It is rare for an author in his late 80s to still publish books. 1 Dr. P. Solomon Raj, a Lutheran theologian and creative artist from India, is an exception to this rule. Born in 1921, he became a school teacher, then studied theology at Gurukul, Madras, served as a minister and as a student chaplain and after that fulfi lled a wide range of positions in India, at Selly Oak, Birmingham uk and other countries before settling down again in his own country. In the meantime he published his PhD

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... ertation in Birmingham and was active in the Asian Christian Arts Association. Since a number of years he is the spiritual father of the St. Luke's Lalitkala Ashram in Vijayawada, Andra Pradesh. In the 1950s he discovered his gift as an artist, fi rst specializing in linocuts and wood block printing (black and white, later coloured ones as well) and then also in designing batiks, and -though to a lesser extent -acryl paintings. Serving in the fi eld of modern mass communication as a means of propagating the Gospel, he discovered the possibilities of using visual art in explaining the biblical narratives. Most of the art works which he published in separate booklets and books are accompanied by brief, often surprising, poetical meditations which remind one of the work of Rabindranath Tagore and others. In an unpublished paper Solomon Raj himself speaks about the prophetic role of the Christian artist. Like prophets, the artist is an instrument of inspiration, a visionary and fore-teller who uses symbolic language. And, 'he is aware of the problems in the society in which he lives, he speaks the vocabulary and the idiom of his time and he wakes up people of his day to some of 1 P. Solomon Raj, Biblia Pauperum. Th e Poor Man's Bible, Bangalore: ATCbooks 2008, ISBN