The Invisible God The Earliest Christians on Art

In this text, the author refutes the traditional assumption that early Christians were opposed in principle to visual images and thus produced no art. He asserts that once Christians acquired legal status and were able to own property and places of worship, they produced art to decorate them.



In this paperback reprint of a book originally published in 1994, Finney refutes the traditional assumption that early Christians were opposed in principle to visual images and thus produced no art. He finds that it was primarily the Christian belief in the invisibility of God, as well as the invisibility of Christians within Roman society, that inhibited their production of images. He shows that once Christians acquired legal status and were able to own property and their places of worship, they started to produce art to decorate them.