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contact:
malbon@vt.edu

Dr. Jensen is Associate Professor of the History of Christianity at Andover Newton Theological School in Newton Centre, MA, and the author of Understanding Early Christian Art (Routledge, 2000).

Abstract: Christians are often said to have received their reticence for visual images, and especially for images of the divine, from their Jewish roots. However, as this paper argues, Judaism did not claim that God is invisible, nor was it consistently aniconic in regards to figurative representations in visual art. Instead, Christian tradition regarding the visibility of God and the permissibility of visual images owes more to the Hellenistic philosophical tradition as adapted by early Christian apologists. As Christian art develops and images become common in churches and other religious settings, the theological arguments in favor of images parallel the defense of the equality of the natures of the Trinity in the mid-fourth century and the Incarnational theology emerging out of the Christological controversy of the early fifth century.

2002, Toronto


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