Altars on the Jordan & the Rhine

Ecumenism in the Arts conference

Institute for Ecumenical Research

Matthew J. Milliner, Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Art History at Wheaton College

“If we take careful note of the statements of the Greeks we shall find they differ from us more in words than in meaning.” -Thomas Aquinas, De Potentia

“Let us then pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.” -Romans 14:19

Introduction

Nicholas Gerhaert, one of the most significant of all Late Gothic sculptors, was born in

Leiden, but his best work was made in Strasbourg. Fittingly, his self-portrait, with which

many of you may be familiar, is here at the Cathedral Museum. But to see the rest of his

work, one has to travel to the Cloisters Museum in New York City, where Americans

literally transplanted a Spanish monastery to the upper tip of Manhattan island. There one

encounters one of his sumptuously sculpted Virgin and Childs from the 1460s. But

perhaps his most famous piece is located at the

Bode museum of sculpture at the crest of the

museum island in Berlin. The Bode museum

catalog tell us it was probably originally built for

a monastery in this city. But when Strasbourg

turned Protestant, the sculpture was moved east

of the city to Molsheim, and then landed in the hands of a private collector not far from

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here in Danlgolsheim, which is why it is called the Dalgosheim Madonna. It was then

purchased by the Bode Museum.

Though it would be nice if it could be brought back home, the Bode Museum is a good

place for it. Comparison to other sculptures in the museum show just how innovative this

particular Madonna was, with her billowing mantle and hair, her nonchalant expression,

and her child seems either coming out from under or retreating into her mantle. What do

you think about when you see this famous sculpture? The German art historian Horst

Bredekamp in my hearing made a rather striking observation - that this sculpture from the

1460s seems to anticipate iconoclasm – as if Christ is about to saw off the head of the

statue (the edge of the veil does indeed resemble a saw). And indeed it is hard to look at

this amazing piece of statuary, which has holes in the back for the insertion of relics, to

be characteristic of everything the Reformation would have protested – or everything that

the flat, two-dimensional Orthodox icon is not. The Reformation in Strasbourg, as I

understand it, was lest severe. After all, this sculpture managed to get away with itself

intact. But there is no doubt that this image stands in for hundreds of similar Virgins that

would have been destroyed in the course of the Reformation. And though I think there is

a place for a healthy iconoclasm – especially in our image-saturated age - we can still

lament that chisel of Nicholas von Leiden’s visual theology so often gave way to the

hatchet.1 Destruction of such images is to purify one version of the church is, after all,

1 As it happens, I think there is good reason in our image-saturated age to celebrate that iconoclastic heritage – there are lots of images in our culture that need to be at least rhetorically dismantled. But this is another topic. See this lecture for more on creative iconoclasm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL9GwT4_YRZdAibxgltxA2hVbByZWDVqY6&v=GLzqin9upgM

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the antithesis of everything I think we’re trying to do this week in pursuing Ecumenism

and the Arts.

But let’s turn from art history to ecumenical discussions. Perhaps like some of you, I’ve

been wrestling for the last two years with the claims of a veteran of this Institute,

Ephraim Radner – specifically the claims made in his downright paralyzing book, A

Brutal Unity. It has left me wounded – and as we know from Jacob’s encounter, wounds

can be good things. Still, this paper is an attempt to recover from his indictment of

Christian disunity, but only after having taken his accusations as seriously as I can.

Which is to say, I will attempt to chart a path through Radner’s book, not around it. At

the conclusion of A Brutal Unity Radner advises us to read the Old Testament

figuratively, with divided Christianity in mind. The warring tribes of Israel thereby

become figures for divided Christianity. Taking up this suggestion with the Marian statue

of Nicholas Gerhaert and the history of iconoclasm brings to mind Joshua 22. I’m not

fully comfortable with this method of reading, but let’s give it a try anyway. The original

passage reads:

The Israelites heard that the Reubenites and the Gadites and the half-tribe of Manasseh had built an altar at the frontier of the land of Canaan, in the region near the Jordan, on the side that belongs to the Israelites. 12 And when the people of Israel heard of it, the whole assembly of the Israelites gathered at Shiloh, to make war against them. (Joshua 22)

Admittedly, this does sound quite familiar. Some of God’s people erect an altar by a

river, and it provokes hostility and suspicion among the rest of God’s people. So, let’s

read it figuratively with Christian disunity and the Strasbourg sculpture in mind, and

switch out the terms.

