Michael

@ErickYbarra3, I'm not sure why you're making a big deal about the Bigham translation. Fr. Price provides a very similar translation to Bigham on fn 332. Price even regards it as a "superior wording of the sentence".

Final/ This covers only one single instance of a clear misattribution. For a more comprehensive treatment of the problems with Dr. Ortlund’s icon material, see my Substack series: iconsofgod.substack.com/p/th… This thread's information is recorded on Part 4 of the series.

10/ Not only did Ortlund wrongly attribute a statement to Jensen, he attributed a statement to Jensen that she fundamentally disagreed with & explicitly challenged later in the same chapter.

9/ Later in the 2021 chapter, Jensen provides her opinion of Tertullian, but this thread is long enough. I will instead give a summary of her position from Humphreys’ introductory chapter to the "Companion." ...a chapter that Ortlund himself has cited before.

8/ An examination of Jensen’s Understanding Early Christian Art (1st ed.), 13-15 reveals that she is very explicit in her rejection of the previous consensus which “portrayed the earliest Christians as proto-Protestants"

7/ She then says on pg 113 that “more scholars joined in to offer alternative explanations”. She names the scholars that joined in to challenge the consensus exemplified by Chadwick on her 19th footnote. One of the scholars footnoted here is… Robin Jensen...herself

6/ Jensen, pg 112: “During the last decades of the 20th century, scholars began to challenge these judgments.” Jensen presents Murray and Finney as contenders to this old, now dated view.

5/ On pages 110-111, Jensen continues to outline the 20th century scholarly opinion that early Christians were hostile to all art, citing Kitzinger, Baynes, Breckenridge, and Belting for support. Then, on page 112, Jensen begins a new line of thought…

4/ Then, she cites Henry Chadwick. Ortlund took Chadwick’s quote and attributed the words to Jensen. This would be acceptable if Jensen agreed with Chadwick’s quote. But let’s read further to see what she says about the consensus highlighted by this Chadwick quote.

3/ That quote is not Robin Jensen's words. To understand the problem we must explore the opening of her 2021 chapter from the “Companion”. Starting from paragraph 2, she summarizes the aniconic scholarly consensus of the 20th century with scholars like Koch, Harnack, and Bevan.