In Dücane Cündioğlu’s understanding of theological art, the relationship between religion and art is considered not only through what is believed to be sacred, but through how the sacred is given form, where it is represented, and through which rituals it is sustained. It is therefore necessary to distinguish between the concepts of idol, sculpture, and image, just as it is necessary to recognize the formal differences between painting, fresco, stained glass, relief, carving, and architecture. When religious language gathers all these distinctions under a single concept such as “image” or “idol,” the material and formal character of the art object becomes obscured. Cündioğlu’s central objection begins here: before determining the theological status of an art object, one must first understand what that object is from the perspective of art history.
This approach also rests on the idea that art did not emerge independently of the history of religion. Cave, tomb, temple, figure, ritual, poetry, music, and collective memory are historically interrelated. Human beings do not merely think about the sacred; they turn toward it, circle around it, bow before it, offer gifts to it, compose poems and songs about it, and give it form in stone, on walls, in glass, and through architecture. Theological art therefore concerns not only the representation of sacred figures in works of art, but the transformation of the human relationship with the sacred into matter, space, image, and bodily movement.
Creation, Form-Giving, and Animation
One of the fundamental analogies developed by Cündioğlu is the relationship between divine creation and the artist’s act of giving form to matter. In discussing Qur’anic accounts of the creation of the human being, he distinguishes between verbs such as halaka, sevva, and savvara. Creation, formation, and the subsequent giving of the breath of life are understood as successive dimensions of the coming-into-being of the human being. God does not merely give form; He is also the source of the matter that receives form and, finally, brings that form to life.
The sculptor’s activity can resemble only part of this process. The artist finds clay, marble, stone, wood, metal, or glass already given. These materials can be cut, carved, shaped, assembled, and brought into a particular form, but the artist is not the cause of their existence and cannot give genuine life to the form produced. The resemblance between divine creation and artistic production therefore lies in form-giving, while the distinction appears at the level of bringing matter into existence and animating it.
Cündioğlu does not treat this distinction merely as an abstract theory of creation. It also reveals a fundamental tension in the history of figurative art. When human beings shape lifeless matter into the form of a human or an animal, the object approaches the appearance of a living being while remaining without life. One reason sculpture has been capable of becoming such a powerful religious object throughout history is precisely that lifeless matter acquires, through form, the appearance of something alive.
His interpretation of the calf of Samiri is significant in this respect. The calf made from molten metal is, in Cündioğlu’s account, in itself a lifeless “body.” Yet when air passing through it produces a sound, it creates the impression of a bellowing creature. Cündioğlu connects rîh, wind, with the way in which the lifeless object acquires sound. Through the movement of air, dead metal behaves as though it were alive. This becomes an example of how human beings may be unable to give real spirit to shaped matter, yet can still give it the appearance of animation.
How Did Human Beings Give Form to the Gods?
In Cündioğlu’s account, the human shaping of the sacred does not begin with sculpture. It extends across a broad field from speech to architecture. Speech, writing, ornament, miniature, painting, fresco, stained glass, relief, carving, and architecture are different ways in which the sacred acquires material or visual form.
Speech is the most fundamental stage of this process. Gods, heroes, and sacred events are first narrated. Stories become poems; poems become songs and enter collective memory. Writing then gives permanence to speech. Hüsn-i hat, the art of beautiful calligraphy in Islamic culture, is one of the artistic forms Cündioğlu invokes in this context. Writing is no longer simply a collection of signs that convey meaning; it becomes speech given visible form. Beautiful writing transforms linguistic content into aesthetic form.
With ornament and miniature, another transition takes place from speech to image. Figurative or nonfigurative decoration organizes the surface. Miniature painting renders historical or mythological narratives visible, bringing scenes contained in language before the eye. Yet when explaining the theological problem of representation, Cündioğlu particularly emphasizes the distinction between surface arts and volumetric forms.
Painting is two-dimensional. Fresco is likewise a two-dimensional representation, but instead of being executed on paper or an independent support, it is applied to a wall before the surface has dried and becomes part of the architecture. Fresco is therefore not merely a painting; it is a painting integrated into a structure. One of Cündioğlu’s central points is that a wall painting and an independent three-dimensional sculpture should not be treated as the same form of representation.
Stained glass produces a different visual effect. When light passes through colored glass, it carries color and image into the surrounding space. Cündioğlu compares this effect to the union of lifeless matter with an animating principle. Glass is matter; light renders the figure visible and effective. The parallel he establishes with the metal calf of Samiri reappears here: air in sculpture and light in stained glass give lifeless material the impression of animation.