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The Protestants heard that the Catholics had built statue of Mary at the frontier of the land of Alsace, in the region near the Rhine, on the side that belongs to the Catholics. And when the Protestants heard of it, the whole assembly of the Protestant gathered at Strasbourg, to make war against them. (Joshua 22)

Again, I’m uneasy with this way of reading Scripture, even if I admit it has lately made

the Old Testament very exciting to read. But instead of pursuing this reading further now,

I’m going use this as an opening device, and leave everyone in suspense as to what

happens (or at least you’ll be in suspense unless you recall the details of Joshua 22).

What I will do now is engage in a review of present literature that might illuminate ways

to look at this sculpture, and try to widen the path of “Ecumenism and the Arts” that we’ll

be pursuing this week. And so, when you see this beautiful sculpture on the screen again,

you’ll know this lecture is almost over, and we’ll get back to a figurative reading of

Joshua.

Visual Ecumenism

Let me now describe a theological scenario that may ring true for many of you, especially

those involved in ecumenical discussions. Recently at Wheaton College where I teach we

had a conference on the doctrine of divine simplicity that hosted some leading lights of

the American theology scene. I even brought pictures so you can feel like you were

there. Session after session pondered the great doctrine of divine simplicity, and the great

thinkers of the past seemed to materialize via respective thinkers. And so, Thomas

Aquinas was in a way mediated by the prolific American Catholic theologian Matthew

Levering, Gregory of Palamas by an Orthodox scholar at Marquette, Marcus Plested.

Irenaus, in turn, was channeled by the Dean of Saint Vladimir’s Theological Seminary,

the saintly Father John Behr, and Karl Barth was channeled by my colleague at Wheaton,

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Keith Johnson. The papers were delivered over the course of several days, and

discussions ensued – fruitful discussions. There was a curious moment where Plested

explained that Gregory of Palamas much maligned distinction between essence and

energies was, as he put it, “an indivisible divisibility.” And at that point Matthew

Levering looked up almost puzzled and said, “that’s exactly what I and Thomas are

trying to say.” A few hours later there was another moment of convergence. After Keith

Johnson’s deft encapsulation of Karl Barth’s notion of divine simplicity, John Behr

looked across the room and made a hard won statement, with a smile “I agree.” Keith

told me this moment was a highlight of his career.

Maybe I wouldn’t have made so much of that if it wasn’t the first time I had witnessed

such a convergence. A few years earlier at a conference at Princeton Seminary that put

Karl Barth and Thomas Aquinas into conversation, there was a strange moment when the

Thomists and the Barthians, in a discussion of sanctification, came to the fleeting

realization that they were both getting at the same mystery in different ways. Everyone

who was present in the room who

was paying attention had to sense

this convergence. This was not,

mind you, an easy conclusion

reached before hard theological

work, but after long days of labor.

Those familiar with the American

theological scene will be know of the Dominican Thomas Joseph White and the

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“revisionist” Barthian Bruce McCormack. Here is another photo I snapped that conveys

the tone of the conference. The convergences emerged quite clearly.

In the published volume from that conference, Bruce McCormack expressed the

convergences this way: “Rather than seeking a premature ecumenical agreement that

would likely entail the assimilation the teaching of one’s own church to those found in

another, should we not enter dialogue with the expectation that the theology that will

enable us to confess a common faith does not exist yet – and can only come into

existence where representatives of both great communions seek to further develop their

own theologies with questions and concerns of the conversation-partners firmly in mind.”

This future oriented ecumenism is something I first heard from Sarah Hinlicky Wilson,

who argued “that we consider the unified church for which Jesus prayed to lie not in the

past but still in the future.” Such a claim also appears in the first volume of Sarah

Coakley’s theologie totale, where she concludes with an exciting reference to the

“Coming Great Church.”

Still, I’m not sure that McCormack is right that we will come up with a verbal theology

adequate enough to finally fuse the insights of all great thinkers of the past. Perhaps

Radner is closer to the truth when he says right that we need more than “simply… the

pragmatic reception, testing, and readjusting of the information en route to a closer and

closer agreement, as if there were a common ‘rational’ basis for knowledge gathering.”

