Of all the big picture questions we examined throughout this semester, the one that consistently stuck out to me was this: “Who is God in this work?” It is all at once such a vast and and confining question, the answer to which is both revelatory of almost all other aspects of a culture and yet still too intricate to grasp. To understand what a culture worships supremely is to understand its motivations for all other decisions, and sometimes vice versa. Some of the cultures we studied worshipped nature, others fickle pagan gods, and still others power or wealth. But because of its application to LDS culture, I will focus specifically on Christianity by examining how two of the pieces we studied this semester, Christ Pantocrator and the Beau
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It was customary in Medieval art to portray the martyrs standing on the weapons of their murderers. In this piece, Christ is trending on the lion and the adder, a metaphorical representation of the devil himself. The artist makes this triumph look effortless, showing Christ’s face with a calm, reassuring expression, which emphasizes the foreordination and necessity of Christ’s victory as an infinite, all-powerful creator over this finite, powerless creature. This portrayal of Christ the conquerer upheld the Aristotelian belief in the attainable possibility of immortality through an infinitely powerful Christ, if virtue and goodness were pursued by the faithful. This notable expansion of the doctrine of Christ from a divine, aloof judge into other roles like priest, teacher, and conquerer, is a hallmark example of how Christian theology continued to develop a clearer picture of who Christ really is as time and cultures passed away. The term “Dark Ages” is a misnomer for this time period not only in an intellectual sense, but also in a spiritual one; although the fulness of the gospel may not have been present on the earth, God was still very much involved in the lives of men, and it is undeniable that divine inspiration played a part in these theological expansions of the doctrine of Christ throughout history, leading all the way up to that day when Joseph Smith knelt down in a grove to
It was customary in Medieval art to portray the martyrs standing on the weapons of their murderers. In this piece, Christ is trending on the lion and the adder, a metaphorical representation of the devil himself. The artist makes this triumph look effortless, showing Christ’s face with a calm, reassuring expression, which emphasizes the foreordination and necessity of Christ’s victory as an infinite, all-powerful creator over this finite, powerless creature. This portrayal of Christ the conquerer upheld the Aristotelian belief in the attainable possibility of immortality through an infinitely powerful Christ, if virtue and goodness were pursued by the faithful. This notable expansion of the doctrine of Christ from a divine, aloof judge into other roles like priest, teacher, and conquerer, is a hallmark example of how Christian theology continued to develop a clearer picture of who Christ really is as time and cultures passed away. The term “Dark Ages” is a misnomer for this time period not only in an intellectual sense, but also in a spiritual one; although the fulness of the gospel may not have been present on the earth, God was still very much involved in the lives of men, and it is undeniable that divine inspiration played a part in these theological expansions of the doctrine of Christ throughout history, leading all the way up to that day when Joseph Smith knelt down in a grove to