Editor’s Reflections � Onef o the earliest hymns we have in our gospel, baptized converts, and have been trying to do the things treasuryf o praise, “Of the Father’s Love Jesus commanded us to do. But all the while, the longing to sit at Begotten,” celebrates the moment when Jesus’ feet and gaze into the loving face of the “Suffering Servant” “the Babe, the world’s Redeemer, / First lingers in every Christian heart. revealed His sacred face.”1 Jesus’ disciples, of course, knew exactly what he looked like, Some eighteen hundred years after this ando s did many in the early church. Bishop Eusebius, who lived classics wa written, one of my own trea- in the same century as Prudentius, even tells us he visited the site sured personal memories is hearing my of the home of the woman healed from hemorrhaging, whose mother singing Helen Lemmel’s lyrics, experience was chronicled in Mark 5:25–34, to view the statue she as she did her chores around the house, commissioned to commemorate her life-changing experience. In “Turn your eyes upon Jesus./Look full in his wonderful face./ his book, The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine, And the things of earth will grow strangely dim/In the light of 7.18,e h describes the statue, which showed a woman kneeling his glory and grace.”2 before a man whose hand was stretched out to her. Then Eusebius In contemporary Christian music, excellent musicians from writes, “This statue (andiron) the likeness (eikon)f t o Jesus i was the f days o the Resurrection Band in “(I Can’t Stop) Loving You”3 saido t bear” (my literal translation). Eusebius reports that the to FFH in “One of These Days,”4 the Miracle Teens of Uganda in healed woman commissioned the sculptor to copy the exact fea- “Presence”5 o t Jamaica’s Carlene Davis in “My Turn”6 (and count- turesf o Jesus. But though he and many others viewed it, neither less others around our world) still express the longing to see our they, nor the apostles before them, ever bothered to tell poster- Savior face to face, while each Sunday many of us continue to ity what Jesus looked like. Eusebius dismissed such depictions invite the Lord into our worship services with praise songs like as a Gentile concern, pointing out that, since Gentiles were free “Lord,e W Welcome You” and “Open the Eyes of My Heart”7 that of Jewish traditional prohibitions against graven images, they assure Jesus we want to see his face ourselves. copied the features of Christ and the apostles “in this uninhib- When Aurelius C. Prudentius wrote his paean in the early ited way” (7.18). As a result, a plethora of pictures of Jesus spread 300s and Helen Lemmel echoed that desire in the late 1800s/early throughout the ancient world. 1900s, Glenn Kaiser in 1981, Jeromy Deibler and Paul Baloche, In the watercolor-on-wet-plaster depictions of Jesus in the respectively, in 1997, Martin Wampamba in 2001, and Che Cowan catacombs, for example, our Savior appears sometimes with short in4 200 (with similar lyrics continuing to be penned in 2009), hair and sometimes with long, bearded and smooth-shaven, tall each composer was expressing a longing Christians have felt over and lithe and short and stocky, with dark, drawn, Semitic fea- the centuries since our Lord Jesus Christ was physically taken up tures often stark with suffering, or bright, fair, and youthful Latin from n us. I the millennia-long history between the ascension and features like a Roman pagan god. Those who painted the for- the second coming, we have gone into the world, preached the mer were following suffering servant passages like Isaiah 53:2–3, Editor • William David Spencer • Deb Beatty Mel Associate Editor / Graphic Designer Boardf o Reference: Miriam Adeney, Carl E. Armerding, Myron S. Book Review Editor • Aída Besançon Spencer Augsburger, Raymond J. Bakke, Anthony Campolo, Lois McKinney President / Publisher • Mimi Haddad Douglas, Gordon D. Fee, Richard Foster, John R. Franke, W. Ward President Emerita • Catherine Clark Kroeger Gasque,. J Lee Grady, Vernon Grounds, David Joel Hamilton, Roberta Editors Emerita • Carol Thiessen† & Gretchen Gaebelein Hull Hestenes, Gretchen Gaebelein Hull, Donald Joy, Robbie Joy, Craig On the Cover • “Called” (detail) from the Woman series, S. Keener, John R. Kohlenberger III, David Mains, Kari Torjesen © Bruce Herman, 2008. Oil and alkyd resin with silver leaf on Malcolm, Brenda Salter McNeil, Alvera Mickelsen, Roger Nicole, wood panel, 60" x 48". Courtesy of the artist. Virgil Olson, LaDonna Osborn, T. L. Osborn, John E. Phelan, Kay F. See more of Herman’s work at bruceherman.com. Rader, Paul A. Rader, Ronald J. Sider, Aída Besançon Spencer, William David Spencer, Ruth A. Tucker, Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, Timothy Weber, Jeanette S. G. Yep Priscilla Papers (issn 0898-753x)s i published quarterly by Christians for Biblical Equality, © 2009. 