Perhaps Augustine was on to something. “Anyone, surely, who has read or heard what the apostle Paul wrote or what was written about him, will fabricate a face for the apostle in his imagination and for everybody else whose name is mentioned in these texts…. Even the physical face of the Lord is pictured with infinite variety by countless imaginations, though whatever it was like he certainly only had one. Nor as regards the faith we have in the Lord Jesus Christ is it in the least relevant to salvation what our imaginations picture him like, which is probably quite different from the reality…. What does matter is that we think of him as a man; for we have embedded in us as it were a standard notion of the nature of man…. Nor do we know what the virgin Mary looked like, from whom he was marvelously born .. . nor have we seen Lazarus and what kind of figure he had…. And so without prejudice to faith it is permissible to say “Perhaps she had a face like this, perhaps she did not.”