in disagreement over what it is to be human.
By following too narrow understandings of Scripture or truth many fail to fully love their fellow creatures with either god-like or humanitarian love. Look at how some Christians criticise the beliefs and practices of other Christians. Many of us fail to recognise the image of God in those we don’t like or with whom we don’t agree, rather than fully valuing or loving them.
These examples and many more have diminished not just the Church but also the image of the God we represent. How far is today’s Church worldwide and locally truly witnessing to the image of God that Jesus revealed? We are supposed to be giving a true picture of God to all. When we fail it think we diminish the image of God in us.
WILLIAM BLAKE – A FALSE IMAGE OF GOD JUDGING ADAM
William Blake was convinced that the church of his time was worshipping false images of God. If the true God was humanly ‘angry, jealous, vengeful, changeable, interested in just one sort of righteous faction – one particular type of church, as some Christians superstitiously believe, rather than the being the God of the whole world’, I’m not sure that sort of limited God would be worth our worship. Jesus represented a far bigger God.
History shows that too many times churches or individual Christians make God in the image they want: - too violent, scary, unapproachable, judgemental, or too liberal or weak. If we reduce God to our level, the God by whom we interpret what it is to be human, stops being the true God shown to us by Jesus and by a holistic reading of Scripture. Christ’s incarnation showed what God is like when in human form. The God Jesus revealed elevates both our view of God, and what human beings in his image can be. So it’s also important to represent Christ truthfully because he’s the model we should be aspiring to follow.
GREGORY OF NYSSA
Christians describe God as perfect in every way, and so much greater than our minds can conceive. Gregory of Nyssa believed that we should not even use concepts of God when we pray, because they reduce our perception of the infinite, invisible God to something tangible. This can weaken our relationship with the full magnitude of the God who created us, surrounds and indwells us. Gregory recommended that we sit and pray in silence, contemplating the presence of God as infinite & unknown, because that is the closest to understanding God that we can attain.
THOMAS MERTON QUOTE
Thomas Merton believed that we should live ‘as if we are seeing God face to face’, but he warns that in doing so, we should not imagine anything or conceive an image of God: “On the contrary, it is a matter of adoring him as invisible and infinitely beyond our comprehension, and realizing him as all.” (Thomas Merton, Hidden Ground of Love 63-64).
The incomprehensibility of God challenges Christian artists, minister and students of theology, because our ministry tries to create metaphors to help people understand God better and know God is close to them.
PRODIGAL SON, GOOD SHEPHERD
At the same time Scripture and Christian tradition give so many metaphors for imagining God’s nature, his parent-like love, shepherd-like guidance, longsuffering, forgiveness, holiness, perfection, creativity, omnipresence and power. Most of all we have the revelation of himself in Jesus.
We are also taught to partially comprehend God in the better parts of human beings: love, care, justice, protection etc., which parallel God’s nature. When Jesus said “Whenever you have cared for one of your fellow creatures you have done it for me.” (Matt. 10:42; 25:40-45) was he in part implying that in serving and recognising glimpses of God in one another we are respecting others and the high image of God in them.
Sadly most of us are fallible human beings who sin and fail to reflect God perhaps more than we succeed. I should be able to say “If you want to know what God is like look at his Church!” Unfortunately if you said that at present you’re more likely to promote wrong impressions, even sometimes be sacrilegious. But that is what we should be working at! We are meant to reveal God by being the people God created us to be.
LEONARDO DA VINCI - VITRUVIAN MAN
As an art-historian as well as an artist and studier of theology I’m fascinated by how people of faith through history attempted to define what is means to be ‘in the image of God’. Some thought it physical: the perfection of our proportions, the beauty of the human body reflecting the beautiful qualities and perfection of our Creator. Others saw it in our moral nature – humans having an internal moral drive to fulfil God’s law..
ORIGEN
Origen of Alexandria thought that the image of God is seen in our highest human faculties. The ‘nous’, the pure, human mind or complex human soul was for him the clearest reflection of the divine image. (cf Origen, Against Celsus VII.66.)
