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The 10 best representations of God in culture

1 | the creation of adam.

Michelangelo (1511)

For its first 1,200 years, Christianity followed the line in John’s gospel that stated, “No one has ever seen God” and avoided portraying him. Relaxation of the rule came when he was shown as first a hand, then a face cloaked in cloud, but the Renaissance knew no such restraint. In one of his frescoed panels for the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam contains the most reproduced full-body image of God of all time. He is a benign, white-haired, bearded figure, clothed in a loose white robe, stretching out his finger to a naked Adam and so – as the Book of Genesis tells in the creation story – breathing life into him.

2 | Alanis Morissette

in Dogma (1999)

Casting women as God retains a strong contemporary kick when some patriarchal branches of Christianity still refuse to ordain females, but having the Canadian singer Alanis Morissette as the Almighty was more than a token gesture in Dogma , Kevin Smith’s irreverent comedy about two fallen angels trying to get back into heaven. Cradle Catholic Morissette, appearing in the wake of the global popularity of her album Jagged Little Pill , had already registered her interest in matters of faith in her song lyrics. Her female God is largely silent (a raven-haired, bewinged Alan Rickman does the talking for her), but she still manages to impose her will and perform the odd miracle.

3 | The Granton Star Cause

Irvine Welsh (1994)

In this lewd short story, part of The Acid House collection, Irvine Welsh – to the horror of many Christians – renders God as a foul-mouthed Edinburgh drunk, worn out by humanity’s insistence on blaming him for everything that goes wrong in their lives. Behind the effing and blinding and earthy setting, however, The Granton Star Cause poses serious questions about free will and the limits of God’s patience. After the success of the 1996 film adaptation of Welsh’s novel Trainspotting , The Acid House was also made into a film. When Channel 4 broadcast it in 1998, Mary Whitehouse attempted to have it banned on the grounds of blasphemy.

4 | The Ancient of Days

William Blake (1794)

The visionary poet, painter and printmaker created his own elaborate mythology, but this image – taken from a phrase in the Book of Daniel and traditionally seen in western Christianity as referring to the creative powers and perfection of God – still registers as a strikingly modern take on the divine more than two centuries later. A watercolour etching , originally for a cover illustration, the circle design with a crouching figure set against a cloud backdrop, retains its power to encapsulate a hard-to-define force that transcends the usual barriers around religion.

5 | Morgan Freeman

in Bruce Almighty (2003)

Having been fixed by Christianity in our collective imagination as an elderly white man, God always makes a bigger splash when portrayed by a black actor. And never more so than with Morgan Freeman ’s portrait in Bruce Almighty and its 2007 sequel Evan Almighty . This is a mellow God, wise enough to grant Jim Carrey’s Bruce Nolan his wish to play God, and then be there when he buckles under the strain of running the world. Freeman’s award-winning role is helped along mightily by him having the sort of voice that lends itself naturally to pronouncing infallibly.

6 | The Good Old Bad Old Days

The devil, it is said, has all the best tunes, but not, for once, in The Good Old Bad Old Days where God manages to hit a few high notes. This musical, written by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley (the second Mr Joan Collins) in an attempt to repeat their earlier Broadway triumph of Stop the World, I Want to Get Off , had a decent six-month run in the West End. It is built around the conceit of an ageing God, exhausted by the devil’s tricks, singing of his plans to retire, but persuaded to stay on after reliving some of humanity’s happier historical tableaux.

7 | Sir Ralph Richardson

in Time Bandits (1981)

Everyone has their own image of God, some of them more akin to the cruel and vengeful character of the Old Testament narratives, but there is something seductively comforting about Ralph Richardson’s portrait of the Supreme Being in Terry Gilliam’s bizarre fantasy Time Bandits . He is your archetypal, utterly reasonable, besuited English civil servant of mature years, gently but firmly attempting to bring order and logic to a crazy universe.

8 | Brian Glover

in The Mysteries (1977)

God was rarely seen on stage before the modern period, save in the medieval mystery plays, which brought the Bible alive for illiterate folk in often raucous street performances. The opening part of the cycle was usually the creation and gave God got top billing. This tradition was maintained in The Mysteries , Bill Bryden’s award-laden version at the National Theatre in the early 1980s, where God was played by the bald Yorkshireman Brian Glover, putting the building blocks of the world into place from atop a forklift truck – a reference by the adaptor, Tony Harrison, to the habit of different medieval trade guilds taking ownership of each part of the mystery play cycle.

9 | Faust, parts one and two

Goethe (1772-1775)

Though God’s role is little more than a cameo in a work that took 60 years to complete and requires about 20 hours on stage if done in one sitting, it is undeniably a reassuring one. While Faust is busy succumbing to the wiles of the devilish Mephistopheles, God up in heaven, surrounded by angels, remains confident that his erring servant will eventually come good. And in part two – reputedly the harder section to perform – that confidence is eventually borne out, albeit only after this benign God has shown plenty of generosity of spirit and that most underrated of Christian virtues, forgiveness. “Man errs,” Goethe’s God concludes, “till he has ceased to strive.”

10 | Groucho Marx

Skidoo (1968)

In what was his last ever screen role, Groucho Marx plays a bonkers gangster boss called God, with near mystical powers, who is seduced by 60s counterculture, dons Hare Krishna robes and a Hawaiian-style flower necklace, and comes out as a hippy after having his first puff of marijuana. “Mmm, pumpkin,” he mutters as he reaches a spiritual high. Despite its stellar cast, Harry Nilsson soundtrack and Otto Preminger direction, Skidoo was panned on release – Marx labelled it “god-awful” and Preminger’s estate subsequently tried to bury it – but of late this oddball comedy has attracted a “so bad it’s good” cult following.

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Visual Spirituality

L et's begin by unpacking what the second commandment actually says. When looking at Exodus 20:4 , we are confronted with two sets of English translations. Older versions, including the King James Version and the RSV, tend to stay close to the words of the Hebrew text. More recent versions, including the NIV and NRSV, focus instead on its intended meaning.

The key difference between these two sets rests on the translation of the Hebrew word pesel , coming from the root word pasal , meaning "to carve wood or stone." This meaning gave rise to the translation "graven image" in the first set of translations. Yet in Scripture, the term is never used for a two-dimensional image, but always for three-dimensional objects carved or chiseled out of wood or stone, with or without a gold or silver covering.

The key point is that the objects were always associated with idolatrous or superstitious practices. That is why almost all new translations have replaced the term "graven image" with "idol." This meaning is supported by the surrounding verses: "You shall have no other gods before me" (v. 3), and "You shall not bow down to them or worship them" (v. 5). Idols could be small and portable, such as the household gods that Rachel stole from her father ( Gen. 31:17-21 ), or large and lifesize, such as the statue Michal used to trick Saul's men into believing David was asleep in his bed ( 1 Sam. 19:13 ). Either way, God's prohibition against idols was both pertinent and necessary. Although the use of idols typified pagan cultures, many of God's people still clung to them.

In light of a better understanding of pesel and the second commandment's wider context, it should be clear that the injunction is not a blanket ban on representational imagery, as some forms of Judaism and Christianity (as well as Islam—witness the furor over the Muhammad cartoons) have suggested, thereby requiring all art to be restricted to abstract patterns and designs. Instead, it is a ban on images used as idols. This explains why God could instruct Moses to include such images as flowers, pomegranates, and winged angels in the design of the tabernacle.

We may also conclude that the second commandment does not forbid portrayals of God. The text is silent on this point. It is sometimes suggested that Deuteronomy 4:15-18 bans any visual representation of God, as it links the fact that the Israelites did not see any form of God when he spoke to them at Horeb with a warning against the creation of idols modeled on anything in creation. Yet this verse does not imply that we can never refer to God in terms of created phenomena.

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Indeed, Jesus is the ultimate image—in Greek, eikon —of God ( Col. 1:15 ). And God reveals himself to us, whether as Father, Son, or Holy Spirit, by means of images deeply rooted in our creaturely experience: King and Servant, Judge and Comforter, Shepherd and Lamb, Fortress and Counselor, and so on. The sheer diversity of these images reminds us that we are never to confine God to just any one of them.

Since visual images grow out of our lived experience, they can enrich, supplement, and, at times, even correct our abstract and doctrinal conceptions of God. They can tangibly affect the way we relate to him. And there is no reason to assume that such images must be restricted to words. Visual art can play an important role.

In addition to the numerous paintings of Christ—and, more recently, films about him—in the history of Western art, depictions of God such as William Blake's God As an Architect (1794), Vincent van Gogh's The Sower with Setting Sun (1888), and Stanley Spencer's The Resurrection, Cookham (1923-7) all portray different aspects of God which can deepen our understanding of the richness of his being. And, in the same way that our verbal representations of God, including our theological conceptions, should be faithful to the way he has revealed himself in Scripture and in creation, our visual representations must also be faithful, even when imaginative.

As long as we do not treat any of these images as exhaustive representations of God or as objects of spiritual power in themselves, such that we cherish and yearn for them for their own sake, we may receive them with thanksgiving as a gift from the Creator of all creators. Let this be an invitation.

Adrienne Dengerink Chaplin teaches philosophical aesthetics at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto.

Copyright © 2006 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Passages mentioned in this article are available on this BibleGateway page .

Other Christianity Today articles on the power of images and worship include:

Reformed Protestants No Longer See Images as Idolatrous | The visual and the word go hand in hand as some pastors see possibility in connecting pictures with worship. (Dec. 6, 2004)

Grave Images | The photos from Abu Ghraib have reopened debate on the power of pictures. (June 21, 2004)

Wholly, Wholly, Wholly | Calvinists and conga drums in Grand Rapids: a report from the seventeenth annual Calvin Symposium on Worship and the Arts. (Feb. 02, 2004)

Image Is Everything | The Taliban's destruction of Buddhist statues is only the latest controversy over the Second Commandment. (April 6, 2001)

Earlier Good Question columns include:

The Gospel of Jesus Christ: An Evangelical Celebration" states that sincere worshipers of other religions will not be saved—does that also refer to Moses and other Old Testament faithful?

Christ commanded us not to judge others, but aren't there times when common sense or prudence requires it?

Why should church buildings get so much of the financial, physical, and social attention that is rightly due to the needs of Christians and others?

Where is heaven, and how will we experience it before the final resurrection?

Can I forgive those who have betrayed me if they are not repentant?

Are all sins weighed equally, or is one more important than another?

Why is the church against euthanasia in instances where people are in terrible pain?

What harm is there in achieving a higher state of consciousness through meditation?

Will we be vegetarians in the new heaven and earth as Adam and Eve were before the Fall?

Why doesn't God cure everyone who prays fervently for healing?

Does God need our help, love, and praise?

Are some people lost "just a little bit" in the same way that others are saved "only as through fire"?

Is Jesus Incarnate Forever?

What does Genesis mean by man being made in the image of God?

What's the difference between Christ's kingdom and paradise?

Is every believer guaranteed at least one spiritual gift?

What role does baptism play in faith and salvation?

How is it that not all prayers for the salvation of others are answered?

If God is in us, shouldn't it be easier to love one another?

What do we gain from a bodily resurrection?

What is the difference between the brain and the soul?

How can I reconcile my belief in the inerrancy of Scripture with comments in Bible translations that state that a particular verse is not 'in better manuscripts'?

Is there a biblical principle behind the punishment of those who break the law?

Is it unscriptural for a Christian to be cremated?

Won't heaven's joy be spoiled by our awareness of unsaved loved ones in hell?

Where exactly do "Oneness" Pentecostals stand in relation to orthodoxy?

Do a man and a woman become married after having sex or after exchanging vows?

How Do You Know That You Have Truly Forgiven Someone?

Who Are We to Judge?

Should We File Lawsuits?

Can We Expect God to Forgive Unbelievers Who 'Don't Know What They're Doing'?

Is the Stock Market Good Stewardship?

Is Satan Omnipresent?

Is Suicide Unforgivable?

Was Slavery God's Will?

A Little Wine for the Soul?

Should We All Speak in Tongues?

Did Jesus Really Descend to Hell?

Take, Eat—But How Often?

Is Christmas Pagan?

Are Christians Required to Tithe?

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Visual Theology

Seeing and Understanding the Truth About God

We live in a visual culture. Today, people increasingly rely upon visuals to help them understand new and difficult concepts. As teachers and lovers of sound theology, we have a deep desire to convey the concepts and principles of systematic theology in a fresh, beautiful and informative way. In this book, we’ve have made the deepest truths of the Bible accessible in a way that can be seen and understood by a visual generation.

My mind is blown. Tim Challies and Josh Byers marry rock-ribbed Reformational theology with breathtaking presentations. The effect is something like following John Knox into the Matrix. In this diaphanous world, we encounter no fiction, but very reality itself –God-reality– and we are transformed.

Owen Strachan

Associate professor of Christian theology and Director of the Center on Gospel and Culture at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary

About the Book

We live in a visual culture. Today, people increasingly rely upon visuals to help them understand new and difficult concepts. The rise and stunning popularity of the Internet infographic has given us a new way in which to convey data, concepts and ideas.

But the visual portrayal of truth is not a novel idea. Indeed, God himself used visuals to teach truth to his people. The tabernacle of the Old Testament was a visual representation of man’s distance from God and God’s condescension to his people. Each part of the tabernacle was meant to display something of man’s treason against God and God’s kind response. Likewise, the sacraments of the New Testament are visual representations of man’s sin and God’s response. Even the cross was both reality and a visual demonstration.

As teachers and lovers of sound theology, we have a deep desire to convey the concepts and principles of systematic theology in a fresh, beautiful and informative way. In this book, we’ve have made the deepest truths of the Bible accessible in a way that can be seen and understood by a visual generation.

Section 1 – Grow Close to Christ

As Christians, our first and most basic discipline is cultivating and growing into that personal relationship with Jesus as we hear from him, speak to him, and worship him.

Chapter One: Gospel

Chapter two: identity, chapter three: relationship.

Section 2 – Understand the Work of Christ

There is content to the Christian faith–information and facts we need to understand. We need to grow in our understanding of what God accomplishing in this world, and as we do that , we will want to grow in our knowledge of God himself so we can better understand who he is and what he is like.

Chapter Four: Drama

Chapter five: doctrine.

Section 3 – Become Like Christ

The Bible tells us to be conformed to the image of Christ, to think like him, to speak like him, to behave like him. We do this by putting away old habits, patterns, and passions and by replacing them with new and better habits, and passions.

Chapter Six: Putting Off

Chapter seven: putting on.

Section 4 – Live for Christ

We need to learn to live for Christ from the moment we wake up each day to the moment we fall asleep, to live in such a way that we draw attention to him and bring glory to him.

Chapter Eight: Vocation

Chapter nine: relationships, chapter ten: stewardship, teaching resources.

The book A Visual Theology Guide to the Bible was written and designed to be taught in a small group, Sunday school classroom, or homeschool. For that reason, we’ve produced a workbook and presentation slides, and handouts that will help you teach through the book.

Student Workbook

The Visual Theology Study Guide is a ten session study designed to help you grow in godliness by practicing what you learn, and it includes application for both personal and small group study. Each chapter includes key terms, group study discussion questions, and exercises for personal reflection in God’s Word.

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Teach through Visual Theology the book with the official Visual Theology Presentation Slides!

We took every single graphic in the book and customized it for display in a teaching or preaching presentation. We didn’t just simply resize the graphics either. Every single graphic was re-worked and custom built to display the information best on a presentation slide!

The Concept of the Image in the Old and New Testaments

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It is notoriously difficult to define the term image . Is it an idea, an artifact, an event, or another phenomenon altogether? W.J.T. Mitchell’s influential essay “What Is an Image?” developed a “family tree” of images, including graphic, optical, perceptual, mental, and verbal images (Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology . Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1987). James Elkins, building upon this model, has suggested an even more diffuse genealogy of image types (Elkins, The Domain of Images . Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999). Sunil Manghani synthesized both approaches and has proposed an “ecology of images”, through which one can examine the full “life” of an image as it resonates within a complex set of contexts, processes, and uses (Manghani, Image Studies: Theory and Practice . London: Routledge, 2012). For the purposes of this analysis, we shall accept this model of an ecology of images, encompassing the graphic, optical, perceptual, mental, and verbal images. The fundamental question, then, is this: How do the Old and New Testaments conceptualize the category of image ? We shall examine the concepts of “graven images”, theophanies (appearances of God), and the “image of God” within the biblical canon, and argue that the conceptualization of image within the Judeo-Christian scriptures contains both a potent iconophobia on one side and iconophilia on the other.

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Barrett and Greenway. 2017. “Imago Dei and Animal Domestication: Cognitive-Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Uniqueness and the Imago Dei”. In: Pederson, Daniel and Lilley, Christopher (eds.) Human Origins and the Image of God: Essays in Honour of J. Wentzel van Huyssteen . Grand Rapids: Eerdsmans.

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Shaw, M. (2021). The Concept of the Image in the Old and New Testaments. In: Purgar, K. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Image Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71830-5_2

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The Visual Discovery of God

More Episodes

During a breakout session at The Gospel Coalition’s 2019 National Conference, Josh Byers and Tim Challies teamed up to deliver a message titled “How Visual Theology Displays the Truth About God.” Never before in history has the world been so acutely aware of the importance of visual communication.

The power of images to shape culture, communication, and education is undeniable, including within the church. Yet imagery has been troublesome at times in church history. In order to help people within our churches become good theologians, we must teach sound doctrine in words, but we also need to engage them visually in order to undergird and communicate truth in ways we might not otherwise clearly accomplish.

The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.

Tim Challies: So we’re here to talk about visual theology. And I’m sure you’ve heard that old saying, that a picture is worth a thousand words. And I think of all generations, possibly, our generation knows about the power of images, right? We are such a visual and an increasingly visual generation.

You think about some of the last great communication technologies, many of them were the printing press, or radio, were word based, telegram, word based communication. The more recent innovations, such as television, the internet, have really been visual based innovations. And so we’ve become the YouTube generation, the Netflix generation, the Instagram generation. And just over time you can see it, especially with younger people, more and more are depending upon images to learn. It’s such a powerful way of learning.

And images can be compelling. I think images can be very, very informative yet, the history of the Christian faith tells us they can also be troublesome. They can also be dangerous. We’ve learned, as you study Christian history, study world history, you see that images can be used to really help our work in this world or images can be used to hinder our work in this world. They can be used to tell truth. They can be used to proclaim error.

