Pictures of Jesus, Part 1

Teacher: Jeff Childers

How do we picture Jesus? How should we picture him? No portrait of the person Jesus survives, yet he is surely the most frequently depicted person from history. What are the benefits and dangers of our cherished images of Jesus, whether hanging on the wall, painted by our worship language, or held in our minds? In this two-part class, we will look at the most common ways of picturing Jesus down through the centuries, up to our present day, investigating the impact of those images on Christian faith and practice. What values or agendas are conveyed by different ways of picturing Jesus? How true and how healthy is our imagination, in picturing Jesus today?