Download or read book Modern Religious Idols written by Michael Bunker and published by . This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Idol worship may seem like just a curious anachronism to our modern sensibilities. The Old Testament is replete with God's commands against it and Israel's temptation to it, but the average reader of today may feel quite insulated from the whole matter. Idolatry is dismissed as ancient naiveté, the impulse of the unlearned, and a superstition that the enlightened man has outgrown. In the following pages, Michael Bunker strikes at the heart of such comfortable assumptions by demonstrating that idolatry is still as alive and malignant as ever, the difference between the ancient world and ours being only that idolatry has become more subtle and idolaters more sophisticated. Instead of having outgrown idolatry, men have nurtured and perfected it. No longer do we craft our idols out of wood and stone, leaving their obvious lifelessness to unsettle our consciences; now we give our idols the breath of life by enshrining them in unbiblical ideas, selfish values and worldly assumptions. Idolatry has always been a matter of the heart; the external manifestations merely change with the times and fall in and out of fashion. The purpose of this present volume is to expose and tear down the subtle idols of the heart that have been enshrined all around us and within us.
Download or read book Idols of the Market written by Sven Lütticken and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this is a book-length essay, art critic and historian Sven Lutticken takes philosopher Theodor Adorno's critique of popular arts and culture a step further. Adorno criticized the manipulation of taste in official cultures and the pretense of individualism; Lutticken looks at the tension between fundamentalism and individualism in the context of the current religious-political image wars. This book examines both the afterlife of religious elements in modern culture and possible responses to the current religious re-appropriation of Adorno's critique of modern capitalist culture by both Christian fundamentalists and radical Islamists...
Download or read book No Idols written by Thomas E. Crow and published by Power Publications, Sydney. This book was released on 2017 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first in the new Power Polemics series, Thomas Crow's No Idols: The Missing Theology of Art turns away from contemporary cultural theories to face a pervading blindspot in today's art-historical inquiry: religion. Crow pursues a perhaps unpopular notion of Christianity's continued presence in modern abstract art and in the process makes a case for art's own terrain of theology: one that eschews idolatry by means of abstraction. Tracking the original anti-idolatry controversy of the Jansenists, anchored in a humble still life by Chardin, No Idols sets the scene for the development of an art of reflection rather than representation, and divinity without doctrine. Crow's reinstatement of the metaphysical is made through the work of New Zealand artist Colin McCahon and American artists Mark Rothko, Robert Smithson, James Turrell, and Sister Mary Corita Kent. While a tightly selected group of artists, in their collective statute the author explores the proposal that spiritual art, as opposed to "a simulacrum of one," is conceivable for our own time.
Download or read book Counterfeit Gods written by Timothy Keller and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2010-09-16 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The issue of idolatry has been with the human race for thousands of years; the subtle temptation is always to take what is good and turn it into the ultimate good, elevating it above all other things in the search for security and meaning. In this timely and challenging book, New York pastor Timothy Keller looks at the issue of idolatry throughout the Bible -- from the worship of actual idols in the Old Testament, to the idolatry of money by the rich young ruler when he was challenged by Jesus to give up all his wealth. Using classic stories from the Bible Keller cuts through our dependence on the glittering false idols of money, sex and power to uncover the path towards trust in the real ultimate -- God. Today's idols may look different from those of the Old Testament, but Keller argues that they are no less damaging. Culturally transforming as well as biblically based, COUNTERFEIT GODS is a powerful look at the temptation to worship what can only disappoint, and is a vital message in today's current climate of financial and social difficulty.
Download or read book The Idol in the Age of Art written by Michael Wayne Cole and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2009 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conflicting attitudes towards devotional art was a major factor in the confessional divisions that split Reformation Europe. By presenting essays concerned with both European subjects and European perceptions of other cultures, The Idol in the Age of Art contributes to ongoing attempts to globalize the study of European art. Approaching the Reformation idol as an essentially international problem, and placing particular emphasis on cultural encounters, it provides fresh perspectives on the very nature of Renaissance art, and underscores how colonial issues came to be often framed in terms of European religious conflicts.
Download or read book Idols for Destruction written by Herbert Schlossberg and published by Regnery Publishing. This book was released on 1990 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Idols of the Heart written by Elyse Fitzpatrick and published by P & R Publishing. This book was released on 2016-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Were all idol-worshippers at heartputting loves, desires, and expectations ahead of God. But theres good news! Elyse shows us how we can identify our idols and battle besetting sins.
Download or read book American Idols written by Bob Hostetler and published by B&H Publishing Group. This book was released on 2006 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Feeding off the frenzy of fleeting fame and image overload, Hostetler takes anecessary look at the false gods in modern society. This timely book can helpreaders realize and overcome their own idolatries.