Relief forms an intermediate stage between painting and sculpture. It rises from the surface and acquires volume, yet does not fully sever its relationship with the wall. Although physically three-dimensional, it remains tied to the architectural surface. With sculpture, this bond disappears. Sculpture is an autonomous object occupying its own space; the viewer can walk around it. One of the principal distinctions Cündioğlu stresses in relation to theological representation is precisely this: the religious status of a freestanding three-dimensional object has not always been historically identical to that of an image bound to a surface.
Naht, carving and sculpting, is another important concept in this process of giving form. Stone, wood, or another material can be carved into shape, and the same act may produce architecture in one context and a figure in another. Structure and sculpture therefore share a common form of material intervention at their origins.
Architecture is not simply the final item in this sequence; it is the field that brings all the others together. A temple can contain frescoes on its walls, stained glass in its windows, reliefs on its surfaces, and sculptures within or around it. Theological art therefore emerges not as a sum of separate artistic disciplines, but as an integrated field composed of space, image, and ritual.
Idol, Sculpture, and Timsal
A central conceptual problem in Cündioğlu’s lecture arises from treating the idol and the sculpture as if they were identical. In his analysis, the idol is not an art-historical technical category; it is a religious term referring to a relation of worship. A sculpture does not become an idol simply because it is carved into human or animal form. What makes it an idol is the sacred relationship established with what it represents and the ritual directed toward it.
Nor does Cündioğlu reduce the word “heykel” directly to the meaning of idol. He draws attention to the fact that the term in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Syriac contexts could refer to a temple, palace, structure, or dwelling, and that it later came to be used for figures found within sacred buildings. The historical semantic field of the word is therefore broader than the modern Turkish sense of an independent sculptural object.
Arabic religious terminology also contains several distinct terms. Cündioğlu associates nusb/ensâb with standing stones and altars; sanem and vesen with human or animal figures; and temâsîl with more general forms of representation. These distinctions become decisive when theological texts are read through the perspective of art history.
The formula he attributes to Muqātil ibn Sulaymān — “Not every timsal is an idol, but every idol is a timsal” — expresses this relationship clearly. Timsal is the broader category of representation; the idol is a representation that has acquired a particular religious function. It is therefore misleading to imagine every appearance of the same word as referring to an independent three-dimensional sculpture that is worshipped.
Cündioğlu interprets the temâsîl said to have been produced for Solomon’s palace or temple in this light. Whether these were sculptures, frescoes, reliefs, or decorations in glass cannot be determined by the word alone. He notes that early interpretations associated them with human, animal, or vegetal figures executed on glass. He therefore resists reducing the concept of temâsîl directly to the meaning of idol.
The Material, Form, and Ritual Status of the Idol
The idol is not an abstract religious concept; it is a concrete object made from a particular material. Cündioğlu therefore emphasizes stone, marble, wood, gold, silver, copper, lead, and precious stones. If a figure is expected to remain for long periods inside a temple or in an outdoor setting, durable materials are required. Material permanence becomes one of the conditions for the continuity of the object within the cult.
Descriptions he cites from Ibn al-Kalbī make the formal characteristics of these objects visible. He recounts a description of Wadd as a large, tall male figure wearing inner and outer garments, armed and carrying particular attributes. The fact that the clothing was carved and painted indicates that such sculptures were not simply unworked blocks of stone; color, costume, and attributes gave the figures their identities.
Hubal is associated in different traditions with copper or red agate. The fact that some idols were human and others animal in form also indicates that the repertoire of sacred representation was not limited to anthropomorphic figures. Horses, eagles, and other animal forms could likewise become part of sacred representation.
Yet the form alone still does not make the object an idol. The figure is placed in a sanctuary, fixed in position, visited, circled, and presented with gifts and sacrifices. Through architecture and ritual, the sculpture acquires religious status. Matter is joined to form, form to figure, and figure to ritual.
Where Did Human Beings Worship?
In Cündioğlu’s account, the earliest forms of spaces of worship are associated with the tomb and the cave. Death is one of the primary fields in which human beings establish a relationship with the sacred. Practices that develop around the body, memory, and location of the dead gradually take the form of grave, shrine, tumulus, and temple.
The tradition he recounts concerning the descendants of Adam circling the place where his body was kept, as well as accounts of images made after the deaths of righteous figures in the time of Noah, constitute religious-memory versions of the same structure. Their common sequence is dead body → memory → figure → visitation → ritual.
Cündioğlu also thinks of the cave in this context. Prehistoric cave paintings are not treated simply as aesthetic production; they are read together with the ceremonial and sacred character of the cave. The stelae and reliefs of Göbeklitepe, tombstones, and other early structures are likewise invoked as evidence of the close relationship between art, sanctuary, and ritual.
