Madam, - Your homilist G.F. (Thinking Anew, July 24th) warns us that paintings of God such as Michelangelo's in the Sistine Chapel can give too human an image of God and take from the essential mystery surrounding Him.
"To try and paint a picture of God is wilfully to attempt to dispel that mystery. . .It is almost certainly the case that your God and mine is similarly too human in our estimation of him."
Rather than wilfully attempting to dispel the mystery surrounding God by painting him in human form, I would have thought that Michelangelo and others were in keeping with the Creator's fondness for that particular form - even to the point of considering it a worthy form for his own son.
G.F. would remind us further that there are no pictures of God in the Bible - that we must concentrate on the Word. But that Word came in human form - so we do have a picture, unless G.F. would prefer not to know what his own body looks like.
To approach God with anything less, or more, than is contained in the human form (male or female), is to "wilfully" oppose the image of how God wishes to be approached. - Yours, etc.,
DECLAN KELLY, Whitechurch Road, Rathfarnham, Dublin 14.