So what we want to talk about and what’s one of our passions, is talk about how we can bring words and images together to explain truth and to build up Christians. That’s what visual theology is, it’s displaying what’s true, especially displaying what’s true about God.

So, I’ll spend a few minutes talking about the theological angle, then Josh is going to show you some visual stuff on the screen here and then we’ll get on.

So everything I want to say here is premised on this idea that’s, I think really obvious to some people and really novel to other people which is, we are all theologians. I believe R.C. Sproul wrote a book by that title. We’re all theologians. God calls us all to know what is true about him. We’re responsible before God to learn what is true about God. What’s true about God’s character. What’s true about God’s actions. What’s true about the world He’s made. What’s true about ourselves, right? What’s true about the future of this world. God made this world. God made everything in this world and it’s our responsibility to learn it. So in that way, we’re all theologians. We all need to acquire knowledge of God and His ways and His works.

But we don’t just need to learn it, we also need to teach it. So we’re all theologians in the sense that we need to learn truth. We’re all theologians in the sense that we need to apply truth. We’re all theologians in the sense that we need to teach, convey truth, to others.

And again, I say this idea is normal to some people and novel to others because we’re living in this time and in this Christian culture of just woeful theological ignorance, right? So many people just don’t know theology. They don’t know sound doctrine. I’m a writer by trade and day by day I’m trying to release something to the world that will be helpful or encouraging. And I got so much feedback from people and it’s just amazing to me how little some people really know. And that’s fine if they’re new believers. We understand, we all enter the Christian life unknowledgeable, ignorant. We all enter the Christian life phoretical. No new believer can explain the doctrine of the Trinity in a way that’s true and orthodox, right? So we all enter that way.

What concerns me is when people have been Christians for years or decades and they still don’t have any real knowledge of theology. And I find this very, very common and very, very tragic. I found myself thinking recently about that passage in Acts chapter 19 where Paul comes to Ephesus for the first time. Here’s what it says, it says, “It happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the in land country and came to Ephesus. There he found some disciples and he said to them, ‘Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?’ And they said, ‘No we’ve not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.”

So, here are these people who were disciples, true disciples of Jesus, but they had no knowledge of the Holy Spirit, right? We don’t really know all the facts of that situation. It’s clearly something unique that happened in that time where you could be a disciple but not indwelled by the Spirit. But we do know this, they were ignorant. Nobody had taught them about the Holy Spirit, that there even was a Holy Spirit.

And I wonder today as if we travel around the world, travel around the church, we would just find vast numbers of people and we might say to them something like, “Tell me about your theology?” And they might say something like, “We don’t even know that there is such a thing as theology.” There’s just so many people who have never really been taught that there is such a category and that that ought to matter to them.

They knows things like Christianity is not a religion it’s a relationship, right? A saying like that and okay, yes, that’s true. We do have a relationship with God. It’s a beautiful thing that by putting our faith in Jesus Christ we’re adopted into the family of God. We enter into this true, living relationship with God. I mean that’s true and that’s amazing. That’s something only the Christian faith offers, but it’s not true that Christianity is not a religion, right? It is a substantial, established, orderly, cohesive body of truth, that’s simply the reality. And so many people have never been taught that. They’ve never been taught theology. They’ve never been told, “You are a theologian.” The only question is are you a good theologian or a bad theologian?

And really I think for a lot of people, even true believers, all they’ve ever been told about theology is that theology is kind of dangerous. That doctrine divides, statements like that. Or they only know theology as this cold, heartless pursuit of cold facts and you take those facts and you use them to body slam other people, right? And yeah, a lot of people do misuse theology in that way.

But they’re never taught that theology is so much more and so much better and so much grander and so much sweeter than that. And so I think about, what’s the cost and the consequence of having genuine believers like they’ve truly come to faith. They’ve truly put their faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and received His salvation, but they’re just not growing in their knowledge of God. They’re not growing in theology. What happens when they don’t embrace their role as theologians? When they don’t try to grow in their understanding of God? When they’re not willing to teach other people how to do theology? How to know theology?

And this is again where I see a lot of this. Something like this happens, a friend comes to them and hands them a book and in that book, the author of the book says, “I am a reformed Presbyterian, Protestant Christian. This book is messages that Jesus has communicated directly to me.” Right? She listens and Jesus speaks his revelation directly to her mind and she writes it down and there’s vast numbers of people who don’t have any kind of concern with this sort of theology.

Why is that? Because people don’t have a sound knowledge of the doctrine of Revelation, the theology of how God reveals himself to humanity. So they see nothing concerning about somebody saying those sorts of things.

Now, for some people that sets alarm bells ringing, for others it does not. I don’t want to say you can’t have theological convictions if that sort of thing is possible. Because I think there are people that can wrap their minds around or go look at scripture and say, “No, I can see where that kind of thing could be possible.” I’m not endorsing it, I’m just saying some people can get to that point theologically. But for a lot of people they just never thought about it.

So somebody comes with something that’s new and novel to the Christian experience. This idea that Jesus speaks to me and I’m giving you messages from Jesus. They don’t have the ability to apply theology to it, to think it through, through the grid of the Bible. So again, you can, some people can get there theologically and at least then we’ve got to grant them, they are acting as theologians.

Or another thing that happens, someone might hand them another book and they open that book and it’s a book about the Trinity. And as they start to read it, they come across a statement like this, “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit died together on the cross.” Well so many people have no substantial knowledge of the doctrine of the Trinity. And so this doesn’t stand out to them as anything concerning, anything that’s opposed by 2000 years of church history, opposed by the creeds and the confessions of the church. They’ve never developed that substantial knowledge or theology of the person of God and the works of God.

As Christians we need to understand, when we become Christians, we don’t set out into this Christian life on our own, right? We enter into this stream where all these people have gone before and we join them by taking hold of what they’ve already established. We’re not making this up as we go. Yet, my not so subtle references to two different books there. Those books exist and they’ve sold somewhere around 40 million copies between the two of them, which is like 39.9 million more than most authors, successful authors, would sell in their lifetime.

So many Christians have so little knowledge of theology that they’re unequipped to identify what’s novel, what hasn’t been done before and they’re unequipped to identify what’s really dangerous, what’s been full out denied by the history of the church so far. And so when the people don’t have that kind of theology, when they’re not even looking out at the world through a theological mindset, it’s so simple then to lead them astray. So simple to convince them that error is truth. So simple to convince them that this new thing is so much better than what we’ve already got or what God has already given us.

So as people come to a conference like this one, a session like this one, I think we can acknowledge this premise that we’re all theologians and the question we’re grappling with is, will we be good theologians or bad theologians? Will we be equipped or will we be ignorant? Good theology is theology that’s drawn from the Bible in an accurate and orderly and a systematic way that really reflects the mind of God. The alternative is chaotic theology, right, that’s formed from best sellers and memes and Ted Talks and stuff like that, theology that’s always searching but never arriving at a knowledge of the truth.

So we need to keep in mind that theology is not the accumulation of cold facts. That’s not what we’re in the business of as theologians, as Christians who are trying to come to deeper and better theological convictions. We’re not just accumulating cold facts, right? Theology is knowledge of God, knowledge of the ways of God that then works itself out in our thoughts and in our actions and the way we think and the way we live.

When we’ve got great knowledge of God we can think great thoughts of God, right? When we think great thoughts of God we can live great lives for God. And when we live great lives for God we bring great glory to God. We’re not doing it for ourselves. We’re doing it to bring glory to Him. So in that way theology isn’t serving ourselves, right? Arriving at deeper theological convictions isn’t just doing something for ourselves, really, we become theologians so we can better serve other people. It’s what we’re doing in this world, right? We’ve living for the good of others which brings glory to God. And sharp, theological convictions allows us to do more good for others and bring more glory to God. We can’t truly know God, we can’t truly live for God until we know the facts that God gives us about Himself.

So that means, you and I as individuals are responsible to consistently go to the word of God and learn the theology scripture teachers. We can go directly to scripture. We can use the many resources that are available to us through the history of the church written by other Christians and so on. God’s word, as you know from Second Timothy three it teaches us, it reproves us, it corrects us and it trains us in righteousness, that’s theology. That’s theology to fill our minds and to warm our hearts and to direct our hands in this world.

So as individuals, we need to go the word. We need to be theologically informed. As parents, as so many of us are, we’re responsible to instruct our children in sound doctrine. You can think of Timothy, young Timothy who was the protégé of the apostle Paul, whose mother and grandmother were commended by Paul for what they had done in the life of this young man. But as for you, Timothy, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you’ve learned it and how from childhood you’ve been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

So here’s this young man, who his mother and his grandmother from a young age had been instructing him in scripture. Instructing him in the sound doctrine that the scripture teaches. He was well taught. So no wonder then, he was able to profess that truth, able to address error. No wonder that a man like that was a pillar of the earlier church. In our lives and our families and then of course in our churches, we need to teach sound doctrine. As pastors, teaching it from the pulpit and members teaching and training one another as we go through this life together. Peers, mentors, everybody, filling themselves with sound doctrine and extending that, reaching that out to others.So as individuals, as families, as churches, students, teachers, we need to be theologians. We need to be training the next generation of theologians.

So how do we do that? And this is where Josh and I have put a lot of thought, a lot of effort into this and we’ve realized that the majority of our efforts in teaching sound doctrine have been in words, right? We explain the truth using words. We preach the truth and we go to classroom settings and do lectures and seminar settings and churches or youth group settings and we teach doctrine using words. And that’s absolutely wonderful and necessary. But we started wondering together, are we missing out? Are we missing out on the opportunity to teach truth visually? Because as a society we see visuals being used to teach a lot of different things.

People are using images like they never have before through computers, through design software, through all sorts of things, through YouTube. We’ve got this ability to teach through images like we never have before. Great opportunities to use images to supplement our words to go along with them, not to replace them. We’re not in the business of getting rid of words and completely replacing them with images. But can we keep speaking those words that are good and true and add to them images that will just engage people’s minds in a different way and give them another way of learning truth? And so I’m going to turn it over to Josh and he’ll tell you about the visual part of visual theology.

Josh Byers: Okay, Trinity right. Can you explain what we’re saying through it? Can anybody get it? Just curious. So real quickly I’ll explain it for you. You’ve got it on you. So, the Father is not the Son. The Son is not the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the Father. But the Father is God. The Holy Spirit is God and the Son is God. So, a very simply way to explain the Trinity. That’s the essence of what visual theology is. We could’ve used a clover, but we’re not heretics. So, it’s why we did not do that.

All right so, Tim mentioned something. He mentioned that God reveals Himself to humanity. And we want to be able to teach people visually. So the question is, how do we do that? Now, when he says that God reveals Himself to humanity, how does He do that? What do we know about God? What has He revealed to us?

Now yes, He has revealed Himself through His word. There’s a number of attributes that we know about God through His word. Okay, so here’s just a few of them. We know that He’s merciful. We know that He’s righteous. We know that He has wrath, right? He’s truthful. He’s knowledgeable. He has wisdom as well. There’s one attribute though, that I think is really interesting that pertains to our particular subject here and that’s the attribute of invisibility. The idea that His total essence, all of His being will never be visible to us. Now obviously, the visible risen Christ we can see and we will see someday. But His total being of all that He is will not be visible to us. Yet, what’s interesting is that He created us as visible creatures, where everything to us is visual. So when we ask the question, how do we teach visual theology, one of the things that I think is important for us to get the foundation and to understand that we were created first of all, as visual beings. As God is invisible, He created us as visible.

When you read the first chapter of Genesis, you realize very quickly that this visual communication has been at the heart of all communication since creation. And even in the text there, you have this beautiful account, it doesn’t just list bullet points of this, this, this, this, and this. It’s not a list. You have Moses writing this beautiful poetry about how the world came to be. And the visuals, they’re in that, help us get a picture in our mind.

So in the very beginning of the Bible it says, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty and darkness was over the surface of the deep. And the spirit of God was hovering over the waters.” I love reading that. It almost sounds like a movie trailer. In the beginning was a world that was formless and void, right? It’s just this idea that automatically transports us to the creation account and brings this beautiful, visual picture into our minds. And not only do we have this beautiful description of what creation is, we obviously have creation itself.

The idea that God created us to appreciate beauty is somewhat mind blowing to me. The idea of, what is beauty? How do I even know how to recognize what is beautiful? Obviously there’s some subjectivity there, but for the most part, we can all agree on what is beautiful. And God put that into us. He gave us an endless variety of colors and hues to experience creation in.

And one of the things I love about this is that as we start to think about the idea that God gave us these things starts to point to the fact that He does want to reveal Himself to us. He does want to have a relationship with us.

L. Shannon Jung, he’s a professor at the Saint Paul School of Theology said this, he said, “The beauty of fields of wheat and sunflowers and pecan orchards and gigantic stalks of corn, they’re all more beautiful than they need to be. They manifest the beauty of God and they awaken us to the sensibility of the world. And they call us to an appreciation of all that is.”

So here’s the reality, God could’ve made our world black and white. He could’ve made it formless. He could’ve made it tasteless. He could’ve made it colorless, but He didn’t. He gave these gifts to us to experience. He gave this beauty and this goodness to us and that reveals that we have a very personal God who is interested in interacting with us. This invisible being wants to interact with us as visible beings. He wants us to enjoy Him. He wants us to have a relationship with Him.

But how does an invisible spirit being interact? How does he cultivate relationship with visible beings? How does He reveal Himself? How does He show us who He is? How does He let us respond to Him?

Well, among other things, He uses symbols and visual displays and He’s done it from the very beginning. Think about the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. What was the purpose of that? All right, just this big temptation warning light in the middle of the garden? No, no, no, no. Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was something that Adam and Eve could look at and every single time they walked by that tree without eating they were able to respond to God and say, “I love you. I trust you. I believe what you said about this tree.” It was an opportunity for them to love God back in this big visual picture.

Adam and Eve’s first clothes, when they did sin they created fig leave clothing for themselves that God rejected. He then gave them other coverings that he accepted. What was the point of that? It was to show them visibly that what you’re trying to do, how you’re trying to fix yourself, doesn’t work. So visually, I’m going to give you better clothes.

And then think about where those clothes came from. They came from the skin of an animal. Now if we read into that, the sacrificial system started right there and then. So what did God do? He killed an animal right in front of them. They’d never experienced death before, but right there in that moment they had a visceral, visual picture of what their sin cost. And what God then did to fix it and to cover it. And it was all very visibly and visual so that they could understand what was going on.

That then leads into the sacrificial system. And you think about the horrible visuals of a sacrifice. The slitting of the animals throat. The blood running out over the altar which was required, why? Because it says in Leviticus that the blood, that the life of the creature is in the blood. And so all these visual pictures, all these ideas that God wants to present to His children.

When they get to Mt. Sinai, God says to Moses, He says, “I want you to draw a line around the mountain and tell the people, ‘If you cross this line, you will die.” He wanted to give them a visual representation of what? The fact that you cannot approach me in an unholy state. If you do, you can’t be with me. You have to be completely separated from me. That’s not all.

God then asked them to wash their clothes and to consecrate them. Why? Because they were dirty and smelly? Probably they were a little smelly, right? But that wasn’t the point. He said, “I want you to understand that when you come before Me, you have to be pure. You have to be clean.” Now, did that fix their sin problem? No. But it gave them again, the visual of what their relationship was to God. It revealed God to them. And then He comes down in thunder and lightning and smoke and these people, it says that they were terrified. They dropped to their knees over this visual display of who God was.

Then you have the tabernacle, where literally every single thing in it is a visual picture of what God is doing and how He’s relating to His people. And this is only a hint in the first two books of the Bible. You can go all the way throughout the rest of the scriptures and what is God doing? He’s presenting symbol after symbol after picture after picture to teach His people. You get to the New Testament, what’s Jesus doing? He’s teaching with parables. He’s telling them stories. He’s giving them word pictures. I am the door. I am the bread. I am the light. I am the vine. I’m the cup.

At the Lord’s supper, it may be the ultimate moment or the penultimate moment right before the cross, of visual theology. And it makes sense because that’s how God created us. We were created to be visual beings. We were created to be drawn to beauty. And so God, an invisible spirit, uses visual illustrations to reveal Himself to us.

Now, like Tim already said, we don’t just go out and throw the Bible away and download Photoshop and call it good, right? That’s not what we’re in the business of doing. We take the word of God very seriously. We just wrote a book on this subject. The visuals have never replaced, nor will they ever replace His word. The scriptures will always be the primary place where we learn who God is and how to cultivate relationship with Him. But they can be so helpful.

So, to first teach visual theology you have to understand the foundation, that we were created to be visual beings. That God has been teaching this way and that it’s a good thing from the very beginning.

Number two, we have to learn to think visually and this is where we’re going to get a little practical. This is why I have you all over here on this side because we’re going to get a little practical here. And I want you to start to understand at least how we think in some ways. And maybe how you can start to think on how to do some of these things. Because it’s not really rocket science. The stuff we do is pretty simple. You can just copy it, that’s kind of what I do a lot of times anyway.

But I want you to start, not really, I want you to start thinking visually. So when I’m creating our graphics, I ask myself basically two questions, right? The first question that I’m asking is, what am I teaching? And the second question is, how can I display it? So we keep it simple.

So first of all, what am I teaching? What is the story that I want to communicate? I always want to break it down as simply as possible. We don’t want to have major ideas competing because if we do that then we lose the biggest advantage that visuals have over test. And that is, speed. We can communicate so many ideas so quickly with a visual.

3M, they’re the company that makes Post-it Notes and all that other kind of fun stuff. They did a study a number of years ago and they found out that when you combine visuals with teaching people understand the concepts 60,000 times faster. All right, there’s all sorts of statistics that we can pull. Facebook says that their posts with graphics get two to three times more engagement.

My daughter just took her driving test. Pray for us. She mastered the visual component of that way before she mastered the verbal part or the written part. Obviously because those things come so much quicker to us.

So in this aspect here, when we’re trying to communicate too many things, too many truths at once, we lose that speed advantage that visuals are giving you. So, you can obviously have a lot of depth of information in it, but there should be one overall thing that you’re trying to communicate. So, in the latest book that we’ve done here, it’s right here. You can pick it up at the bookstore. I got the plug in. And one of the graphics we wanted to create is, I wanted to tell the story, we wanted to show that Jesus is present throughout the entire scripture. That His life is involved and is woven throughout all the scriptures. So that’s the thing that I wanted to teach.

