Every story in catacomb art is a tale of deliverance, a tale of the powerlessness of death and the certainty of the resurrection. God delivers us from the consequences of death situations and gives us life instead. In our view of the history of Christian art it appears the crucifixion of Jesus holds the highest place. When we look back thirteen hundred years it indeed does. We haven't looked back far enough. We need to go back to the beginning, those first three centuries after Jesus walked among us, and search the dark corridors of those subterranean burial chambers of the persecuted Christians. There we find a much different theology at work: a theology with resurrection hope and power at the center. What I saw in the catacombs jarred me into a new reality: no crosses--no death themes. Deliverance and resurrection reign supreme. Reclaiming the power and centrality of Jesus' resurrection became the single, fervent challenge of my study and, even more, the challenge of my life. The entire collection of Christian art in the catacombs created during the first three centuries, and there are thousands of works, mirrors the truth of deliverance and resurrection promise declared gloriously by the authors of the New Testament Epistles. If catacomb art were all we had of Christian theology and practice from the period of Roman persecution--no Scriptures--we would have no choice but to conclude that the first message of the Christian faith was the Easter gospel. "The Art of the Roman Catacombs: Themes of Deliverance in the Age of Persecution" is the culmination of thirty-seven years of research in the catacombs of Rome by author Gregory S. Athnos. His book, which includes more than fifty art plates, is an attempt to see this treasure of art as more than art; it is a veritable theology of the early pre-legalized Church.
