Science and religion in Western literature: critical and theological studies

Abstract

towards it. It was then that God spoke to Him and revealed Himself (135). Through each feast, Hart invites us deeper into a mystery that, with the magi and the shepherds, provokes awe and wonder rather than thesis, analysis and conclusion. In this respect, Aidan Hart’s work might be considered to visual art what the theologian John Behr has been to biblical study, whose own scriptural analysis has been shaped by a reconsideration and importance of the liturgical – helping us to rediscover those connections and symbols that higher criticism has stripped away in a frenzy of historicism and yet without which the signs to the new Jerusalem are difficult to discern. If such ressourcement is being encountered in the realms of the history of art or biblical studies, this might yet be true for our church buildings. Whether it is the technology-filled warehouse of the contemporary megachurch, the pared back simplicity promoted by many Roman Catholic architects post-Vatican II, or (dare I say it), Anglican cathedrals like my own that have been filled with what might be termed ‘gallery art’ more likely to signify a dean’s ego than the Incarnation, Festal Icons is richly suggestive of other possibilities for liturgical and missional renewal for the churches of the West. Indeed, this would be its own form of recovery: what is particularly striking reading this book is just how diverse that offering of praise was prior to the Renaissance. Festal Icons does not leave the reader thinking we need to fill our churches with Russian icons. Rather, through manifold illustration, we encounter the extraordinary variety with which Christians of very different contexts have used the gifts of God in nature – wood, metal, stone and pigment – to return creation’s praise and thanksgiving. Indeed, in an age in which churches have become obsessed with technology whilst fretting about our alienation from a planet we casually despoil, the common denominator of the icon is a sense of humility, otherness and mystery that, like nectar to the bee, is naturally irresistible. As such, Festal Icons bears a much wider readership than those purely interested in the visual-art traditions of Orthodoxy. Hart and Gracewing are to be congratulated for giving us not just a liturgical ‘toolbox’ but a genuine treasury of faith that, very reasonably priced, ought to be inwardly digested by any Christian desirous to enter more deeply into the wonder of God’s self-revelation to us in Jesus Christ.