Others explained God’s likeness as our spiritual nature; sharing a characteristic with God which enable us to communicate with the divine in the spiritual realm.
AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO
Augustine (354-430) partly recognised God’s image in our natural tendency to draw towards God, as though at some time we were separated from him. He was influenced by Platonists who taught that people search for another half of ourselves with whom we are yearning to reunite. That’s the source of Augustine’s famous statement: “God made us for himself and our hearts are restless until we find our rest in him”.
Augustine believed that that our inner character reflects God. The human soul, he thought, both mirrors and longs to seek and understand God. He suggested that Christians contemplate the pure human soul to recognise elements of the image of the Father who we reflect. The Trinity he thought were mirrored in the three parts of our nature: Body, Soul and Spirit / ‘mind’, ‘will’ and ‘understanding’ / reason, intelligence, and interior spiritual nature. Augustine believed that our body, soul and spirit complement each other, working together to animate us, just as the Trinity work together and complement each other as a whole.
Our understanding of personality has thankfully expanded hugely since Augustine, but perhaps his instinct was true that we reflect our Creator in our wholeness and complexity.
JOHN GARRETT C 17THENGRAVING OF ALTE MEDIAEVAL & PROTESTANT THEOLOGIANS
Other theologians through time have continued to speculate. I don’t personally think that it matters that we should be able to define this mystery of how we reflect God. What truly matters, I believe, is that we keep in mind that we are meant to resemble our God, in whatever ways that’s true. That gives us an aim, individually and corporately, to live up to God’s holiness and activity. We are meant to live, work and use the earth keeping true to this high understanding of what it is to be human.
Hildesheim Doors 1015 God introducing Eve to Adam
In some ways we know all creators leave signs of their character, and aspects of themselves in what they create. If humans ARE the pinnacle of God’s creation, it’s almost inevitable that qualities of our perfect God are found within us.
St. Paul suggested this at the beginning of Romans when he talked of the created world displaying some of God’s invisible qualities. (Rom.1:20). Psalm 8:3-4; Isaiah 40:12, 15. 17 and Job 38 imply this too. When I look at you and you look at me what qualities can we recognise of God? More importantly, how can we demonstrate our God-likeness in our lives?
I’m not sure that we’re even meant to speculate about the mystery. Perhaps we’re just meant to take the Genesis statement as true and discover what it means to be in the image of God by ‘living’ life fully and righteously. How different the world and the Church would be if we all aim to live by imitating what we know of God, particularly if we imitate the image of God that we see in Christ, following his teachings and his way of life.
DOGMATIC SARCOPHAGUS Vatican Museum
There is a wonderful visual image for ‘growing into the image of God’ in the representation of Adam and Eve on several early Christian sarcophagi like this in the Vatican Museum. They are represented as fully formed adults, but the size of children.
It’s thought that this is a visual representation of the teaching of several Early Church Fathers that humans were created perfect but not yet complete. Like children they had to grow into full maturity by discovering what it means to be truly human. In other words, we discover what we are meant to be by living to the full the lives we are given.
IRENAEUS OF LYONS (c130-c200) taught that humans were designed to grow into the likeness of God. Christ, Irenaeus wrote, made this completion possible: “The Word became man in order to make us what he is himself”.
TERTULLIAN emphasised that human beings are ‘made and not born’: we become Christians by a process of formation that he called ‘paedea’. This was a classical idea that a person is formed by the drawing out of their true selves, developing what they are called to be through life and education. Tertullian claimed that the goal of creation, human life and Christ’s creative work of salvation, was to grow human beings to maturity. Maximus the Confessor, the 7thC Greek theologian, emphasised that our aim is to grow into the likeness of Christ through life, prayer and spiritual discipline. Our physical and interior lives are the time we practise Christ-like living with the help of God’s grace. We observe Lent as a special season for extra Christian exercise and formation!
In life we’re meant to find what God is like and live reflecting him in our nature.
