The meaning of any visual image is dependent on language and therefore relationships. Without language, an image remains dumb. It is precisely because humans are relational that images are transposed into dialogue, almost instantly, within human community. Images require conversation. Through conversation, relationships are formed, transformed and the ethical is given content and traction within human life.
An image lives in human experience through words. Even a silent soliloquy or reflection is already a discourse that will likely become a dialogue or part of a dialogue in human relationships. A visible image cannot remain visible without becoming invisible. Images must become invisible words if they are to live in human memory, experience, interpretation and meaning.
Biblical testimony is everywhere adamant that humans cannot live by images alone but by every word that comes from God.
The Word became visible flesh, making visible the invisible. Yet what is visible is only recognised through the invisible, the Spirit, who comprehends the invisible. What becomes visible in Jesus Christ is established in profound invisibility and intimacy in Pentecost. The unseen is seen by agency of the unseen—the word illuminated by the Spirit—even as these enable the unseen One to become a visible image in our lives.
Also for your interest, a website article: Beauty, creation, glory and grace
Beautiful things can awaken human inklings to the possibility that beauty is given by God. We can add images to such inklings from phenomena that engage and caress our senses. Yet these are also tenuous or uncertain as to God who invokes personal faith.
For a related article on aesthetics, faith and Christology, see: Lord of the between
We can juxtapose anything in a thought, such as mermaid, tinned sardines and coffin. This is a source of creativity. It is also a source of confusion about the meaning of life as humans combine diverse phenomena in the quest for meaning. Accordingly, art can both generate and obfuscate meaning.
Other articles for your interest and use
Dr Stephen Curkpatrick
Churches of Christ Theological College
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