And as Wilson points out, even when agreement is reached, “churches have found it

convenient to call into question the nature of the agreement anyway.” I’d like to therefore

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suggest this afternoon that the “yet unseen ground of reconciliation” called for by Father

Thomas Joseph white in the same Barth/Thomas conference volume is literally unseen,

and it has been with us for some time. It is not some forgotten theological genius who can

fuse all our insights once and for all – but it is the forgotten theological genius of art as a

mode of theological discourse. It has been overlooked because for so long the arts have

not been taken seriously as loci of theological activity, let alone as one of the places

where the Spirit unexpectedly appears. But when we see art that way, the recent

ecumenical movement looks a lot different; and while our ecumenical failures are

certainly not erased, they are mitigated. In short, when it comes to the field of art and

architectural history (which is where I spend most of my time), those fleeting moments of

convergence I witnessed at two theology conferences are more of a daily occurrence than

an occasional breakthrough. I have lots of examples of this phenomenon – and we will

see many this week. But instead of launching into an extended list (which I’ve done in a

different venue), it might be best to start out with some warnings. Because the via

negativa is so fruitful in theology, let me then begin by taking an apophatic approach.

That is to say, let me start by saying what I hope Ecumenism and the Arts does NOT

mean by pointing out four different pitfalls on this potentially promising path.

1. Giving Art Too Little

First, by turning to artistic ways that the churches have been unified, we are not giving up

on serious theological work. This is not a coffee break from serious verbal theological

discussion.2 Instead, it is to give attention to the unique capacities of art to convey

2 Jeremy Begbie refers to this error as theological imperialism “where theology swells its chest and [music] is stifled… Out of concern for doctrinal orthodoxy, music is not given room to be itself, not allowed to glorify God in its own way” (Resounding Truth, 22).

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meaning, and to attune ourselves to that capacity without having to translate it

immediately back into verbal modes of discourse. The field of theology and art has been

busy for the last decades pointing out that art can function theologically, and we want to

take advantage of those labors. That said, there is a risk here that is nicely illustrated by

taking three recent and very fruitful works in the field of theological aesthetics. Cecelia

Gonzalez Andrieu’s A Bridge to Wonder aims to pursue a specifically Latina Catholic

approach to theology and art. Bill Dyrness, a Reformed thinker, calls for a “Search for a

Protestant Aesthetics.” And deeply learned C.A. Tsakaridou seeks an especially

Orthodox approach that she distinguished from Protestant and Catholic ones. In short, the

theology and art conversation has been confessionalized – and to that extent it may still

be shaped by verbal theology. I am not suggesting that such publications are not

worthwhile. Not in the least. But I am saying that if we seek to approach “Ecumenism

and the Arts” in a distinctly Catholic, Orthodox, or Lutheran or Pentecostal way, we may

be pre-determining the results, and possibly shutting down avenues of disclosure. What

if theological aesthetics transcends our divisions?

What is more, verbal theology has in many places pointed to the need for a new kind of

approach. If, as D. Stephen Long points out in his recent study, the theological friendship

of Balthasar and Barth uncovered a rätselhafte Riss (puzzling crack or enigmatic cleft)

between the church that could not be bridged, Ecumenism and the Arts is one way of

inhabiting that crack. Long concludes his fantastic study with these words, “Our divisions

should never be rendered intelligible, and we should never be satisfied with them. They

are, and always will be, like evil itself, puzzling, enigmatic and absurd.” This strikes me

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as an invitation to be less intelligible, in the verbal sense, and to explore what Jacques

Maritain calls the “pre-cognitive” domain of the aesthetic knowledge, and to see what it

might contribute to ecclesiology. And so we are still doing theology by exploring in this

direction, but doing it in a unique way.

2. Giving Art too much

But nor can Ecumenism and the Arts be an excuse to indulge in any given fancy. The

risk of error is as serious here as they are in any theological discussion.3 To turn

ecumenism and the arts into a chance for the faltering religion of “Art” (what’s left of it)

to colonize Christianity would be a disaster. This has already been tried by the greatest

minds in Europe, and I doubt we could do much better. Hans Urs von Balthasar

famously identified this risk of aesthetical theology (where feeling rules) as oppose to

theological aesthetics (where God’s revelation is in control), and what we are after (I

hope) is the latter. The surface aesthetics of the Enlightenment sought to escape deeper

theological claims. But Ecumenism and the Arts, as I understand it, should point not to

something merely ephemeral or decorative, but foundational. It is interesting that Karl

Barth describes his famous discovery of Anselm, that grounded theology in faith as the

