Young kids are often taught about Roy G. Biv, a hypothetical gentleman who helps them remember the seven colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. Even kindergartners tend to rebel at the mysterious ‘I’ in Mr. Biv’s name, however. What the hell is indigo? It has to be explained to them that indigo, halfway between blue and purple, is actually a very different, super-important color, trust us.

In fact, indigo is a bit of a fraud. The other six “colors of the rainbow” are the long-enshrined primary and secondary colors of art theory. Indigo only got shoehorned into the rainbow because Isaac Newton, who originally saw five colors in the spectrum, decided decades later when he wrote his landmark treatise Opticks that seven would be a more elegant number. He believed the seven colors should harmonize somehow with the seven classical “planets” in the night sky and the seven notes on the diatonic scale. So he added orange, along with indigo, an important dark blue dye since ancient times. In reality, most observers have a hard time seeing indigo as a separate band of the spectrum, and it’s not usually included in modern color theory.

If indigo is iffy, how many colors are there really? Well, the human eye can distinguish between about a million different hues, but a real rainbow displays its shades in one continuous spectrum, not the neat stripes of a Care Bears cartoon. In the Iliad, Homer refers to a one-tone purple rainbow, because the ancient Greeks didn’t have words for the full spectrum of color. Later classical and medieval thinkers agreed with Aristotle that the rainbow had three shades; in Islamic thought, there are four, corresponding to the four elements. So it’s largely a cultural call. Many Asian languages, even today, use the same word for “blue” or “green” — someone in China might describe the rainbow very differently from someone in Finland, or Papua New Guinea. Let’s just say there’s a wide spectrum of possibilities.

Although this is cool and neat by itself, what really caught my eye was that we owe our 7-color rainbow to Newton’s dependence on the medieval seven-planets as an organizing principle for other (all?) areas of life.

Have you ever asked yourself why there are seven Narnia books, and what holds them together, though they all seem so very different? It turns out that C.S. Lewis scholars have been trying to answer that question for over 50 years, and after many unconvincing attempts to systematize Narnia (plays of Shakespeare, days of the week, …), Anglican priest and Lewis specialist Michael Ward had an epiphany that Lewis was (just like Newton) using the seven medieval “planets” (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Sun, Moon) to organize his creative vision — and even subversively using the Narnia series to attempt to re-interject awareness of the seven medieval planetary ideals into the modern consciousness.

For more information, you could go read Ward’s book for lay readers, The Narnia Code, or his academic book (Warning! English professors only beyond this point!) Planet Narnia, or listen to him talk about it on Mars Hill Audio Journal #90, or hear the extended discussion from Mars Hill Audio: Conversations. Or you could just go poke around the man’s website.

And while you’re doing so, you can be listening to this cute song from my favorite band, even though it is now obsolete (maybe they’ll write a new song, like they did when this song had to be corrected).

In the past, I’ve tried an approach like, “starting today, I’m going to read my Bible for 20 minutes every day.” While I may stick with it for a week or a month (sometimes even longer), inevitably I stop because I have no self-discipline for that sort of thing. I knew I didn’t want to try that approach again so I tried to come up with a new strategy that would work for me.

I began by thinking of things that I really like and want to do. One thing that kept coming up was design. So I decided to try and combine my love of design with my desire to read the Bible more. The result is a series called Word.

Basically, Word is a series where I create original designs for each book of the Bible. Before each design, I spend time researching the book, finding out the themes, historical context, weirdest stories, etc. I also scan through parts of the book looking for a passage or story that could translate into a cool design. Each design isn’t meant to completely represent the book, rather it is merely based on a passage from the book.

There are too many great designs in the project to try to link to here, but to inspire you to hop on over and check them all out for yourself, I’ll choose a few of the most “three-sixteeny”, i.e. those that most highlight words. Enjoy!

Another good way to browse them all is in his online shop, from which you can order prints. (And then you can hop over to his tumblr, Gettin’ Biblical [HT Pooka], where he shares great Christian graphic design from all sorts of books and such.)

A little H&S-related news:

• Mark your calendars now for H&S: Paedocommunion, Jan 28 2012.
• Also, take a moment to browse the nifty new calendar of upcoming events (or just check Facebook) for our good friends at Hess Brewing. San Diego Beer Week is coming up, and Hess is involved with a number of great events around town, not to mention regular happenings at the tasting room, like F.A.C., Tri Tip Thursdays, and regular tasting room hours.

And here are your .mp3s. The format is a little different this time, with introductory material from both speakers as well as myself, which I broke out into a separate .mp3.