Now the second question is, how do I display it? How can I visually represent this thing that I want to teach? And my philosophy is, I want to do it in a simple and beautiful way. I want to keep it simple so you understand it. I want to do it beautiful so that you want to continue to look at it. So that you want to continue to share it with others.

So if I want to teach that Jesus is the story of the Bible, the Bible is all about Jesus all the way through, how can I show that? Well, one of the things that I thought of is you can connect the prophecies in the Old Testament to the New Testament. So this is what we came up with. Now, on the surface this looks kind of complicated, but really there’s one overall purpose. There’s one overall arching message to this and that is the fact that the life of Jesus is woven all throughout the scriptures. Now like any good infographic, you can go deeper into it. You can see, okay, these ones are talking about His life. These ones are talking about His birth, His ministry, His resurrection. And then you can start to match up the references and just if you’re wondering, it’s really easy. The columns, you have the Old Testament and the the New Testament, the first one on the top from the Old Testament matches with the first one on the top or the first one on the bottom with the New Testament, so on and so forth. So you can match them up real easily. It’s not as complicated as it actually looks.

And then if you look at every seventh letter it unlocks a code on our website, no, I’m just kidding. It will tell you the secret message of the Bible. Now, for the most part what we’ve done, we’ve chosen to communicate primarily through the medium of infographics and there’s obviously a lot of different ways that you can communicate visually. Film, photographs, drama, we’ve chosen infographics primarily because I think it seems to tap into the advantages that both text and graphics have.

So, the power of text is you that can present an idea clearly and with a lot of clarity, right? The power of visual is that you can juxtapose maybe multiple meanings or maybe most important, you can elicit an emotional response that you don’t necessarily get with text. I think infographics actually combine those two things. They can elicit the emotional response. You can get bigger meanings out of it but it also has a lot of clarity to it. So that’s why we choose to use infographics.

Now, I want to explain this a little bit further and we’re going to give you a peak into the process that I use. And the goal here is I want to start to maybe unlock something’s in your mind. I want to inspire you to start thinking how you can create visually. All right? And with infographics, especially there’s a number of categories that they fit in. So that’s how we’re going to do this. I’m going to show you a bunch of different categories and how then our graphics fit into these and then you can hopefully go back and start working on your own. And if you’re taking notes, I’m going to kind of go through this fast. All of this will be on my blog so you don’t need to worry about if you miss something, it’ll be up there. Okay?

So here we go, number one, the first type of graphic that we’re using is called a quantitative graphic. And what this does, it shows relationships between amounts. The one that I want to show you here is a graphic that we did on the story of Gideon. As you’re reading through the book of Judges like I was one day, I came across this story and you have some numbers there. And it said that the armies of Gideon were 300 and the armies of Midian were 130,000 and then you keep on reading.

I stopped for a second like, what does 130,000 look like? When you just see it on the page the number there doesn’t mean a whole lot, but when you start to actually think about what that is, it’s kind of ridiculous. We’re not done because Keynote wouldn’t let me do it any further, so I had to create a whole other slide.

Now, there’s power here but there’s not as actually as much power as if you see it all in one poster. It’s pretty cool when you see it in one poster. But the idea that this is what they were up against. What’s the thing I’m trying to teach here? Is that the glory goes to God and God alone.

So that’s a quantitative. It shows relationships between amounts. Those are really easy to do. Just find relations between amounts in whatever story you’re trying to teach and those are pretty simple.

Statistical, they’re just numbers but we make them look pretty. All right? The book of Numbers, obviously. There’s a lot of fun things in there. One of the very first pages of the new book, we talk about some different statistics that are there and all we’re doing is we’re just putting colors with it and laying them out a little bit to give them more visual appeal.

Relational graphics, these are comparing and finding hidden relationships in data. Now in the first book that we did, one of the things we thought we would do is we would try and communicate all the one another’s that are commanded in New Testament. So you should encourage one another, you should greet one another. And so I was trying to figure out a way to display this and I thought there’d be a good relational value of this if we maybe enlarged the circles to see how many times it was mentioned. And I got some interesting information from that.

One of the things you’ll often realize is when you start to compile relational data, is that there are some surprises. And there’s a reason that love is called the greatest commandment. And here’s another power of the infographic is that it can juxtapose as multiple meanings. Not only is love the greatest commandment, but love is responsible for all of those things. You can put all of those things inside of love. So another powerful thing that you get from just the visual aspect of this.

Timeline, this is how subjects change or progress over time. These are pretty easy, right? Kings of Israel, the prophets that go along with them. Doesn’t just have to be dates, though. It could be the genealogy of Jesus there. Whoops, we’ll go back to that. Hold on. That’s another timeline type graphic as well.

Process, our how to. This is just a step by step guide in doing something. So memorizing scripture for example. How do we do that? Well, we just use a simple one, two, three, four, five process.

Comparisons, we can compare and contrast two different subjects or we can show two different sides of a single subject. So, again in the new book, we have a graphic in there called ten rules and this is when we’re trying to explain what the Ten Commandments are and what they do. And the big idea here is that I want you to understand and see that there was a difference between Jesus keeping the law and Israel keeping the law, right? So here we had the fact that Jesus was able to have no other gods, but Israel had many gods before them. So we’re able to compare and contrast the differences between the two.

We have lists. It’s exactly what is sounds like. It’s just a list of information related to a subject. So in this instance we have just a list of miracles. And then we do quantify that a little bit, so we combine two different types of graphics, where we quantify how many are of which, not that that has a lot of meaning behind it but it just kind of shows you what’s interesting there. How many times Jesus did healings as opposed to how many times He, I was surprised at how many times demons that He healed from people as well.

Flow charts, you start with a single point or a question then you branch off depending on the answers given. One of the ones we did with this, we entitled this, how to put sin to death. And who’s the original author behind, do you remember that?

Tim Challies: [inaudible]

Josh Byers: John Owens, yes from John Owens. So we just took John Owens, basically his formula on how to do that and put it into an infographic that, we’ve had this up in our youth room before and I’ve literally seen students just stand there. I don’t know if it’s because they couldn’t read it or if it’s too hard to follow, but they were engaged. They were looking at it and hopefully they’re learning some aspect of how can I put my sin to death. But it’s engaging in that way.

An inside view, so this is when we break down what makes something work or how it’s put together. So you have idea like this where we can actually see what’s inside the tabernacle. The specific distances or sometimes you’ll see exploded pictures of things, right? That’s what these are.

And then lastly we have maps and these are pretty obvious as well, where we can use location or geographic data to display ideas.

So we understand that we are created to respond visually if we want to teach this. We understand that we need to think visually and then lastly we just need to display it. And there’s a lot of flexibility that you actually have when it comes to these things. I think the beauty of when you’re using a visual theology, it’s that obviously, yes, you can teach it, right? You can stand up here and you can teach the one another’s and show that but you can also just display it casually, just put it up on a wall. Just put it up. Just have it. Just give it to somebody. Put it up on Facebook. Put it up on Instagram and just let it be there for people to come and draw them in so that they can see it. They can wander into it under their own time.

So many times I go to churches and I see the things that they have on their walls where it’s like, you’ve got to be kidding me? There was one church I went to and I went into the bathroom and they had this really cool quote. And it sounded really spiritual except that it was from the Book of Mormon. And they didn’t realize it. And so let’s replace these things. Let’s start teaching people. We want to communicate what we actually do value. If we value theology, if we want to teach theology in a deep way, we want to communicate that by putting it on display for all that can see.

Just a few more ways of how I’ve seen it be used. We get so many messages, emails every single week from people that are using this stuff around the world. I got an email from a pastor who was counseling a couple and he was trying to get them to understand the concept of biblical submission and it just wasn’t getting through. Then he showed them this graphic and he wrote and he said it was like a light bulb turned on for them. And they said they understood it and they were able to go through it with them.

We’ve had missionaries contact us. They’ve taken the graphics and they’ve been able to be translated and this a missionary that was in Cambodia that was using them. This is a missionary in the Philippines that’s teaching through our books of the Bible graphic, teaching students how to memorize the books of the Bible. Like I said before, it’s good to put these up in churches. They’re replacing photos like that of dream boat Jesus. He’s pretty isn’t he? This is being recorded. I forgot. Okay.

Well, you know, with scripture, with things that actually engage people. Student ministries, like I said, putting these up in their youth room. Letting their students wander in and engage. And then I’ll end with this. There was a dad who wrote me and he said that he got our attributes of God poster at a conference that we were at. And he brought it home to his seven year old daughter. She put it up in her room. And every week she’s got this play group that she invites friends over to. And when she put this poster up, she told her friends that she invited from around the neighborhood, “Hey, we’re going to spend five minutes out of our play group and we’re going to read over a attribute of God and talk about it.” Like, are you serious? Seven years old? I mean that’s awesome.

Here’s the big idea, God’s word is not going to return void, right? He’s promised us that, so whether we’re speaking it, whether we’re reading it, whether we’re displaying it, there is so much power that’s there and with this generation and with the way that our culture is being formed by the image, we have got to start thinking visually. We’ve got to start thinking, how can we utilize this to teach the greatest story that’s ever been told?

Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?

Tim Challies is a pastor, noted speaker, author of numerous articles, and a pioneer in the Christian blogosphere. Tens of thousands of people visit Challies.com each day, making it one of the most widely read and recognized Christian blogs in the world. Tim is the author of several books, including Visual Theology , The Next Story , and, most recently, Epic: An Around-the-World Journey through Christian History . He and his family reside near Toronto, Ontario.

Josh Byers is a designer, illustrator, photographer, and co-author of Visual Theology .

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Religion: Representations of God

• The Life of Mary Ward
• Representations of God
• Religion through the Ages
• Contemporary Issues
• Texts in Society
• Ethical perspectives

How do you paint Christ as fully human and fully God? The National Gallery reveals the visual language of signs and symbols known as iconography .

Duration: 6:14

Sister Wendy shows how to find the story in an artwork.

Duration: 3:59

Video - Trinity explained in 3 minutes (duration 3:55)

Video - a comprehensive explanation by Mr McMillan (Duration: 5:06)

• The Trinity step by step - BBC Bitesize
• The Trinity in simple language  - no technical words!

History of the Catholic Church

Great Schism

Renaissance

Reformation

In the year 1054 a major split occurred in Christianity. The churches in Western Europe, under the authority of the pope at Rome, separated from the churches in the Eastern Roman (or Byzantine) Empire, under the authority of the patriarch (bishop) of Constantinople. The churches of the Eastern Empire have come to be known by the collective term Eastern Orthodoxy.

(Source:  Britannica article 'Eastern Orthodox Churches' )

Controversy over the use of icons led to the movement called iconoclasm (image breaking). This in turn paved the way for the final split between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches (1054AD, The Great Schism).

Iconoclasts argued that the use of icons by such leaders as Heraclius was a pagan rather than Christian ritual. Religious art, they claimed, should be only of abstract symbols, plants, or animals. They believed that the growing power of the Arabs was due to the Byzantine sin of icon worship.

Opponents to iconoclasm, led by the monks, were called iconophiles. In 726 Emperor Leo III issued the first of many laws against the use of icons. This ushered in the Iconoclastic Controversy, which lasted until 843. In 731, the Roman pope, Gregory III, countered the uprising with a threat to expel the iconoclasts from the Catholic church.

It was Empress Irene who brought the Iconoclastic Controversy to an end by restoring the use of images in the Eastern Orthodox church. 

(Find out more:  Britannica article )

The word renaissance means “rebirth.” It refers to the rediscovery by scholars (called humanists) of the classical writings—those of the ancient Greeks and Romans. In fact, however, the Renaissance was a period of discovery in many fields—of new scientific laws, new forms of art and literature, new religious and political ideas, and new lands, including America.

(Source:  Britannica article 'Renaissance' )

A religious movement known as the Reformation swept through Europe in the 1500s. Its leaders disagreed with the Roman Catholic Church on certain religious issues and criticized the church’s great power and wealth. They broke away from the Catholic church and founded various Protestant churches. Today Protestantism is one of the three major branches of Christianity. As the Reformation spread across Europe, it also inspired movements for political and social change.

(Source: Britannica article ' Reformation ')

Sessions of Vatican II were held in four successive autumns from 1962 to 1965. The most immediate result of Vatican II was the revision of the liturgy, which included changing the language of the liturgy from Latin to the languages of the people. Another prominent outcome was increased openness to other religions and denominations and cooperation with them.

(Source: Britannica article ' Vatican Councils ')

Key verses about the trinity

• 'There is no God but one.' ( 1 Corinthians 8:4 )
• 'The Father and I are one.' ( John 10:30 )
• Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ( Matthew 28:19 )
• The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you ( 2 Corinthians 13:13 )
• The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. ( Luke 1:35 )

NOTE - the word 'trinity' is not found in the Bible. It is a technical word to describe the unique nature of God.

• Line by line explanation of the creed

Nicene Creed

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered, died, and was buried. On the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son. With the Father and the Son he is worshipped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

Video - What is the catechism? (Duration 2:55)

• Catechism table of contents (Vatican website)

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Visual Heresy – An Evangelical On The Iconography of God The Father

The Logo of the “Flying Spaghetti Monster Religion” shows Atheism to be the final result of believing God to be a an arbitrary “being” which either “exists” or does not “exist” within the sphere of knowledge.

My priest recently sent me a link to a talk (posted below) given by  Matthew J. Milliner , an assistant professor of art history at Wheaton College, which was quite astounding to me.  The talk tackles two subjects quite adroitly, two subjects, which Orthodox thinkers have addressed for some time now.  Firstly he tackles what is being called the “declinist narrative” (even it seems by some contemporary Evangelical scholars).  He expounds the notion that an important theological shift occurred in Medieval Scholasticism (Occam, Dun Scotus) which closed off the classical analogical and anagogic possibilities of language and of the cosmos itself.  This change would be the seed of the modern world, of desacralisation, of atheism, of totalitarianism, etc.  Mr. Milliner refers to the problem of the “univocity” of God as presented by Dun Scotus, that is how the qualities ascribed to God are seen as not being analogical to the unknowable Divinity, but are rather “univocal” to God’s very nature. So according to Dun Scotus, when we say that God is good, his goodness is the same as our goodness, but his goodness is just far greater than ours.  In this way, God is seen as a “thing” that has really really lots of great qualities. He explains and shows how traditional metaphysics are rather analogical in approach, that is both pointing to the resemblance and dissemblance between God and creation simultaneously.  He offers this wonderful quote by the Aeropagite:

God is at total remove from every condition, movement, life, imagination, conjecture, name, discourse, thought, conception, being, rest, dwelling, unity, limit, infinity, the totality of existence, … and yet… to praise his divinely beneficient Providence you must turn to all of Creation.

This is what Orthodox have come to call the “apophatic” and “cataphatic” approach to God, both resumed together in the very movement of analogy.

Now as if an Evangelical quoting an excerpt from “The Divine Names” is not surprising enough, he goes on to his second point.  He continues by suggesting that this problem, this crisis if you will, can be most clearly seen through the appearance of depictions of God the Father in visual arts at this very epoch.  Mr. Milliner connects these two developments, that is the theological change within Scholasticism on one hand, and the artistic change on the other in a wonderful and compelling way.  The central notion is that an image of God the Father, by representing him within the sphere of knowledge, reduces the unincarnate, uncreated Deity to “a bearded old man on a cloud”, maybe an ultimately invisible bearded old man on a cloud, but a “being” nonetheless, who in the final analysis could be believed in or not.  Similar points have been argued by several Orthodox thinkers, such as Leonid Ouspensky and our own  fr. Steven Bigham  (both of which Mr. Milliner mentions).  He goes on to show how efforts both in the Catholic Church and Orthodoxy have failed to remove this image, despite knowing (especially the Orthodox) its danger. The suggestion is made that the root of Protestant iconoclasm were these types of representations of God.  He even comments, with tongue in cheek, that if the P-Riot ladies really wanted something to protest when they staged their little punk liturgy, they should have looked up to the image of God the Father in the dome of Christ the Savior Cathedral.

Image God the Father in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.

Interestingly enough though, the third point he makes is that Protestantism might have solutions to this, Evangelicals even.  He then develops a surprising theory in which he casts the development of landscape in Protestant Europe as recapturing or continuing the type of analogy which was lost at the end of the Middle Ages. These works, especially that of the Romantics would be a way of representing the majesty of God the Father “in his absence, as the image of his consequences”.  Basically he suggest that landscape painting, rather than being the harbinger of secularism it is usually seen to be, is rather a preservation of the traditional Christian world view.

Landscape by Ruisdael described in the talk as showing God’s glory in creation.

I think we can totally agree with him that landscape painting is indeed a particularly vivid embodiment of Protestant ontology and maybe even spirituality.  But is it in line with the Medieval analogical worldview?  Here is where I think we must diverge with Mr. Milliner.  There is in fact an aspect missing in Mr. Milliner’s presentation.  He emphasizes how univocity destroys analogy, but there is a second face to this destruction of the traditional world view.  The analogy is a double movement, a showing and a removing, a relation which shows both absolute transcendence and absolute immanence simultaneously.  Mr. Milliner is therefore missing that other danger, the danger of presenting God as so completely transcendent as to cut him off from the created world, making him absent from it. It is the very image Mr. Milliner uses of God as being represented “in his absence, as the image of his consequences”.  In this view of the world, we do not have analogy, but rather the seed of Deism.   The two aspects of late medieval scholasticism, that is univocity on one hand, and nominalism or basic Occamism on the other, are just two sides of the same coin.  They are the ripping apart of the double movement of analogy, the radicalization of either believing God to be just another (albeit powerful) being, or believing him so absolutely transcendent as to finally be totally absent, present only in “the image of his consequences”.  This radicalization, this incapacity for analogy is both in images of God the Father AND in the rise of the purely visual, anecdotal or highly emotional representations of the cosmos of which landscape is just one of the manifestations among many within the “declinist narrative”.  Both opposites in the analogical dismemberment,  even the radical transcendence of God which on the first hand may seem superior,  in the end reduce God to necessity of some kind.  The radical transcendence of God as can be found so strongly in William of Occam, ends up making God into a no less arbitrary “exterior being”.