“aesthetics of theological knowledge,” not utilitas but pulchritudo (beauty).4 Can

identifying this deeper, thoroughly Christian, pre-cognitive awareness lead where our

verbal confessions cannot? Balthasar and Barth’s lifelong friendship did not end in

agreement, but they did BOTH have Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece (just 3 Begbie calls this risk theological aestheticism, where art becomes a “new theological master, supposedly giving us supreme access to God or perhaps to some [undefined] “spiritual” realm.”4 Fides quarens intellectum: Anselms Beweis der Existenz Gottes im Zusammerenhang seines theologischen Programms (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1931). According to Stephen Long, Barth’s shift meant “theology begins with an aesthetic knowledge that seeks to express the form and tone of the glory of God revealed in Christ” (275).

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down the river!) hanging by their desks (Balthasar’s, incidentally, was a gift from Barth).

What if Ecumenism and the Arts can identify a pathway that the Holy Spirit has

employed in spite of our failures to reach confessional agreement? This I hope lends a

certain urgency to our gathering this week.

3. Words still matter, but in a different way

Still, all of this runs the risk of disparaging words. After all, I’m using them now, and it

is with words that we hope to arrive at some of the insights we’ll approach this week.

Nevertheless, words can be used kenotically – that is to say, words can empty themselves

and reveal their limitations. Maybe we have done a violence to words by forcing them

into constructed harmonizations. Theologians of serious stature have suggested as much.

Thomas Aquinas’ pointed out that divisions between Greeks and Latins arise from the

“inability of the Greek language to distinguish properly between ‘cause’ and ‘principle’”

(both are translated in Greek as arche). Conversely, Theophylact’s of Ochrid complained

that the Latins err due to the incapacities of the Latin language to distinguish between

eternal procession and temporal mission.5 More recently, In The Pillar and Ground of

the Truth, Pavel Florensky argues for a “de-logicized Pneumatic inchorence,” for a

“deliberate dismantling of the logical articulation of such phenomena.”6 It would be

laughable to think that Florensky – a most rigorous theologian and glorious martyr -

suggested this because he was unorthodox. He suggested this because the activity of the

Holy Spirit, he believed, had not yet been fully revealed. Rusty Reno admits that “any

5 Could the rift among Barthians in the American theological scene be so illuminated as well?!6 But interestingly enough, when Florensky went to art history, he just fell into the old confessional grooves, dismissing print culture as Protestant, sculpture as Catholic, and the icon as Orthodox. Florensky then showed the path but he didn’t walk it himself.

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progress toward Christian unity will undermine and diminish the sophisticated

theological systems born in the polemical centuries that followed the Reformation,” and

so – I would suggest - perhaps we need to leave the systems aside for a time to make

progress.7 To defer to images as a theological datum is not therefore to give up on verbal

formulations, but to acknowledge their limitations, to admit that verbal precision has been

over-employed.8 It is not to forget that Jesus is Logos, but to remember that the same

New Testament names him eikon as well. 9

4. Doing it Ourselves

Finally, and most importantly, God help us if this is a way of rolling up our sleeves and

getting the ecumenical job done by ourselves. As Balthasar put it, “Unity can only be the

grace of the Church’s Founder; this is no human product.”10 Ecumenical discussions are

choc filled with warnings that this is the work of the Spirit, not our own. But what we

can do is point out that maybe the Spirit has been more active than we had thought in

bringing - pursuing avenues that were less closed to his workings. Nor is this to avoid the

theme of repentance. Instead, it is simply to agree again with Wilson who suggests:

7 This is not, incidentally, to suggest that images will seal the deal and can take over from this point forward. The hopes of “true dogmatic union” (Plested 134) in verbal agreement may need to be later revisited. 8 Radner says that the “one mind” of which Paul speaks in Philippians “cannot refer to such unified agreement. Rather, oneness of mind is received through having the ‘mind of Christ,’ which is that of the one who gave up the form of God for that of a slave and emptied himself into death.” (446) I’m not fully sure what he means – but we do have to rethink the way we agree for the “substance of such ‘agreement’ has never been well defined.”9 There is so much more to say here. Edmund Husserl’s Sujet is defined as: “Forms of non-propositional meaning that induces visually affected cognition.” In his work on the image, Thomas Pfau has suggested that “images will give rise to a knowledge that transcends the matrix for cognition established by modern epistemology…” What if, I am wondering, images transcends modern ecclesiology as well? 10 Balthasar continues, “Church history is at a growing disintegration of ecclesial unity, without any corresponding movement to return to visible unity… However much one strives, today more explicitly than ever, for an ecumenical movement for such a return, it is of an almost supernatural difficulty, because the reference point for the sought after unity can no longer be sought in common.”