MODENA CATHEDRAL c1119 Creation of Adam and Eve
Notice here how the sculptor has made Adam a literal replica of the Creator.
Eve has the same features but without the beard!
MICHELANGELO Creation of Adam – Sistine Ceiling
Michelangelo’s Adam similarly mirrors the features and pose of the father only is much younger!
The Creation story in Genesis uses two Hebrew words ‘tzelem’ and ‘demus’ translated differently as ‘image’ and ‘likeness’. These are not synonymous but both carry the sense of either ‘similarity’ or ‘correspondence’ between God and humankind. ‘Image’ has its roots in the idea of a ‘shadow’-‘tzel’. ‘Likeness’ is derived from ‘domeh’ meaning ‘similar’. Together they imply that we don’t physically ‘resemble’ God so much as reflect or mirror God in the way that the ‘shadow’ of a person relates to its original. But exactly in what ways we embody God’s image and likeness aren’t specified. I think this is deliberate. We find out how to live, act and think in God-like ways by living. Each of us has to discover it for themselves in the light of Scripture and revelation. Being told that we’re ‘in the image of God’ gives us something to grow towards, and a profound guide by which to measure our actions.
ECCLESIASTES 3:11
Our imaginative and creative response to this mystery may be one way we are meant to grow. Our minds may be designed to reach beyond our present state, to develop and expand. Ecclesiastes 3:11 implies that something inside all human beings reaches to understand things way beyond our capabilities. We reach to understand God, yet our limited minds can never fully comprehend. Similarly we’ll never fully reflect God because we are fallible. Many people regularly struggle with desires to be more perfect than we are, to understand more, to live better. Though these are frustrating, this may be what leads to human advance. We’re driven to improve ourselves, to reach beyond our circumstances, our knowledge and our world. If we didn’t have the imprint of God and the longing to be more like him within us, human beings might not have advanced as far as we have. We wouldn’t have the capacity and drive, which the Church is meant to have, to build the Kingdom of God. Christ’s call to us to advance God’s kingdom implies that he knows that you and I have the potential to do so, with his Spirit’s inspiration and power and God’s image inside us.
HELEN OPPENHEIM QUOTE
Despite our limitations, we are designed to be able to find God in this world and develop a relationship with him in our lives. The Theologian Helen Oppenheim wrote of the Church: “We are not trying to pronounce about what God can or cannot be, but about how God can be found in our world… God’s people have the hopeful responsibility of being the presence, the findability of God upon earth…Our diversity should enable God to be found in all areas of life in the world… The word multi-faceted comes to mind… the church may be a prism breaking up the white light of God’s dazzling majesty.” Theology 93: 1990 p 133-141).
Scripture describes so often that God intends us to encounter him in this life, if only indirectly. God made human beings diverse; we’re designed to respond to God and find him in a variety of ways. Different individuals & traditions have different characters and varied approaches to spirituality. Our diversity as human beings allows more of God to be understood than if we were all clones or all felt, reacted and lived in the same way. By communally sharing our experience, we can help the world understand more about God than one individual could ever know on their own.
That’s one reason for valuing the stranger or other religious pathways - to see if we can learn from their insight. Those who are different from ourselves shouldn’t pose a threat; they can enlighten us.
Partly an aim of these paintings exhibited here over Lent is to provide different ways to consider the relevance of Christ to us. They explore the nature of God that was shown in Jesus’ Passion and Resurrection. They also ask us to contemplate prayerfully what Jesus’ self-sacrifice means for Christians today, called to mirror Christ, the human image of God.
As the leaflet explains they are painted partly in response to my struggle to recognise the image of God in the inhumanity of war.
TIEPOLO
I first visited Wurzburg in Germany on an art pilgrimage to see the great Tiepolo ceiling in the Prince-Bishop’s ‘Residenz’,
STATIONS
the famous life-size Rococo Stations of the Cross
RIEMENSCHNEIDER
and particularly the sensitive works of one of my favourite religious sculptors, Tillman Riemenschneider, ‘the German Donatello’.
