Book contents
- Is God Invisible?
- Cambridge Studies in Religion, Philosophy, and Society
- Is God Invisible?
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Web Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Aesthetic Personalism
- 2 Is God Invisible?
- 3 The Gates of Perception
- 4 The Perception of Gates
- 5 The Beautiful Gate
- 6 Revealing and Concealing
- 7 Public Perception of Religious and Art Objects
- 8 A Personal Guide to the Aesthetic Experience of Works of Art
- Epilogue
- Index
2 - Is God Invisible?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 March 2021
- Is God Invisible?
- Cambridge Studies in Religion, Philosophy, and Society
- Is God Invisible?
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Web Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Aesthetic Personalism
- 2 Is God Invisible?
- 3 The Gates of Perception
- 4 The Perception of Gates
- 5 The Beautiful Gate
- 6 Revealing and Concealing
- 7 Public Perception of Religious and Art Objects
- 8 A Personal Guide to the Aesthetic Experience of Works of Art
- Epilogue
- Index
Summary
In Bertrand Russell’s The Wisdom of the West, the above photograph is paired with the caption “Mt. Sinai, home of Yahweh, the Invisible God of the Jews.” Indeed, this photograph depicts what is believed to be the 7,500-foot-high, volcanic, granite mountain located on the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, which the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament) and the Qur’an identify as the site where Yahweh makes a covenant with Moses. The choice of this grey, out-of-focus, distant view is akin to Herman Melville’s description in The Encantadas of the Galapagos Islands: “It is to be doubted whether any spot on earth can, in desolateness, furnish a parallel to this group … . In these isles rain never falls … Another feature in these isles is their emphatic unimaginableness.”
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- Information
- Is God Invisible?An Essay on Religion and Aesthetics, pp. 16 - 39Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021