[Dialogue] Spong 5/21/08 Christian Art

[KroegerD at aol.com]

May 21, 2008 
Christian Art: Reinforcer of a  Dying Literalism  

I did not realize how thoroughly biblical literature has shaped Western  
civilization until I took a course offered by The Teaching Company entitled  
"Great Artists of the Italian Renaissance" taught by Professor William Kloss of  
the Smithsonian Institution. I was certainly aware that almost all Western art  
up until the Renaissance had religious themes and biblical scenes as its 
primary  content. What I did not embrace was that during this time the vast 
majority of  people could neither read nor write. This meant that the only way they 
could  visualize the content of their religious traditions was through 
paintings or  pictures. It was for this reason that the walls of churches were 
regularly  decorated with paintings of biblical stories. These paintings focused 
primarily  on the life of Jesus. Depictions of the Passion of Christ, with graphic 
 portrayals of Jesus' suffering, are commonplace. To keep religious fear at 
high  levels and to make control of the behavior of the masses easier, there 
was also  an emphasis on the chilling paintings of the Last Judgment complete 
with the  devil, eternal flames and the torments of the damned. The reason that 
the  "Stations of the Cross" were either painted or hung on church walls was 
to allow  the faithful to envision the meaning of Jesus' death, about which 
most of them  would never read. With few people actually knowing the content of 
the Bible and  certainly with no one sharing a modern critical view of biblical 
scholarship,  the paintings of Christian artists determined for many the way 
the Christian  story was communicated.  
What we need to recognize is that when artists painted Jesus scenes from the  
Bible they also assumed the first century view of both life and the universe  
that was reflected in these gospel writings. Heaven and God were just above 
the  sky of a three tiered universe, deeply and closely related to this world. 
One  thinks of the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel painted by Michelangelo, 
which shows  the finger of God all but touching the finger of Adam. Angels are 
treated by  these artists as important heavenly beings, who come to earth not 
only with  divine messages, but also to inspire human achievement. These angels 
are  presumed to have the ability to care for holy individuals like Jesus of  
Nazareth. So Christian art portrays an angel announcing his birth to Mary,  
flying above his manger at birth, attending his needs at baptism, guiding him in  
the temptations, hovering around his cross at his crucifixion, opening his 
tomb  on the day of resurrection and, finally, accompanying him as he ascends 
into  heaven. The medieval world lived with a clear sense of a heavenly realm 
just  above the sky and it was the common assumption that there was always 
maximum  contact between the two realms. Jesus' parables were treated by these 
artists as  literal events. This was particularly true of Matthew's parable of the 
last  judgment and Luke's parable of the Good Samaritan.  
Matthew was a particular favorite of the artists of the late Middle Ages.  
Such a well known artist as Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio did a whole series 
 of Matthew paintings. Matthew's medieval importance seemed to stem from the 
fact  that this book was placed by the church fathers at the front of the New  
Testament and in that pre-critical time was believed to be not only the 
earliest  gospel, but also to be literally accurate. Caravaggio's painting entitled 
the  "Inspiration of Matthew" shows him with an angel telling the evangelist 
exactly  what to write, a sign of the commonly held belief that Matthew's 
gospel  contained inerrant revelations directly from God. It was not a human work. 
 Another Matthew portrait actually showed the hand of an angel physically 
guiding  the hand of Matthew so that every word of the text was not just divinely 
 inspired, but divinely written. These artists captured the cultural view of 
the  literal accuracy of the texts of the gospels. This view remains 
unchallenged in  the minds of many to this day.  
Contradictions in the texts between two of the gospel writers seemed not to  
bother the artistic world. This was especially true in the popular portrayal 
of  the nativity stories. A stable as the place of Jesus' birth was a fixed 
item in  the world of medieval art. The stable was assumed to be populated with a 
variety  of animals, sheep and cows in particular. A star was frequently 
placed in the  sky above the stable and wise men on camels were sometimes 
portrayed as among  those present at the stable to worship and present their gifts. 
These items are  of particular interest to me because not one of them is 
biblically accurate in  any literal sense. People did not embrace then, as indeed 
many do not now, the  fact that there are two quite disparate and highly 
incompatible accounts of  Jesus' birth in the New Testament, the earliest one in 
Matthew and the other one  written some ten or so years later in Luke. These birth 
narratives have been  hopelessly blended in the common mind and even filled 
with imaginary details.  This process was aided in no small measure by the great 
paintings of Christian  history.  
The facts are that in Matthew's first and earliest version of Jesus' birth  
there is no journey of Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem because Matthew assumes 
that  they live permanently in Bethlehem, in a specific house, so well identified 
that  a star can actually stop over that house and bathe it in its light. So 
in  Matthew there is no stable, no stable animals and no manger. Matthew's 
story  also gives us no angels, no shepherds, no circumcision and no presentation 
in  the Temple. Matthew does tell us that Jesus and his parents fled to Egypt 
to  escape the wrath of Herod, returning to their Bethlehem home only when 
Herod's  death made it seem a safe thing to do. As a matter of fact, there is 
also no  mention of camels in Matthew's gospel as the means of the wise men's 
locomotion.  Tradition and Christian paintings, not Matthew, have put the camels 
into the  Christian memory bank.  
In Luke's second nativity story the details are quite different. Luke has no  
star and thus no wise men to follow that star. There is still no stable even 