Early on, Hodge recounts some history (p. 193).

When the controversy first arose in the Church about the baptism of heretics there were two extreme opinions Cyprian and those African bishops who were under his influence took the ground that the baptism of all those who separated from the outward communion of the Catholic Church whether for heresy or schism was null and void In this view the bishops of Asia Minor generally coincided a fact easily accounted for as all the heretics with whom they were in conflict denied the very essentials of the gospel.

Indeed, that is the easy case, but what we have to deal with is the case in which the trinity is upheld, but the gospel is denied. The eventual resolution of this controversy landed on rebaptism only in the event of problems with the Trinigy. But I echo Roger Wagner’s point, why do we draw the line at the Trinity, and not where Paul draws lines, at the Gospel?

A little later, Hodge references Calvin, who said:

[Baptism] is a sacred and immutable testimony of the grace of God, though it were administered by the devil, though all who may partake of it were ungodly and polluted as to their own persons. Baptism ever retains its own character, and is never contaminated by the vices of men.

Hodge concurs (p. 204):

The illustration used by Calvin derived from the fact that those circumcised by apostate priests under the old dispensation were never recircumcised or treated as not having received that rite by the inspired prophets.

First off, we have Calvin (this best quote Ray did use in the debate):

“[Baptism] is a sacred and immutable testimony of the grace of God, though it were administered by the devil, though all who may partake of it were ungodly and polluted as to their own persons. Baptism ever retains its own character, and is never contaminated by the vices of men.”

This is from Calvin’s comments on Amos 5:26 in 1559 — the significance of 1559 being that the RC Church unchurched itself with Trent in 1557. From the same time, this is from the French Confession of 1559:

Yet nevertheless, because there is yet some small trace of a Church in the papacy, and that baptism as it is in the substance, hath been still continued, and because the efficacy of baptism doth not depend upon him who doth administer it, we confess that they which are thus baptized do not need a second baptism. In the meanwhile, because of those corruptions which are mingled with the administration of that sacrament, no man can present his children to be baptized in that Church without polluting his conscience.

Knox:

But the question is, whether a man baptized in Papistry ought to be rebaptized when he cometh to knowledge? And I answer, he ought not: first, because Christ’s institution, as said is, could not be utterly abolished by the malice of Satan, nor by the abuse of man; secondly, because the Spirit of Christ purgeth and removeth from us all such venom as we received of their hands, and superstition makes not the virtue of Christ’s institution to be ineffectual in us. . . . The seal once received is durable, and needeth not to be iterated, lest by iteration and multiplication of the sign, the office of the Holy Spirit, which is to illuminate, regenerate, and to purge, be attributed unto it.

Beza:

Here I will not hesitate to borrow from the lawyers, something very much to the point. The fault may be in the person, as when a magistrate is corruptly made, who in any case … is no magistrate. But the lawyers more subtly distinguish between the one who is a magistrate, (that is, a legitimate one) and the one who is in the magistracy; as when they dispute that it is one thing to be proconsul, and another thing to be in the proconsulship, or that to be praetor is different than to exercise the office of the praetorship…In conclusion, a faulty calling may hurt the conscience of the one who invades that office, but it does not defile those things that are done by him as though he were lawfully called.

This supports the de jure/de facto distinction that Ray was talking about with RC Priests, as well as this quote from William Perkins, who applies it directly to baptism:

By this doctrine they are justly to be blamed, who would have their children rebaptized, which were before baptized by Popish priests; because the sacrament, though administered by a Papist, if he stand in the room of a true pastor; & keep the form thereof, is a true sacrament.

Here’s more from Perkins:

“First, the preaching of the word, and administration of the sacraments are all one in substance. For in the one the will of God is seen, in the other heard. Now the word preached by heretics, is the true word of God, and may have his effect…. Now if the word taught by their ministry was powerful, why may not the sacraments ministered by the heretics standing in the room of true ministers be true sacraments?”

Here’s a modern quote from John Fesko, presumably from his recent book Word, Water and Baptism:

A Roman Catholic minister is a representative of an apostate church, but it helps to recognize that Protestant theologians, though they disagree with and condemn Roman Catholic apostasy, nevertheless still call the RCC a church. This is not to say that it is a manifestation of the visible church, but rather that there are still some elements of truth within the RCC. As Turretin argued, it is one thing to say that the whole body is sound, and entirely another to say that there are some sound organs.

And finally, an extensive quote from Turretin:

IV. However, if heretics retain the fundamentals of baptism (which constitute its essence) and do not change or corrupt its form, we hold that baptism administered by such is valid, although they may err on various articles of faith, and their baptism may be mixed up with various extraneous rites in accidentals.

