Images of Faith: Time For Another Look

Rembrandt
The Bishop commenced his talk with a detailed description of Rembrandt’s painting Presentation of the child Jesus in the Temple with Simeon and Mary which is housed in the National Museum in Stockholm. He described the picture as "absolutely stunning", and passed round Simon Schama’s book Rembrandt’s Eyes which has a photograph of the painting, which was created in the very last years of his life in the late 1660s.

Rembrandt created a number of versions of this subject Presentation in the Temple in his earlier years. In 1631, when he was only 25, he created a very dramatic and stagy version, which is on display at the Hague. It shows a very aged Simeon clothed in a rich brocade golden cloak and he is cradling the infant Christ child. Mary, portrayed as a simple peasant girl, is kneeling. Joseph is a strongly built middle-aged man leaning to one side and sitting on some steps. And there is this extraordinary light coming down apparently from heaven. All the way down there are steps, and on those steps crowds of people. The backdrop is Rembrandt’s idea of what the Temple might have looked like.

The Stockholm painting is a complete contrast: all the background has been omitted. There are no steps and no people except Simeon, Mary and the Christ child. There is no heavenly light coming down. Looking at it, if you don’t know the story, you don’t know what it is about. All that we have is an aged man with his hands out, and lying across his arms, a child. And Mary is in the background. In Christian terms it is a powerful exploration of the implicit theology of the story. The unexpectedness of a God who could be so humble, and it goes even deeper because this is an old man who didn’t expect at the very end of his life to see the fulfilment of his dreams. It is impossible to read this image in Christian terms without bringing to mind Pieta’s where Mary, at the death of her son, held him in her arms.

Unease about Images
The Bishop acknowledged that he had chosen a specifically Christian image with which to open his talk. He did so because it means so much to him, though of course he recognised that for many in the audience, its implicit theology will not necessarily be acceptable. He had opened with this image because the older he gets, the more he recognises the power of visual images in the shaping of our society and of our world. He recognised that within Judaism and Christianity there always is, and always will be, a very uneasy relationship with visual imagery in relation to our faiths, and he didn’t need to mention the Decalogue with its prohibition on the creation of graven images. He said that today, within Christianity, there is an image/no image divide and therefore we find churches with bare walls and churches filled with statuary, stained glass, and so on. On a personal note, he stands a bit closer to the image bit than the no-image bit in Christianity.

Word Pictures
The Bishop continued illustrating his theme by referring to analogous and metaphorical images taken from a homily of Gregory of Nissan, the teaching of Moses, and a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins. They are all images which describe our incomprehension and spiritual longing for God.

There is within Judaism and Christianity a relationship with images which has about it profound and theological and spiritual unease. However, this having been said, we deal with Scriptural word-pictures which are of immense power. For example, in the Hebrew Scriptures we have stories such as that of wrestling Jacob, and immediately our minds will be conjuring up the power of that story and we will see it in visual terms. In the Tate there is the astonishing Jacob Epstein painting of Jacob wrestling with the angel. There is the tension arising from the uncertainty of whether the angel is going to be able to lift Jacob up, or is the weight of Jacob going to draw the angel down? In the Christian Scriptures we only have to think of or read the story of the Good Samaritan, for example, and again our imagination conjures up visual shapes. Image, for all of us, is enormously powerful.

Images and Books
The Bishop then said that he was moving on to more difficult and more powerful territory, but still about image. He showed the audience a copy of a book in the Lonely Planet Guide series called Israel – a travel survival kit by Neil Tilbury. It shows on the front cover two traditionally dressed ultra-Orthodox Jewish men at the Western Wall, and the Bishop said that many in the audience would be able to decode the image and read it because they know the subtle and nuanced relationship between dress and belief. For an example from his own church the Bishop said that he can look at a group of C of E clergy and can guess pretty clearly what their theology is. A very deep white collar all the way round the neck tends to be favoured by the Evangelical wing of the church. Those who wear a dog collar similar to his own, i.e. a not very deep collar positioned only at the front of the neck, are most probably of the broad-church/liberal tradition. So he can read the nuances of this in a way that, say, somebody who doesn’t know anything about the C of E couldn’t.