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“After repentance, new paths toward unity, presently invisible to us, will appear.” Even if

none of us have adequately repented (and who of us have?) – might we ask if God is

nevertheless showing us one of “these new paths toward unity”? Perhaps turning to

aesthetic forms of unity that can be more easily “agreed” upon or inhabited is,

furthermore, is actually a form of repentance. It is an attempt to redress the wounds that

have been brought on through our potentially idolatrous trust in words.

And do we really have any other choice that to seek a new path forward? While some

retrospective ecumenical discussion call for proceeding as usual, don’t we need to try

something different? Willem Visser ‘t Hooft originally claimed that WCC is “either a

Christocentric movement or it is nothing at all,” sadly has become not a warning, but a

prophecy. It is interesting that the worries that there the WCC was “communist” has

since been verified – there were KGB agents at the highest level. William Abraham

bluntly declares “ecumenism is now braindead… the best and brightest in the younger

leadership of the church have abandoned the ecumenical seas and gone sailing in other

waters.”11 Joseph Small even refers to the “death spiral of ecumenical councils, the

abstract seclusion of ecumenical dialogues.” But as I mentioned, none of these dim

prognoses are as hard hitting as Radner, who cuts off all our escape routes. We can’t say,

“don’t worry, we’re all one anyway,” because our divisions have implicated us in the

horrific violence of Rwanda and the Holocaust. Our foolish trust in conciliar processes or

vague spiritual unity have blinded us to the reality of Christian disunity. But despite the

11 The Princeton Proposal for Christian unity that chronicles where discussions are today is grim. “Great divisions remain, and few see a way forward.” “The ecumenical train is stalling or has even run off the tracks.” Brian Daley puts it, there is “a kind of spiritual and mental exhaustion in the face of the difficulties that prevent real communion among the churches, and a willingness to settle simply for practical cooperation in external programs.”

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hopelessness that one can come way with from reading and rereading A Brutal Unity,

Radner does offer one very concrete way ahead – and that might be where the Spirit is at

work. Thankfully, that’s what we’re here this week to pursue.

Visual Ecumenism

The one fragment of hope in that otherwise dark book, a fragment that he clings to all the

more tightly in the discussions that have followed is, is architectural. Radner speaks of a

German architectural curiosity - where

Protestant and Catholic churches met under

the same roof. Not very far from us, at the

earliest Simultankirche in Biberach,

Germany, Charles V insisted that Catholics

had the right to worship, and so they did –

but in the same church with Lutherans. A

lack of resources made this coinhabitation a necessity. Here is the beautifully decorated

Lutheran nave, and here is the Catholic choir, equally gorgeous. The clock let them know

when it was to make the switch. Radner rightly point out that “this arrangement dates

from the 16th century here, and did not await some avant-garde ecumenical endeavor of

the late 20th century increasingly difficult to sustain in the contemporary climate of

ecumenical disarray.” Maybe most interestingly, is the church has both a Protestant and

Catholic Mary. In the follow up discussion to A Brutal Unity, Radner further explains

why he found this so helpful: “Over time, initial antagonism, separate entrances, and the

rest began to soften… changes overcame rooted hostilities…” Lamenting the American

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practice of building new congregations to literally petrify divisions, Radner concludes,

“Divided Christians should be forced to worship in the same buildings, one after the

other; to look at each other’s faces as we pass by, on the way to and from our separated

Eucharist and self-distinguishing sermon; to listen to the trailing verses of the hymns we

are not a part of – and slowly to learn to curse the strange powers of our hearts that made

us enemies in our own families.”

SPEAKER’S NOTE: One of the surprises of this conference was that not only was the Lutheran pastor of this church present for the talk, but many more examples of this phenomenon in Alsace were presented!