V. The reasons are: (1) the essentials remain there as much as to form as to matter (to wit, the word with the element and the formula prescribed by Christ—that it be administered in the name of the Trinity). (2) Neither the prophets, nor Christ, nor the apostles ever reprehended circumcision as void which had been performed in the Jewish church by idolatrous and heretical priests, such as the Pharisees were. (3) The example of Zipporah teaches that an invalid circumcision as to men is valid with God. (4) We do not read of any who were baptized by heretics having been rebaptized by the apostles.

VI. Although heretics are not true members of the invisible church, that does not hinder them from administering true baptism provided they retain its essentials; for they accommodate the tongue and hand only in this act to God. It is God who baptized and who is efficacious through the minister; as God through a corrupt ministry can gather a church from adults, so through baptism administered by heretics from infants. For although they do not belong to the orthodox church, still they can belong to the external but impure church. In them, the infidelity of men does not make void the faith of God, because baptism is not of men, but of God, which he wishes sometimes to be conserved in an impure church; as we find that God still preserved a remnant under Ahab in the time of Elijah (1 K. 19:18), however much the church had been corrupted in other ways.

Here are the .mp3:

• Part 1: Debate (72min, 13MB)
• Part 2: Q&A (28min, 4.9MB)

Everyone there had a great time. Give the mp3 a download and have a listen!

And of course, look out for great events at Hess brewing; check their website or their Facebook page for more details:

• Fri Sep 16: F. A. C. (Friday Afternoon Club) with live music, and discounts if you bring your Hess glassware.

Here’s something new, I’ve started to get suggestions to have a post-op poll afterwards, to see what people thought of the debate. So here’s three questions for you…

So at this point, I am stuck with an embarrassment of riches. Below are four potential logos Court has come up with (five, if you count the reversed version of the second). You can click on any one for a full-res look at it. Help me choose the best! Vote for your favorite in the poll (after waiting for it to load…), and drop a comment to say why you like it.

I’ve never done this built-in poll thing, but let’s give it a whirl. The poll should appear here:

Take Our Poll

An Artist Who Refuses To Create An Image

I wish I could find somebody who knows something about art, who would also argue against images of Christ. Without fail, all of my visual-art-enabled friends, are pro-images, and find anti-image argumentation silly and ignorant of what pictures really mean: how they are intended by artists, how they are received by connoisseurs. And I have not found any of the anti-image advocates (image anti-vocates?) to make any claims (or show any evidence) of competence or training about any area within the visual arts.

There are (at least) two possible explanations for this phenomenon. On the one hand, it could be that the iconoclasts are letting their iconoclasm determine their exegesis (which would make it eisegesis), and making ill-advised pronouncements about what they simply don’t understand. On the other hand, it may be that iconophiles simply are too attached to their idolatry to see it clearly as idolatry.

It would be helpful, therefore, to hear a case against images of Christ, from an otherwise-iconophile, someone with some kind of chops in art or photography or graphic design or something that would give them credentials as a hostile witness. Or an iconoclast of some form who would argue that the Bible mandates liberty, against their own personal preference.

I believe I myself can be of a little service in that latter role. I guess I’m not an iconoclast exactly, but I don’t particularly care about images one way or the other, which makes me close to a neutral witness.

One of the questions in the Q&A that I got pounded on was, “what’s the benefit of images of Christ?” intensified by DVD’s “what’s the motivation?” I reiterated my “liberty doesn’t require need” argument, and that’s fine as far as it goes, but I’m sure it sounded like a dodge (and surely it was).

Frankly, the reason I came back so weak on that question is that I just don’t care enough about images to have thought much about benefits. The right answer to the question is simple enough though, and I should have been able to come up with it. The benefit is that good things are good; beauty is beautiful. Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think on these things.

DVD’s heroin analogy went unanswered as well. It went something like, “If somebody were to argue for liberty to consume heroin, you would naturally want to know why they would want to, what’s the reason?” The right answer is along the same lines. Apart from pointing out how a mention of heroin poisons the well, it is not necessarily the case that an argument for liberty implies that somebody just really wants to do something. For instance, I have no interest in either dancing or smoking (rather intense disinterest, actually), but I would argue for liberty. I can believe that somebody else can glorify God with their dance, and that a good cigar is a good thing.

So what questions do I wish you had asked?