in  Luke. The stable is a fantasy creation of story tellers. Luke mentions 
only a  manger, literally a feeding trough, and around that word our imaginations 
have  built the stable. Luke makes no mention of the presence of animals at 
Jesus'  birth, because there was no stable in which to house them. People 
hearing this  for the first time are so convinced they will argue until they 
actually read the  text. There is also no innkeeper in these narratives who offers 
the "expecting"  couple a barn, despite the fact that this character shows up 
regularly in our  pageants. The angels appear in the Bible to Mary in Nazareth 
and they appear to  the shepherds in the field, but nowhere in those familiar 
texts does an angel  ever appear at or near the manger. None of these facts 
have stopped the artists  of Christian history from blending tradition, fantasy 
and mythology into their  paintings. One should not be surprised that those 
paintings were viewed as  literally accurate events of history.  
The Virgin Mary was also a popular subject of medieval art and the  
imagination of the artists built the Marian tradition quite in opposition to  biblical 
facts. Neither Mary nor Joseph receives a single mention in the  writings of 
Paul (51-64 CE). In Mark, the earliest gospel, the name of Mary is  mentioned 
only one time (6:3), and then by a critic of Jesus who wonders at the  source 
of his learning, "Is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary?" he asks.  Mary's 
name is never mentioned again in the only gospel the Church had until the  
9th decade. The myth of Mary is a late developing tradition. Mark did refer once 
 to "the mother of Jesus (3:31-35)," but she is portrayed here as believing 
Jesus  to be out of his mind and, with her other sons and daughters, tried to 
have him  put away. It was not a flattering portrait, yet this was the only 
image of the  mother of Jesus in the first gospel to be written. In Mark's gospel 
she is not  mentioned as being present at either the crucifixion or the 
resurrection. The  mother of Jesus was also not present at the cross in the second 
gospel of  Matthew or in the third gospel of Luke. Only in the 10th decade 
work of John did  she finally get placed at the scene of the crucifixion. The 
Fourth Gospel had  Jesus commend her to the care of the "Beloved Disciple," who, 
we are told in  that text, took her immediately to his home. Even in the 
Fourth Gospel, however,  Mary is not present when Jesus died nor did she have any 
hand in taking him from  the cross. One would not know that from Christian art. 
Her grief at the cross  was conveyed in thousands of paintings. She was 
pictured cradling his deceased  body in her arms in the popular Pietas and most 
recently in Mel Gibson's  biblically falsifying motion picture, "The Passion of 
the Christ." Facts do not  seem to matter when a painting is made or a motion 
picture is produced.  
It is the power of these images that makes it so difficult for modern  
Christians to escape a culturally imposed literalism. Stained glass windows in  
churches across the world encourage it. Paintings in the great museums of the  
world assert it. Liturgies shaped primarily in the 13th century reinforce it.  
The familiar hymns of the Church imaginatively reenact it ("Here betwixt ass and 
 oxen mild, sleep, sleep, sleep, my little child,") In the universe that we  
inhabit there is no heaven located just above the sky from which angels can  
travel constantly to make divine pronouncements. The world portrayed in  
Christian art and in regular ecclesiastical usage quite frankly no longer  exists. 
When the essence of our faith is portrayed as relevant only inside a  world 
that to us does not exist, one cannot help but wonder whether or not that  faith 
can have any future. It does not unless we are able to lift whatever the  
essence of Christianity is out of the world in which it was first articulated,  
then translate it and finally cause it to be heard in the accents of the world  
of our knowledge and experience. That is the Christian task. There are grave  
doubts, I submit, as to whether we have the ability to accomplish this task  
since our great artists have so powerfully reinforced our cultural literalism.  
John Shelby Spong  
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Mary Brinson from Springfield, Missouri, writes:  
Although I did not read it until adulthood, I have found the words in the  
Gospel of Thomas to be true all my life.  
V.3 Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look the (Father's) kingdom is  
in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 
'It  is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) 
kingdom  is within you and it is outside you. When you know yourselves, then you 
will be  known, and you will understand that you are children of the living 
Father. But  if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you 
are the  poverty."  
And:  
V. 77 Jesus said, "I am the light that is over all things. I am all: from me  
all come forth and to me all attained. Split a piece of wood; I am there. 
Lift  up the stone, and you will find me there."  
What is your take on the Gnostic view, the Gospel of Thomas and others? I  
know you try to avoid describing God, for God truly is indescribable, but what  
you said sounded similar.  
Dear Mary,  
I have read the Gospel of Thomas several times and believe it to be the most  
authentic of the non-canonical gospels. Your letter has captured two of its  
insights with which I too resonate. The Jesus Seminar actually elevated it 
into  the canon in a seminar-published book called The Five Gospels. The best  
work done on it is by Elaine Pagels in her book Beyond Belief and by Bart  
Ehrman in his book Early Christianities.  
The Gospel of Thomas and other Gnostic gospels offer us a new angle on Jesus  
and I think we honor that. When orthodox defenders of traditional religious  
formulas attack alternative understandings, it is because they have assumed 
that  their view has captured truth. That is little more than idolatry.  
We walk into the mystery of a God who is beyond words, concepts or human  
perception. Jesus is for me a doorway into that mystery. Christian language in  
such concepts as Incarnation and Trinity is designed to put rational shape into 
 that experience. I do not reject that language, but I also do not literalize 
it.   
Thanks for writing.  
John Shelby Spong 



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