\By following this isolated shaft of light in his otherwise dark account, things get brighter

indeed. For as it happens, the Simultankriche are more than isolated instances. No one

giving serious consideration to the architecture of Crete can ignore the reality of double-

nave churches. Now today, both naves are used by the Orthodox church because, but in

its original construction, what possible

reason could there be for this other than to

serve both the Catholic and Orthodox

population of the same island? I was

surprised to find this to be a controversial

assertion among some Greek art historians,

but the evidence can’t be ignored. The Greek scholar Olga Gratziou has admitted that

“from the mid-fifteenth century on, the practice of celebrating both rites within the same,

usually Greek, church became widespread.” Here is a case of willed ecumenism that did

not take the form of a meeting of theologians. If such convergences can do theological

work, do further complicate the eristology (study of division) mapped by Radner?

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Violence

But as I said, my hope is to take Radner seriously, to drink his message to the dregs - and

I therefore must admit we’re at risk here of glossing over some serious difficulties. As he

puts it, “Christian division… enacted disagreement with physical consequences,

represents one of the most blatant yet intractable problems facing the Christian life and

speech within the world….” The failure of the church to deal with her own division is

“rampant and extensive. Indeed, she has fixated upon such division, and stoked it, ever

and again.” Can this really be patched over by supplementing his account with a few

more moments of fleeting harmony than he himself suggests? Who is to say that the

examples I’ve thus far offered, and the ones we will be hearing about this week, are not

tantamount to mere “conciliar agreement” that fail to genuinely witness to unity in Christ.

Well, to test that, I let’s conclude by going to one of the most egregious cases of

Christian violence I know of – an epoch that is avoided even by Radner himself, namely,

the Crusades. If we can find visual ecumenism emerging from here – perhaps the case

for its legitimacy will be strengthened.

Radner places blame for the “catastrophic indolence” of divided Christianity on the

shoulders of Epiphanius of Salamis, who made a catalogue of heresies, one that

especially blamed the Jews. And so, let’s go to Salamis on the island of Cyprus for a

moment. Here is an image I took on my visit. And as I pondered the ruins of that once

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great city that Paul would have visited, I looked out on those shores and thought about

what it would have been like to experience an Islamic conquest. A conquest that, Radner

claims rather convincingly, by the failure of Christians to maintain unity in the face of the

Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon. These are sobering thoughts indeed.

But of course, Christians fought back, and in so doing, ended up fighting each other. An

equally devastating event for Cyprus came far later. I am speaking of the conquest of

Cyprus in 1192 by Western Christians in the midst of the third crusade. King Richard the

Lionheart of England turned the island into a cash cow to generate funds for his Holy

Land campaign, and so he conquering it, and sold it to the Knights Templar, who had a

miserable and bloody experience on the island. The Orthodox islanders revolted against

them. The Templars retreated to a castle in Nicosia, the island’s most populated center,

only to reemerge and slaughter the population on Easter day, 1192. The sack of

Constantinople in 1204 was a horrible event, but at least it didn’t happen on Easter. The

frustrated Templars then gave the island back to Richard, who in turn sold it to Guy de

Lusignan, a Frenchman. That, by the way, is why there are Gothic churches on Cyprus.

French Gothic architecture on an Orthodox

island – Strasbourg in Cyprus - another

happy case of visual ecumenism? No, as

we’ve just seen, this is a result of horrible

Christian violence. Might it be God’s

judgment on Christian indolence that it has

now become a mosque?

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Well, I might have just undone my argument – and I come close to that simply to make it

clear that I really have agonized over Radner’s devastating claims. But I have good news

as well. It’s one of the most amazing tales of art history I know, and I’m excited to share

it with you. Following the slaughter of his co-religionists in Nicosia by the Knights

Templar, one Byzantine painter, Theodore Apsevdis, retreated into the mountains. And

there he obtained a commission to re-paint a monastery church at a village called

Lagoudera. Believe it or not we can date this program to precisely 1192, after the

slaughter of the Orthodox population on Easter morning. Now this artist had witnessed

horrific inter-Christian violence. For all we know, members of his family may have been

killed. And so when he painted

the Virgin, he altered something

and gave us the first instance of

the Virgin of the Passion. He

reached into his iconographic

repertoire to give us a mourning

Virgin Mary – with angels

above her bearing the instruments of the Passion, and a Christ child who is fearful.

Apsevdis gave us a visual, mournful response to a horrible instance of Christian violence.

