Father-Son Lookalikes
THE FIRST SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST: TRINITY SUNDAY
Isaiah 6:1-8 • Psalm 29 • Romans 8:12-17 • John 3:1-17
My dad moved away from his small hometown in Indiana in 1971. He’s kept in touch with three close friends, but he saw other old friends only at major high school reunions. At his fortieth class reunion, one of my dad’s good friends grabbed him and said—“you have to see Brian Kirkby [not his real name]. He looks exactly like his dad used to.” Sure enough, the man my dad hadn’t seen since he was in his late teens had somehow turned into a man who looked exactly how my dad remembered this man’s dad. This now-grown man had the same build, gait, voice, and facial expressions as his dad once did.
Some of us may have had similar experiences when seeing once-familiar faces after many long years. You might have to ask—“are you the Mrs. So-and-So I remember, or are you Mrs. So-and-So’s daughter all grown up now?” It’s sometimes tough to tell.
It can be similarly jarring to view many medieval paintings of the Trinity. Today, some of us are more accustomed to depictions of God the Father as an old man and God the Son as a young one. But medieval paintings portray God the Father and God the Son as the exact same age. In this artistic tradition, God the Father and God the Son are lookalikes, more like identical twins than parent and child. Sometimes the Holy Spirit appears in humanoid form as well, so the Trinity is a set a triplets. These paintings are like revelations of the Trinitarian mystery of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit as equally eternal persons.
Not all painters of the Trinity were up for this theological challenge. A few years ago, I took a summer class with a scholar named Peter Stallybrass, who calls the years 1350-1550 the period of the invention of God the Father as an old man. Several artists in that time started to settle for an easy way of distinguishing God the Father from God the Son in their work by making God the parent older than God the child. They gave God the Father gray hair and a decent haircut, and they left God the Son with dark hair down to his shoulders.
That’s what we see in a famous Renaissance painting of the Trinity by the Italian artist Masaccio: God the Father with gray hair and a gray beard, standing behind and just above God the Son, whose brown-haired head is bowed on the cross. The Holy Spirit is a dove who seems to come from God the Father’s lips and is about to land on God the Son’s halo.
The painting is a famous example of the artistic technique of linear perspective, but Peter Stallybrass calls it downright lazy to depict God the Father as an old man and God the Son as a young one. This artistic convention just doesn’t rise to the real challenges of Trinitarian theology.
Within the first three centuries of Christ’s death on the cross, it became very important for Christians to proclaim that although Jesus Christ was born in human form at a particular point in human history, Jesus Christ was also God the Son, who had existed eternally. God the Father was no older than God the Son, even though human beings had gotten to know the one before the other, and even though the God the Father’s love for God the Son was like that of a parent for a beloved child.
In fact, the original version of the Nicene Creed that we read together each Sunday used to have a final section that spelled out exactly what not to believe on this topic. According to that version of the creed, Christians must not say, “There was a time when God the Son did not exist,” or, “There was a time when God the Son was created,” or, “God the Son was created out of nothing.” The authors of this creed insisted that God the Father didn’t ever exist all on his own, and that God the Father did not create God the Son like he did other creatures. God the Father and God the Son both are eternal. The Father is no older than the Son.
Many medieval artists were much more up for the challenge of revealing this startling truth than Renaissance artists were. They chose to depict God the Father and God the Son as lookalikes of the same mature but youthful age.
In image after image, God the Father and God the Son were both young men, with the same hair color, the same build, the same stature, the same posture, the same facial expression, the same clothing, and usually matching haloes. Sometimes, there were little clues for telling Father and Son apart. A few artists marked God the Son’s halo with a cross, but other artists gave them both haloes with crosses. One artist had God the Father hold an orb, while God the Son held a cross, but another artist had Father and Son hold one orb together.
Some people point out that although God the Father and God the Son are identical twins in these images, we can tell them apart because God the Son is always to the right of God the Father—“seated at the right hand of the Father,” as the Creed says. Other than that, though, God the Father and God the Son are often indistinguishable.
These artists refused to settle for an easy theology of God the Father as an old man and God the Son as a young one. We actually have a contract for a painting from 1453 stipulating that the artists make no visual distinction between God the Father and God the Son. This patron was fighting against the artistic trend of differentiating Father and Son by age.
This is the sort of theology that Jesus labors to convey to Nicodemus in the gospel reading for today—which is Trinity Sunday. It’s probably trite to compare the kingdom of God to a fortieth high school reunion, but Jesus explains to Nicodemus that the Son comes into the world to invite people into an ageless realm, where God the Father and God the Son turn out to be more like identical twins than parent and child. We see the face of one in the face of the other. And in this eternal realm, parents and children, the young and the old, are no longer separated by age, but can meet on that high but level ground of reconciling love.
© 2021 The Rev. Dr. Lora Walsh
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church – Fayetteville, Arkansas