A central development in western thinking over the past few centuries has been the bifurcation of reality into the material world (impersonal and external to the self) and the subjective world (personal and internal). In response to this dualistic perception, the western mind has tended increasingly to view the source of meaning and truth within the self. We may hear evidence of this often sub-conscious presupposition when people say things like, “Well, that may be true for you, but my truth is….”

 

The implications are profound when people begin to think that truth is created more than discovered. As philosopher Richard Rorty observes: “About two hundred years ago, the idea that truth was made rather than found began to take hold of the imagination of Europe.” And to a very large extent we are the epistemological offspring.

 

A recent art review in a national news magazine elicited contemplation of this deeply philosophical matter. The August 15, 2011 issue of Time Magazine offered a thoughtful article by Richard Lacayo about a current exhibit of the 17^th century Dutch painter, Rembrandt. The exhibit is called “Rembrandt and the Face of Jesus,” a collection of the artist’s paintings on loan from the Louvre and currently showing at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. More than a mere sampling of paintings of Jesus, the collection highlights the evolution in the artist’s image of our Lord over Rembrandt’s later adult life.  Subscribers to Time may read the entire review at this link:http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2086866,00.html

 

Lacayo’s positive critique of the exhibit notes that Rembrandt’s earlier works depicting Jesus tended to be dramatic, filled with sharp light and emphatic gestures. Rembrandt painted these works while in his early 40’s, and they emphasize the divinity of Jesus, a Christ who is “other” and over the human predicament. However, Rembrandt’s later portraits of Jesus show him in more subdued, human images. Lacayo reasonably suggests that a series of personal losses and misfortunes in Rembrandt’s later years may have contributed to the artist’s increasing emphasis on the humanity of a more gentle Jesus: “Rembrandt in middle age appears to have gone in search of a consoling Christ, quieter, more meditative, somebody who would listen.”

 

I was glad to have stumbled upon the news of this exhibit and would love to see it during its run through several US museums. I was struck, however, by an introductory comment in the review that got me thinking on our cultural regard for truth and meaning. Lacayo writes, “You see the great Dutch painter effectively inventing Christ as we tend to picture him now – not as a remote divinity but as the ideal human being….”

 

Do we “invent” our image of Christ? And does this invention invariably lead to a Lord who conforms to our own ideal of what it is to be human? Do we construct a Jesus who fits (or consoles) our life’s situation? Isn’t the all-too-human temptation to “invent” God in our own image a rather important subject addressed throughout Scripture? (See the second of the Ten Commandments; Deuteronomy 4.15-24; Psalm 115.1-8; Acts 17.25; Romans 9.16). And did Rembrandt himself think he was inventing a new Christ as he aged, experienced pain and sorrow, and reflected more deeply on the person of Jesus? While I cannot know with certainty, I doubt it. 

 

On the other hand, we are incapable of knowing God in purely objective ways that are divorced from real life experiences. A gift of the post-modern critique of much western thinking is its emphasis that the subjective and personal are far more powerful mediators of meaning than earlier centuries may have realized. Our internal worlds do, in fact, shape much interpretation of what is true and not true.

 

Not having seen this new Rembrandt exhibit, my strong hunch is that it would be a much diminished project if the only paintings on display were of the artist’s later years. At the core of the Christian message of salvation is that Jesus was at once both human and divine. It is Christian doctrine that this incarnate and suffering Christ was no human construct but a divine initiative and revelation of God. Christ enters into our world as an event very much external to the self. But it is also Christian doctrine that this means of salvation is an “implanted word,” a truth making its home inside those who believe.

 

Christians do not invent our conceptions of truth and meaning. But nor are they impositions from outside the self. Our personal experiences help “make sense” of this gift of salvation whom we could never create or even imagine absent His coming from outside ourselves. The gospel of Christ is too large for a bifurcated view of reality. And as Rembrandt’s own life illustrates through his paintings of Jesus, our personal experiences – even in pain and suffering – offer opportunity for crafting an ever deeper portrait of God whose love transcends both external and internal worlds by encompassing both.