The temple later takes different architectural forms in different cultures. Cave, tent, synagogue, church, and mosque are not presented as direct stages of a single architectural lineage, but they share a common function: the spatial organization of the relationship with the sacred. Human beings do not merely “believe”; they turn toward the sacred in a particular place.
Architecture is therefore not an external frame around theological art. Worship requires a space that organizes the direction of the body, its movement, and its gaze. The sanctuary is the point at which artistic representation and ritual behavior intersect.
How Did Human Beings Worship?
In Cündioğlu’s understanding of theological art, worship is not merely an intellectual belief. Body, sound, direction, movement, and object converge within ritual. The first form of worship is orientation. Visitation and pilgrimage require movement toward a particular sacred site. The sacred is not merely contemplated from a distance; one physically goes toward it.
The second dimension concerns the posture of the body. Bowing, swaying, touching one’s face to the ground, rükû and secde place the body in a particular position before the sacred. Belief is thereby expressed through bodily conduct. Human beings do not merely state that they show reverence; they arrange their bodies according to that reverence.
Circular movement, especially in the form of tawaf, gives rhythm to movement through space. A sacred object or structure stands at the center while the body repeatedly moves around it. The recurrent appearance of circling in Cündioğlu’s accounts of tombs, idols, and sanctuaries suggests that one of the fundamental geometries of ritual is the relationship between center and circumference.
Prayer and supplication constitute the verbal dimension of ritual. Yet speech can become poetry and music. Hymns, laments, and songs do not merely narrate collective memory; through rhythm they carry it into the body and emotion. In Cündioğlu’s anthropological emphasis, the connection between religion, music, and dance is therefore fundamental. Ritual transforms speech into a bodily and auditory experience.
Gift-giving forms another dimension of worship. Sacrifice, votive offerings, and other forms of giving constitute the material expression of the relationship with the sacred. In Cündioğlu’s video description, circumcision and sacrifice are also listed within this order of offerings and bodily signs. Belief thus generates concrete practices extending into the body, objects, and material value.
These four areas — orientation, bodily movement, speech/music, and offering — transform worship from a purely mental assent into a comprehensive human activity. The sanctuary provides space; the figure and symbol provide focus; mythology provides meaning; ritual provides repetition.
Mythology: Memory That Gives Meaning to the Figure
The lasting effect of a sculpture or sanctuary does not depend solely on formal achievement. In Cündioğlu’s analysis, what sustains such objects is the mythological narrative that develops around them. For a person who does not know whom a figure represents, a statue is merely shaped stone or bronze; narrative connects that form with history, character, and sacred meaning.
In the ancient Greek world, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, the tragic tradition, and stories transmitted by poets across generations form the basis of this collective memory. Zeus or Poseidon does not live through sculpture alone; their stories, conflicts, kinships, anger, and actions occupy collective memory. Sculpture makes visible a figure already recognized through narrative.
Cündioğlu therefore argues that scattered stories are not enough to constitute mythology. A powerful mythological world requires broad epic narrative, poetry, song, and a rich imagination. While arguing that no epic corpus on the scale of the Greek world developed in the Hijaz, he draws attention to the strong linguistic and narrative unifying force of the Qur’an within Arab culture.
Within this framework, mythology functions as a narrative structure that gives an object “spirit.” The more stories accumulate around a figure, the more enduring its place in collective memory becomes. The artist gives form to matter; narrative gives social meaning to form.
The Fresco in the Kaaba and the Limits of Representation
One of the examples through which Cündioğlu tests these art-historical distinctions concerns a tradition associated with the conquest of Mecca. He recounts a report according to which, while the idols in the Kaaba were removed, a wall image of Mary and Jesus was preserved by the Prophet, and he reconsiders this tradition through the distinction between the independent three-dimensional idol and the fresco bound to a surface.
Cündioğlu also revises his own earlier interpretation at this point. Once the distinctions between fresco, relief, and sculpture are considered more clearly, he argues that the report should be reconsidered together with the question of temâsîl. If there is a formal and theological distinction between a freestanding three-dimensional sculpture and a two-dimensional surface image, it becomes difficult to gather every figurative representation under a single category of “idol.”
This example clearly reveals the method underlying the lecture: before making a theological judgment, one must determine what the object actually is. What is a fresco? What is stained glass? What is relief? What is sculpture? Which of these can the term timsal encompass? At what point does an object become an idol? Without art history answering these questions in terms of form and technique, theological language can collapse distinct objects into one another.
Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Visuality
Cündioğlu also evaluates differences among Christian denominations through these formal distinctions. Catholicism accepted visible representations of the sacred on a broad scale, making sculpture, painting, fresco, and stained glass integral elements of church space. Sacred narrative was constructed not only as something heard or read, but as a world to be seen.