The only possibility of recovering the analogical world of the Middle Ages within Christian Art is through the person of Jesus Christ, who is the express image of the Father.  Mr. Milliner makes a point about Christ being the image of the Father in passing.  He quotes St-John of Damascus saying “I do not depict the invisible divinity… …but I depict God made visible in the flesh”, yet he fails to hone in on this.  In fact he fails to make Jesus Christ the center of his discourse.   To miss this is to miss everything.  There are some images of divine absence in Christian tradition, the “hetymasia” being the most common, but the Church has truly made the image of Christ the central image of all of Christian art, an act consecrated by the 7th ecumenical council.  Indeed, the entire web of cosmic analogy is held together by the the incarnation:  the human and divine completely united while remaining completely separate and without mixture. All the cosmos points to Christ, who  is the head, “from whom the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love”.  What better description is there of the analogical world than this passage from St-Paul?  By seeing this we will grasp why “landscape”, or more specifically representation of foliage and animals were not abandoned in the Middle Ages, but were rather placed in peripheral guises, as ornament, hierarchically arranged  in the “measure of their parts”.  The center, the true and only image of God is the renewed Man, the new Adam, Jesus Christ himself.

Above and beyond the representation of God the Father, which IS heretical, the analogical perspective remains at the core of Orthodox life, theology, ecclesiology, spirituality and art.  The success of St-Gregory of Palamas and the proclaiming of the Essence/Energy distinction over the pervasive scholastic theology of the time, ensures that the core is still there despite the real and undeniable ravages of modernism.  On the other hand, if Protestants pursue this line of thinking, this declinist narrative, it will inevitably show how the very radicalization of opposites I have described, the very ripping apart of the analogy, is what gave birth to all the conflicts of the Reformation: The opposition of predestination to free-choice, the radicalization of faith vs. works, the opposition of “interior” spirituality with exterior form, the progressive evacuation of all sacramental reality.  In fact, when one takes this road, it is impossible not to notice that the very fabric of Protestantism is woven with nominalism and univocity.

Despite my last objection, my heart is smiling, for this vision of the world is the key.  If we are to develop what Mr. Milliner beautifully calls “a metaphysical ecumenism”, if Orthodox, Catholic and Protestants can truly recapture the metaphysics of the early church, then to follow the analogy itself, to follow the very movement of manifestation from the inner to the outer, we will not be far from true and actual communion.  And so this talk is quite worth the time to engage with and shows hereto unheard of points of contact between Orthodox and Evangelicals, points which it would benefit us all to pursue.

The talk can be seen here:   http://youtu.be/JdaBe0dFsTI

…never suggested that the FATHER is MALE… There are many words for a non-male or neutral progenitor. ‘Parent’ is one of them, ‘father’ is not.

This was a really good essay. I believe evangelicals are parroting some of these lines about medieval development from Mark Noll, which is fine, but the next step seems to be to try to work out independent trajectories that frankly don’t make much sense. As much as I find iconography involving an old man regrettable, there is at least the rationale of the Ancient of Days. I can find no way at all to avoid the same criticisms you develop with respect to Milliner.

[…] article was originally published on the Orthodox Arts […]

To continue my general rear-guard action, I would point out as usual that Scotus does not deny the analogy of being, and from what I have read of the Scotist school, they harmonize analogy and univocity. furthermore, many elements of his thought are Dionysian in inspiration (divine ideas, unitive containment, etc.). Oddly, your discussion of how Christ should be at the center of art, etc., is fully in line with Scotus’ own position on Christ and the incarnation as being the peak of creation and the general Franciscan interest in the humanity of Christ.

But I suppose that it is necessary to have the black legend of Scotus in order for Protestants, Orthodox, and Catholics to unite in love and harmony.

To be honest with you, I am certainly not an expert on Duns Scott and know him only from secondary sources. So it is quite possible that you are right, since it is commonplace today to try to find “the culprit”. In a similar manner you will find Orthodox writers trying to put all of Western malaise into St-Augustine or Thomas Aquinas. One thing is certain, that is how between Abelard and Luther, something changed, a true shift in thinking which cut off all true Ontological hierarchies. In this regard and specifically for this video and my article, what matters is that this shift can be seen in ecclesiastical art as images of God the Father become prominent. The shift, like I tried to show, is not just in a type of radical univocity, but also the radical transcendence of God seen in much protestant discourse, both of which sent the world on a pendulum swing that would move with a more and more extreme opposition into the modern age.

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REPRESENTATIONS OF ZEUS: THE KING OF THE GODS

User-created.

This user gallery has been created by an independent third party and may not represent the views of the institutions whose collections include the featured works or of Google Arts & Culture.

This gallery will be show different representations of Zeus, a god found in greek mythology. We will also be showing parts of his temple. He is known as "the father of God and men" and also "the god of sky and thunder". It's an interesting topic since he is the most powerful of all the gods and we will be exploring how this element is being illustrated in his representations.

40 Symbols of Christianity: What They All Represent

Christian symbols are visual representations used to express ideas and beliefs related to the Christian faith. Before doing this research, I had no idea how many there actually are! 

I am sure this is not an exhaustive list of all the symbols used in Christianity, but here are some of the more common Christian symbols and what they represent:

40 Symbols of the Christian Faith

1. The cross : The cross is the most well-known Christian symbol. It represents the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is the Son of God and the Savior of the world.

Jesus was crucified on a cross, suffering and dying as a sacrifice for the sins of humanity.  Jesus was resurrected from the dead and ascended into heaven, defeating death and offering salvation to all who believe in Him.

The cross is often worn as a symbol of faith and devotion. The cross is a powerful reminder of the love and sacrifice of Jesus, and it is a symbol of hope and salvation for Christians around the world.

2. The fish : The fish symbol, also known as the Ichthys, is a simple drawing of two intersecting arcs that form the outline of a fish. It was used as a secret symbol by early Christians to identify themselves to one another, particularly during times of persecution when it was dangerous to openly practice their faith.

The Greek word for fish, “ichthys,” which is an acronym for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior.” It is now used to represent the Christian faith.

3. The dove : The dove is a symbol of the Holy Spirit and is often associated with the story of Jesus’ baptism, when the Holy Spirit descended upon him in the form of a dove.

4. The anchor : The anchor is a symbol of hope and stability, and is often used to represent the Christian faith.

5. The lamb : The lamb is a symbol of Jesus, who is referred to as the Lamb of God in the Bible. It is often used to represent Jesus’ sacrifice for humanity.

6. The alpha and omega : The first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and omega are often used to represent the beginning and the end, and are used to symbolize the eternal nature of God. Jesus called Himself the Alpha and Omega in the book of Revelation. 

7. The crown of thorns : The crown of thorns is a symbol of Jesus’ suffering and death on the cross. It is often used to represent the sacrifice Jesus made for humanity.

8. The chalice : The chalice is a cup that is used to hold the wine during the Christian sacrament of Holy Communion. It is often used as a symbol of Jesus’ sacrifice and the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Eucharist.

9. The empty tomb : The empty tomb represents the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He was laid in a tomb after His crucifixion, but the tomb was found empty on the third day. 

10. The Bible : The Bible is often used as a symbol of the Christian faith, as it contains the teachings and stories that form the basis of Christian belief. The Bible is the Word of God.  

11. The sacred heart : The sacred heart is a symbol of the love of Jesus for humanity. It is often depicted as a flaming heart surrounded by a crown of thorns, with a cross or cross-shaped wound above it.

12. The lily : The lily is often used as a symbol of purity and innocence, and is often associated with the Virgin Mary.

13. The olive branch : The olive branch is a symbol of peace and is often associated with the story of Noah and the flood, when a dove returned to the ark with an olive branch in its beak, signifying the end of the flood and the start of a new era of peace.

14. The vine : The vine is often used as a symbol of Jesus, who referred to himself as the “true vine” in the Bible. It is also used to represent the Christian community, which is often referred to as the “vineyard of God.”

15. The pelican : The pelican is a symbol of self-sacrifice and is often used to represent Jesus and his sacrifice for humanity. In medieval legends, it was believed that pelicans would pierce their own breasts to feed their young with their own blood.

16. The rose : The rose is a symbol of love and is often associated with the Virgin Mary and the love of Jesus for humanity. It is also used to represent the resurrection of Jesus and the hope of eternal life.

17. The labyrinth : The labyrinth is a complex, winding path that is often used as a symbol of the journey of life or the search for spiritual enlightenment.

In the Christian tradition, the labyrinth is often used as a way to symbolize the journey of the soul towards God, and it is sometimes used as a tool for prayer and reflection.

18. The cross with wings : The cross with wings is a symbol that combines the cross, a symbol of Jesus’ death and resurrection, with wings, a symbol of the ascension of Jesus into heaven.

19. The lamb holding a banner : The lamb holding a banner is a symbol of Jesus, who is referred to as the Lamb of God in the Bible. The banner often bears the inscription “Agnus Dei,” which means “Lamb of God” in Latin.

20. The dove with an olive branch : The dove with an olive branch is a symbol of peace and is often associated with the story of Noah and the flood, when a dove returned to the ark with an olive branch in its beak, signifying the end of the flood and the start of a new era of peace.

21. The fish and loaves : The fish and loaves are a symbol of Jesus’ miracle of feeding the five thousand with just five loaves of bread and two fish.

22. The good shepherd : The good shepherd is a symbol of Jesus, who is referred to as the Good Shepherd in the Bible. It is often depicted as a shepherd carrying a lamb on his shoulders.

23. The rainbow : The rainbow is a symbol of the covenant God made with humanity and the earth, that He would never again flood the earth. 

24. The Chi Rho : The Chi Rho is a symbol that combines the Greek letters “chi” and “rho,” which are the first two letters of the word “Christ” in Greek.

25. The dove with a halo : The dove with a halo is a symbol that combines the dove, a symbol of the Holy Spirit, with the halo, a symbol of holiness and divine nature.

26. The Holy Family : The Holy Family is a symbol that represents the family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. It is often used to represent the importance of family in the Christian faith.

27. The nimbus : The nimbus is a circular symbol that is often depicted around the heads of saints and other holy figures in Christian art. It represents the holiness and divine nature of the person depicted.

28. The star of Bethlehem : The star of Bethlehem is a symbol that represents the star that is believed to have appeared in the sky at the time of Jesus’ birth, guiding the wise men to his birthplace. It is often used to represent the birth of Jesus and the hope of salvation.

29. The pelican in her piety : The Pelican in her Piety is a symbol that represents the self-sacrifice of the pelican, which is believed to pierce its own breast to feed its young with its own blood. It is often used to represent Jesus and his sacrifice for humanity.

30. The dove and olive branch : The dove and olive branch is a symbol of peace and is often associated with the story of Noah and the flood, when a dove returned to the ark with an olive branch in its beak, signifying the end of the flood and the start of a new era of peace.

31. The cross and crown : The cross and crown is a symbol that represents the victory of Jesus over death through his death and resurrection on the cross. It is often used to represent the hope of salvation through faith in Jesus.

32. The Jesus fish : The Jesus fish is a symbol that combines the fish symbol, which was used by early Christians to identify themselves to one another, with the name of Jesus. It is often used to represent the Christian faith.

33. The palm branch : The palm branch is a symbol of victory and is often used to represent the triumph of Jesus over death and the hope of eternal life.

34. The shield of faith : The shield of faith is a symbol that represents the protection and strength that faith in Jesus can provide. It is often depicted as a shield with a cross on it.

35. The thumb and fingers : The thumb and fingers is a symbol that represents the five wounds of Jesus, which he suffered during his crucifixion. It is often used to represent the sacrifice Jesus made for humanity.

36. The Trinity knot : The Trinity knot is a symbol that represents the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which holds that God exists as three persons in one: the Father, the Son (Jesus), and the Holy Spirit.

37. The Jerusalem cross : The Jerusalem cross is a cross with four smaller crosses surrounding it, representing the four gospels of the New Testament. It is often used to represent the spread of the Christian faith from Jerusalem.

38. The wheat and grapes : The wheat and grapes are symbols that represent the Christian sacrament of Holy Communion, in which bread and wine are used to represent the body and blood of Jesus.

39. The shield of David : The shield of David, also known as the Star of David, is a symbol that is associated with the Jewish tradition and is often used to represent the connection between Judaism and Christianity.

40. The lighted candle : The lighted candle is a symbol that represents the light of Jesus and the hope of salvation. It is often used in Christian worship and devotion.

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Article contents

Islam and art: an overview.

• Wendy Shaw Wendy Shaw Professor, Art History of Islamic cultures, Free University Berlin
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199340378.013.783
• Published online: 25 March 2021

Modern terms like “religion” and “art” offer limited access to the ways in which nonverbal human creativity in the Islamic world engages the “way of life” indicated by the Arabic word din , often translated as religion. Islam emerged within existing paradigms of creativity and perception in the late antique world. Part of this inheritance was a Platonic and Judaic concern with the potentially misleading power to make images, often misinterpreted in the modern world as an “image prohibition.” Rather, the image function extended beyond replication of visual reality, including direct recognition of the Divine as manifest in the material and cultural world. Music, geometry, writing, poetry, painting, devotional space, gardens and intermedial practices engage people with the “way of life” imbued with awareness of the Divine. Rather than externally representing religious ideas, creativity fosters the subjective capacity to recognize the Divine. Flexible enough to transcend the conventions of time and place over the millennium and a half since the inception of Islam, these modes of engagement persist in forms that also communicate through the expressive practices of contemporary art. To consider religion and art in Islam means to think about how each of these categories perpetually embodies, resists, and recreates the others.

• contemporary art
• calligraphy
• intermediality

Introduction

The relationship between religion and art in Islam invites some basic questions: How to define Islam? What is art? How does the relationship between Islam and art inform the many ethnic and religious cultures of the regions where Islam has played a prominent role.

This article considers Islam as a way of life ( din ), distinct from the modern concept of “religion.” 1 Islam emerges as the accumulation, variety, and mutual interaction of practices, texts, and discourses accruing over time and space with reference to foundational texts. 2 These texts are the Qurʾan, understood as the sacred word of the Divine, miraculously passed to the Prophet Muhammad ( 571–632 ce ) at the inception of Islam; and the Hadith, the record of the prophet’s words and deeds, transmitted through his companions ( as-sahaba ) and compiled in the 9th century . 3 The word Islam derives from the root consonants “ s-l-m,” with associations including peace, greeting (familiar from salam in Arabic and shalom in Hebrew), and willing submission of the self to the Divine. One who engages in this practice is Muslim.

Far from natural or universal, “art” is a modern European concept distinguishing objects created with intellectual ambitions from crafts, appealing primarily to sensory pleasure over utility, preferring vision to other senses, and ultimately enabling fetishized commodification. 4 While premodern sources do not address art as such, Islamic cultures have encountered and incorporated the concept as part of global modernity. This article also recognizes that in the predominantly multilingual and multireligious regions under Islamic rule, premodern or modern practitioners nor all subjects engaged with these arts . Rather, much as European Christianity informed the modern label of the “West,” Islam informed a mode of apprehending and creating worldly forms exceeding the boundaries of faith. Acknowledging these anachronisms, this article considers how practices that modern subjects conceive as “art” function through Islamic thought rooted in premodern eras.

Seven sections frame this endeavor. The section “ Mimetic Practices ” outlines the emergence of Islam against the backdrop of existing practices of perception in the late antique world. “ Permissibility of the Image in Islam ” addresses the supposedly universal image prohibition in Islam. “ Impressions of the Divine ” explores music and geometry as representational invocations of the Divine. “ Spatial Invocations of the Sacred ” examines the fixtures of devotional spaces and gardens in Islam. “ Writing and Intermediality in Islamic Discourses ” examines the intermediality enabled by inscription. “ Representational Painting of Religious Subjects ” examines visual modes of religious representation. Finally, “Islam in Contemporary Art” looks at continuities of Islamic expression in modern-day art.

Mimetic Practices

The Qurʾan imparts a mode of engagement with the Divine informing human understanding of creation, including what modern subjects call art. This practice of perception emerged within a broader understanding of mimesis comparable with that of late antiquity, comprising both the visual representation of an absent object and the direct internalization of external stimuli.

Muslims recount that in 610 ce , God informed a humble merchant named Muhammad that he was chosen as the final prophet to renew monotheism in the lineage of Abrahamic prophets, including Moses and Jesus . He received this message during a long meditation in which a voice instructed him to recite/read. Some traditions interpret the description of him as “ummi ” in the Qurʾan as indicating his illiteracy, rendering his capacity to read as miraculous proof of the text’s Divine origin. 5 The voice conveying this extraordinary enunciation was that of an angel , identified as Gabriel in early biographies of the prophet. Over time, the Prophet Muhammad conveyed numerous revelations to a growing group of monotheists. 6 Believing writing would render them vulnerable to desecration, many memorized the verses, while his wives may have written and protected early codices. 7 The fourth political successor ( Caliph) of the prophet, ‘Uthman (r. 644–656), ordered a definitive compilation around 653 CE. This book is the Qurʾan , meaning “the recitation.”

This legacy of inspiration makes the Qurʾan more than a text to be interpreted: its recitation rearticulates the Divine word. For this reason, it is frequently considered untranslatable, although its meanings can be elucidated through any language. 8 While the Qurʾan mentions the eyes and the ears, in numerous passages the heart serves as the primary sensory organ.

