Countering Identity Politics By Portraying the Father as a Gray-Haired Man

Contrary to what many might think, these images offer hope, not admonition, to radical feminists.

I have often wondered if the traditional portrayal of the God the Father as the Ancient of Days (see my past article describing the reasons for this, here) might be causing Christianity more harm than good today. I don’t think I have met a single Catholic who believes that God really is an old man with a beard, but I have met many non-Catholics who think that’s what I believe! And this imagery might be to blame.

The Holy Trinity by Jose de Ribera, painted 1635

Modern man seems incapable of grasping the nuanced (although absolutely legitimate) justification for the representation of the Father as the gray-haired figure. This imagery, it seems, fuels the prejudice of many today that Christians are simple-minded and superstitious, bigoted and sexist! What was a beautiful symbol that opened the doors to a subtle and nuanced understanding of the relationships between the persons of the Trinity, has become for modern man a distorted caricature.

Here is my response to this.

The reason for painting the Father as an older man is to illustrate by analogy with human experience the relation of the Father to the Son; it portraying Him as someone who could be a paternal figure to the Son. So in this painting, a Pietà with God the Father and the dove of the Holy Spirit, painted by the Frenchman, Jean Malouel in the early 15th century, we see a figure who is clearly intended to be the Father of his suffering Son.

As recounted in Scripture, Christ refers to the first person of the Trinity as His Father. Contrary to the common accusation from those who are invested in identity politics, this is not intended to reinforce a patriarchal hierarchy on earth. The intention, which would have been clearly understood at the time, is not that natural fathers identify themselves with God, and so falsely elevate their own place in society. Rather, it is that every Christian, male and female, identify themselves with Christ in this painting. We are part of the mystical body of Christ; we die and overcome death with Christ through the sacramental life of the Church. Through Christ and in the Spirit we enter into the mystery of the Trinity in a dynamic of love - an exchange of agape - with the Father.

We cannot hope in this life to understand the precise nature of the loving relationship between the persons of the Trinity, but by analogy, we can say that the First Person loves us as a good father loves his children, and we are the children in this scenario. So the love which our natural fathers have for us, or at least ought to have for us, participates in some way in the nature of the perfect love that the First Person of the Trinity has for us, through Christ and in the Spirit. Nobody is excluded; this profound privilege is extended to every single person. This could not be more inclusive and it is the intention of such artworks to reflect this truth.

The different aspects of love between people are different facets of divine love, and participate in it. It is through aggregating the myriad of human relations that we experience and see around, and so discern, if only dimly, the nature of divine love. Paternal love is distinct from maternal love. The love of our natural mothers, again by analogy, direct us, the children, to the love that binds us to Mother Church and to Mary as the Mother of the Church, and that love is fully realized in God and his love for us. The same can be said of filial love - it is exemplified and was fully realized in Christ’s friendship with His Apostles, and realized too in God’s love for us. All these different expressions of love are given to us as Christians.

So much of today’s gender wars, I feel, emanate from a poor grasp of the Christian understanding of both human and divine love. It is more common, through the popularization of the Theology of the Body, to focus on nuptial love as a type for God’s love, and rightly so. But we should be careful not to neglect what the types of paternal, maternal and filial love tell us about God’s love too.

The careless use of this imagery is not the cause of such misunderstandings, but there is a danger that it will reinforce them once they are there. So if we are to use it, we must work harder to explain their meanings to others, beginning with other Christians around us. If we can do that, we might have a powerful way of answering our critics.

Should We Paint God the Father?

This article first appeared in September 2010, and is reposted in response to comments from readers made on last week’s post about the artistic representation of Our Lady.

One of the most famous pieces of sacred art that exists is Michelangelo’s fresco in the Sistine Chapel of God giving the spark of life to Adam. Despite its popularity and familiarity, I had often wondered about the validity of representing God the Father.

