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Chapter 1 - Understanding the Icon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2023

Stephanie Rumpza
Preface by
Jean-Luc Marion
Stephanie Rumpza
Affiliation:
Sorbonne Université, Paris
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Summary

This chapter surveys art history, patristic theology, and modern Orthodox theology to identify a starting point that can address the mediating function of the icon. However, each of these approaches is also marked by limitations that ultimately leave them unable to sufficiently address two questions that are essential to this inquiry: (a) What is a painted image, and how does it mediate the truth of what it shows by its specific, finite capacities and aesthetic devices? (b) What would it mean for God to “show himself,” or what kind of “visibility” would God have? I make a case that phenomenology will be a powerful tool to address both questions.

Keywords

IdoliconoclasmiconsByzantine Art HistoryJohn DamasceneTheodore StuditeLeonid OuspenskyOrthodox TheologyDivine visibilityspiritual images
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Chapter
Information
Phenomenology of the Icon
Mediating God through the Image
 , pp. 10 - 55
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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