Michael

Greetings X, My 6-part Substack Series, "The Disaster of Reformed Historiography of Art", is fully released. The introductory post is here. I hope you enjoy! open.substack.com/pub/iconso…

@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.

2/ Ortlund: “Tertullian, almost everybody admits, is thunderingly aniconic. He’s often put up there with Clement as on the extreme end of that. Here’s how Robin Jensen classifies them—you can pause and read this quote if you’d like to.” He then attributes this quote to Jensen.

1/ Since allegations of @gavinortlund misrepresenting sources have surfaced again, I figured I would point out a misattribution he made over two years ago that everyone missed. A Thread🧵 In his 20 May 2024 video “Icon Veneration is STILL an Accretion” ~1:04:50, he says this...

It reminds me of the problems with his icon polemics from a couple years ago. iconsofgod.substack.com/p/th…

@CovenantReform2, I've given you a few days now. Have you found: 1. A peer-reviewed source (other than your WTJ article) stating the Dura baptistery was a bathroom? 2. A statement from me on Dura?

@HwsEleutheroi at 45:53: "John Damascene, Theodore the Studite, Patriarch Nikephoros... struggled to try to make heads or tails out of the definition that was given at N2." -When did John Damascene repose? -When was N2? -How could he struggle with N2's decree if he was reposed?

Final/ These persistent misrepresentations of the Council of Frankfurt need to stop. For a more detailed discussion of the Franks, and why Protestants should stop using them in their anti-EO polemics, see my Substack article "An Outright Break With Rome" iconsofgod.substack.com/p/an…

5/ This is a clear textual misattribution on White's part. He is not the first Protestant to falsely attribute a statement from the Opus to the Council of Frankfurt. Martin Chemnitz did it in the 16th century. Andrew Messmer did it in 2022. @gavinortlund did it multiple times.

4/ ...And Thomas Noble, which @HwsEleutheroi has apparently read.

3/ Instead, for variety of reasons not able to be explained in 280 characters, the 'Libri' (formally called the Opus Caroli) was never published as a public, formal statement on images by Charlemagne, even though he privately agreed with it. This is noted by Paul Meyvaert...

2/ I don't know why he did this & I won't speculate. The statement actually belongs to the Libri Carolini, a document produced by the Carolingians in the years leading up to Frankfurt. This wouldn't be a big deal if the 'Libri' was used at Frankfurt...but it wasn't.