This morning the Brazos Fellows wrapped up our unit on Christianity and the image–and, what’s more, our fall term–with a conversation on icons with Dr. Natalie Carnes. Dr. Carnes is Assistant Professor of Theology at Baylor, and a constructive theologian who writes on Christology, patristic theology, theological aesthetics, images, children and childhood, and much more. The fellows and Dr. Carnes had a great discussion about the history of Christian arguments over icons and the various questions raised by images: can matter convey the reality of God? What does the incarnation change in what is possible with images? What are right uses of image in worship, and when do we need to be iconoclastic? It was a great end to our semester of study.
Dr. Carnes and I sat down for a round of “Five Questions in Ten Minutes,” and covered all sorts of topics, from Dorothy Day, to Augustine, to creative theological responses to our cultural over-saturation with images, to the role of art in resisting violence. Listen to our conversation here:
Here are links to a number of items we talked about:
- Dr. Carnes’s Beauty: A Theological Engagement with Gregory of Nyssa and Image and Presence: A Christological Reflection on Iconoclasm and Iconophilia
- The Visual Commentary on Scripture
- The writings of Dorothy Day
- Love (III) by George Herbert
- Augustine’s Confessions
- Artist Andy Goldsworthy, and the two documentaries on him, Rivers and Tides and Leaning into the Wind
- That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation by David Bentley Hart
- What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance by Carolyn Forché
Brazos Fellows Blog 