There may be more than one way to conceptualize what Christianity is all about, and more than one defining visual image. Holy Cross, Life-Giving Tree explores the implications of what at first seems an unlikely identification: that the cross of Christ is one and the same as the mysterious tree of life mentioned in scripture. Unlikely as this identification may sound today, it was widespread in art of the first Christian millennium and is still prominent in liturgies of eastern branches of Christianity today.

The book documents early tree of life imagery for the Cross across wide swathes of the ancient world: from Scotland to India and from Ethiopia to Armenia. It also explores liturgies from east and west, before going on to ask what it might all mean for moderns. The medieval abbess Hildegard of Bingen (widely popular today) is cited as a possible western exemplar of such ideas. It also proposes that tree of life imagery could be helpful (for example) in interfaith dialogue. It argues, “the deepest appeal of the Living Cross motif is that it evokes patient vegetative kinds of growth that are inherently universal and deeply pacific.”