The Qurʾan conveys the Divine through this human linguistic vehicle while enjoining the believer to also recognize nonlinguistic signs throughout creation, as expressed in Sura 2:164, which concludes a description of the world and cosmos with the phrase “there are signs in all these for those who use their minds.” 9 The influential Sufi ontology of the sheikh ibn al-Arabi ( 1165–1240 ) constructs no duality corresponding to the European distinction between nature and art, as all is part of the same Divine desire for self-disclosure ( tajalli ), expressed in the Hadith: “I was a hidden treasure and wished to be known.” 10 Also recognizing the Divine (Q17:44), animals enact Divine grace through creativity (such as spiders making webs in Q29:41 or bees building honeycombs in Q16), are affected by music, and often sheltered in purposely built architecture, such as eighteenth-century Ottoman bird houses . 11

Ninety-nine Divine names ( asma al-husna ) elucidate the concept of the Divine. One of these is “the creator,” al-khaliq . As the attribution of a name of Divine characteristics to humans can be understood through the sin of shirk (associating companions to the Divine), human creativity is often interpreted as bestowed through Divine grace in order to honor Divine creation. 12 This is not to say that Muslims necessarily encounter all experience spiritually, but many scholars suggest that the performance of prayer ( sal’at ) through ritual recitation and bowing ( sujud in Arabic or namaz in Turco-Persianate languages, related to the Hindi namaste ) is enhanced through the recognition of and gratitude for the Divine as encountered in the everyday. For example, Muhammad al-Ghazali ( 1058–1111 ), honored as the “renewer of the religion,” wrote that initiated Sufis gained the capacity to penetrate hidden beauties “with the eye of the heart and the light of insight,” and, through analogy, recognize the wonders of Divine creation. 13 Similarly, the Persian poet Hafez ( 1315–1390 ) wrote:

In the meadow, every petal is the book of a different state: What a pity should you remain ignorant of them all! 14

Likewise, according to the artist Dust Muhammad (d. 1564 ), human creativity was part of the “workshop of prayer,” enhancing the recognition of Divine grace as enabling the production of the beautiful. 15

Not unique to Islam, emphasis on internal recognition over outward representation characterized a broader understanding of mimesis in late antique Mediterranean cultures. The Arabian Peninsula nourished a multiethnic society embedded in multiple trading networks. The prophet belonged to the Quraish, one of the leading tribes of the region, worshipping local gods related to those of Mesopotamian and Hellenic antiquity. Many narratives of local Christians and Jews—including the stories of Adam , Abraham , Jonas, and the annunciation and virgin maternity of Mary —are in the Qurʾan, proof for Muslims that the texts of the “peoples of the book” are earlier versions of the same revelation. Such stories were often later depicted in manuscript paintings associated with non-Qurʾanic texts .

Through trade, peoples of the Arabian Peninsula encountered cultures of both the Sassanian Empire in Persia and the Roman Empire as ruled from the city renamed Constantinopolis (modern Istanbul) in 330 ce . At the time of Muhammad’s prophecy, the dominance of Christianity in the Roman Empire (mandated in 529 ce ) was barely a century old. Iconoclastic discussions circulated among eastern Mediterranean Christians , Zoroastrians, and Buddhists. 16 This environment recognized multiple types of mimesis. Outward mimesis resembles our modern understanding of representation: an image that brings forth that which is absent, taking its place through a cognitive deception. Inward mimesis recognizes an aesthetic vehicle that enters the prepared soul of the recipient directly, without intermediary. 17 While modern subjects share this experience, for example in musical affect, it is rarely considered representation. In contrast, like late antique philosophers, early Islamic scholars recognized the outward mimesis of images, but they preferred the direct imprint on the soul. The Islamic philosopher al-Farabi (c. 872–950) indicates such an understanding by saying, “Many people believe that the imitation of something in the most indirect form is preferable to direct imitation, and they hold the creator of those expressions to be the author of a more genuine form of imitation, as well as more skilled and experienced in the art.” 18 Likewise, Ottoman and Safavid texts concerning the arts root the gaze in “the enticement and wonderment of the eye, the embodiment of vision through emotional states and desire,” and articulate the subsequent movement from physical sight to insight. 19

The contrast between the dominance of outward mimesis in modern culture and that of inward mimesis in the premodern Islamic world has encouraged an emphasis on “image prohibition” in the Islamic world, limiting the recognition of the diverse modes of mimetic expression in Islamic culture, including music, space, inscription, and painting.

Permissibility of the Image in Islam

Is there a universal image prohibition in Islam? The simple answer is no. While there have been localized restrictions on the use of images, most commonly in spaces of prayer, figural representation has been part of Islamic cultural production from the earliest sites of archaeological excavation to the contemporary era. Wall painting and sculpture dominated early periods, while manuscript painting became more common later.

In contrast to biblical passages (Leviticus 26:1 and Exodus 20:4–6) explicitly prohibiting image making, the Qurʾan forbids idolatry without mentioning images. The Hadith indicate that images existed in early Islamic society, and that the prophet found them inappropriate in prayer spaces but acceptable if debased through use as carpets or cushions. Islamic ritual uses no votive imagery, relying instead on the direction ( qibla ) of the Kaaba in Mecca , believed to mark the altar God gave to the prophets Adam and Abraham , as the focal point of prayer. Although the prophet is said to have destroyed the idols of the Kaaba (except for a probable icon of Mary and Jesus) during the conquest of Mecca, this never became precedent for the destruction of votive objects in Islamic law. 20

The Hadith most commonly cited to restrict representational images warns that on the day of judgment, makers of images will be enjoined to breathe life into their creations and will be condemned following their inevitable failure. 21 While the utterance is attributed to the prophet, its cultural emphasis articulates political tensions during the early decades of Islam. 22

Modern texts have often grouped Hadith pertaining to images together, constructing an overarching image prohibition and equating images with irreligiosity. 23 However, Hadith alone do not constitute the legal path ( sharia ), often referred to as Islamic law. Rather, noncanonical precedent emerges through jurisprudence ( usul al-fiqh ) interpreting the Qurʾan and the Hadith. While some Islamic scholars have issued nonbinding legal opinions ( fatwa ) prohibiting the use of images (variously defined), uneven implementation of such injunctions results in no normative ban on images. While the rubbing out of figural images on some manuscripts can indicate localized iconoclasm, it can also indicate wear through worship by touching and kissing the image. Another periodic popular response to images has been to sever the head from the body with a drawn line, rendering the image visibly unable to breathe. 24

Early debates about the arts in Islam focused less on visual images than on poetry and music, intertwined as in the antique tradition. The cantillation ( taghbir ) of Qu’ranic verses was not to be understood as song or entertainment, which are strongly associated with the forbidden practices of drinking wine, gambling, and fornication (Q5:90). The Qurʾan also decries the poets (Q26:221–227), but this may have referred to pretenders who claimed false verses of the Qurʾan, akin to sophists and soothsayers in the Platonic tradition. 25 Regardless of their legality, board games like chess and backgammon remained common. Similarly, poetry and music flourished both as entertainment and as part of burgeoning mystical approaches to Islamic spirituality, which often used wine as an embodied metaphor for spiritual transcendence.

Often called Sufism and traced to the inspired nature of Muhammad’s prophecy, such practices aim toward spiritual union with the Divine. 26 As soon as early groups of mystics tried to achieve transcendence of self in ecstasy through ritual music, poetry, and movement, theologians debated the permissibility of their practices, conceiving music as image. Some found all poetry unlawful as it ran the risk of shirk in competing with the Qurʾan, while others considered it as distraction from the Divine articulated in the Qurʾan. Others allowed for spiritual music but banned pleasurable music . Others favored pleasurable music as an enticement to the spiritual. Still others found spiritual music appropriate for novices but irrelevant for sages. For many thinkers, the transgressive similarity of music with alcoholic or sexual intoxication was precisely what enabled its potential as a vehicle for transcendence, a frequent theme in poetry about the beloved.

As in every society, not everybody followed theological mandates. Wine , song, and unsanctioned sexuality persisted—with both spiritual and bodily implications central to poetry in which materiality often functions through transgressions leading to transcendence. 27 Often labeling it as “heterodox,” and opposed to normative “orthodox” positions, contemporary academic and theological scholarship varies concerning the centrality of Sufi interpretations of Islam. 28 Yet Sufism is particularly salient in relation to the arts, as people involved in creative and mercantile fields often worked through guilds associated with Sufi orders. 29

In these early centuries of Islam, representational images existed with differing degrees of access according to region and social class. In the palaces of Muslim rulers, wall paintings and sculptures were common, evident in sites dating to the era of the Umayyad Caliphate ( 690–750 ce ) known as Qusayr Amra (in modern Jordan) and the Khirbat al-Mafjar (in the West Bank of Palestine). In 13th century Anatolia and Iran, branches of the Seljuk Dynasty used figural representation on luxury ceramics , and incorporated figural sculpture in public settings. Conservative scholar ibn Taymiyya ( 1263–1328 ) reviled grave visitation, the worship of relics at shrines, and the practice of displaying images of the prophet and other saints in places of worship in Damascus, indicating that images did at times function votively, probably overlapping with Christian practices. 30

Correlating with the political and cultural tensions following the Mongol invasions, the most famous injunction against images emerges in the 13th century , when Abu Zakariya Yahya ibn Sharaf al-Nawawi ( 1234–1278 ), a scholar of the Shafi’i school of law, wrote:

The authorities of our school and others hold that the making of a picture of any living thing is strictly forbidden and that it is one of the great sins because it is specifically threatened with the grievous punishment mentioned in the Hadith . . . the crafting of it is forbidden under every circumstance, because it imitates the creative activity of God. 31

Yet any fatwa lacks universal mandate. Manuscript painting flourished after the 13th century under the rule of the post-Mongol dynasties who established courtly practices of patronage of theologians and the arts, which proved inspirational for later dynasties throughout the Islamic world. As explored in section VI, this tradition of manuscript painting not only depicted worldly portraits, legends, and histories but also religious narratives, figures, and spiritual themes. Still, the intimacy between religion and creative expression was often most profound in nonfigural arts, explored in the next two sections.

Impressions of the Divine

The modern tendency to address the perceptual world of Islam through the visual and temporal paradigms of “art” and “history” has reduced the recognition of many evocations of the Divine beyond the outward, figural representation presumed normative from a European Christian tradition. Instead, inward mimesis impresses Divine manifestations on the prepared soul through a multitude of perceptual agents.

Several sources inform inward mimesis in the Islamic tradition. The most important is internalization of reception of the Divine word, articulated in the Qurʾanic recitation that constitutes prayer. The Qurʾan asserts its providential origins by repeatedly declaring its inimicability. Resembling the inward mimesis valorized in late antiquity, this miraculous quality, understood as an affective response experienced as tingling or spontaneous weeping, has been extensively theorized as i’jaz . 32

Such internalization reflects the Platonic tradition integrated into Islamic thought through the translation and extensive discussion of ancient texts in the 8th and 9th centuries , the period when Islam quickly grew into a new faith and inspired an enormous political and hegemonic power. The 6th-century consolidation of Christianity led to the rejection of philosophical schools. Philosophers found patronage under the Sassanian ruler Khosrau II (r. 590–628), who viewed the wealth of knowledge enabled through a massive project of translation as restitution of the sacred wisdom given to Zoroaster and stolen from his descendants. Institutionalized translation continued under Islamic rulers after their conquest two centuries later. Translating from intermediate languages, including Pahlavi (Old Persian) and Syriac, as well as Greek, Islamic scholars engaged with a wealth of ancient thought from Greece as well as from India (particularly famous in the wisdom fables known as Kalila and Dimna ). 33

Engagement with ancient legacies contributed to the development of complex mathematics, notably the “reunion of broken parts” ( al-jabr , or algebra) developed by Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (780–850). Soon after, mathematically based music and geometry , which would pervade much of Islamic culture, entered both praxis and discourse. Already in the early 9th century , al-Kindi (801–866) discussed music through Pythagorean and Platonic ideas of celestial harmonies and similitudes. In his Great Book of Music , al-Farabi (c. 872–950) developed these ideas further through analogy with geometric forms, like the square and the circle, forming an iconography of emotions evoked by notes through comparison with sculptures deified by ancient peoples captivated by outward mimesis. Similarly, the Brethren of Purity, an anonymous group of scholars based in 10th-century Basra and Baghdad, who preserved Platonism through widely disseminated epistles about living in the world Islamically, describe music through comparison with the proportions of oud strings, poetic rhythms, writing, the human body, and planetary movements. During the same period, the scribes ibn Muqla (d. 940) and ibn al-Bawwab (961–1022) developed scripts that followed a geometric model based on predictable proportions of the pen nib. Ibn al-Bawwab enabled the transmission of his method through a didactic poem describing the techniques of making pen and ink, advocating patient imitation, and assuring the joy of achievement to those who write in accordance with Divine guidance. 34

The Brethren described music and geometry alike in terms evoking aniconic representation. The musical image remains imprinted on the soul, much like memorized text, obviating the need for an outward, physical image mediating between the individual and the Divine. Similar transcendent effects were attributed to the interlocking, potentially infinite isometric geometric pattern developing in the 10th to 11th centuries . This was soon recognized as providing easy access to arithmetic and algebra, as well as informing everyday practices such as design and construction. Geometry informed the experimental proof of intromission expressed in the Optics of ibn al-Haytham (965–1040, known as Alhazan in Latin). Engaging contemporary philosophical and theological discussions of atomism and the soul, his thought reflects an atomistic model of perception where sensory organs take in bits of information that are compiled in the soul, which functions as a world-reflecting mirror through the act of contemplation. By imposing a secondary pattern over structural geometries that establish the form of objects, surface geometry has the capacity to invoke the transitory nature of the physical world. 35 The Brethren describe a similar model of perception, suggesting that engagement with the sensory world through physical expressions of mathematics, like music and geometry, cultivate the imagination with a capacity for abstraction. The transmedial metaphors dominating discourses of both music and geometry underscore the importance of this abstract realm, where the categories of the physical world have the capacity to morph from form to form and transcend temporal limits, emphasizing the reminding of the believer of the liminal world between materiality and the Divine.

When understood as agents of inward mimesis, geometry and music function to engage the subject with an awareness of the Divine without requiring subjective agency. Lacking a semiotic system of sign and signified, music and geometry do not represent so much as make the real present. This prepared the subject for internalized engagement of the Divine, whether mystically or through the study of theology. If anything can be considered analogous to outward Christian representations of God, these aural and visual geometries would come closest as they provide a worldly model for a pervasive Divine cosmology even without an intermediary theorization. 36

This system of mathematical pattern, in both two-dimensional and three-dimensional forms called muqarnas (stalactite vaulting), quickly became a dominant visual idiom in manuscripts , surfaces, and architecture of the Islamic world from Andalusia to Afghanistan and India, peaking in the 13th and 14th centuries . 37 It persists into the modern period, increasingly as a sign of “heritage” that provides an Islamic “look,” commonly evoked in institutions such as museums and airports . Disassociating it from culture and religion, architect Michael Hansmeyer uses it for algorhythmic architectural explorations. Nonetheless, informed by a believer’s informed subjectivity, pattern can evoke spirituality.

Spatial Invocations of the Sacred

Architectural elements and the objects surrounding prayer invoke various aspects of devotional recognition of the Divine. What is this Divine? The Qurʾan, which speaks in the first person and addresses its reader in the second, offers a few clues. While the Qurʾan suggests some anthropomorphic aspects of the Divine (mentioning a face, hands, and feet), understood by some literally and others metaphorically, the Divine is also theorized as transcending human comprehension, alluded to through metaphors of light (Q24:35) and as close as the jugular vein (Q50:16). The ninety-nine Divine names articulate attributes, including the creator, the omnipotent, the omniscient, the peace bringer, the merciful, and the noble. The passage most frequently quoted as describing the Islamic understanding of the Divine is the Light Verse ( Surat al-Nur ).

God is the Light of the heavens and earth. His Light is like this: there is a niche, and in it a lamp, the lamp inside a glass, a glass like a glittering star, fueled from a blessed olive tree from neither east nor west, whose oil almost gives light even when no fire touches it––light upon light—God guides whoever He will to his Light; God draws such comparisons for people; God has full knowledge of everything––shining out in houses of worship. (Q24: 35–36) 38

With the development of architecture specific to the Islamic realm in the late 7th century , a niche called a mihrab became the conventional form through which to indicate the direction of prayer ( qibla ) in a space set aside for the purpose of bowing ( s - j - d ) to the Divine called a masjid (corrupted as mosque in English). 39 As the niche in late antiquity generally framed the figure of a deity or ruler, the empty niche, also used at the 3rd-century ce Dura-Europos synagogue , aptly signified articulation of the Divine through recitation. Prayer spaces memorialize the prophet in the form of a staircase beside the mihrab leading to a platform for speaking, representing the stool that the prophet stood or sat on while reciting. The final steps of this minbar are left empty, and the leader ( imam ) of the congregation speaks from the middle of the stairs, below the empty place of the prophet at the top, metaphorically leading the entire Islamic community ( umma ). 40 Mihrabs are often decorated with oil lamps made of glass , ceramic , or rock crystal, which evoke the Light Verse through form, inscription, and the effects of a flickering flame filtering through water. 41 Flat mihrabs , including some on grave markers, often include the image of an oil lamp.

The Kaaba is not only the focal point of all prayer but also of the annual pilgrimage ( Hajj ) enjoined on all Muslims (Q22:27). Although composed of a simple architectural cube, and therefore often omitted from architectural histories of the Islamic world, it has a rich symbolism and is covered with brocaded textiles adorned with golden inscriptions. 42 A similarly ornate ceremonial palanquin ( mahmal ) representing the authority of the sultan over the Holy Places was carried by camel every year preceding the Hajj. Pilgrims might anticipate the spiritual journey through texts such as the Description of the Holy Cities ( Futuh al-Haramayn, 1505–1506) by the Indian scholar Muhi al-Din Lari, translated and popular as well in Ottoman Turkish and Persian. They would often receive illustrated and talismanic documents confirming their completion of the Hajj.

Aside from pointing in the direction ( qibla ) of prayer toward the Kaaba, a mosque has no fixed form. Believers are enjoined to pray three to five times a day anywhere clean, preferably facing the qibla . The need to determine the direction of the qibla and the correct times of prayer has increased the importance of astronomy and related sciences in the Islamic world. The custom of prayer carpets ( sejjadah [sing.], like masjid , also from the root s-j-d) developed so that people could establish a clean, sacral space around themselves during the act of prayer outside of a designated space. The ritual of bowing to the Divine during prayer valorized such carpets, often made with exquisite detail and materials, such as silk. Although not requiring iconography, prayer carpets are often small, like a modern yoga mat. They can mimic the pointed frame of a mihrab, often decorated with the outline of a lamp or sandals of the prophet. Often bequeathed to religious foundations, the layering of carpets in prayer spaces inadvertently served to preserve older carpets, which became a gold mine for 19th-century European collectors. Believers also often use other objects of prayer, such as prayer beads and, among Shi’ites, prayer stones , which do not fit the rubric of “art.”

