Explainer

Creed

Israel

Middle East

23 March 2024

6 min read

The most contested real estate on the planet

Can contradictory views about how God connects to Jerusalem ever be reconciled?

Peter Walker

Peter is a rector, writer and theologian.

A gold-domed, blue-walled octagonal mosque seen through a row of arches.

The Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount.

Andrew Shiva via Wikipedia.

It was Saturday 14 October last year. BBC Radio were about to play a pre-recorded interview with a spokesman for Hamas and needed to explain to listeners something in advance: “the reference you will hear in a moment, stating that one of the causes of the Gaza conflict is the desire to preserve the freedom of ‘Al Aqsa’, is a references to the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem—regarded as the third holiest site in the Muslim world”.

That was it in a nutshell. The Hamas spokesman was making it plain that, behind all the many political causes of the conflict erupting so tragically in the Holy Land, there was an essentially theological issue. Yes, as in other conflicts around the world, there are strong human desires in both Israeli and Palestinian communities to live in a place of security and to have their aspirations for some political independence to be adequately met, but here in the Holy Land there is an irreducible ‘God-component’ to the conflict.

The heart of the conflict

It’s not just that the conflict is predominantly between two major monotheistic religions—Judaism and Islam. It’s that those two world-religions have conflicting theological views—derived from their respective scriptures, the Hebrew Bible and the Quran—about physical places in the Holy land. And, even more particularly, they are have essentially contradictory views about the piece of land which Christians now often refer to as the ‘Temple Mount’: namely, the place where the former Jewish Temple stood, but which Muslims refer to as Haram Esh Sharif (‘the noble sanctuary’), because it is now the site both of the Dome of the Rock and the above-mentioned Al Aqsa mosque.

This is the most contested piece of real estate on the planet. The same site is, on the one hand, revered by Jews as the site of Solomon’s temple centred on the ‘holy of holies’ and, on the other, is revered by Muslims as the place from which Muhammed went on his mysterious ‘night journey’ up to heaven and back, as recounted in the Qu’ran. So, for both religions the site is not just of historical interest but rather is invested with theological weight—as a place associated like no other, with God himself.

The Hamas spokesman was thus helpfully laying bare the irreducible theological crux at the root of this conflict. Secular politicians and humanitarian agencies might want to take this ‘God-component’ out of the equation, but it will not go away. For this conflict is based on essentially contradictory views about how God connects to Jerusalem and especially to the Temple Mount.

Enter Jesus

The familiar story of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem is remembered on Palm Sunday every year. It is an event with layers upon layers of meaning. At its heart, however, is the conviction of the Gospel writers and of the early Christians that Jesus had entered Jerusalem as the human embodiment of God himself.

A hint of this may be found in the way that Jesus, when criticised by the religious leaders for the extravagant claims the crowds were making for Jesus at that moment (especially haling him as the ‘Messiah’), himself claims that “even the stones would cry out” in honour of him, if they could—presumably because they know that their Creator was passing by at just that moment!

Yet this conviction—that Jesus had been the human embodiment of God—is perhaps best sensed when we note how Jesus’ coming over the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem can, arguably, be seen as the return of the Lord’s Shekinah glory into the Temple. This comes through noting a highly significant passage in the Old Testament book of Ezekiel. The prophet, writing from exile in Babylon, had seen a vision about the ‘glory of the God of Israel’: ‘the glory of the Lord went up from within the city and stopped above the mountain to the east of it’ — in other words the Mount of Olives, the hill to the east of the city of Jerusalem, that looked over the Temple Mount

Now Jesus comes over the Mount of Olives and storms into the Temple: this is Ezekiel’s vision but now in reverse. He is embodying the return of the Lord’s glory; he is the personal presence of Israel’s God; he is, as the prophet Malachi predicted, ‘the Lord himself coming into his Temple’.

If true, then Jesus was God’s embodied presence coming into the Temple. God had previously made the Temple to be the place where he dwelt on earth; now Jesus was that presence himself—in human form.