BOMBED WURZBURG PICTURES
I wasn’t prepared for the memories of sorrow I encountered. I’d never been taught about the horrific bombing of Wurzburg and the death of so many of its inhabitants in 1945. I’d heard of course of Dresden, like the Blitz of Coventry, London and so many cities.
2ND BOMBING PICTURE
What shocked me wasn’t just the massive loss of innocent lives and the sadness, but the selectivity of history, and the needless waste. I felt ashamed for those who sanctioned the city’s decimation and those who had to obey orders. We should be ashamed at the beautiful places and artefacts destroyed by war. But it’s more shameful to accept or sanction innocent suffering.
3rd BOMBING PICTURE WITH CROSS
Would our military leaders consider today causing a fire-storm like Wurzburg which destroyed a mediaeval and renaissance city, with no military or industrial significance, destroying over 5 thousand lives and 21,000 homes in 17 minutes? Afghanistan, Iraq and continued nuclear capability suggest that we might.
WURZBURG versus FATHER FORGIVE THEM
The destruction of Wurzburg was about revenge, asserting power, without conscience over thousands of innocent lives. How different the world might be if we worked to heal as Christ healed and forgave as Christ forgave? How different might contemporary international and interfaith relations be if after the horrors of 9/11 the West had followed a Christ-like model of forgiveness, reconciliation and healing rather than revenge and vindication?
The image of God in us is partly awakened when we live according to a holy conscience and reflect the nature of God in our actions.
ICON OF LUKE THE EVANGELIST PAINTING HODEGETRIA
We need to think creatively rather than reactively to change the world for good. Some theologians think our creativity reflects God’s nature. – We have the imagination to think outside the limits of our experience. Inventors, scientific discoverers, artists, economists, theologians do this, but so do parents and teachers who help those for whom they are responsible to grow beyond their own experiences.
CHRIST IN GETHSEMANE
If a creator is reflected in their creation, I wonder how my painting reflects my own character and reflects God. Most things artists paint are partly self-portraits. My subjects reflect my worldview or understanding. The style in which I paint reflects my character; the subjects have been chewed over and explored deeply through the long process of painting, they are part of my way of thinking and understanding my faith.
BOTH SERIES
The pictures are intense, perhaps rather melancholic, but they celebrate what it is to be human. They’re also very realist in their depiction of Jesus’ suffering and love, which is how I understand faith. I try to be truthful and spiritual, not idealised. The pictures grow partly from a thirst for justice, longing for a better world, praying hopefully for changes that I know I haven’t the power to influence.
“NOT MY WILL BUT YOURS, FATHER”
As you probably guess, I get really involved in my paintings, developing and changing them through months of contemplation and thought. The long process of creating is a visual form of listening to the subject, thinking through what I believe, and contemplative prayer. This series is especially close to my heart because they came from a yearning for justice, peace, and an end to the idea that violence, war and death can resolve problems.
SEVEN LAST WORDS
Some people, especially my partner, frequently ask me why I paint religious themes so persistently when more commercial images would be far more lucrative. I suppose I consider faith, art and life as so important that I want to use the limited life I have left to concentrate on the most important things.
I felt an inner need to get these paintings right, not just for self-expression, and as a memorial to the innocent who die daily in war, but because I hope that the pictures might encourage others to contemplate, to pray and learn peace and pastoral care for the world. The paintings are a visual prayer for Christ’s example to be reflected in our world and in the Church.
Painting a religious subject is not just illustrating a Bible story; we’re trying to understand and convey its inner meaning. That’s especially true when painting the Crucifixion and Resurrection, which to me are the most important themes in the whole of art.
RESURRECTION PAINTINGS
How you and I relate to Christ, his death, resurrection and the gifts he offers are a major source and inspiration for life. Knowing their meaning enlivens us spiritually, motivates us, and can help us best reflect the nature of God in our lives. The story of Salvation can drive us to work towards building the Kingdom of God, even in a limited way, in this world where so many are in pain or injustice thrives.
