"If we have no idea what Jesus looked like, how should he be portrayed?"
It's not often that I disagree with John Piper. But on this question Dr. Piper and I are on opposite sides. Andy Jackson recently pointed to a brief excerpt from one of Dr. Piper's sermons titled "What do you think of pictures of Jesus?". I've transcribed the text from the audio:
I'm a little hesitant about portraits of Jesus at all. There's that argument about whether that's breaking the first Commandment -- don't make any graven images, don't have pictures of Jesus in your house. The reason I'm not a stickler on that is because Jesus became incarnate, therefore we know he had a face. God the father didn't have a face, except insofar as He and the Son are one.
Jesus had a face and even though we don't know what it looked like I think renderings of it to show various things are okay. And if we're going to do that, they should be real diverse. I think they should be real diverse because you lock in on that famous one--I don't know what it's called, the one with the long hair, kind of the idyllic face and the blue eyes---that's absolutely absurd.
But I think they should probably be black portrayals of Jesus, and white portrayals of Jesus, and Chinese portrayals of Jesus. And everybody knows that they're not accurate. There isn't one that's accurate. That's why it's legitimate to do lots of inaccurate works. Because you just say we all know that we don't know what he looked like so what we want to say with our inaccurate Jesus is something true about Jesus. Namely, he's there for everybody.
There are three points in this statement in which I agree. I agree that such images do not break the first Commandment and I agree that Warner Sallman's "Head of Christ" is "absolutely absurd." I also agree that Jesus is there for everyone. Unfortunately, the rest of the passage seems to me to be confused and illogical.
For example, Piper says that the images should be "real diverse." But how much diversity is acceptable? Would he approve of portrayals of Jesus as an elderly man? What about as a woman?
The fact that no particular rendition can be completely accurate does not make it "legitimate to do lots of inaccurate works." Unless the work is intentionally abstract, then a degree of realism is to be expected from the artwork. By offering a portrayal that intentionally veers from the Biblical portrait of Christ, the artist is using Jesus to further a particular racial, ethnic, or political agenda.
Piper is also just flat out wrong in saying that "everybody knows that they're not accurate." Hitler claimed that Jesus was probably Gallic and that "it's certain that Jesus was not a Jew." The view that Jesus has Nordic features is still held today by white supremacists. Similarly, the view that Jesus was black is espoused by syncretic religions, such as Santeria or Voodoo, where African gods were merged with saints of the Roman Catholic Church. The Black Hebrew Israelites (a group that can be found preaching on street corners in our Nation's capital) also claims that since black people are descended from Israelites, Jesus had to be black.
The antisemitism that motivates and inspires most of these images is reason enough to condemn such revisionist art. Christians should stand firm against this vicious ideology by refusing to budge on the truth that our Lord and Savior took the incarnate form of a Jew.
But even when the motives are noble, we should reject such this faux diversity. Instead, we should express our humility by honoring the choices that God made in taking human form. We are created to reflect the image of our Lord; we shouldn’t try to recreate his image to reflect our own.
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