Curious Christian

You may recall I mentioned earlier that I had a preference for scenes over figures and symbols when it comes to Christian iconography?

I should come clean here and clue you in that in this I am partially influenced by … wait for it … uber-liberal and Jesus Seminar scholar John Dominic Crossan. What? Sounds out of character? Well I always like to give credit where it is due and while I disagree with him on many things this is one area where I am in broad sympathy. In The Essential Jesus: Original Sayings and Earliest Images he writes:

Imagine early Christian art under three rather general categories: signs, figures and [scenes]. Signs are such items as the lamb, anchor, vase, dove, dolphin, leaf, ship, olive branch, vine, grape, trident, and so on. Figures are such human images as the shepherd, especially the youthful male shepherd standing with the ram on his shoulders, or the fisherman with pole and line, or the veiled woman praying with upstretched hands, or the philosopher standing with closed scroll in hand or seated reading from an opened one. Scenes are especially those biblical ones whose presence renders the object most securely Christian and that certify as definitely Christian any more neutral signs, figures or scenes that accompany them. Compare for example, Plates 1 and 2.

Those three figures on Plate 1 depict Philosophy with opened scroll, Piety with upraised arms, and Humanity with shouldered ram. Those figures alone make it only proto-Christian, that is, susceptible of either pagan or Christian usage and interpretation.

But look at those same three figures on Plate 2. That sarcophagus, from the same period [250-275AD], is most assuredly and exclusively Christian, with a full Jonah cycle to the left and a baptism of Jesus to the right.

In short, scenes take you more directly and more surely to the essential stories than figures or symbols. With scenes, the gap between word and image is thinnest. That is not to say I am against the use of figures or symbols, just that where they are used more care needs to be taken to give them a context, because they are so much easier to decontextualize. Hopefully my emerging church friends can join the dots for themselves as to what implications this has for alternate worship events which feature the appropriation of ancient icons.