Because the image on the front of the Lonely Planet Guide to Israel is so powerful people will have their first impression of Israel shaped by this image. Irrespective of whether it is a good or bad image, it is through people’s eyes that their minds and understanding are shaped. The Bishop then issued a challenge. If we were designing a book cover for people going to Israel who neither understood the history of the country, nor its theology, nor its multiplicity of religions and secular values – what book cover would we choose to design?

The Bishop then showed the audience the covers of two other books. The first was titled The Western Wall Tunnels – Touching the Stones of Our Heritage. He discussed and praised the design, content, colouring, calligraphy and said that it was an example of a positive image which, together with the title of the book achieved its objective of making one want to reach out and experience the reality. The other book is titled One Palestine Complete – Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate by Tom Seger. On the cover there is an old sepia photograph of British Officers sitting in a car, and he discussed the impact and message conveyed on the cover.

Images by Design
The Bishop pointed out that he had begun his talk by discussing an image by Rembrandt of great profundity and beauty, and then progressed to a discussion of book cover design. What they all have in common, whether it be Rembrandt, or one of the books he mentioned, is deliberate choice. The images have been deliberately designed and chosen to achieve specific objectives in the eyes of the viewers/readers.

Bridges or Barriers?
He said that many people in the audience will know, all too horribly, how some images of Judaism have been used to denigrate the Jewish religion and way of life. As an example he cited those carved images on some of the great European cathedrals. These images of Ecclesia (Church) are all bright and victorious and triumphant, and Synagogia is blindfolded and broken and stumbling. They are terrible and wretched images and they helped to shape and express European thinking.

We live in an age saturated with images, and as Christians and Jews we have a major problem on our hands. How can we explain these images, whether painted, sculptured or verbal? How can we explain these images of our faith to each other so that they are bridges and not barriers when we face inwards to each other. And then, when facing outwards, how can we convey to other people what our faith means to us? What image shall we choose?

To return specifically to the Rembrandt, the Bishop said that he decodes the image as a white, Anglo-Saxon, C of E priest. He brings to the reading of that image all the haunting musical settings of the Nunc Dimittis with which he was brought up, and which he still sings. And in that sense he and Rembrandt aren’t too far apart, in spite of the centuries that separate them. They have a common European identity. But if we were to show that Rembrandt to an educated Japanese who will have within his culture a mix of Taoism and Buddhism, and only the tiniest awareness possibly of Judaism or Christianity, then how can, and how does that image by Rembrandt speak to him? Does it have any mode of communication at all? How would they read it? In his own experience he was taken round Buddhist Temples by Japanese hosts on a visit to Tokyo. He couldn’t read the Temples at all. He needed his hosts to read the images for him and to translate into terms he could begin to understand.

Towards Mutual Understanding
These days, in this global village of ours, the growth of half-truths and the communication power of the Internet means that the more we communicate the more we might be in danger of creating chaos – "babel and bubble" are here and now. This is all too pertinent for us Jews and Christians because we are trying to understand each other and work constantly for reconciliation. And the problem is partly in relation to the land of Israel. From a Christian perspective, the lack of understanding of the nature of the land of Israel politically, culturally, historically, theologically is far too thin. The misunderstandings are absolutely massive. So what images can we share which will create mutual understanding, and what images can we share, or do we share, which might create mistrust and a breakdown in understanding? Are there images common to us both which have a universal validity?

A Massive Challenge
The Bishop ended his most interesting talk by saying that he wished he was able to provide some answers, rather than just to raise questions with which he is struggling. It is obvious that Jews and Christians are going to have to work together to combat some of the terrible imagery that is around. The images we create are not about logos, they are something far deeper than that. It is the way we are going to reach out to another generation, and he didn’t doubt, following the terrible events in London recently, that the task is absolutely huge. If we don’t get it right we are in for a terrible future. So it is a big challenge, and we need all the help we can get to think it through.

- Bernard Tiley