Image and Presence: A Christological Reflection on Iconoclasm and Iconophilia (Encountering Traditions)

We aren’t Buddhists, I objected; we don’t have to deny the goodness of desire. Christian faith does not see desire itself as bad or as the root of suffering. The call to indifference sounded to me like a call to neutrality, to denying what I wanted in exchange for a prim piety.

Here the faith in creation, the source of all paganism, breaks down. Here this whole philosophy and wisdom is abandoned to folly. Here God is non-God. Here is the triumph of death, the enemy, the non-church, the lawless state, the blasphemer, the soldiers. Here Satan triumphs over God. Our faith begins at the point where atheists suppose that it mu

The more theology and the church attempt to become relevant to the problems of the present day, the more deeply they are drawn into the crisis of their own Christian identity.

The emptiness and even temporary depression we feel on releasing an image is the “abyss” that comes from surrendering a false belief that had seemed to make our lives understandable. An image creates a false unity of belief and experience which gives us a kind of security because it seems to make our lives coherent and our experiences familiar. But