Although it's Eastertide, I'm kinda stuck on Good Friday. The faculty staged a preview of this year's Sprunt Lectures by convening a panel discussion on Margaret Miles' recent article in The Christian Century.
Miles argues that in the early and medieval Church, the symbol par excellence of God's love was the Virgin Mary nursing the baby Jesus. But in the early modern period the breast became secularized and eroticized, and the cross replaced the lactating Virgin as the paradigmatic icon of God's love. Miles laments this shift, for the result is a modern culture which objectifies women's bodies and glorifies violence.
The historian on the panel, as I saw it, politely demolished the notion that the cross is an inherently problematic symbol and the nursing Virgin an inherently benign symbol. True, early Christians were loathe to incorporate crosses into their art, but that's because the Emperor Constantine viewed the cross as a symbol of pacifistic insubordination to the Empire. Moreover, when an 11th century Byzantine Emperor launched a campaign to pacify the countryside, his army marched under the banners of the Virgin and Christ child. Our historian reminded us of a chapel service last month led by our Korean students in which a symbol of the hope for Korean unification was displayed, two pieces of wood, one from each side of the border, fastened together to form a cross (i.e., crosses aren't always a tool the Man uses to keep down The Other).
What he didn't do was dispute Miles's argument about how and why a lactating Virgin Mary disappeared from Christian iconography. I'd like to hear more about that.
Our theologian acknowledged the fact that the cross is a multivalent symbol, but noted that what's important is how the cross is preached and depicted and expressed gratitude for Miles's concerns about a brutally eroticized culture.




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