122 West Franklin Avenue, Suite 218, Minneapolis, MN 55404-2451. For address changes and other information, phone: 612-872-6898; fax: 612-872-6891; or e-mail: [email protected]. CBE is on the Web at www.cbeinternational.org. Priscilla Papers s i indexed by Christians for Biblical Equality, the Christian Periodical Index (CPI), American Theological Library Association’s (ATLA) New Testament Abstracts (NTA), and Religious & Theological Abstracts (R&TA). In addition, Priscilla Papers s i licensed with EBSCO Publishing’s full-text informational library products. 2 • Priscilla Papers ◆ Vol. 23, No. 4 ◆ Autumn 2009 which warned he was neither attractive nor filled with splendor, expositionf o the encounter of the Canaanite woman with Jesus, buts wa despised and forsaken, suffering and knowing pain, while drawing out the implications for her time and then for ours. Pro- the latter artists were attempting to capture the victorious Son of fessor Lyle Story of Regent University then provides insightful God glowing through his human incarnation with the glorious, analysis with a “pair of fours”—four women who encountered Je- majestic grace that is described in passages like Psalm 45:2 (3, sus and the anointing stories recounted by the four gospel writers. Hebrew), which they took as extolling the one anointed forever Professor Aída Besançon Spencer of Gordon-Conwell Theologi- as “handsome (yapah) among men” (my trans.). For these artists, cal Seminary next takes us through a directory of woman leaders as for those who knew Jesus, what he actually looked like was of in the New Testament church. A perceptive review by seminarian little importance; who he was as God-Among-Us and what he Jordan Easley examines Gender, Power, and Persuasion: The Gen- did to liberate humanity from sin was what really mattered.8 esis Narratives and Contemporary Portraits y b Mignon R. Jacobs. Still,s a the years go by, we do lament with Tertullian and Au- And Professor Spencer provides a careful analysis of a new book gustine that the image of Jesus Christ has been so modified as to that answers conversely to our theme, Jesus’ attitude toward the have been lost to us. In the meantime, we follow his commands womene h encountered: liberating or restricting? A poet new to in that interim stage described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 13:12, feel- our pages, Adele Hebert, completes the issue with a poetic medi- ings a though we are indeed peering through a poor reflection, tationn o one of the women who anointed Jesus. Our beautiful ande w treasure the accounts of those who encountered Jesus face cover art was painted by one of Christianity’s major living art- to.n face I such a context, this issue of our journal discusses New ists, Bruce Herman, Lothlórien Distinguished Chair in Fine Arts Testament women and the impact meeting Jesus had on them. As at Gordon College, who has graciously allowed us to introduce with everyone who encounters Jesus today through the work of to a wider viewing public this beautiful detail of Jesus’ mother his Holy Spirit, our subjects received an indelible impression for Mary from his outstanding new series of paintings (2008). Read- the f rest o their lives. The significance of their accounts has also erss a moved by this sample as I am may view the entire work at provedo t live on to instruct our lives, as day by day the Holy Spir- its location of permanent display in the monastery San Paolo in it effects our sanctification, which we might image as the turning Orvieto, Italy.9 of the holy countenance of God, which can look on no evil, ever May God bless each of us with the love of Christ so that all we more fully toward our own progressively purifying faces. encounter will see the face of Jesus shine through the compassion Whom, then, do we meet? The first woman is often over- in our own. looked, but she sounded a transitional prophetic voice as one of Blessings, the first prophets to see the incarnated Christ: Anna, as she is recovered for us by Prof. Larry Helyer of Taylor University. Pris- cilla Papers associate editor Deb Beatty Mel follows with a careful Notes 1. Aurelius C. Prudentius, “Of the Father’s Love Begotten,” trans. John M. Neale (1854) and Henry W. Baker (1859). 2. Helen H. Lemmel, “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus,” Hope Publishing Company, Worship and Service Hymnal (Chicago, Ill: Hope, 1957), 220. 3. Glenn Kaiser, “Lovin’ You,” from the album, Resurrection Band, Mommy Don’t Love Daddy Anymore (Waco, Tex.: Light Records, 1981). 4. Jeromy Deibler, “One of These Days,” from the album, FFH, I Want to Be like You, (Brentwood, Tenn.: Essential, 1998).