Living in the light of Christ’s Redemption, Resurrection and promise can enliven the image of God in us. Too much past Church teaching was about resigning ourselves to pain and injustice now, hoping for greater things in heaven. But Christian Resurrection life starts now. God didn’t create life on earth to be a painful preparation for heaven. He created life to enjoy and make the most of now, to fulfil us, while we learn, and work to improve the state of life for all. True Christianity, as Christ taught it, isn’t about ascetic rejection of pleasure, as though there’s something wrong in what God has given us, to tempt us towards evil. Rather, we’re to grow into God’s likeness by enjoying the full life God has given to us and finding and relating to God within it. Christ died, rose from death and gives us his Spirit’s to strengthen us for our lives. Whatever heaven is we will discover later; now we practice living righteously in ways that bring the image of God alive in us and in our world.
LAST WORDS
Living un-God-like lives has led to war or human suffering. And that’s where the image of God relates to these paintings. Christ is described in the letter to the Colossians as “the image of the unseen God” (Col. 1:15). Hebrew calls him “the exact representation of God” (Heb. 1:7), Jesus himself said those who have seen him know the Father (John 14:6).
He represents to us the perfection of living in the way God designed us to live.
“FATHER INTO YOUR HANDS I COMMIT MY SPIRIT,”
Reflecting him can help us love humanity enough to give up our priority and not assert ourselves above us.
“SON BEHOLD YOUR MOTHER, MOTHER BEHOLD YOUR SON.”
He tells us to look after one another in our needs.
“FATHER FORGIVE THEM, THEY DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING.”
His example calls us to love and forgive all, not exact retribution for evils. He encourages us to forgive, even at the expense of our own life and rights, to be servant of all, not demanding mastery over others. What would have been Christ-like responses to evil in the run-up to the two World Wars we are preparing to commemorate? How would Christ have responded after 9/11? How do we reflect God in our reaction to terrorist organisations strengthened as a result of Iraq and Afghanistan. What god-like response should we be making to Syria, the Ukraine or ethical dilemmas of today?
FORGIVENESS OF PETER
The only hope for improving our world as I see it is a return to the type of self-sacrificial love and humanitarian sensitivity expressed in the theme of these paintings. – Christ “did not insist on his equality with God, but gave up his life for the good of others” (Phil.2:6)… God focuses on forgiveness and healing, not revenge or violence. Such self-sacrifice is rare, even among Christians. How can we more fully show God in ourselves, our churches and society?
In the image of God we are meant to take greater loving pastoral responsibility for our world, to support growth, not damage others.
What shadow of God do you recognise in yourself? How might you reflect him better in how you live, what you do or create, your family, work, your society, the environment you create around yourself? We have Lent and beyond to focus our creative minds and imaginations to better live out God’s likeness in us.
“MY GOD, MY GOD WHY HAVE YOU FORSAKEN ME?”
The true nature of God is seen in self-sacrifice as much as creativity. Perhaps the most powerful should be the most self-sacrificial. It is healing and holy to love and forgive, even amid confusion and pain.
How different is this image of the leader as a suffering servant from prevailing attitudes in society, where self and ego, fame, money, strength and asserting yourself over others, often dominate.
LAST WORDS / NEW SONGS
If we recognise that we are in the image of God then ALL in our world are in the image of God too. We need to feel this equality more: ALL have the same value as you and I.
Believing that human beings are in the image of God, should make us live up to that image. Though we are complex beings, we are not just automatons, determined to act or think by our nature or nurture, our psychology or environment; we have the potential to achieve the state for which God designed us. We don’t have to give in to selfish, baser drives of our ego: with Christ’s Spirit inside us we have the potential to selflessly serve others as Christ exemplified. We don’t have to be driven by self-preservation, excluding or destroying those who are different to ourselves; we carry in our make-up the potential to be as loving and inclusive of the stranger as was Christ. Jesus taught that everyone is our neighbour, to be loved and valued as though we see the image of God in all he has made.
I hope these pictures might help us to contemplate and pray for the needs of the world and of ourselves in this light.