Why Only Gifted Artists Should Be Allowed to Paint Jesus

Unexpectedly, with a three hour layover from the Lancaster train until the Boston Bus in Philadelphia, I saw in the information kiosk that the Museum of Art (yes, Rocky ran up and down its steps) had a special exhibit called "Rembrandt and the Faces of Jesus." It was a collection of some of his most famous work, sketches and oils, though I didn't care as much for the sketches, as well as the Hundert Thaler (because it sold for so much) etching of Jesus saying "forbid not the little children to come to me." In that one picture is so much fine, and so much wonderful . . . a toddler some distance, reaching for Jesus, the tenderness of Jesus, all with the economy of line and Rembrandt's unique use of light. Modern evangelicals have generally taken clip art of Jesus drawn by so" me tech school grad thinking to use such pictures to ornament a bulletin. What Rembrandt did was something beyond and not counter to the second commandment. We don't know what Jesus looks like (though artists of his day went by a supposed Lentulus letter, sent to the Roman senate in the time of Jesus and describing what He looked like, but not discovered until 1474, and almost certainly a fraud), but Rembrandt strove for a biblical realism, using a young Jewish man from his neighborhood as a model and carefully doing his Bible study, instead of the Jesus-as-idealized-Greek-god depictions of his day. He portrayed a complexity of expressions, real human ones, across the face of Jesus and overturned how people painted Jesus, the Supper at Emmaus painted at the same time that the Westminster Confession was being finished in England. In the less famous but no less startling 1628 painting above, Jesus is in silhouette while those to whom he is revealed are illuminated. Rembrandt is not making a picture of Jesus for us to worship or to fix in our heads, "Oh, that's what Jesus is like." No, he is saying, Jesus was real, human; He had human emotions, and everywhere where He was (as he is in all of the later paintings and etchings), He is light! The further from Jesus you are in these works, the more you are in the dark.
The whole opposition to images of Jesus imputed to many Reformed people is, however, unjust. Cromwell tried to stop the destruction whenever he could, restraining the unruly soldiers of his New-but-not-so-Model Army. Similarly Calvin allowed that there might be some use for paintings like those of Rembrandt's. (I'll attach a paper I wrote for the now defunct New England Reformed Journal several years ago some day soon). But all Reformed folks were concerned for the use of images that God did not create. Jesus is the one who is the image of the father. The writers of the gospel, obedient to the Holy Spirit, saw no need to insert a drawing of Jesus, because THE WORD OF GOD IS ENOUGH. They saw the superstition of their day in which people who could not read or hear sermons interpreting scripture in their own language and turned instead to pictures of Jesus around them. Rather than give their students pictures, why not just return the Word that God said is all we need for life and godliness? They so desired the Word be first place. They did so because they cared less about their personal ecclesial power than they did for the people they saw dying without the gospel. A gospel added to is no gospel, they knew, and they wanted their people to have real and new life founded on His Word alone.
So, an afternoon of watching a Dutch master preach in his own style, I suspect, Calvin would not have been offended by, unless of course they ended up where they never had been or intended to be, in church as an aid to worship. But he didn't have time . . . he labored to study God's word and comment on as much as he could before the Lord called him home. In his calling, Calvin was as gifted and careful as Rembrandt . . . which is why Calvin's commentaries remain to this day "close to the bone" of what he was studying, careful not to over-theologize nor to be sure when he wasn't, to allow the Scriptures to speak for himself. So, I too, on the bus back on soggy roads, I turn from an afternoon of the Word carefully painted to my own study, not will the gifts of a Calvin or a Rembrandt, but with all I have to bring out the complexities, the life, and the reality of His living and blazing Word. . . . . .

In this, the more famous 1648 Supper at Emmaus painting, I'm intrigued at the similarity of Caravaggio's painting of the same subject; the two with the added servant who is unaware what is happening. . . .

For a helpful and not too long study of the second commandment issue, you might want to consider this nuanced PCA position paper on paintings of Jesus in and outside of worship.

The Lord of the Church at work in Pastor and the Local Body

Another breathtaking reminder from the pen of Octavius Winslow which I have neither the eloquence or grace to say, but so fully cruciformed and true. For both pastor and congregation to meditate upon, without reason to excuse either of their peculiar responsibilities.

“You all are partakers of my grace.” Philippians 1:7

Most true is it, that in the grace bestowed by God upon a Christian pastor all the members of the flock share. They partake of that which belongs to him. All the grace with which he is enriched- all the gifts with which he is endowed- all the acquirements with which he is furnished- all the afflictions with which he is visited- all the comforts with which he is soothed- all the strength with which he is upheld- all the distinction and renown with which he is adorned- belong alike to the Church over which God has made him an overseer. There is in the pastoral relation a community of interest. He holds that grace, and he exercises those gifts, not on account of his own personal holiness and happiness merely, but with a view to your holiness and happiness.

You are partakers with him. You are enriched by his “fatness,” or are impoverished by his “leanness.” The degree of his grace will be the measure of your own; the amount of his intelligence, the extent of yours. As he is taught and blest of Christ, so will you be. The glory which he gathers in communion with God will irradiate you; the grace which he draws from Jesus will sanctify you; the wealth which he collects from the study of the Bible will enrich you. Thus, in all things are you “partakers of his grace.” How important, then, that on all occasions he should be a partaker of your prayers! Thus your own best interests are his strongest plea. Your profit by him will be proportioned to your prayer for him.

To the neglect of this important duty much of the barrenness complained of in hearing the word may be traced. You have, perhaps, been wont to retire from God’s house caviling at the doctrine, dissecting the sermon in a spirit of captious criticism, sitting in judgment upon the matter or the manner of the preacher, and bitterly complaining of the unprofitableness of the preaching. With all tender faithfulness would we lay the question upon your conscience, “How much do you pray for your minister?” Here, in all probability, lies the secret of the great evil which you deplore. You have complained of your minister to others (alas! how often and how bitterly, to your deep humiliation be it spoken); have you complained of him to the Lord?

Have you never seriously reflected how closely allied may be the deficiency in the pulpit, of which you complain, to your own deficiency in the closet, of which you have not been aware? You have restrained prayer in behalf of your pastor. You have neglected to remember in especial, fervent intercession with the Lord, the instrument on whom your advancement in the divine life so much depends. You have looked up to him as a channel of grace, but you have failed to ask at the hands of Jesus that grace of which he is but the channel. You have waited upon his ministrations for instruction and comfort, but you have neglected to beseech for him that teaching and anointing, by which alone he could possibly establish you in truth, or console you in sorrow. You have perhaps observed a poverty of thought, and have been sensible of a lack of power in his ministrations; but you have not traced it in part to your own poverty and lack in the spirit and habit of prayer in his behalf.

You have marveled at, and lamented, the absence of sympathy, feeling, and tenderness in the discharge of his pastoral duties, but you have forgotten to sympathize with the high responsibilities, oppressive anxieties, and bewildering engagements inseparable from the office which your pastor fills, and in which he may largely share, often “under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life.” Thus in a great degree the cause of an unprofitable hearing of the word may be found nearer home than was suspected. There has been a suspension of prayer and sympathy on your part, and God has permitted a suspension of power and sympathy on his.

There's No Place Like Home, Part II

Not often that you can go to the grocery store (Weis Markets) and find signs like these!