My own instincts run against the idea of portraying God the Father in a painting at all; even when I was a child, I always thought that the white-whiskered God looked more like God the Grandfather, than God the Father. Later on in life, this was reinforced by training in icon painting. I was pretty sure, but not certain, that it was not part of the tradition. Certainly, I have never painted an icon of God the Father. Furthermore, the theology of St Theodore the Studite in regard to sacred imagery, which is accepted by both Eastern and Western churches, bases the argument for the creation of any figurative art upon the fact that we can portray the person of Christ as man. The person of God the Father is a spiritual being and most certainly not man. This would seem to suggest that we should not portray the Father as a man either.

I quietly suspected that the white-bearded God of Michelangelo or William Blake or even my favourite Baroque artist, Velazquez, were all in error. I was not so worried about Blake, who was not Catholic and had eccentric beliefs, but I didn’t like the idea that Michelangelo, and especially Velazquez might be in error.

I was forced to rethink this recently, when I was approached to do a commission that involves the portrayal of the Father. Rather than reject it out of hand, I thought I had better find out where the Church stands on this.

Here’s what my first investigations have revealed. For the first thousand years or so of Christianity, East and West, there was little portrayal of the Father figuratively. Then images started to appear in both the Eastern and Western traditions, though it was more common in the West.

There are two simple arguments that I have found for the representation of the Father: the first is that Christ said in John 14, 9 that whoever has seen me has seen the Father. This would seem to open up to a representation of the Father as the Son. So, one could say, seeing an image of the Sacred Heart of Jesus is also seeing one of the Sacred Heart of the Father, with the heart of the Father understood as a symbol of His love.

The second is that the white-bearded figure with whom we are all familiar is the Ancient of Days who appears in the seventh chapter of the book of Daniel. This is the source of so many familiar portrayals of the Father. In the East there is a tradition known as the New Testament Trinity. This title would distinguish it from the Hospitality of Abraham, in which three angelic strangers of Gensis 18 represent the three Persons of the Trinity. Below is a Greek Orthodox New Testament Trinity on the ceiling of the entrance to the Vatopedion Monastery on Mount Athos. The Catholic Church allows for the interpretation of the Ancient of Days as the Father, which justifies the portrayal of the Father. (I have been told that Pope Benedict XIV issued pronouncement on this in 1745, although I have not been able to validate this beyond a reference on Wikipedia). It also allows for the interpretation of the Ancient of Days as Christ. Since the 1667 Synod of Moscow, the Russian Orthodox Church has forbidden the portrayal of God the Father as a man. Consistent with this, it interprets the Ancient of Days strictly as the Son. It is this pronouncement by the Russian church that gave me the idea, wrongly, that it had never been part of the Eastern tradition and that the whole Eastern Church forbids it.

There is a Western tradition of portrayal of the Trinity in a type known as the Throne of Mercy, in which the Father sits on his throne and presents His crucified Son to the viewer, while a dove rests on the cross or hovers just above it. It was this that was explicitly mentioned by Benedict XIV. This tradition goes right back the medieval era times in the Western Church, and has continued even into the 20th century.

So where do I stand on this now? It seems clear that the portrayal of the Father as a grey-haired man is permitted. I would feel on safest ground however, following the traditional presentations, such as the Mercy Throne image. Outside that, I would consider painting images of the Father, but would be cautious, unwilling to promote any trend of anthropomorphizing God the Father in case the transcendence of God is further compromised in people’s imaginations.

It is also worth pointing out that when God is portrayed as a single person in the form of the Ancient of Days, we cannot be sure that it is the Father who is portrayed. The artist might, quite justifiably, have the intention of representing the Son. I have not, for example, been able to find an authoritative text that tells us precisely which person of the Trinity either Michelangelo or Blake intended us to be looking at. (I would welcome comments from readers on this and any other related point - I am still open to formation on this point!)

Velazquez’s Crowning of the Virgin

The New Testament Trinity in Mt Athos, Greece

A Mercy Trinity by Ribera, 17th century

A Gothic pieta, with God the Father as the Ancient of Days

An early Gothic Mercy Throne

Mercy Throne, 16th century, German

The Ancient of Days, William Blake, English 18th century

For those who are interested in a deeper discussion of the theological and artistic principles behind the traditional imagery of the Church, investigate the www.Pontifex.University Master of Sacred Arts program.