Believers are enjoined to congregate on Fridays, rendering a congregational space advisable. Built to hold maximal adherents as equal devotees before the Divine, mosques developed as the largest structures in most settled areas. Early mosques often used a basilica form laterally, situating a mihrab on the long wall. Decorative elements reflected regional practices, as in the extensive use of mosaic at the earliest surviving congregational mosque, the Great Mosque of Damascus ( 715 ce ). Multiple faith groups could share sacral spaces. For example, the Great Mosque of Damascus included a shrine dedicated to Nabi Yahya (St. John the Baptist), appealing to Christians as well as Muslims. The first monumental architecture of the Islamic world, the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem ( 692 ce ) was built in the form of a Christian martyrium over the ruins of the Temple of Solomon, destroyed by the Romans in 70 ce . This memorialization coincided with the invitation of Jews, banned from the city under Roman rule, to return to the city, suggesting a shared memorial function for the structure. 43

Over time, the dome, already common in Christian churches in the region, developed as an optimal way to cover a large expanse of space without interruption, allowing for undivided, theoretically egalitarian, communal congregation. Muqarnas became a common structural element supporting domes and delineating portals and niches after the 12th century . The potential evocation of Divine order thus circulated in a multitude of forms that built on the same basic elements of geometry, often also producing sonic resonance that enhanced the circulation of recitation that brings the sacred into architecture and is reinforced by frequent use of Qurʾanic quotations on the walls, often surrounding the mihrab and/or as a band around the prayer space. 44

The Qurʾan enjoins the call to prayer to be issued through the human voice before each time of prayer but indicates no architecture for this purpose. According to biographies of the prophet, the first muezzin —the one who calls to prayer—was a man of Ethiopian descent named Bilal ibn Rabah enslaved in Mecca. One of the first converts to Islam, he was tortured by his master,then rescued and manumitted under orders of the Prophet Muhammad, who, recognizing his strong voice, called upon him to lead the ritual call to prayer ( adhan ) . Often considered one of the most important signifiers of Islam in the contemporary world, minaret developed after the 8th century as mosques became central to settlements large enough that the call to prayer, initially issued from a roof, could no longer be heard by the congregation . Over time, minarets came to signify power through the number associated with each mosque, their height, and decoration and varying conventional forms associated with different dynasties.

Mosques can take many forms, often reflecting local architectural materials. Earthen mosques, such as the Larabanga Mosque in Ghana ( 1421 ), have encountered modernization under colonialism enabling monumentality, such as at the Djenne Mosque ( 1907 ) in Mali. 45 Hypostyle mosques, such as the Damascus Great Mosque, the al-Azhar Mosque-University in Cairo (972), or the Great Mosque of Cordoba , use small domes in front of the mihrab amid a sea of columns holding up a transverse prayer hall. Conversely, mosques in the northern provinces of the former Ottoman Empire, such as the Selimiye Mosque of Edirne ( 1574 ), and in Iran, such as the Shah Mosque in Isfahan ( 1629 ), use vast domes, often illuminated with delicate inlaid tile or painting, to evoke Divine grandeur in both the scale of the edifice and the delicacy of its adornment. Echoing these traditions, mosques in South Asia frequently use a wide hypostyle format adorned with multiple domes and tapering minarets, such as the Jama Masjid ( 1656 ) in Delhi or the Badshahi Mosque ( 1673 ) in Lahore.

Generally established through foundations ( waqf ), mosques were essential to the premodern economic and social system of the Islamic world. Before inflation, waqf s enabled the circulation of wealth between classes and between rural and urban regions. A person would establish a foundation by donating in perpetuity the profits from rural lands and caravanserais along with those from urban services like baths and shops (often grouped together in open and covered markets) to a complex of charitable institutions surrounding a mosque, which could include schools, universities, hospitals, and public kitchens, as well as often the tomb of the founder or sheikh of a Sufi collective. Waqf s dedicated to spiritual leaders would often also include smaller prayer spaces and spaces of lodging, libraries, rituals, and the teaching of Sufi orders, often associated with guilds. Together, the profit-making and charitable institutions surrounding a mosque would form the center of a settlement, with multiple centers emerging as cities expanded. The mosque served not only as the center of communal life religiously but also economically and politically, as communal Friday prayers would regularly reinforce the ruler’s dominion. While foundations can be conceived in secular terms, as architectural complexes or urban planning units, they functioned as important elements in socioreligious practice by fostering community, enabling instruction, harboring the sick, and feeding the poor. The dissolution of waqfs under late 19th-century modernizing bureaucratization provided an important source for objects that would be recategorized as “Islamic art.” 46

Contemporary mosque architecture tends to emphasize broad sanctuary spaces through myriad forms enabled by contemporary materials. Some, like the Cologne Central Mosque ( 2017 ), which slices a neotraditional domed design with glass panes, or the Mosque of Light ( 2018 ) by the Mumbai-based architecture firm NUDES for Dubai’s Creek Harbor Development, emphasize the play of light as an iconic Islamic form. Others, like the Vali-e-Asr Mosque ( 2017 ) by Fluid Motion Architects in Tehran, emphasize plain monumental surfaces while eschewing traditional forms such as minarets, domes, or isometric geometries—a move proving controversial to the conservative regime at the time of its completion. Similarly, the Sancaklar Mosque ( 2018 ) by EAA-Emre Arolat Architecture uses stark, partly underground modernism to oppose neo-Ottoman monumentalization characteristic of early 21st-century state patronage in Turkey, as at the Çamlıca Mosque ( 2019 ) in Istanbul.

Just as the Qu’ran is not the only mode of semiotic engagement with the Divine, architecture is not the only spatial engagement with it. Early Islamic buildings, such as the Dome of the Rock and the Great Mosque of Damascus ( 715 ce ), included mosaic revetments designed to evoke Qurʾanic descriptions of paradisical gardens and rivers (Q6:99, 9:72). Such semiotic representations of gardens informed floriate decoration in the expansions of the Mosque of Cordoba, particularly around the mihrab. Although initially only representations of gardens seem to have been understood symbolically, by the 13th century , physical gardens in Spain and India also could evoke spiritual associations. By the 15th century , gardens flanking Ottoman mosques often housed cemeteries, evoking the gardens of paradise. 47 Similarly, Persianate poetry describing the chaharbagh , a garden divided into four parts, often ascribes paradisiac qualities to it while evoking the division of the cosmos. The garden could also serve as a metaphor for wisdom, as in poetry compilations conceived as gardens . As with geometry or music, the capacity of vegetal forms on surfaces, including on carpets , metalwork, and tile to evoke the Divine often resides less in direct symbolism than in the habitus of the subject. Thus such effects could also function in Christian spaces of worship, such as the Armenian Vank Cathedral in Isfahan.

Writing and Intermediality in Islamic Discourses

Religiosity was not experienced solely in prayer spaces but also through everyday special elements and objects inscribed with Qurʾanic and poetic texts invoking the Divine. The adaptation of the 18th-century neologism “calligraphy,” emphasizing the visual beauty ( calli -) of text ( graphy ), not only minimizes the semantic importance of writing but also the affective properties associated with the Arabic word denoting scripted writing, khatt . Discourses about khatt emphasize text as trace, left both by the Divine inscriber of the world and the manifestation of providential grace in the scribe. The quality of such writing came to be described less through visual terms as through the virtue of the scribe as expressed in the pure line that meditatively mediated between the oral and visual characteristics of text.

The root of the inscriptional tradition in the Islamic world emerges in what are generally understood as the first revealed verses of the Qurʾan.

Read [ iqra ]! In the name of your Lord who created: He created insan [humanity] from a clinging form. Read! Your Lord is the Most Bountiful One who taught by the pen [ q-l-m ], who taught man what he did not know. 48 (Q96:1–5; see also Q68:1)

Reflections of this association between the pen and creation are manifold. Often considered the first scribe ( khattat ) among the believers, the Hundred Sayings of ’Ali ibn Abi Talib recommends the beauty/grace ( husn ) of writing as trace ( khatt ) as the keys to sustenance, referring not simply to visuality but also to the sustenance conveyed through scripture. 49 To him is also attributed the aphorism, “Whoever writes ‘In the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful,’ in beautiful writing will enter Paradise without account.” 50 Both poetic manuals on the inscriptional arts and biographies of illustrious scribes ( khattat ) often emphasize the perseverance and virtuous nature of practitioners more than describing the visual properties that lend quality to the inscription. 51 Thus the formal performance of the trace understood as “calligraphy” and recognized through proportioned writing gains beauty by manifesting the virtue of the scribe. A practitioner is enjoined to learn through the physical repetition that imbues the hand with the learning of the masters, ultimately liberating the scribe to spontaneously embody praxis within his or her own nature. 52 The meditative aspect of this practice manifests in the lyrical rhythms of practice sheets turned in multiple directions, resulting in apparently abstract forms of letters and letter combinations. The word for such practices, mashq , coincides with the word for the improvisational aspect of musical performance, which likewise builds on a set of temporal and tonal constants to enable an infinity of informed innovation.

As the prophet hears rather than sees the sacred voice, the pen of the Qurʾan is not simply a physical pen. The creation of the pen from the reed invites comparison with the flute ( nay ), and its voice becomes a metaphor for the human body. Thus the epic Mathnavi of the sheikh Jalal al-Din Rumi ( 1207–1273 ), commonly called “the Qurʾan in Persian,” begins with the following lines:

Listen to the reed flute as it tells it tales Complaining of separations as it wails. “Since they cut my stalk away from the reed bed, My outcry has made men and women lament I seek a breast that is torn to shreds by loss So that I may explicate the pain of want” . . . What has struck the reed-stalk is the fire of love What has struck the wine is deep passion of love Anyone who’s lost a friend, the reed’s with him Its wails tear apart the veils that keep us in Who has seen a poison or cure like the reed? Who has seen a lover or mate like the reed? . . . Only to those without sense is such sense known Yet the ear has no customer but the tongue. 53

Referencing the separation of the reed from the reed bed, the human from the maker, and the text from the creation of which it partakes and represents, the poem frames itself as song and as succor against the separation from the Divine. As in Platonic thought, rhetoric functions as a salve, even as the transgressive property of song also potentially poisons. 54

Also comparing the reed to the lover separated from the beloved, the Mathnavi echoes the mystical association between the forms of letters and human bodies. Developed by Fadallah of Astarabad ( 1340–1394 ), the practice of hurufism interpreted the unexplained “mystical” letters that appear at the beginning of some passages of the Qurʾan. Just as the round letter nun —corresponding with the Latin N and looking like ن ‎—can correspond with a mole or a dimple in the chin of the beloved, in poetry about inscription, it could be an inkwell . Although hurufism never became a dominant practice—Fadallah was probably executed for heresy under Prince Timur (r. 1370–1405 )— its influence pervaded poetry about writing, where metaphors of the text, bodies, sexuality, and sacrality readily intertwine. Thus The Bounty of Lovers ( 1454 ), a book about the spiritual and aesthetic dimensions of inscription, relates a story about the calligrapher ibn Muqla (886–940), who was inspired to redesign lettering from square to round forms so that the following verse articulated by the son of the caliph would make sense.

My lover’s teeth are in the form of the [letter] sin [ س ‎], And his mouth’s shape is like a rounded mim [ م ‎]. Together they spell poison [ samm سم ‎]; amazing, by my life! After I tasted it, there was no doubt. 55

Likewise, the theologian-poet Jami ( 1410–1492 ) describes the passion of Zuleikha (the biblical wife of Potiphar) and the prophet Joseph through architectural and calligraphic metaphors of the body that gloss the direct descriptions of sexuality in theological interpretations of the Qurʾan and simultaneously allude to the credal testimony (the shahada , which states that there is no God but God) at the heart of Islam. 56 Hurufism exemplifies a practice bridging the gap between picture and text, framing familiar Qurʾanic and spiritual passages in representational forms such as birds , lions , and the “ complete man ” ( al - insan al-kamil ), understood as the prophet Muhammad. The cartoon How Did the Ship Amentu Move? ( 1969 ) by Tonguç Yaşar ( 1932–2019 ) and Sezer Tansuğ ( 1930–1998 ) interprets this tradition through religious poetry envisioned as rowers (shaped as the letter waw ) finding salvation in the tears of ’Ali ibn Abi Talib.

Just as discourses about writing merge with discourses about music, poetry, and the human form, architecture is often articulated through poetry. Not only are Qurʾanic and poetic inscription ubiquitous in architecture, often the use of the first person enables objects to articulate themselves as though speaking to the viewer. Thus at the Alhambra Palace, built in the 14th to 15th centuries under the Nasrid Dynasty in Granada, many objects and walls are inscribed with poetry referring simultaneously to secular power and Qurʾanic meaning. One inscription describes the tower where it is located in poetic terminology:

Her beauties are evenly distributed among her four walls, her ceiling, and her floor. Marvels and wonders she holds in stucco and tile; more astonishing still is her beautiful wooden dome. . . . Just as in badi’ [poetics/metaphor], there is paranomasia [variety], classifications, caesura, and interlace. 57

Another inscription describes the stucco ceilings of a room as a “raiment of embroidered stuff [that] makes one forget the tulle of Yemen,” in a context where the building is compared so frequently to a garden that it becomes, in effect, a garden of words that constructs the world, which the theorist of poetry Ibn al-Khatib (d. 1375 ) associates with the creation of poetry. 58 The floral forms on carpets can transform a space of prayer into a metaphorical garden of paradise, particularly meaningful in interpretations of prayer as enacting a transition from the mundane world into the liminal barrier ( barzakh ) buffering the realms of the Divine. In collected albums, juxtaposed image and text evoke similitude between seemingly disparate forms , such as Sufi devotion, flowers, and poetry, to become apparent.

Poetry abounds with transformational allusions. Buildings are described as covered with tendrils, alluding to the shared structure of architecture and surface geometry, as well as to the arts of limning. Wine intoxicates, providing a metaphor for the sweetness as well as the dangers of unprepared witnessing of the Divine. Not simply references to paradise, as often described, poetic and tile gardens provide a means of understanding physical gardens through symbolic tropes of desire, longing, vanity, astonishment, deception, and testaments to the eternal. 59 Far from merely poetic, the destabilization of materiality encountered through verse resembles the destabilization of form enabled through surface geometry, reminding the believer to recognize that all forms of matter ultimately function as Divine manifestation. Likewise, objects that allude to other states of being, such as vessels that take on the forms of animals or buildings, may function not simply representationally but as a means of confusing categories. 60 Like love and the image, materiality itself could serve as a transitional object toward transcendence, as indicated in the Canon of Forms by Sadiqi Beg Afshar ( 1533–1610 ), who said:

I take the chattels of my ambition to the alleyway of the Figure; I aspire to Meaning from the face of the Figure. My heart, which had known the Art of the Figure, Brought itself, now, the high-road of Meaning . . . So far have I come in portraying the Figure That I have traversed “Figure” and arrived at “Meaning.” 61

The discursive manifestation of religious thought through all aspects of human creativity did not, however, preclude the forms of outward representation readily understood today as religious art. While the Qurʾan is never illustrated, the text is often honored with the highest skills of the book arts, including binding, fine papers, flawless writing, and detailed floral and/or geometric limning ( teshib ) that differs in form in various times and places but generally serves as an interface between the everyday world and imagination accessed through the word.

Veneration of the sacred word has led to manifold modes of adornment for folios and volumes of the Qurʾan. The famous Blue Qurʾan , probably made in 9th-century Andalusia, uses a large format, probably designed for ceremonial use, to frame golden letters in Maghrebi script that shimmer against an indigo-dyed parchment. On the opposite end of the size spectrum, Qurʾans written in small text often are cased in ornate boxes or fabrics, particularly useful among semi-nomadic peoples as well as people on military expeditions. Structured to enhance the sonic rhythm intrinsic to the text as well as to compliment the beauty of the voice with the page, ornate , often multicolor Qurʾans emerged throughout the Islamic world, with differing forms in different eras and places.

The Qurʾan can be used talismanically, with verses displayed on banners or cenotaph covers or hidden on amulets or shirts , which might be worn under armor. Such inscriptions include Qurʾanic verses as well as the Divine names , set as magic squares based in the numerology associated with letters. Objects designed to hold and cover the Qurʾan are often worked with a high degree of craftsmanship, frequently incorporating pattern, talismanic text, Qurʾanic inscriptions, and/or symbolic representation of architectural elements such as mihrabs or mosque lamps. Folding Qurʾan stands ( rahle ) are often made of ornately carved wood. Qurʾanic inscriptions on delicate materials, such as a leaf , demonstrate humble meditative devotion. In Africa, the water used to wash writing boards used to learn reading and writing can be drank as a means of imbibing the healing properties of the Qurʾan.

Sufi devotion, ritualized in accordance with the teachings of various sages, included modes of remembrance ( dhikr ), often through repeated evocation of the Divine, music, and meditative action (such as the turning of the Mevlevi dervishes in Turkey, Qawalli music of the Chisti order in India, or Gnawa music of the Maghreb). Asceticism , often mixing with adjacent Christian, Hindu , and Buddhist practices of renunciation , was also central to the Sufi transcendence of self toward Divine union. Seemingly miraculously washing up on the shores of the Red Sea from its native Seychelle Islands, the shell of the coco de mer palm became the emblematic begging bowl ( kashkul ) in which renouncing dervishes would collect whatever foods donors gave them, boiling the resulting meal at the end of the day. A dish traditionally made on the tenth day of the month of Muharram, the Turkish desert porridge ashure commemorates the meals collected from this begging by incorporating a wide variety of fruits, nuts, and grains and by being distributed among a community. Either made from such shells or in their form, devotion was often demonstrated by carving the hard shell with ornate Qurʾanic inscriptions or mother-of-pearl or precious metal inlay. Ornate kashkul probably exceeded their original function as indicators of pious poverty, owned instead by revered sheikhs.

