Over the centuries, European debate about the nature and status of images of God and sacred figures has often upset the established order and shaken societies to their core. Out of this debate, an identifiable doctrine has emerged of the image in general and of the divine image in particular. This fascinating work concentrates on these historical arguments, from the period of Late Antiquity up to the great and classic defenses of images by St. John of Damascus and Theodore of Studion. Icon...

In it he treats of the relationship between God and mankind, stressing first and foremost the love of God for human beings, and the plan he devised for saving them from the consequences of sin. Using many texts from the Old Testament Wisdom literature, he meditates on the extraordinary desire God has to love them and be loved by them. He, like St Paul and St John, sees the Saviour, Jesus Christ, as the embodiment of the Wisdom of God, and applies to Christ the title "Eternal and Incarnate ...

The walls of medieval churches were brightly painted with religious imagery and colourful patterns.Though often shadows of their former selves, these paintings are among the most enigmatic art to survive the Middle Ages. This beautifully illustrated book is an ideal introduction to this fascinating subject.It tells the stories behind the paintings and explains their purpose, the subjects they showed, how they were made and by whom, and what happened to thes...

My Lifes Labyrinth covers a fascinating journey as we walk through life with Jesus Christ. It lifts our feelings when were down and encourages our beliefs when were searching. It makes each day a great discovery as Jesus goes before us organizing our day. As we go around each corner, there is a surprise that we had never dreamed of. Jesus knows what he is doing with our lives as we walk together along our lifes labyrinth.

Hieronymus Bosch was painting frightening, yet vaguely likable monsters long before computer games were ever invented, often including a touch of humour. His works are assertive statements about the mental illness that befalls any man who abandons the teachings of Christ. With a life that spanned from 1450 to 1516, Bosch experienced the drama of the highly charged Renaissance and its wars of religion. Medieval tradition and values were crumbling, paving the way to thrust man into a new uni...

Religious leaders and scholars encourage you to talk with God and to hear His voice. God said in John 10:14, I am the good shepherd; and I know my sheep, and am known by my sheep. Part of knowing His sheep and being known by them is speaking with them. Although you want to have a closer relationship with God and hear His voice, youre not sure how to do so.Many individualsincluding believersdont know whether God speaks to His children. In How to Hear the Voice of God, autho...

“The Devil holds the strings which move us!” (Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil, 1857.) Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer… the Devil has many names and faces, all of which have always served artists as a source of inspiration. Often commissioned by religious leaders as images of fear or veneration, depending on the society, representations of the underworld served to instruct believers and lead them along the path of righteousness. For other artists, such as Hieronymus Bosch, they provided a...

Pour apprécier l'icône orthodoxe, il faut comprendre plusieurs éléments à la fois : l'histoire, la théologie, l'objet d'art, les artistes. D'abord, l'histoire : l'iconographie s'est développée à travers de longs siècles, atteignant de nobles cimes, puis des abîmes de décadence. Ensuite, la théologie : les icônes proposent une vision du salut de l'homme et de la transfiguration de la création. Troisièmement, l'objet d'art lui-même : avant tout, une icône est une « chose » matérielle créée p...

It is common to think of Jesus of Nazareth’s main physical characteristics as including long, wavy, blondish hair and a short beard. Yet the Holy Scriptures are silent about Christ’s features, and his representations are hardly consistent in early Christian and medieval arts. The wearing of long hair, moreover, is explicitly condemned by St Paul as shameful and effeminate: therefore it is surprising that, notwithstanding the Apostle’s authoritative judgement, the long-haired archetype came...

A collection of paintings and poems written from a Christian perspective. This is a discovery of God's eloquence as opposed to the author's feeble words. It is also a journey of the author's pre-Christian poems to becoming a Christian later in life.

Focusing on the period between the Wycliffite critique of images and Reformation iconoclasm, Shannon Gayk investigates the sometimes complementary and sometimes fraught relationship between vernacular devotional writing and the religious image. She examines how a set of fifteenth-century writers, including Lollard authors, John Lydgate, Thomas Hoccleve, John Capgrave, and Reginald Pecock, translated complex clerical debates about the pedagogical and spiritual efficacy of images and texts i...

One day, while watching a television show that featured the Rapper DMX, Reverend Claiborne Brown heard him quote a poem: These are hands of a man that steals; these are hands of a man that kills; these are the hands of a man that does; now fold them, the hands of a man that was. The poem DMX quoted revealed how he lived his life on the streets, but Reverend Brown prayed and asked the Lord to bless him with a poem that would bless the world. And so the Lord blessed him with a poem called Se...