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| Mary Bird, Scott Bodenheimer 1993, woven color plates, 20" x w22", 50 x 55cm |
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This work depicts the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. In Christian dogma, the Holy Spirit, or the Holy Ghost, is the the third person of the Trinity together with God the father and Jesus the son. All three are consubstantial, meaning that though their persons are distinct, their substance is the same divine essence or nature. There are hardly any other points of dogma that have caused more confusion and heresies than that of the Holy Spirit. Some of the heresies include the Monarchian, Arian, Eunomian, Acacian, and Socinian. St. Athananasius is given the credit for finally refining the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in 360 CE. Certain Christians at the time believed that the Holy Spirit was in the form of an animal. Athanasius said that animals and man were created by God out of nothing, they are creatures, but that the Holy Spirit, being consubstantial with God came before creation. He quoted Jesus:
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost
Matthew 28:19, KJV
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By inference Athanasius wrote that if the Holy Ghost had been of a different nature than God, something created, a creature, then Jesus would have said so. This tenuous explanation is at the very heart of the most crucial doctrine of Christianity, the Trinity.
[Wouldn’t it be an amazing thing if Christian Churches could use the same sort of tenuous explanation to revise their dogmatic view of homosexuality? e.g. If God had disapproved of homosexuality, then Jesus would have said so.]
Although doctrine doesn't allow the Holy Spirit to be created, it does admit a sequence , called Procession. Jesus proceeds from God, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from God and Jesus both. In the Eastern Orthodox or Greek Church though, the Son proceeds from the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son.This difference in the idea of Procession gave cause to the schism between the Roman Catholic and Greek Churches which broke them apart in 870 CE. In Christian dogma the Holy Spirit is given the male pronoun exclusively, as the Trinity is seen as exclusively masculine in nature. |
A father of the early Church, Bishop Theophilus of Antioch, wrote in his Ad Autolychum around 180 CE that the Persons of the Trinity were
theos, logos, and sophia
or God, The Word, and Wisdom. In Greek the word for wisdom is feminine, and often in Greek Orthodox art, there are depictions of Sophia as female.
[To see my work called Sophia, click here.]
Most Christian denominations have struggled to dogmatize the feminine aspect out of the Godhead. But the overwhelming desire to sense the female in the divine caused a whole cult and devotion to Mary, Marianism, to spring up beside the doctrine of the Trinity. Perhaps if the Latin word for Spirit: “spiritus” had been feminine in gender, and not masculine, or if the translation of what Matthew wrote in Greek: pneumatoV [pneumatos], which is neuter in gender had been respected as neither masculine nor feminine, then the Roman Church could have admitted a sense of femaleness to the Trinity.
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In the Gospels, in the account of the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist, Mark and Matthew both write that the manner in which the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus was “like a dove.” But it isn’t any wonder that St. Luke was the patron saint of painters, because he describes the scene pictorially:
Now when all the people were baptized, it came to pass, that Jesus also being baptized, and praying, the heaven was opened,
and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.
Luke 3:21-22 KJV
The dove is a common symbol in religion and art. The dove was the special bird sacred to Aphrodite, the goddess of love who was born from the sea. |
The dove is often linked to water imagery, Noah released a dove to find dry land after the Flood, and it came back with the olive branch symbolizing peace.
Some scholars believe that early Christian frescos and mosaics were purposefully filled with imagery common to contemporaneous Roman and Greek art. Until Christianity became a legally sanctioned religion under the emperor Constantine, overt displays of particularly Christian scenes like the Crucifixion were dangerous to depict. A picture of a tree with seven doves could be seen as symbolic of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, or merely a decoration.
In my work Mary Bird, the dove is made from images of Mary, and the image forming the left eye of the dove shows Mary holding the toddler John the Baptist, with the infant Jesus to her right being held by Elizabeth.
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In March of 2002, representatives from the Cultural Arts Council of Houston and Harris County (CACHH) contacted me on behalf of the Houston Downtown Management District (HDMD), and asked me if I'd consent to reproducing an image of one of my works on the reverse side of a large, 5 foot high by 10 foot wide sign, located on Lamar Street,on the south side between San Jacinto and Fannin. HDMD oversees a program to enhance Houston’s downtown, and the signs they’re putting up help motorists know what streets and buildings are coming up ahead. Since nearly all the streets downtown are one way, the opposite sides of the signs display art images for pedestrians. I chose Mary Bird because it fit the proportions well, and didn't require drastic cropping. I also thought it would be interesting to see an image dealing with spiritual themes in such a prosaic venue. |
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July 2002, Houston, Lamar at San Jacinto
A new sign in downtown Houston displays the image of Mary Bird. Part of the new urban redevelopment of downtown, the signs help visiting motorists navigate the one way streets, listing major buildings and attractions. The reverse side each sign presents an art image for pedestrians.
To see more images of the sign, click here.
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