Representational Painting of Religious Subjects

Although the Qurʾan is never figuratively illustrated, its stories have often been represented. Such images can accompany prose and poetic commentaries glossing the sacred text or nonreligious texts such as dream and prognostication manuals. For example, a mid- 16th century Book of Omens includes an image of the Sleepers of the Cave , a variant on a Syriac Christian liturgy narrated in Q18. Far less recognizable to European conventions of representation, a galleon can also represent the same narrative by including the names of the Seven Sleepers and their Dog, as represented on an 18th-century inscribed panel . Illustrations of Abrahamic prophets, such as Jonah and the Whale , as well as Islamic mystical figures, such as the “servant of God” often associated with Khidr (Q18:65–82) or Idris (Enoch/Hermes Trismegistus), were often also part of popular texts engaging Qurʾanic themes. As in the story of Joseph, described as the most beautiful of stories in the Qurʾan (Q12), poetic elaborations often correlate more with Jewish exegesis of Genesis from approximately the 3 rd -5 th century CE than with those in the European Christian Bible. Thus, the most frequent illustration of the prophet Joseph , both in manuscript paintings and independently from text on tile panels , involves a scene in which love of Joseph is revealed as inevitable because of his intrinsic reflection of Divine grace. In dual frontispieces of the Firdausi’s epic Book of Kings ( Shahnameh, 977), King Solomon and Bilqis (the Queen of Sheba) are often portrayed enthroned in recognition of her conversion (Q27). The narrative plays a central role in royal architectural symbolism, such as at the throne of Shah Jahan in Delhi and at the Court of the Lions at the Alhambra Palace, as well as underlying the central themes in Attar’s epic poem, The Conference of the Birds ( 1177 ). 62

Representations of the Prophet Muhammad include paintings, descriptive texts, relics, and ritual objects of affective veneration. Many early manuscript paintings from the 13th century depicting the Prophet Muhammad show his face as fully visible, often enthroned as a ruler. The richly illustrated Compendium of Chronicles (1305–1306) , written by the vizier Rashid al-Din ( 1247–1318 ) and patronized and disseminated under the Mongol Ilkhanate ( 1256–1353 ), outlines the history of the world from creation, through the Abrahamic prophets, the biography of the Prophet Muhammad , and the spread of Islam to naturalize the leadership of the recently converted Mongol conquerors. At times depicted with a flaming halo, over time, concerns that depictions of the prophet’s face might lead to excessive iconic veneration, later manuscript paintings took on the convention of veiling the face of the prophet, as well as, at times, other holy figures such as his mother, Aminah, or his son-in-law ’Ali ibn Abi Talib . Many illuminated texts, particularly of poetry, included images of the Prophet Muhammad on the winged riding beast Buraq , believed to have taken the prophet on a miraculous journey. Although only mentioned in the Qurʾan (Q17) as leading to the farthest place of worship ( ‘isra ) and to heaven ( mir’aj ), the extensive description of the miraculous journey in biographies and inspired visions became a hallmark of witnessing the prophecy of Muhammad and led to the widespread interpretation of Jerusalem as the site of the “farthest place of worship.” 63 Illustrated books describing these journeys ( mi’rajnama ) functioned as devotional texts.

Enjoying widespread devotional use throughout the Islamic world, the prayer book Waymarks of Benefits and the Brilliant Burst of Lights in the Remembrance of Blessings on the Chosen People (Delail al - Khayrat) by the Moroccan sheikh Muhammad al-Jazuli ash-Shadhili (d. 1465 ) often included diagrammatic illustrations of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. Both these works and hilye panels combined textual descriptions of the Prophet Muhammad with the image of roses as the distillation of the “sweat of the Prophet’s grace.” 64 Such images informed the poetic trope of the rose, the meaning of roses in gardens, and the extensive use of rose oil and rose water as a personal scent as well as in sweets.

While representational paintings of the prophet proliferated in manuscripts, nonpictorial representations of the prophet flourished in many media. In the Ottoman Empire, images of the prophet eventually fully eschewed representational form as wall panels of written descriptions of the prophet ( hilye ) became common in the 18th and 19th centuries . Prayer books and tiles often represented him through images of his relics, such as his sandals, rosary, and sword. Like images of his sandals , his footprint (related to the Buddhapada )—often miraculously embedded in materials such as stone —indicate a Divine absence revered through practices of rubbing to seek physical contact with prophetic blessings. 65

Independent written panels ( levha ), either to be hung on a wall or assembled in albums called muraqqa , enabled a public presence and the private admiration of the Word. Among the largest of such panels were six roundels that frequently surrounded the domes of Ottoman mosques with the names of Allah, Muhammad, the four rightly guided caliphs (who took leadership after the death of the prophet), and sometimes Hasan and Huseyin, martyred sons of ʾAli ibn Abi Talib. Panels often use mirrored writing ( muthanna ) to merge text with form. 66 In this example, two intertwined letters “waw,” indicating Divine unity, inhabit a vessel that can pour the wine of devotion. Blessings can also be simpler, such as basmala , “in the name of God,” marking the beginning of each Qurʾan chapter and uttered upon embarking in any activity.

Representations of other saintly figures also proliferate. The double-bladed sword of ʾAli ibn Abi Talib, the duh al-fiqar , has graced many flags in the Islamic world and often indicates Shia affinities when worn as jewelry or used decoratively. Also used apotropaically in ancient Mesopotamia and by modern Jews, the form of an open right hand called the hamsa (five) has long been reconceived through Islamic identification with the hand of Fatima, daughter of the Prophet Muhammad.

Islam in Contemporary Art

Twentieth-century emphasis on secularism, nationalism, and universal modernism has often presumed divergence between Islamic meanings and contemporary artforms. Nonetheless, many artists extend the legacies of Islam into modern works. While framing all contemporary art of the Middle East as “Islamic” mistakenly contravenes many artists’ secular engagement with global practices, many artworks straddle both expressive languages. 67

Often conflated as a modernist Hurufiyya movement, art using letters as forms often bridges the gap between modern and spiritual references. 68 Synthesizing European artistic movements with traditional Islamic forms, the Khartoum School, led by Ibrahim El Salahi (Sudan, b. 1930 ), transforms forms inspired by text, the cloak ( jibba ) of the messianic Mahdi , and trees into paintings that bridge the gap between modernism and modern visualizations of mystical thought. The work of Charles Hussein Zenderoudi (Iran, b. 1937 ) ranges makes reference to several legacies: the abstraction of hurufism, echoing the Romanian-French movement of letterism; figural references to traditional forms of reverence through talismanic objects left at shrines; and to the passion play commemorating the martyrdom of Hussein , reconceived through modernist styles. Erol Akyavaş (Turkey, 1932–1999 ) engaged with his discovery of Sufism working in New York, creating paintings and prints that incorporate modern styles with traditional illustrative sequences, as in the Mirajnama ( 1987 ). Superimposing two video recordings of the Bosporus through a stencil composed of a 19th-century Ottoman calligraphic panel of the shahada , Mesopotamian Dramaturgies/Water ( 2009 ) by Kutluğ Ataman (Turkey, b. 1961 ) references both the boundary between Europe and Asia, West and East, indicated by the waters and the coming together of the two seas indicated in the Qurʾan. The stamped series Twenty-one Stones by Idris Khan (UK, b. 1978 ) evoke the ritual of stoning the devil during the Hajj. Walid Siti (Iraq, b. 1954 ) combines inscription with circumambulation of the Kaaba evoked in his drawing White Cube .

Not all interpreters of Islam hail from Islamic origins. Incorporating a basmala panel into the illusionistic Calligraphy with Box and Glasses ( 1982 ), Richard de Menocal (US, 1919–1995 ) used an upright and an empty glass, suggestive of the cone shape of a dervish hat, to evoke the processes of birth and return honored in Mevlevi turning as well as the memento-mori tradition of European still-life painting. Videos by Bill Viola (US, b. 1951 ), such as The Veiling (1995) , The Messenger ( 1996 ), and The Night Journey ( 2005 ), directly evoke Islamic paradigms within transcultural mysticism. 69 Recognizing Islam as a dynamic contemporary force and spiritual presence in the contemporary world that is disturbed by common ignorance about Islam, Sandow Birk (US, b. 1962 ) used extensive travel in the Middle East to inform his ornate rendition of the American Qurʾan ( 2015 ).

Contemporary artworks frequently use references to Islam to address issues of violence surrounding contemporary Islam. The Christian-Palestinian Mona Khatoum (Lebanon, b. 1952 ) evokes the drama of devotionalism and violence pervading the Lebanese Civil War ( 1975–1990 ) in her Prayer Mat ( 1995 ), consisting of pins and a compass. Likewise, His Lantern ( 2006 ) by Afruz Amighi (Iran, b. 1974 ) reconceives the form of a prayer carpet through symbols of the Iran–Iraq War and materials associated with refugee camps. A portable mosque out of steel and chain-link, the form of Paradise Has Many Gates , by Ajlan Gharem (Saudi Arabia, b. 1985 ) at the 2018–2020 Vancouver Biennial suggests the pencil-minaret and dome characteristic of the Ottoman Empire, while its materials recall those of the controversial US military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

Islamic legacies can subvert conservative religious interpretations. Mixing figural Arabic writing with representational drawing, the series O Loss of Forbidden Love by Murat Morova (b. 1954 ) draws on the Hurufi tradition as a means of reconsidering the imposition of modern sexuality over historical realities. Similarly, in works like The Book of Pleasure ( 2007 ) and Exemplary ( 2009 ), Canan Şenol (b. 1970 ) draws on manuscript painting and the shadow puppet tradition to reconsider lost histories of female gender and sexuality.

Sculptural forms often enable new calligraphic meanings. Meaning “nothing” in Persian, Parviz Tanavoli’s (b. 1937 ) sculptures of the word Heech , can be understood as punning on the contrast between form and meaning and can also be understood as a reflection on the transitory nature of materiality central to Sufi thought. Whoever Obeys Allah, He Will Make for Him a Way Out by Nasser Al Saleem (Saudi Arabia, b. 1984 ) depicts a Qurʾanic quotation (Q65:2) as an experimental maze for mice, playfully suggesting Islam as an escape from the so-called rat race of modernity. Bani Abidi’s sound installation, Mataam ( 2020 ) condenses the act of Shi’ite mourning to the rhythmic beat of the hand slapping flesh.

Sculptures bridging Islam and modernism often play on the overlap between the modernist grid and isometric pattern. Thus the cut mirror sculptures of Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian (Iran, 1922–2019 ) adopt the traditional aina-kari technique, often used to adorn palaces and mosques since the 17th century , within modern frames of reference. Yet as the mirror panel work entitled Resist Resisting God ( 2009 ) by the collective Slavs and Tatars suggests the reuse of forms in Islamic culture have difficulty fully segregating the worldly from the spiritual.

All understanding depends on the models of knowledge informing our experience. To consider religion and art in Islam means to think about how each of these categories perpetually embodies, resists, and recreates the others.

Review of the Literature

Most interpretations of Islamic art have focused on formal political and cultural meanings. 70 Louis Massignon ( 1883–1962 ) wrote the first work to conceive of the arts in relation to Islamic precepts. 71 In contrast, many works normalized the premise of an “Islamic image prohibition” by analyzing early Islamic texts outside of systematized practices of Islamic thought. 72 The World of Islam Festival ( 1976 ) in London attempted to approach Islamic arts through religion, yet many scholars of Islamic art dismissed its exhibitions and publications as generalizing. 73

Emphasizing Neoplatonism over theology, Gülru Necipoğlu’s Topkapi Scroll ( 1995 ) innovatively interprets Islamic art through Islamic thought. 74 José Miguel Puerta Vílchez’s History of Arab Aesthetics ( 1997 / 2017 ) provides a monumental critical compendium of early Islamic thought on the arts. 75 Doris Behrens-Abouseif’s Beauty in Arab Culture ( 1998 ) emphasizes secular aspects of thought. Oliver Leaman Islamic Aesthetics ( 2004 ) provides a conversational overview of issues pertaining to the arts in Islam. 76

Recognition of intellectual history beyond secular frameworks has grown in the 2000s. Critical translations and accompanying essays complicated the spectrum of analytical materials available to engage with Islamic art through Islamic thought. These include Esra Akın-Kıvanç’s Mustafa ‘Ali’s Epic Deeds of Artists ( 2011 ) ; David Roxburgh’s Prefacing the Image ( 2001 ); and Wheeler Thackston’s Album Prefaces ( 2000 ).

Analytical volumes have also proliferated. Samer Akkach’s Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam ( 2005 ) focuses on the thought of Sheikh ibn al-Arabi. His articles offer radically divergent epistemic frameworks through which to comprehend works generally categorized as architecture. 77 Jamal J. Elias’s Aisha’s Cushion: Religious Art, Perception, and Practice in Islam ( 2012 ) explains how perception functions in diverse yet intertwined Islamic religious, philosophical, scientific, and mystical discourses. Stephennie Mulder’s The Shrines of the ‘Alids in Medieval Syria ( 2014 ) examines inter-sectarian devotions through architectural and textual evidence. The work of Christiane Gruber, particularly The Praiseworthy One ( 2018 ), critically examines the nature of figural representation in Islamic thought and practice. 78 Margaret Graves’s Arts of Allusion ( 2018 ) implicates praxis within Islamic intellectual frameworks. 79 Wendy Shaw’s What Is “Islamic” Art ( 2019 ) elucidates the interpretive framework expressed in the Islamic theological and literary corpus, critiquing conventional art historical epistemes.

Recent compilations fruitfully complicate disciplinary boundaries delimiting Islam and the arts. These include Kishwar Rizvi’s Affect, Emotion, and Subjectivity in Early Modern Muslim Empires ( 2017 ); Michael Frishkopf and Federico Spinetti’s Music, Sound, and Architecture in Islam ( 2018 ); Birgit Meyer and Terje Stordalen’s Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam ( 2019 ); and Christiane Gruber’s The Image of the Prophet between Ideal and Ideology ( 2014 ) and The Image Debate: Figural Representation in Islam and Across the World ( 2019 ). 80

Links to Digital Materials

• Historians of Islamic Art Association
• Islamic Art and Architecture
• Art of Islamic World
• Arts of the Islamic World Khan Academy
• Islamic Art and Culture (a resource for teachers)
• Islamic Art
• Selections of Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Calligraphy : Qur’anic Fragments
• The David Collection of Islamic Art
• Manar Al-Athar Manar Antiquities
• The Albukhary Foundation Gallery of the Islamic world
• The Met Islamic Art
• Department of Islamic Arts Louvre

Further Reading

• Ahmed, Shahab . What Is Islam: The Importance of Being Islamic . Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015.
• Akkach, Samer . Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam: An Architectural Reading of Mystical Ideas . Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005.
• Elias, Jamal J. Aisha’s Cushion: Religious Art, Perception, and Practice in Islam . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012.
• Graves, Margaret . Arts of Allusion: Object, Ornament, and Architecture in Medieval Islam . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
• Gruber, Christiane . The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts and Images . Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018.
• Necipoğlu, Gülru , and Barry Flood , eds. The Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture . Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017.
• Shaw, Wendy . What Is “Islamic” Art: Between Religion and Perception . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
• Vílchez, José Miguel Puerta , and Consuelo Lopez-Morillas , trans. Aesthetics in Arabic Thought: From Pre-Islamic Arabia through al-Andalus . Leiden: Brill, 2017.

1. Shahab Ahmed, What Is Islam?: The Importance of Being Islamic (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 187–188 ; and Daniel Debuisson, “Critical Thinking and Comparative Analysis in Religious Studies,” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 28, no. 1 (2016): 26–30.

2. Ahmed, What Is Islam? , 80–82.

3. Considering itself as renewing Abrahamic monotheism, Islam conceives of a unique God worshipped alike by Muslims, Christians, and Jews, all of whom use the word Allah . Yet retaining “Allah ” in English resembles saying the French believe in Dieu, while implicitly exotifying Islam. As Christian anthropomorphic connotations of “God” fit poorly with Islamic paradigms, I use the more neutral term “the Divine.”

4. Larry Shiner, The Invention of Art: A Cultural History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).

5. The root letters, q-r-’a indicate both reading and reciting in Arabic. Within a rich tradition of memorized oral literature, literacy in the 7th century differed from the modern vocalization translation of visual signs. Rather, it consisted primarily of the cultivated skill of recitation and spontaneous composition. Gregor Schoeler, The Genesis of Literature in Islam (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 16–24; and Sebastian Günther, “Muhammad, the Illiterate Prophet: An Islamic Creed in the Qurʾan and Qurʾanic Exegesis,” Journal of Qurʾanic Studies 4, no. 1 (2002): 1–26.

6. Fred Donner, Muhammad and the Believers at the Origins of Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).

7. Ruqayya Y. Khan, “Did a Woman Edit the Qurʾan? Hafsa and Her Famed ‘Codex,’” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 82, no. 1 (2014): 174–216.

8. Fazlur Rahman, “Translating the Qurʾan,” Religion & Literature 20, no. 1 (1988): 23–30.

9. Muhammad Abdel-Haleem, The Qurʾan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 223.

10. Samer Akkach, Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam: An Architectural Reading of Mystical Ideas (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2005), 113–116 ; and Michael Barry, Figurative Art in Medieval Islam and the Riddle of Bihzad of Herat (Paris: Flammarion, 2004), 18.

11. Fadlou Shehadi, Philosophies of Music in Medieval Islam (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 26.

12. Jamal J. Elias, Aisha’s Cushion: Religious Art, Perception, and Practice in Islam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 87 ; and Oliver Leaman, Islamic Aesthetics (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), 47.

13. Gülru Necipoğlu, “The Scrutinizing Gaze in the Aesthetics of Islamic Visual Cultures: Sight, Insight, and Desire,” Muquarnas 32 (2015): 23–61; and Elias, Aisha’s Cushion , 222.

14. Julie Scott Meisami, “Allegorical Gardens in the Persian Poetic Tradition: Nezami, Rumi, Hafez,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 17, no. 2 (1985): 229–260.

15. David Roxburgh, Prefacing the Image: The Writing of Art History in Sixteenth-Century Iran (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 191; and Wheeler Thackston, Album Prefaces and Other Documents on the History of Calligraphers and Painters (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 4.

16. Elias, Aisha’s Cushion , 63; Michael Shenkar, “Rethinking Sasanian Iconoclasm,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 135, no. 3 (2015): 471–498.

17. Stephen Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).

18. José Miguel Puerta Vílchez and Consuelo Lopez-Morillas, trans., Aesthetics in Arabic Thought: From Pre-Islamic Arabia through al-Andalus (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 282 .

19. Necipoğlu, “The Scrutinizing Gaze,” 23.

20. Wendy Shaw, What Is “Islamic” Art: Between Religion and Perception (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 51–52 .

21. Elias Aisha’s Cushion , 9–13; Ahmed, What Is Islam , 48.

22. Mika Natif, “‘Painters Will Be Punished’—The Politics of Figural Representation amongst the Umayyads,” in The Image Debate: Figural Representation in Islam and Across the World , ed. Christiane Gruber (London: Ginko, 2019), 32–45.