In Orthodoxy, by contrast, a different boundary emerged between freestanding three-dimensional sculpture and the two-dimensional icon. Sculpture was rejected while icons, frescoes, and paintings remained. This is especially important for Cündioğlu because it shows that even within the same religion visual representation does not function through a simple opposition of complete acceptance and complete rejection; distinctions of dimension and form matter.
A different tendency emerges in Protestantism. Cündioğlu summarizes this through the idea that “God is not seen; He is heard.” Especially in Calvinist spaces, the removal of visual objects draws the sacred away from image and toward the word. The transfer of paintings and sculptures removed from churches into museum contexts changes their theological status as art objects.
This transformation stands at the center of Cündioğlu’s interpretation of secularization. An object once embedded in a sacred space and a specific religious narrative can retain the same material existence while becoming an object of art history in a museum. The object remains the same; context and meaning change.
From Religious Sanctuary to Secular Monument
For Cündioğlu, it would also be misleading to think that theological art simply disappears in the modern world. Secular societies may cease to produce statues of gods, but they continue to produce statues, busts, monumental tombs, and memorials for leaders, heroes, and historical figures.
His comparison involving statues of Atatürk and Anıtkabir is not intended to equate religious worship with secular commemoration, but to reveal similar mechanisms in the production of collective memory. A monument concentrates the shared past of a society around a particular figure; the memorial space is visited, ceremonies are performed there, and the narrative is repeated from generation to generation.
The same structure can be found around monuments dedicated to other modern leaders. Modernization and secularization therefore do not eliminate the human need to produce sculpture, monument, visitation, and collective memory. The content of the sacred may change, while the social function of symbol and ritual continues.
His discussion of the Black Stone likewise serves to show that an object’s meaning does not arise solely from its material substance. Physically, a stone is a stone; narrative, tradition, and ritual give it historical and religious meaning. In the same way, the bronze or marble of a secular monument does not possess historical significance by itself. Meaning arises within the relationship a society establishes with that object.
Collective Memory and Meaning
The discussion of “packages of meaning” at the beginning of Cündioğlu’s lecture is not entirely separate from the problem of theological art. Human beings inherit from the societies into which they are born not only a language, but also ready-made symbols, stories, values, and modes of interpretation. Religion, ideology, and culture produce and sustain these systems of meaning.
The art object is one of the strongest carriers of such inherited meanings. Temple, tomb, sculpture, fresco, or monument is not merely a physical object; it materializes collective memory. When a person encounters a particular figure, the narrative previously learned about it is recalled as well. Art therefore does not merely represent the past; it participates in determining how the past is remembered.
Cündioğlu’s emphasis on individual responsibility gains meaning in this context. To accept inherited packages of meaning without question is to leave one’s intellectual responsibility to others. To draw one’s own path requires the courage to admit that an idea accepted as true for years may have been mistaken. His discussion of art and religion therefore concerns not only the history of ancient idols, but also the symbols, narratives, and forms of collective memory within which human beings continue to live today.
Conclusion
At the center of Dücane Cündioğlu’s analysis of theological art lies the relationship between creation and form-giving. In creation narratives, God brings matter into being, gives it form, and animates it. The human artist finds matter already present and can shape it, but cannot give it genuine life. Nevertheless, art can bring lifeless matter close to the appearance of a living being and can give it a powerful impression of animation through narrative, light, sound, or ritual.
Human beings carry the sacred from speech into writing, ornament, miniature, painting, fresco, stained glass, relief, carving, and architecture. These forms are not identical: surface differs from volume, attachment to the wall from spatial independence, representation from the object of worship. Distinguishing idol from sculpture and sculpture from timsal is therefore not merely terminological precision; it is a basic condition for understanding theological art.
The space of worship also shapes artistic form. Cave, grave, shrine, and sanctuary constitute the material field of collective memory together with sculpture, relief, and painting. Human beings turn toward the sacred, bow before it, circle around it, pray, sing poems and hymns, and offer sacrifices and gifts. The relationship with the sacred thus moves from thought to body, from body to space, and from space to art.
Mythology gives narrative to this structure. The stone or bronze of a sculpture does not by itself create collective memory; stories about the figure make it meaningful. Ritual repeats the narrative, the sanctuary gives it place, and art makes it visible. Secularization does not entirely abolish this structure: the religious statue may be replaced by the monument, the sanctuary by the memorial site, and the sacred story by a historical or national narrative.
Theological art, therefore, is not merely the history of which images religions permitted and which they prohibited. In the framework developed by Cündioğlu, the question is more fundamental: how human beings give form to matter, how they give meaning to form, how they ritualize meaning, and how all of these become part of collective memory.
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