Jim, others may have responded with greater authority already and I’m just now seeing this query. The Man of Sorrows became a huge image in Ethiopian tradition (evidently brought in by Portuguese Jesuits in the sixteenth century). However, I’m a Byzantinist not an Ethiopianist. In Byzantine tradition the image of judgment is always Christ (either a Pantokrator image or the scene of the Final Judgment). In these icons, Christ’s wounds are present because it is an expression of Incarnational theology—He resurrected and ascended in the body, so the very wounds that Thomas checked to verify the Resurrection remain. The fact that Christ is responsible for judgment is sound. First, in the gospels Christ makes clear that judgment is given to the Son of Man. Second, in Eastern tradition, all actions of the godhead (creation, salvation, judgment) are actually actions of the Trinity, no single Person. Nonetheless, in iconographic tradition, the Father cannot be depicted (for no one has seen Him) and the Spirit appears more or less as beams of light, so Christ alone is shown. There is no sense of needing to reconcile Christ as intercessor and judge because they are really one and the same thing (i.e., God’s judgment and mercy are the same thing seen from different perspectives).

- Kurt

medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture

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