And, when Jesus goes on solemnly to announce that “your house is left desolate”, he is making it clear that that divine presence, which had genuinely filled the Temple back in the days of Solomon, was now being removed once and for all.

After some further teaching Jesus eventually makes his own final departure from the Temple precincts—a clear sign for the writer of Matthew’s Gospel that Jesus is taking the divine presence with him out of the building. And a few weeks later, as described by Luke, we are presented with the picture of Jesus taking divine presence back into heaven in the event of the Ascension.

Viewed in this way, we can see the whole story of Jesus’ going into the Temple as effectively a ‘de-secration’ of the Temple. He was making it clear that he alone was now where God’s presence was to be found. Divine presence was no longer to be associated with a place, but with a person.

Back to the present

Coming back to the present day, then, there is a profound sense in which those who associate the former Temple Mount with a doctrine of divine presence are chasing after ‘thin air’. The Temple once upon a time had housed the presence of God, but, according to this Christian understanding, it does so no longer—it is an ‘empty pot of gold’. ‘The Glory has departed’—in Jesus.

If so, this major source of tension in the contemporary Middle East—the conflicting theologies of Judaism and Islam concerning the sanctity of the Temple Mount and its historic connection to God’s presence—can only be resolved by a recognition that Jesus has decisively changed all this.

If Jesus is ‘God incarnate’ (something clearly not recognised in Judaism and Islam)—if, in other words, he is the place where we go to find God—then that takes the ‘God-component’ out of the equation and brings to an end the elevated status that so many give to Jerusalem and the Temple.

Jerusalem, understood in this way, now points in God’s purposes to the far greater reality of Jesus Christ who alone embodies the true presence of God in human form. Jesus himself said that “one greater than the Temple is here”. But, tragically, the overwhelming majority of those who live in Jerusalem and the Holy Land today are committed to religious systems which deny these and other New Testament claims for Jesus.

Taking this further

Alternatively, you might like to access to a suite of resources for Holy Week: take your pick from some ‘In the Steps of Jesus’ videos (filmed in Jerusalem), or some audio recordings (‘The Week that Changed the World’) or a book (‘Immersed in the Passion’) that retells the story from Palm Sunday to Easter Day.

Review

Art

Character

Creed

Easter

Suffering

18 April 2025

5 min read

Why sculpt the face of Christ?

In Nic Fiddian Green’s work we feel pain, strength, fear and wisdom.

Jonathan Evens

Jonathan is Team Rector for Wickford and Runwell. He is co-author of The Secret Chord, and writes on the arts.

A man looks up a shaft of light that illuminates him and a crucifix higher up a wall.

I Accepted, 2025.

Richard Foster.

The seeds of faith were sown in the life of Nic Fiddian Green by his father. As he has explained recently, he “was shown a way and a faith, and an understanding around the faith of Christianity, in the way my father lived”.

Later, his wife-to-be, Henrietta Hutley, asked him to help create Stations of the Cross for the Wintershall Estate in Surrey where, today, The Nativity and the Life of Christ are regularly performed. Henrietta’s father, Peter, wrote and brought The Passion of Jesus to Trafalgar Square, while her mother, Anne, had the vision for the Stations of the Cross project after a life-changing visit to Medjugorje.

Fiddian Green says that “The Face of Christ has been with me for over 40 years” and that he has “searched for His face through my art as part of my spiritual journey, and also in the work of many others – especially Renaissance artists like Giotto, Piero della Francesca and Michelangelo”.

Fiddian Green, who is internationally celebrated for his monumental equine sculptures, has created a deeply personal and spiritually resonant exhibition entitled The Face of Christ. The exhibition features 20 new sculptures including works in bronze, copper, lead, marble, plaster, and silver, together with a series of drawings. The exhibition ranges from the Nativity to the Resurrection but focuses primarily on the crucifixion.