For starters, “Are you suggesting we can keep the 2nd commandment just on Sundays, and then it doesn’t matter if we break it all week long?“

Or, to quote Lorraine Boettner (as quoted in Hyde’s In Living Color),

How would you like it if someone who had never seen you and knew nothing at all about your physical features, resorted to his imagination and, drawing on the features of his own nationality, painted a picture and told everyone that it was a picture of you?

My answer: I’d feel fine. Now that we’re done talking about my feelings, can we get back to the question of whether Images of Christ are permissible or forbidden?

I also wish the audience had asked questions that pressed harder on DVD’s position. For instance, if we are not allowed to depict the incarnation of the second person of the trinity as a God-man, are we also not allowed to depict the endoxation of the third person as a God-dove, or a God-pillar-of-fire or -cloud? What about the “Ben Hur approach” of avoiding Jesus’ face, depicting his hands, or the back of his head? Is that forbidden because those hands, or that hair, don’t match the particularities of Jesus’ actual hands or hair? Or is an ascension that shows only Jesus’ feet forbidden because they don’t look like his actual feet? Or how about the Great Commision Publications position on abstract representations?

the principle of suggestion is operative in the arts. For example, in a large scene a face or a figure may be suggested by a line or a blob of color. “Representations” of Christ of such a character would not necessarily go beyond the biblical evidence. Such a suggestion would only state that in some such scene Jesus took part as a true man.

It seems to me that, given DVD’s strong stance on the criticality of the specific physical feature of Jesus, he would have to forbid all of these boundary-pushing scenarios.

Among this group of questions would also be the question of depicting a generic baby in the manger. For that, we have a negative response in his article “Celebrating Jesus’ Birth — Without His Picture.” So I would guess he’d lean toward the negative for all of the previous scenarios as well.

I already talked about what I wish I had said. How do I know what DVD might wish he had said? Obviously I don’t. But some speculation…

To be fair, if I had pushed back on DVD’s argument that the second commandment admits of no distinction between making/worship of images, it would not have been a slam dunk. In re-listening, I heard some clues that indicated he might have had a nuance in mind that did not come across very clearly to the audience. Observe (at about 12:24):

I think it’s safe to say that for Deuteronomy [4:15--], for the scriptures as a whole, making images and using them for worship are part and parcel of the same thing. In other words, the idea that one might make an image and not use it for worship was not really a possibility that the biblical writers even imagined. Why would you make an image if it wasn’t to worship it? What kind of confrontation with the deity would you undergo if you would not respond with worship?

Given that phrase “with the deity,” I think it’s safe to say that DVD is not arguing for a lack of distinction between making/worshipping — and thus a complete prohibition — of images altogether. Rather, he is speaking only of images of objects of worship — of God or god(s). This qualification would provide shelter from an accusation that he proves too much, and his arguments forbid all images whatsoever.

I have two lines of response to this hypothetical nuance.

First, the second commandment doesn’t give us that nuance. If anything it heads in the opposite direction, never mentioning God at all, but going to great lengths to prohibit everything but God (heaven, earth, waters).

Second, do we really believe that all images of objects of objects of worship are forbidden? It was for this reason that I wore that night a t-shirt with Kokopelli emblazoned on it. Kokopelli is the pagan god of fertility, music, and trickery for many Indian tribes of the American Southwest. How egregious could images of objects of worship be, if I was openly wearing such an idol on my chest, and nobody even blinked? But the opportunity never presented itself, so I let the ambush pass.

Note, my Kokopelli shirt was primarily there in preparation for a question like the following accusation of obeying the commandments only on Sundays:

Those who say that images are forbidden, but only for worship, imply that we can fulfill the command of God by not having images in worship, while we have them in books or at home on our walls. The logical conclusion is that we can have idols, but just not in worship. (Daniel Hyde, In Living Color, p. 87)

“Really, we can’t have an idol? If we visit an African country, we can’t buy a statue for ornamental purposes if somebody may have worshipped it before? I can’t go to Joshua Tree and buy a T-shirt like this one with Kokopelli on it?”

Continuing in this vein, where is the line to be drawn between what may not be imaged because it is an object of worship, and what may not be imaged because it is a potential object of worship? Who knows what people might or might not worship? I mean, look at the response to a coincidentally Mary-shaped scorch mark on a grilled-cheese sandwich! And again, consider the exhaustive nature of the second commandment. If there really is no distinction between making and worshipping, then isn’t the point of the second commandment that anything in creation, if imaged, might be worshipped by some crazy idolater, and therefore all images are absolutely verboten? In particular, God would have a lot of ‘splaining to do about all those images he commanded the Israelites to include in the house of worship he designed for himself.