W. Stoker

Are Human Beings Religious by Nature? Schleiermacher's Generic View of Religion and the Contemporory Pluralistic. Secular Culture

Schleiermacher defends the importance of religion and church for society. In his philosophy of culture, he claims that, next to other institutions like the family, the state, science and next to hospitality and friendship, the church is indispensable to society (E1812/13, III, 7-262). He argued, over against the intellectuals of his time, in his Uber die Religion that religion belongs to human nature: “Everything that belongs to the true life of humankind and what should be a continually living and active impulse in them must, however, come from the most inward part of the spirit itself. Religion is something like that. It subjects everything to itself and shapes all action and thought to a theme of its heavenly power of imagination” (139; 37). In his theological encyclopedia he presents us with the idea that if religious communities are not to be considered mistakes, their existence “must be seen as a necessary element for the

The representation of violence as evil in contemporary art: the power of the image in Kiefer, Richter, and Bin Laden

ABSTRACT How can violence as evil be represented in art and what do works of art evoke in the viewer? Two closely related questions on the representation of violence as evil are discussed. The first is whether there is an ethical limit to the representation of evil, that is, the issue posed with respect to the (im)possibility of Holocaust art. Works by Anselm Kiefer are compared to Holocaust art in the exhibition Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery /Recent Art (New York, 2002). The second question concerns the difference between art and life with respect to the representation of evil. Bin Laden’s live image of 9/11 is compared to Richter’s painting September. The former is life as a reality show; Bin Laden’s image can petrify the viewer. The latter is art, and Richter’s style of blurred realism distances the viewer from the event so that he can arrive at a moral and political position regarding terrorism.

God in the everyday: The biblical God and the God of philosophers and artists

God in the everyday: The biblical God and the God of philosophers and artists. Life in secular Western society is lived and experienced within an immanent framework, with no reference to God. For many there is no longer any self-evident connection between God and ordinary life – ordinary life here broadly conceived as painted or narrated in art and literature. Since the time of the church fathers, the Christian tradition has conceived of God not only as personal but also, with reference to Exodus 3:14, as being or being-itself. Heidegger criticised this as onto-theology. Is it not better to speak about God without being (J-L Marion)? This problem is discussed from the approach of the philosophy of religion and it is argued that it is possible to speak about God in terms of being. This article further explores how Paul Tillich and Richard Kearney connect God with everyday life by speaking of God in terms of being. Tillich’s ontology is a-historical and classical insofar as he uses the concepts of participation and analogia entis. Kearney proposes ontology as onto-eschatological, dynamic, historical, and hermeneutical. This article thus shows that the biblical God is viewed as the God of the philosophers in terms of being-itself (Tillich) and the God who may be (Kearney). The biblical God is also the God of the artists in whose works of art a trace of the religious ultimate is visible in the sacramental power of sensory reality or in secular epiphanies.

God, Master of Arts: On the Relation between Art and Religion

Abstract What does theology have to do with art in this (post)modern period? To make clear why art and religion can be related in a positive way, the question of why art is of value will be posed (1). Subsequently some examples will be critically discussed of how art and religion have been related in theological aesthetics (2). Finally, in dialogue with the positions discussed, I will develop my own approach to theological aesthetics (3).

The Substance of Things Seen: Art, Faith and the Christian Community

[1] This book contributes to the discussion on art in the church. Jensen shows why the Christian community cannot ignore art. Chapter one, ‘Visual art and Spiritual Formation in Christian Tradition,’ deals with the formative power of the beautiful. Augustine held that the beautiful object reflects the essence of beauty. However, we need to transcend our attraction to beautiful things in creation and focus on the ultimate source of that beauty. Chapter two, ‘Visual Exegesis: Sacred Text and Narrative Art in Early Christianity,’ deals with the issue of whether visual art can be a means for interpreting stories in text form. Several questions about the relation between image and text are discussed: How should we interpret images? Is the classical exegetical tradition of the church, with its different levels of exegesis, an aid to interpretation? The examples of Jonah, Abraham and Isaac argue for the congruence of textual and visual interpretation. Chapter three, ‘Idol or Icon? The Invisible and the Incarnate God,’ deals with the debate between iconoclasts and iconodules and how the Protestant Reformation viewed visual images. Chapter four, ‘Beyond the Decorative and Didactic: The Uses of Art in the Church,’ discusses several uses of art in the church. In the section on ‘Art as Decoration,’ the author indicates the different views on beauty held by Abbot Suger and Bernard of Clairvaux in connection to the architecture of abbey churches and monasteries. ‘Art as didactic’ concerns art as the Bible of the poor. ‘Art as an Aid to Devotion’ gives examples from mediaeval paintings and from the abstract expressionistic artist Rothko. ‘Art as Prophecy’ confronts the viewer with disturbing images that raise moral problems, as seen in Picasso’s Guernica. Chapter five deals with architecture as a kind of icon and the church building as theological symbol. Chapter six discusses the thorny problem of ‘taste.’ How can we distinguish ‘good’ art from ‘bad’? [2] This book was not written for specialists but is accessible to a wide range of readers and is useful for church study groups. Jensen is a historian of Christian art and her examples are mostly from the history of the church. Issues in contemporary theological aesthetics such as the value of beauty, the interpretation of images from a hermeneutical perspective, the theological significance of Jesus in literature and in paintings of artists without any church affiliation are not

Thinking through Myths: Philosophical Perspectives

[1] In newspapers the term ‘myth’ often means a false, even deceitful, story. In opposition to this negative assessment, however, Thinking through Myths explores the relationships between truth, rationality, imagination and storytelling in order to trace the influence of myths in for example, moral life, politics and science. [2] With the exception of Schelling, Cassirer and Ricoeur, most modern philosophers have paid little attention to myths. The contributors to Thinking through Myths want to provide philosophical reflections on myths, thereby complementing approaches to this area from the fields of sociology, psychology and the history of religion. The contribution of philosophy involves the investigation of the cognitive dimension of myths. The authors of Thinking throughMythswould generally agree that myths are more than false stories. Myths are seen as credible and authoritative and function as paradigms. Hence, it is correct to describemyth as ‘true history,’ as Eliade and Pettazzoni do, in the sense that myths are always considered to be true by those who embrace them as myths (9). But what does the idea of ‘true myths’ imply? One can ask what it might mean to say that myths are rational, in what sense myths are a permanent feature of our culture and what happens when the idea is rejected that myths belong to a previous primitive stage. [3] R. Segal discusses E.B. Taylor’s conception of myth as primitive philosophy and also gives other views of the relationship between myth and philosophy from Frazer to Popper, Bultmann and Jonas. However, this survey is too brief to give a balanced overview of the philosophical study of myth after Taylor. [4] Taylor sees natural sciences as a paradigm for rational thought that is free of myth, but M. Gerhart and A.M. Russell show in their article ‘Myth and the Public Science’ how public science depends on the narrative structure of myth. They argue that the persuasiveness of science is not independent of mythic narrative. [5] Most of the articles elaborate on the rationality of myth from different schools and fields of philosophy: phenomenology (M. Scarborough), pragmatic semiotics (W.L. Power), metaphysics (K. Schilbrack), feminist philosophy (P.S. Anderson), moral philosophy (J. Wetzel), postmodernist philosophy (W.G. Doty), environmental philosophy (J.B. Callicott) and political theory (C. Flood).