The exhibition is deeply personal for Fiddian Green because it is informed by the harrowing encounters he had with an array of life-threatening illnesses a few years ago. These caused an obvious and honest creative re-assessment and it is from these experiences that a stronger, deeper and more contemplative vision has emerged. One that permeates the new work via modes of stillness and reflection.

The Face of Christ offers a profoundly meditative engagement with the image of Christ, capturing a sense of serenity, resilience, and transcendence in bronze and stone. In these works, he shows us how his spirit and his faith help him triumph over the physical as he explores the enduring power of faith, suffering and redemption. In the eyes of his work, we feel pain, strength, fear, wisdom and more as he asks questions of the viewer that leave a powerful and spiritual resonance.

Fiddian Green says: “These works are a reflection of my journey of faith. I have come to find that His power to elevate us underpins everything I strive to do and The Face of Christ is an attempt for me to convey in my work all that He conveys in my heart. Christ gives me the key, but will I open the door…?”

A sketch shows the hanging head of Christ wearing a crown of thorns.

This Storm Will Pass, 2024. Slademore Gallery.

A crucifix hands on a round-topped slab.

I Paid, 1993. Slademore Gallery.

Crown of Thorns, 2025. Nic Fiddian Green.

While the exhibition focuses on the crucifixion and the face of the crucified Christ, the expression on Christ’s face is generally one of peace, rather than pain. In part, this is because many of the heads of Christ included are images of Christ resting in death prior to the resurrection. The brokenness that the crucifixion brought is shown in these images through damage to the body of Christ, as opposed to the expressions on his face. This is most powerfully the case with ‘Broken for You’, a bronze crucifixion sculpture where Christ’s torso, as well as being scarred by a long spear-like fissure, has also been fractured with the two parts fused together using brace brackets. Similar fissures appear on other of the crucifixion sculptures but ‘Broken for You’ goes furthest in graphically showing the pain Christ endured on our behalf.

It seems to me that Fiddian Green could go further in revealing the horrors that Christ endured and that his love of Renaissance art with its focus on beauty and balance might hold him back in this regard. Another artist to have regularly depicted the Crucifixion in images shown in mainstream galleries in recent years is Peter Howson, whose images of the crucifixion are much more expressionist graphically capturing the depth of pain that Christ endured. Fiddian Green’s drawings, more than his sculptures, tap into the sense of pain endured, particularly ‘This Storm will Pass’, a partial image of the face of the crucified Christ which in its frenetic pencil-marks and incomplete state speaks particularly powerfully.

Fiddian Green, by contrast, primarily gives us a sense of the peace that he receives from Christ on the face of Christ. ‘I Forgive’, a bronze head of the crucified Christ depicts the love with which Christ looks on us as he endures the cross. ‘Christ is Laid to Rest’ is a huge head encircled by a crown of massive spikey thorns with green verdigris overtones suggesting the sweat and blood of anguish which has led to the completion of purpose that Christ finds in death. ‘Peace’, a plaster sculpture of Christ’s head, is also redolent of the supreme achievement of the cross; ‘It is finished’, meaning that all his work is complete and done, enabling him to rest and enabling us to enter rest.

In these images, Fiddian Green is reading back into the events of the crucifixion the outcomes that it gains for us and showing, in his Christ figures, the peace that he personally finds in the love and forgiveness which overflows from the crucified Christ to each and every human being throughout time and history.

Fiddian Green writes of having “been given materials to use by the God of heaven and earth” – those materials of the earth that he uses in his sculptures – and says that “it is my hope that some of these pieces may rest and resonate with those who see it; that they may find a deep connection by gazing on the works which takes the eye, the heart and the soul to the One who helped me create them”.

While Lent, Holy Week and Easter are often times when art is offered to enable us to walk in the footsteps of Christ it is not common for commercial galleries to specifically invite meditation on these events, so don’t miss the opportunity for contemplation that the Sladmore Gallery is providing through this exhibition.

The Face of Christ, 10th April – 2nd May 2025, Sladmore Gallery, London.

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