Dürer Works of Religious Subjects

By now I hope your eyes are not glazing over from the number of Dürer works that I have shared with you. If this series is not to your liking, just drive right by; it's OK. I promise. Just promise me you'll come back and read the last post in the series.

I've had a very difficult time choosing a reasonable number to share with you, so I decided that I would post just one example from each category: paintings, drawings, woodcuts, engravings, and watercolors. (all except the watercolor are religious subjects)

Job and His Wife 15o4
painting

Job and his Wife detail

Take a close look at that face. Looks like someone who might just tell her husband to "curse God and die," doesn't it?

Mount of Olives 1521
drawing

Title Page from The Large Passion 1497-1500
A series of 12 woodcutting on the life of Christ

From the link:

"The Large Passion is named after the format of the series (39 x 28 cm). The whole series of twelve cuts did not appear till 1511 when Dürer published the cycle, together with a title page and a poem by the Benedictine theologian and friend of Willibald Pirckheimer, Benedictus Chelidonius (died 1521). The first seven woodcuts were executed between 1497 and 1500, then the series was completed by five cuts in 1510. The complete edition in book form appeared in 1511."

Prodigal Son 1496
engraving

"In the Engraving of The Prodigal Son, Dürer deviated considerably from earlier depictions of the theme. Here, the scene is placed in the midst of a Franconian farm and shows the prodigal son at the moment of his repentance, kneeling in prayer on a pile of manure in the foreground amongst the swine. The naturalism of the picture was widely admired and contributed to the fame of the engraving."

View of Nuremburg 1496/97
watercolor

God's Minute 3/8

Ask of God and He will give it Thee.--John 11:22

OUR Father, we thank Thee for the home with its protection and loving fellowship. Whatever else in may or may not be rich in, make it rich in the presence of Thy Holy Spirit in fulness and power.

Forgive and forget, we beseech Thee, for the sake of our Saviour and Thy dear Son the sins of our lives, and cleanse us in His precious blood.

Send each one of us forth filled with the spirit of our Master, which is the spirit of unselfish service. Strengthen us to do every proper task, teach us to be kind and helpful to others in Christ's name, make of us blessed channels of They mercies, and lead us into that pathway of life in which we can best glorify Thee and serve our fellowmen.

Make our home life continually more Christ-like, and may that life as well as our individual lives react for good on all with whom we come in contact. Hasten, through the service of our lives, the coming of Thy world-wide Kingdom, and the crowning of King Jesus, in Whose Name we pray.

Amen.

Prof. William J. Martin,
Davidson, North Carolina

Tuesday Treasures

I visited Faith's blog tonight and learned about "Tuesday Treasures." You can read all about it here.

I'm getting this one up quick so I don't miss the Tuesday deadline, so it will be little more than a quick picture before I turn off the computer and call it a day.

The second Bible on the left belonged to my paternal grandmother, Mary Alta Meek Lafferty. I never knew her because she died when I was just a toddler, but it's nice to have her Bible, to hold it and know that it belonged to her.

Am I the only one. . .

. . .who notices glaring mistakes in nearly each and every post once I hit the publish button? Sometimes more than once?

Why can't I see the mistakes in the Preview mode? Why do sentences seem clear before I publish and completely convoluted when I see them published on the blog?

Is it just me?

And another question. . .how many times do you think I will have to go back and "fix" this post?

[I see one already: "nearly each and every?" What does that mean?]

Order of a Different Kind

This week's Carnival of Beauty is on the Beauty of Order.

When I asked myself if I wanted to blog about order, my first thought went to the disorder of my attic and my basement. If you stay on main floor of my house, you will come away with the idea that I am an orderly person. And you'd be right; I am. You could open any drawer or cupboard or closet on the main floor of my home and observe an "observable orderliness." That's not to say everything is neat as a pin, but like things are grouped together in a relatively neat and tidy way. I like it that way, it makes me happy.

But when you get to the storage room in my basement or the whole of my attic, you will see a very different scenario. Oh, if you look carefully you will find evidences of past organization attempts but to see that you would have to look beyond the chaos. I have only a very vague idea of what is in all those boxes that are crammed together and frankly, the disorder is what keeps me from going up (or down) there and taking care of it.

About now, you're probably expecting me to take out my handy dandy camera and snap pictures of my shame. That day may come, but as Aragorn said, "it is not this day."

This day I am going to throw a curve ball. Because as I really thought about what I like most about order I thought of something different. I thought of Louis Berkhof and Robert Reymond. Some of you are smiling right now because you know where I am going with this. Others are scratching their heads and thinking, "Who are those guys and what do they have to do with order?"

Berkhof and Reymond are two of my "familiar friends", or at least they are familiar through their writings. Both have written Systematic Theologies.

What is a Systematic Theology? I will borrow from Reymond as he quotes J. Gresham Mechan:

Systematic theology "seeks to set forth, no longer in the order of the time when it was revealed [biblical theology] but in the order of logical relationships, the grand sum of what God has told us in His Word."

Think of it this way. My usage of the Bible is like the way I live in my house. The familiar daily essentials are well known, well used, and at my fingertips, like the main floor of the house. I know right where to find my hairbrush, my appliance manuals, my dishtowels and cereal boxes. The same is true with the Bible; I know where I will turn in my Bible when I am grieving, when I am tempted, when I lack peace, when I need encouragement or assurance.

But I know that there are treasures in the Word; treasures that relate to and expand upon the familiar passages. But, like my attic and basement storage room, on first glance I wonder, "Where in the world do I start? How can I find what I am looking for? How will I know how it all fits together?"

That's where a good Systematic Theology comes in. A Systematic Theology helps you find what you are looking for and then goes on to help you understand how the parts relate to the whole. I don't want to take my attic and basement analogies too far; they are truly disorganized, the Bible isn't. It can just seem that way to the casual observer.

A Systematic Theology helps you open up those obscure passages, discover those Biblical treasures, and think more deeply about Biblical truth. Before you know it, some of those attic treasures find their places on the main floor. . .

Before you know it, you'll no longer be a casual observer but a lifelong "studier."

The entries in this week's Carnival of Beauty need to be submitted by 3 pm EST today, so get organized and get them submitted! Don't forget to check out all the entries tomorrow!