And it did not stop there. To say this icon type became popular would be a dramatic

understatement. The icon, as we say, struck a chord. After it spawned many versions in

the Mediterranean in the following century, it was transferred to Europe. There was a

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huge infusion of this Byzantine type into Western Europe – even Michelangelo had a

version of it. The popularity intensified as the Byzantine Empire came to its end. And

what I am about to say may seem a stretch – but it is a deeply compelling argument that I

can make available to anyone who is interested. But the German art historian Johannes

Tripps has made the case that THIS theme is what is behind Nicholas Gerhaert’s

Dangolsheim Madonna. There are a sufficient amount of prints and other examples to

show that this theme was sweeping through the upper Rhine at just this time,12 and they

can be traced back to the Byzantine Virgin of the Passion. The veil would have called to

mind the Passion for medieval Strasbourg audiences, just as the angels do in the

Madonna. Notice how they both hold the foot which will be pierced.

We began by calling to mind the suspicion with which Protestant Christians have looked

upon Catholic altarpieces. We could have simply pointed out that there were many

Protestants, mostly Lutherans, who left such statues untouched (that is the thrust of

Bridget Heal’s fascinating book. But I have attempted to add another dimension here, to

say that the Orthodox, who presumably would dismiss such sumptuous statuary, may

have actually inspired it. Moreover, this inspiration

is the result of the very Christian violence with

which Radner rightfully insists we have to reckon.

A Brutal Unity claims that Christian division is

what spawned the liberal state, a providential turn

12 Tripps says: “Consequently a greater demand must have existed for devotional images with the theme of the child fleeing ‘under the cloak’ or the ‘veil’ of his mother, otherwise the enterprising Israel van Meckenem would not have imitated the same template from E.S. a second time.”

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for which we should be grateful. And I have to admit here that the secular museum

functioned similarly to the liberal state. In the wake of Christian tendency to destroy

images, the culture of the art emerged to take care of images like this, and I am grateful

for the museum doing so. But I would not want to overplay that importance either, for

the icon born of Christian violence, after inspiriting this sculpture, had a long career

ahead beyond the museum. It was revived in its original form shortly after its translated

appearance at Strasbourg, where it became a chief way the Eastern aesthetics informed

Catholic Rome. Consider, for example, this image from an Italian devotional image for

the icon from 1953, showing the Pope and Patriarch united under her sponsorship.13

If A Brutal Unity may have been a necessary Good Friday in the ecumenical discussion,

but the church year doesn’t stop there. Christian violence cannot and does not have the

last word. That has to go to Scripture, where “God works all things [even Christian

violence] together for good for those who are called according to his purpose.” And

speaking of Scripture, to which we now return, let’s finish Joshua 22. As you’ll recall,

the people of Israel were about to declare war on the Reubenites, the Gadites and the

half-tribe of Manasseh because they made an alter on the wrong side of the Jordan. But

the builders of this altar defend themselves:

If it was in rebellion or in breach of faith toward the Lord, do not spare us today… 24 No! We did it from fear that in time to come your children might say to our children, “What have you to do with the Lord, the God of Israel? …. 26 Therefore we said, “Let us now build an altar, not for burnt offering, nor for sacrifice, 27 but to be a witness between us and you, and between the generations after us, that we do perform the service of the Lord…”

13 And because the image, when its origins are fully understood, directly addresses the doctrine of election, and so – as I’ve argued elsewhere - we could include Protestants in this reconciliation as well.

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And Israel was convinced, just as I hope most Protestants today would be convinced of

the legitimacy and beauty of Gerhaert’s Strasbourg sculpture. What is more, the people

of Israel left it there the altar there as a testimony of peace between the tribes.

33 The report pleased the Israelites; and the Israelites blessed God and spoke no more of making war against them, to destroy the land where the Reubenites and the Gadites were settled. 34 The Reubenites and the Gadites called the altar Witness;[d] “For,” said they, “it is a witness between us that the LORD is God.”

I would not have expected such a conclusion from the R-rated book of Joshua, but thanks

be to God, that’s how it reads. Just so, I would not have expected one of the world’s most

popular UNIFYING icons to emerge from a horrific instance of Christian violence, but

thanks be to God, that seems to be what happened, and it’s happening still. I look

forward to hearing this week about other “altars of witness,” whatever they may be!

SPEAKER’S NOTE: Another remarkable “altar of witness” that conference participants experienced was the piece of art that hung in the St. Thomas church in Strasbourg where we worshipped together each morning. The fragmented, yet still unified, pieces of Christ’s robe that hung above us seemed to contrast with the “seamless robe” that of Christ preserved not far away in Trier, which has sometimes been used as a means of ruling out other members of Christ’s body by churches that claim to be the undivided whole.

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