Ad Imaginem Dei: Out of Commission for Awhile

Friday, December 28, 2018

Out of Commission for Awhile

Gabriel Metsu, Visit of the Physician
Dutch, c. 1660-1667
St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum

I don't expect to be posting much for the next several months. The day for my spinal surgery has finally arrived and the work of preparing these notes will be beyond my powers and stamina for a bit.

I will try to continue to call attention to various previously posted ideas and images in the "Featured Posts" section on the right hand column and by occasionally repositioning some especially noteworthy topics as the top article below this notice. Please check frequently to catch things you may have missed or would appreciate seeing once again.

During this busy time, please take a second or two to pray for me in your kindness. Pray that God will direct the surgeon's mind and hands, the hands of the nurses and aids and physical therapists and keep any infections or other possible harmful side effects away from me right now. Above all, pray that I can have a speedy recovery and can walk freely once again, so that my life can remain active and independent for some years yet.

And I would like to thank the several total strangers who have sent me their prayers in response to my earlier postings about this problem. May God reward you a thousandfold for you kindness.

So, I wish you a Merry and Holy Christmas, if you are Christian, or a Happy Holiday for whatever other festival you may be celebrating at this time of the year. And we can all hope for a better 2019!

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Uniquely among the monotheistic religions Christianity permits the use of images of God. Why? The answer lies in the Christian belief in the reality of the Incarnation. Since God has assumed human nature and form the Biblical prohibition against making images of God ceases to apply. As the second Council of Nicea declared in 787 "Following the divinely inspired teaching of our holy Fathers and the tradition of the Catholic Church (for we know that this tradition comes from the Holy Spirit who dwells in her) we rightly define with full certainty and correctness that, like the figure of the precious and life-giving cross, venerable and holy images of our Lord and God and Savior, Jesus Christ, our inviolate Lady, the holy Mother of God, and the venerated angels, all the saints and the just, whether painted or made of mosaic or another suitable material, are to be exhibited in the holy churches of God, on sacred vessels and vestments, walls and panels, in houses and on streets."
(Council of Nicaea II: DS 600)

This decree of Nicea II was promulgated for the entire church, both Greek and Latin speaking, and was a response to the strongly held beliefs of the iconoclasts, who wished to suppress the use of images, which had convulsed the Byzantine Empire and the eastern churches for almost 100 years. In addition, St. John Damascene, last of the Greek Fathers and a staunch defender of images, had written in De imagine ("In Defense of Images") "Of old, God the incorporeal and uncircumscribed was never depicted. Now, however, when God is seen clothed in flesh, and conversing with men, (Bar. 3.38) I make an image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake, and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter." (St. John Damascene, De Imagine, Part I, 15-16, from Internet Medieival Sourcebook.)

The ways in which this imaging of the divine has been accomplished in the course of time is the subject of Christian iconography. To quote from the Merriam-Webster dictionary, iconography is "1: pictorial material relating to or illustrating a subject; 2: the traditional or conventional images or symbols associated with a subject and especially a religious or legendary subject; 3: the imagery or symbolism of a work of art, an artist, or a body of art".

The iconography of any subject develops and changes over time. Christian iconography develops and changes too, as reflection on the Gospels and Tradition develops over time and as the act of making art develops and changes as well. This is the background for this blog.

Ad Imaginem Dei

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Friday, December 28, 2018

Out of Commission for Awhile

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Central Park Sunset

Oscar Wild 1997(?)-2014