Ben Quash

Professor of Christianity and the Arts

[The Visual Commentary on Scripture @TheVCS]

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[Plough Quarterly @Plough]

“Traherne talks about the creation as the ‘frontispiece of eternity’: the front page of a book which is charged with the promise of what lies within. It’s not obscuring; it’s promising. Everywhere he looks, he sees eternity announcing itself.” @BenQuash

https://t.co/eqzc1C1kIx

[Plough Quarterly @Plough]

“Relationship, in a sense, is beauty. Good relationship is beauty. And that will include the relationship between two notes, or three notes, in a composition. The relationship between two colors in a painting, the proportions of an architectural space.” @BenQuash

https://t.co/RY8zkalFJM

[The Visual Commentary on Scripture @TheVCS]

Sandra Bowden’s collagraph takes inspiration from the psalmist’s pronouncement that God has set the earth on an immovable foundation.

Click here to read about the third work in our exhibition on #Psalm 104:

https://t.co/jF6RtJiAHG

[Andrew Davison @AP_Davison]

Do watch this film 'Finding Harmony'. I was struck by how its record of the King's decades-long commitment to communion with nature and among peoples bears witness to his devotion to that divine wisdom who 'reaches from one end to the other, mightily ordering all things well'.

[Andrew Davison @AP_Davison]

It was such a joy to be among people from many nations and walks of life – including religious leaders and other theologians, such as my @UniofOxford colleague @WestLondonMan – at the premiere of 'Finding Harmony: A King's Vision'.

[The Visual Commentary on Scripture @TheVCS]

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[The Visual Commentary on Scripture @TheVCS]

James the son of Zebedee is best known for being the patron saint of pilgrimage.

This statue of James can be found in Santiago de Compostela, a site closely associated with pilgrimage.

Take a closer look in this week's exhibition, The Way to Glory:

https://t.co/h2YdvPfcKX

[The Visual Commentary on Scripture @TheVCS]

Psalm 104 presents the earth and everything in it as a theatre of God’s glory that incites the praise of God’s people. None of the characters or scenes in this creational theatre is insignificant.

Take a closer look at our exhibition of the week:

https://t.co/uyt1bgBr26

[Plough Quarterly @Plough]

“Relationship in a sense is beauty. Good relationship is beauty. And that will include the relationship between two or three notes in a composition, the relationship between two colors in a painting, the proportions of an architectural space. But it extends to other forms of relationship, other kinds of good proportion in the hierarchies of our social organizations, in the forms of mutual and reciprocal care, and the distribution of responsibilities that any human family or society needs, where we seek to play our part in relation to others. When those things work, they are beautiful. That is beauty. And that’s what each thing we do and say should seek to serve.” @BenQuash

https://t.co/RTDs9pMoYb

[The Visual Commentary on Scripture @TheVCS]

Vincent van Gogh wrote that ‘all nature seems to speak … I do not understand why everyone does not see and feel it; nature or God does it for everyone who has eyes and ears and a heart to understand’.

Take a closer look at Long Grass with Butterflies in this week's exhibition:

https://t.co/ELX2olwS8W

[The Visual Commentary on Scripture @TheVCS]

The title of this work, The World Spills, comes from an essay by philosopher Bayo Akomolafe who writes that ‘the world spills in excess of itself’.

Find out more in our exhibition on #Psalm 104, O Lord, How Manifold Are Thy Works!

https://t.co/x191jcxJG6

[The Visual Commentary on Scripture @TheVCS]

The events described in #Matthew 2:1–12 culminate with the star finally halting above the place where the Child was and the Magi entering the house. There they see Jesus and his mother, fall to their knees, and offer him gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

As interpreted by theologians and communicated in the liturgy, however, the story of the Wise Men has been understood to have various other meanings, several of which emerge in the works discussed here.

Click here to explore Timothy Verdon's exhibition The Adoration of the Magi:

https://t.co/1JKtfbJpwL

[The Visual Commentary on Scripture @TheVCS]

Cristobal de Villalpando, trained in Mexico City by Baltasar de Echave Rioja, son of one of the first Hispanic artists to emigrate to ‘New Spain’ (as Mexico was then known), was inspired by Rubens for his depiction of the Magi.

Take a closer look here:

https://t.co/vs0XVfWJnG

[Plough Quarterly @Plough]

“Sometimes we think about beauty as something that is absolutely out of the ordinary. But actually, in Old Testament terms, this kind of beauty is precisely being what you’re meant to be well. So, a lamb without blemish is just a really lamb-y lamb; not some kind of exceptional lamb different from all the other lambs, but a lamb with all the right bits in all the right places.” @BenQuash

https://t.co/RTDs9pLR8D

[Plough Quarterly @Plough]

How does scripture talk about beauty? In the latest episode of Another Life, @joynessthebrave and @BenQuash discuss beauty in the Old and New Testaments.

https://t.co/OGta75wJZH

[Plough Quarterly @Plough]

“Beauty isn’t the same thing as art, and in particular in modern and contemporary art, beauty is often a word that artists will avoid because it has connotations of consolation or pleasure or of easiness, and contemporary art likes to justify its existence often on the grounds that it makes things more difficult; it complexifies.” @BenQuash

https://t.co/RTDs9pMoYb

[The Visual Commentary on Scripture @TheVCS]

Benozzo Gozzoli's fresco cycle, painted for the Medici family's private chapel in 1459, is one of the most impressive depictions of the Journey of the Magi.

Take a closer look in our exhibition of the week, The Adoration of the Magi:

https://t.co/m3nJSBPkt2

[Plough Quarterly @Plough]

"It’s an odd thing, I suppose, to say that history gives me hope. But it does....because what has endured, carries with it the wisdom of long settlement..."

@BenQuash speaking with @joynessthebrave
https://t.co/OGta75xhPf

[The Visual Commentary on Scripture @TheVCS]

In the week of #Epiphany, our Exhibition of the Week looks at the Adoration of the Magi.

Click here to read Timothy Verdon's commentary on Matthew 2:1–12 and this sixth-century mosaic in the church of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna:

https://t.co/3oN3oG5Gbm