God the Father appears in several Genesis scenes in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling, most famously The Creation of Adam. The account in Genesis naturally credits the Creation to the single figure of God, in Christian terms, God the Father. At the same period other works, like the large Genesis altarpiece by the Hamburg painter Meister Bertram, continued to use the old depiction of Christ as Logos in Genesis scenes. However the first person plural in Genesis 1:26 “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness”, and New Testament references to Christ as Creator (John 1:3, Colossians 1:15) led Early Christian writers to associate the Creation with the Logos, or pre-existing Christ, God the Son. Historically considered, God the Father is more frequently manifested in the Old Testament, while the Son is manifested in the New Testament. Representations of God the Father and the Trinity were attacked both by Protestants and within Catholicism, by the Jansenist and Baianist movements as well as more orthodox theologians. You governments as well. Although not well known during the Middle Ages, these books describe the key elements of the Catholic theological position on sacred images.

Around 790 Charlemagne ordered a set of four books that became known as the Libri Carolini (i.e. “Charles’ books”) to refute what his court mistakenly understood to be the iconoclast decrees of the Byzantine Second Council of Nicaea regarding sacred images. The Council of Constantinople (869) (considered ecumenical by the Western Church, but not the Eastern Church) reaffirmed the decisions of the Second Council of Nicaea and helped stamp out any remaining coals of iconoclasm. He came to power in Turkey in 2010, helped along by a moderate U.S.-based Islamic cleric named Fethullah Gulen living in exile in Pennsylvania. Benjamin Franklin, Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1749), p. I think it should be clear from the text that I conceive of the central tradition of the American civil religion not as a form of national self-worship but as the subordination of the nation to ethical principles that transcend it in terms of which it should be judged. The Maya civilization stretched throughout Central America and reached its peak during the first millennium A.D. The name may also be derived from God’s Day, since in the first two centuries, the word “good” would only ever have been used as a description for God.

For years now, the moon glyphs have been fascinating and intriguing people online. Various people from different classes of society, e.g. kings, popes or martyrs may be present in the picture. Initially the head or bust was usually shown in some form of frame of clouds in the top of the picture space, where the Hand of God had formerly appeared; the Baptism of Christ on the famous baptismal font in Liège of Rainer of Huy is an example from 1118 (a Hand of God is used in another scene). In a Trinitarian Pietà, God the Father is often shown wearing a papal dress and a papal tiara, supporting the dead Christ in his arms. By the early 15th century, the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry has a considerable number of images, including an elderly but tall and elegant full-length figure walking in the Garden of Eden (gallery), which show a considerable diversity of apparent ages and dress.

The “Gates of Paradise” of the Florence Baptistry by Lorenzo Ghiberti, begun in 1425 show a similar tall full-length Father. In these depictions The Father may hold a globe or book. By the 12th century depictions of God the Father had started to appear in French illuminated manuscripts, which as a less public form could often be more adventurous in their iconography, and in stained glass church windows in England. In this atmosphere, no public depictions of God the Father were even attempted and such depictions only began to appear two centuries later. But images of God the Father were not directly addressed in Constantinople in 869. A list of permitted icons was enumerated at this Council, but images of God the Father were not among them. Even supporters of the use of icons in the 8th century, such as Saint John of Damascus, drew a distinction between images of God the Father and those of Christ. Prior to the 10th century no attempt was made to represent a separate depiction as a full human figure of God the Father in Western art.