23. Shaw, What Is “Islamic” Art , 44–51.

24. Finbarr Barry Flood, “Between Cult and Cultures: Bamiyan, Islamic Iconoclasm, and the Museum,” The Art Bulletin 84, no. 3 (2002): 641–659. Christiane Gruber, “In Defense and Devotion: Affective Practices in Early Modern Turco-Persian Manuscript Paintings,” in Affect, Emotion, and Subjectivity in Early Modern Muslim Empires: New Studies in Ottoman Safavid, and Mughal Art and Culture , ed. Kishvar Rizvi (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 95–123.

25. Irfan Shahid, “The ‘Sūra’ of the Poets, Qurʾān XXVI: Final Conclusions,” Journal of Arabic Literature 34, no. 2 (2004): 175–220.

26. Akkach, Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam , 18–23.

27. Shaw, What Is “Islamic” Art , 69–76, 211–222.

28. Alexander Knysh, Sufism: A New History of Islamic Mysticism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017), 35–61; Frederick de Jong and Bernd Radke, eds., Islamic Mysticism Contested: Thirteen Centuries of Controversies and Polemics (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999); and Ahmed, What Is Islam , 94–96.

29. Gülru Necipoğlu, The Topkapi Scroll: Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture (Santa Monica, CA: Getty Center for the History of Art and Humanities, 1995), 353. Ahmed, What Is Islam , 78, 96.

30. Christiane Gruber, The Praiseworthy One: The Prophet Muhammad in Islamic Texts and Images (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018), 15–16 ; and Ondrej Beranek and Pavel Tupek, The Temptation of Graves in Salafi Islam: Iconoclasm, Destruction and Idolatry (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018).

31. Ahmed, What Is Islam , 49–50.

32. Yusuf Rahman, “The Miraculous Nature of Muslim Scripture: A Study of ‘Abd al-Jabbar’s ijaz al-Quran ,” Islamic Studies 34, no. 4 (1996): 409–424.

33. Dimitri Gutas, Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbasid Society (London and New York: Routledge, 1998).

34. Sheila Blair, Islamic Calligraphy (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008), 161–162.

35. The interpretation of geometry as a spiritual form remains a point of contention in Islamic art history. See Akkach, Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam , 14–16; Wendy Shaw, “ The Islam in Islamic Art History: Secularism and Public Discourse ,” Journal of Art Historiography 6 (2012).

36. Nader el-Bizri, Epistles of the Brethren of Purity: On Arithmetic and Geometry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 144.

37. Necipoğlu, “The Scrutinizing Gaze,” 28.

38. Abdel-Haleem, The Qurʾan , 223.

39. Estelle Whelan, “The Origins of the Mihrab Mujawwaf: A Reinterpretation,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 18, no. 2 (1986): 205–223.

40. The norm of male theologians or imams is not universal. See Sa’diyya Shaikh, Sufi Narratives of Intimacy: Ibn ‘Arabi, Gender, and Sexuality (Raleigh: University of North Carolina Press, 2012); and Zainab Alwani, Muslima Theology: The Voices of Muslim Women Theologians (Berlin: Peter Lang Verlag, 2013).

41. Avinoam Shalem, “Fountains of Light: The Meaning of Medieval Islamic Rock Crystal Lamps,” Muqarnas 14 (1994): 1–11.

42. Simon O’Meara, The Ka’ba Orientations: Readings in Islam’s Ancient House (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020).

43. Rabbat, Nasser, “The Dome of the Rock Revisited: Some Remarks on Al-Wasiti's Accounts,” Muqarnas 10 (1993): 67–75.

44. Akkach, Cosmology and Architecture in Premodern Islam .

45. Christiane Gruber, “The Missiri of Fréjus as Healing Memorial: Mosque Metaphors and the French Colonial Army (1928–1964),” International Journal of Islamic Architecture 1, no. 1 (2012): 25–60.

46. Wendy Shaw, “Islamic Art in the Islamic World: Museums and Architectural Revivalism,” in The Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture , ed. Gülru Necipoğlu and Barry Flood (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), 1150–1171 .

47. Fairchild Ruggles, Islamic Gardens and Landscapes (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 89–101.

48. Abdel-Haleem, The Qurʾan , 428.

49. Shi’ite Muslims consider ʾAli ibn Abi Talib and his descendants the divinely inspired successors of the prophet.

50. David J. Roxburgh, “‘The Eye Is Favored for Seeing the Writing’s Form’: On the Sensual and the Sensuous in Islamic Calligraphy,” Muqarnas 25 (2008): 275–298.

51. Esra Akın-Kıvanç, Mustafa ‘Ali’s Epic Deeds of Artists: A Critical Edition of the Earliest Ottoman Text about the Calligraphers and Painters of the Islamic World (Leiden: Brill; 2011); V. Minorsky, trans., Calligraphers and Painters: A Treatise by Qādī Ahmad, Son of Mīr Munshī (circa AH 1015/ad 1606) (Washington, DC: Freer Gallery, 1959); and Thackston, Album Prefaces and Other Documents .

52. Carl W. Ernst, “The Spirit of Islamic Calligraphy: Bābā Shāh Iṣfahānī's Ādāb Al-Mashq,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 112, no. 2 (1992): 279–286.

53. Kenan Rifai and Victoria Holbrook, trans., Listen: Commentary on the Spiritual Couplets of Mevlana Rumi (Louisville, KY: Fons Vitae, 2011), 11.

54. Shaw, What Is “Islamic” Art , 80–81.

55. Carl W. Ernst, “Sufism and the Aesthetics of Penmanship in Sirāj Al-Shīrāzī's ‘Tuḥfat Al-Muḥibbīn’ (1454),” Journal of the American Oriental Society 129, no. 3 (2009): 431–442.

56. Shaw, What Is “Islamic” Art , 242–243.

57. Cynthia Robinson, “Marginal Ornament: Poetics, Mimesis, and Devotion in the Palace of the Lions,” Muqarnas 25 (2008): 185–214, 192; and Olga Bush, Reframing the Alhambra (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018).

58. Robinson, “Marginal Ornament,” 196.

59. Meisami, “Allegorical Gardens.”

60. Margaret Graves, Arts of Allusion: Object, Ornament, and Architecture in Medieval Islam (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018) .

61. Ahmed, What Is Islam , 53.

62. Ebba Koch, “The Mughal Emperor as Solomon, Majnun, and Orpheus, or the Album as a Think Tank for Allegory,” Muqarnas 27 (2010): 277–311; and Olga Bush, “‘When My Beholder Ponders:’ Poetic Epigraphy in the Alhambra,” Artibus Asiae 66 (2006): 22.

63. Gruber, The Praiseworthy One .

64. Meisami, “Allegorical Gardens,” 243; Gruber, The Praiseworthy One , 297; Finbarr Barry Flood, “Lost Histories of a Licit Figural Art,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 45, no. 3 (2013): 566–569.

65. Hasan Perween, “The Footprint of the Prophet,” Muqarnas 10 (1993): 335–343.

66. Esra Akin-Kivanc, Muthanna/Mirror Writing in Islamic Calligraphy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2020).

67. Sussan Babaie, “Voices of Authority: Locating the ‘Modern’ in ‘Islamic’ Arts,” Getty Research Journal 3 (2011): 133–149.

68. Blair, Islamic Calligraphy , 589–627.

69. Ziad Elmarsafy, “Adapting Sufism to Video Art: Bill Viola and the Sacred,” Alif: Journal of Comparative Poetics 28 (2008): 127–149.

70. Sheila S. Blair and Jonathan M. Bloom, “The Mirage of Islamic Art: Reflections on the Study of an Unwieldy Field,” The Art Bulletin 85, no. 1 (2003): 15–184; and Shaw, “ The Islam in Islamic Art History .”

71. Louis Massignon, “Les Méthodes de réalisation artistique des peuples de l’Islam,” Syria 2, no. 2 (1921): 50.

72. Thomas Arnold, Painting in Islam: A Study of the Place of Pictorial Art in Muslim Culture (Oxford: Clarendon Press; Creswell, K. A. C., 1928). Keppel Archibald Cameron Creswell, “The Lawfulness of Painting in Early Islam,” Ars Islamica 11/12 (1946): 159–166; Silvia Naef, Y a-t-il une ‘question de l’image’ en Islam? (Paris: Téraèdre, 2003); and Silvia Naef, Islamisches Bilderverbot vom Mittel- bis ins Digital Zeitalter (Vienna: LIT Verlag GmbH, 2006).

73. Anneka Lenssen, “‘Muslims Take Over Institute for Contemporary Art’: The 1976 World of Islam Festival,” Middle East Studies Association Bulletin 42, nos. 1/2 (2008): 40–47.

74. Gülru, The Topkapi Scroll .

75. Jose Maria Puerta Vilchez, trans. Consuelo López-morillas, Aesthetics in Arabic Thought: From Pre-Islamic Arabia through to al-Andalus (Leiden: Brill, 2017).

76. Leaman, Islamic Aesthetics ; Doris Behrens-Abouseif, Beauty in Arab Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).

77. Samer Akkach, “The World of Imagination in Ibn ‘Arabi’s Ontology,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 2, no. 1 (1993): 97–113; and Samer Akkach, “The Poetics of Concealment: Al-Nabulusi’s Encounter with the Dome of the Rock,” Muqarnas 22 (2005): 110–127.

78. Christiane Gruber, The Praiseworthy One . “Between Logos (Kalima) and Light (Nur): Representations of Muhammad in Islamic Painting,” Muqarnas 26 (2017): 229–262.

79. Graves, The Arts of Allusion .

80. Kishwar Rizvi, ed., Affect, Emotion, and Subjectivity in Early Modern Muslim Empires: New Studies in Ottoman Safavid, and Mughal Art and Culture (Leiden: Brill, 2017); Michael Frishkopf and Federico Spinetti, eds., Music, Sound, and Architecture in Islam (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2018); Birgit Meyer and Terje Stordalen, eds., Figurations and Sensations of the Unseen in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019); Christiane Gruber and Avinoam Shalem, eds., The Image of the Prophet between Ideal and Ideology: A Scholarly Investigation (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2014); and Christiane Gruber, The Image Debate: Figural Representation in Islam and Across the World (London: Ginko Library Art Series, 2019).

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Visual Theology – To the Glory of God

While the infographics will always be free for you to download, I have also opened a store where you can buy prints of each of them. They are all professionally printed in a variety of sizes and are suitable for display. (Visit the store today and you’ll see a few coupon codes that can bring the prices down.)

( Click on the thumbnail to see the complete infographic )

If you are after a high-res version, you can have it here in JPG format. Please feel free to download, copy, email, share, or print the graphic; I just ask that you don’t sell it.

If you have other ideas for theological infographics, please feel free to leave a comment. Several more are already in development.

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Three Respectable Sins of Pastors

Over the past few years, there has been a lot of attention given to the ways that pastors may abuse their parishioners. Such attention is appropriate and every pastor ought to prayerfully guard himself against such abusive behaviors. Every church leadership structure ought to build rigorous systems of accountability and follow biblical guidelines in the…

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Managing Kingdom Causes with Sound Business Principles 

This week the blog is sponsored by Redeemer University. The word “management” conjures up images of executives leading large corporations with the goal of generating wealth for shareholders. Think of “sustainability” and the lens widens to benefiting other stakeholders like customers, suppliers, community, and the environment. Now, broaden your view even wider. Pan out–way out!…

Comparative Suffering

It is something you tend to hear a lot when you have endured a time of significant sorrow or suffering: “I know it’s nothing compared to yours, but…” We have a natural tendency to compare—to compare our experiences to another person’s and to rank or rate them accordingly. The person who has suffered the loss…

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The Visual Bible: Matthew Streaming: Watch & Stream Online via Amazon Prime Video

By Anubhav Chaudhry

Directed by Regardt van den Bergh, The Visual Bible: Matthew (also known as The Gospel According to Matthew ) is a faithful adaptation of the Gospel of Matthew, with every word of the Scripture presented verbatim. The movie stars Bruce Marchiano as Jesus and brings the biblical text to life through detailed and authentic portrayals.

Here’s how you can watch and stream The Visual Bible: Matthew via streaming services such as Amazon Prime Video.

Is The Visual Bible: Matthew available to watch via streaming?

Yes, The Visual Bible: Matthew is available to watch via streaming on Amazon Prime Video .

The Visual Bible: Matthew meticulously follows the Gospel of Matthew from the New Testament. Every scene is a direct representation of the biblical text, depicting the life, ministry, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The movie starts with the genealogy and birth of Jesus, covers his baptism, miracles, teachings, and parables, and concludes with his trial, death, and resurrection.

The movie features Bruce Marchiano as Jesus, Richard Kiley as Matthew, and Gerrit Schoonhoven as Peter. Meanwhile, Joanna Weinberg portrays Mary Magdalene, David Minnaar is John the Baptist, Dawie Ellis plays Thomas, Stephanus Sebek takes on the role of Herod Antipas, and Pieter Louw is Pontius Pilate.

Watch The Visual Bible: Matthew streaming via Amazon Prime Video

The Visual Bible: Matthew is available to watch on Amazon Prime Video. It is a streaming service offering a wide range of TV shows, movies, and original content. Subscribers can enjoy a diverse selection of genres, including exclusive Amazon Originals, with the option to rent or buy additional content.

You can watch via Amazon Prime Video by following these steps:

• Go to  Amazon Prime Video
• Select ‘Sign in’ and ‘Create your Amazon account’
• $14.99 per month or $139 per year with an Amazon Prime membership
• $8.99 per month for a standalone Prime Video membership

Amazon Prime is the online retailer’s paid service that provides fast shipping and exclusive sales on products, so the membership that includes both this service and Prime Video is the company’s most popular offering. However, you can also opt to subscribe to Prime Video separately.

The Visual Bible: Matthew synopsis is as follows:

“The only dramatization using the actual scriptures…word for word from the New International Version (NIV). In Israel, then known as Judea of the Roman Empire, Nazarene Jesus Christ travels around the country with His disciples preaching to the people about God and salvation of their souls.”

NOTE: The streaming services listed above are subject to change. The information provided was correct at the time of writing.

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Anubhav Chaudhry serves as an SEO Content Writer for ComingSoon.net, blending his profound love for cinema with expertise in search optimization. When he's not analyzing films or series, Anubhav passionately follows football and enriches his entertainment knowledge with streaming content binges. With Anubhav's pieces, expect a confluence of SEO acumen and cinematic insight.

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Trump’s Guilty Verdict Reverberates Through New York City, His Hometown

In the place where Donald J. Trump first made his name, reactions mirrored the nation’s: exultation and deflation. At Trump Tower, the defendant pumped his fist for a crowd of hundreds.

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By Matthew Haag

• May 30, 2024

The news that Donald J. Trump had been found guilty on all 34 felony counts in a cover-up of a sex scandal spread in seconds from the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse, where the verdict was read, to the hundreds of people who were gathered outside.

Voices rippled through the crowd hemmed in behind lines of steel barricades on Thursday afternoon. “Trump found guilty?” one person yelled, followed by an eruption of cheers and applause. Supporters of Mr. Trump responded with their own chorus: “Viva Trump!”

Jericho Rojas, a student at Borough of Manhattan Community College, said he was relieved by the jury’s verdict. “God is good,” said Mr. Rojas, 19. “I’m very happy.”

During Mr. Trump’s nearly seven-week hush-money trial, Collect Pond Park, across the street from the Lower Manhattan courthouse, had been transformed into a representation of New York City writ small. There were gawkers and tourists, politicians and celebrities, demonstrators and protesters, all of whom stood for hours in scorching sun and driving rain to see what would happen to one of the city’s most famous natives.

It was no different on Thursday afternoon, though the many Trump supporters who had populated the park quickly disappeared after the verdict.

Tom Kellar, 69, a retired computer programmer from Ohio who was visiting New York City, heard about the verdict while a few blocks from the courthouse. “I hope he goes to jail or prison,” Mr. Kellar said.

On the other side of the courthouse, the mood was somber when Mr. Trump’s motorcade departed. A few men shouted, “Not guilty!” But there was no sign of the joyous celebration that had persisted throughout the trial. No singing, no dancing, no chanting or cheering.

“I feel very sad, speechless; this is one of the saddest days in American history,” said Shuping Lu, 60, who had rallied for Mr. Trump outside the courthouse on most trial days.

Near her was Lily Qi, 62, who had traveled from Wilmington, Del., to support Mr. Trump. “I’m feeling so bad,” she said. “This is so evil.”

Awaiting the former president at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue were about 500 people. The crowd was quiet, with most people holding their phones out, ready in case Mr. Trump appeared. And he did, shortly after 6 p.m., raising his fist into the air.

As Mr. Trump stood on the corner of Fifth Avenue and West 56th Street in Midtown Manhattan, a man in the crowd started counting loudly from one to 34, representing the 34 guilty counts.

“Thirty-four counts! Guilty!” the man said.

Another person in the crowd, Anna Alimani, yelled back: “Trump 2024!”

Miles away, on a Brooklyn-bound J train, Brian Blazak, 39, said his first reaction to the guilty verdict was to laugh. The trial had felt like a sideshow, he said. But Mr. Blazak, who has a history degree, said the verdict would be a significant moment for America.

“I never thought we’d live in a country where a former president was convicted of anything,” he said.

Reporting was contributed by Anusha Bayya , Olivia Bensimon , Wesley Parnell , Christopher Maag and Nate Schweber .

Matthew Haag writes about the intersection of real estate and politics in the New York region. He has been a journalist for two decades. More about Matthew Haag

Our Coverage of the Trump Hush-Money Trial

Guilty Verdict : Donald Trump was convicted on all 34 counts  of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal that threatened his bid for the White House in 2016, making him the first American president to be declared a felon .

Next Steps: The judge in the case set Trump’s sentencing for July 11, and Trump already indicated that he plans to appeal. Here’s what else may happen .

Reactions: Trump’s conviction reverberated quickly across the country. Here’s what Trump , voters , New Yorkers , Republicans  and the White House  had to say.

Making the Case: Over six weeks and the testimony of 20 witnesses, the Manhattan district attorney’s office wove a sprawling story  of election interference and falsified business records.

Legal Luck Runs Out: The four criminal cases that threatened Trump’s freedom had been stumbling along, pleasing his advisers. Then his good fortune expired .

Connecting the Dots: As rumors circulated of Trump’s reported infidelity, two accounts of women  being paid to stay silent about their encounters became central to his indictment.

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