All tagged symbolism
Images of God in Christian art, have regularly reflected a lack of imagination when it comes to the diversity of God’s people. Art, it could be said has a crucial role to play in challenging racial prejudice in the world and in the Church today.
The Physiologus is a strange hybrid of genres, at least to modern eyes. Much as the Gospels are neither quite straightforward biography as we now understand the genre, nor entirely pious fiction, the Physiologus is neither quite natural history nor entirely a collection of just-so-stories.
Next in our series on Christian symbolism, Mthr Arabella Milbank writes on the depiction of angels and their function and significance in the life of the Church.
Next on our series on Christian symbolism, Mthr Melanie Clark writes on the history and significance of the Church’s use of the colour blue. Mthr Melanie is Curate of Lichfield S Michael with S Mary and Wall S John. She is an early modern historian: her PhD thesis (Selwyn College, Cambridge) was on the English Civil Wars and Restoration period in the seventeenth century.
If it takes an imaginative leap to see the book, understood as an artefact or object, as a sign or symbol in Christian life, then this is perhaps down to sheer familiarity. Books are ubiquitous in Western culture. I sit writing this in one of my favourite places: an enormous bookshop in rural Warwickshire, consisting of multiple barns full of volumes on every imaginable topic. Even in the café I am surrounded by stacks of the things, I am resting my laptop on a few of my most treasured discoveries (books are working objects, after all).
Some time ago, at a local synod, a speaker suggested that we needed another symbol—apart from the cross—a symbol that suggested a more dynamic approach to Christian faith. I was interested, indeed amused, that this scandalised some members of the audience, because it was clear that they were unaware of the sensitivities of those Christians who lived in the centuries immediately following the death of Christ. […]