Download or read book How Religion Evolved written by Brian J. McVeigh and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2016-06-30 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did many religious leaders—Moses, Old Testament prophets, Zoroaster—claim they heard divine voices? Why do ancient civilizations exhibit key similarities, e.g., the “living dead” (treating the dead as if they were still alive); “speaking idols” (care and feeding of effigies); monumental mortuary architecture and “houses of gods” (pyramids, ziggurats, temples)? How do we explain strange behavior such as spirit possession, speaking in tongues, channeling, hypnosis, and schizophrenic hallucinations? Are these lingering vestiges of an older mentality? Brian J. McVeigh answers these riddles by updating “bicameralism.” First proposed by the psychologist Julian Jaynes, this theory postulates that an earlier mentality existed: a “human” (the brain’s left hemisphere) heard voices of “gods” or “ancestors” (the brain’s right hemisphere). Therefore, ancient religious texts reporting divine voices were recountings of audiovisual hallucinations—a method of social control when early populations expanded. As growing political economic complexity destabilized god-governed states in the late second millennium BCE, divine voices became inadequate. Eventually, humans had to culturally acquire new cognitive skills (modern religions) to accommodate increasing social pressures: selves replaced the gods and history witnessed an “inward turn.” This psychological interiorization of spiritual experience laid the foundations for the world’s great religions and philosophies that arose in India, China, Greece, and the Middle East in the middle of the first millennium BCE.
Download or read book The Idol of Our Age written by Daniel J. Mahoney and published by Encounter Books. This book was released on 2018-12-04 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a learned essay at the intersection of politics, philosophy, and religion. It is first and foremost a diagnosis and critique of the secular religion of our time, humanitarianism, or the “religion of humanity.” It argues that the humanitarian impulse to regard modern man as the measure of all things has begun to corrupt Christianity itself, reducing it to an inordinate concern for “social justice,” radical political change, and an increasingly fanatical egalitarianism. Christianity thus loses its transcendental reference points at the same time that it undermines balanced political judgment. Humanitarians, secular or religious, confuse peace with pacifism, equitable social arrangements with socialism, and moral judgment with utopianism and sentimentality. With a foreword by the distinguished political philosopher Pierre Manent, Mahoney’s book follows Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI in affirming that Christianity is in no way reducible to a “humanitarian moral message.” In a pungent if respectful analysis, it demonstrates that Pope Francis has increasingly confused the Gospel with left-wing humanitarianism and egalitarianism that owes little to classical or Christian wisdom. It takes its bearings from a series of thinkers (Orestes Brownson, Aurel Kolnai, Vladimir Soloviev, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn) who have been instructive critics of the “religion of humanity.” These thinkers were men of peace who rejected ideological pacifism and never confused Christianity with unthinking sentimentality. The book ends by affirming the power of reason, informed by revealed faith, to provide a humanizing alternative to utopian illusions and nihilistic despair.
Download or read book Images and Idols written by Thomas J Terry and published by Moody Publishers. This book was released on 2018-10-02 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christians ought to be leading the way in creativity, but we rarely do. God is the Creator of all things, and He created us in His image. Creativity is woven into the very fabric of our humanity. Therefore, Christians should value and champion creativity as a vital part of our image-bearing role. Instead Christians often don’t know what to do with creatives and creatives don’t know what to do with Christianity. On one side you have Christians who neglect or discount art, imagination, and beauty altogether. On the other, you have artists who make idols out of each of these good things. Ryan Lister, a theology professor, and Thomas Terry, a spoken word artist and founder of Humble Beast, team up to help restore the connection between creativity and theology. Images & Idols is a theological and artistic exploration of creativity in the Christian life. It will help creatives build a strong theological foundation for their art, while challenging the church to embrace a theology of beauty and creativity.
Download or read book God of All Things written by Andrew Wilson and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2021-03-02 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract theology is overrated, for God can be found in even the most ordinary of things. Jesus used things like a lily, sparrow, and sheep to teach about the kingdom of God. And in the Old Testament, God repeatedly describes himself and his saving work in relation to physical things such as a rock, horn, or eagle. In God of All Things, pastor and author Andrew Wilson invites you to rediscover God in this way, too--through ordinary, everyday things. He explores the idea of a material world and presents a variety of created marvels that reveal the gospel in everyday life and fuel worship and joy in God--marvels like: Dust: the image of God Horns: the salvation of God Donkeys: the peace of God Water: the life of God Viruses: the problem of God Cities: the kingdom of God God of All Things will leave you with a deeper understanding of Scripture, the world you live in, and the God who made it all.
Download or read book Desirable God written by Roger Burggraeve and published by Peeters Publishers. This book was released on 2003 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The human fascination with images, and the idolatry or idolization of images as the source of desire, passion and terror, is treated in this book. The first part enters more deeply into religious idolatry, past and present. It treats the biblical, the early-Jewish as well as the Christian views on monotheism and the prohibition against images, as source of authentic humanism or as source of intolerance and violence. In the second part, the focus shifts onto a number of contemporary, profane idols and gods: the nationalist fascination for one's own land and people, and the fear or hate towards foreigners; the rampant preoccupation with (genetic) health, in a context of body culture and aestheticization, of which the postmodern sport idols have become the great 'icons'; the current image- and screen-culture and all forms of audiovisual exorcisms; and last but not least the ongoing process of economization and globalization, with an expanding culture of 'branding' logos.
Download or read book Gods that Fail written by Vinoth Ramachandra and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vinoth Ramachandra shows how modern idols like science, reason and irrationality enslave their devotees and block effective mission in today's world.
Download or read book Religion Feminism and Idoloclasm written by Melissa Raphael and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-01-22 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion, Feminism, and Idoloclasm identifies religious and secular feminism’s common critical moment as that of idol-breaking. It reads the women’s liberation movement as founded upon a philosophically and emotionally risky attempt to liberate women’s consciousness from a three-fold cognitive captivity to the self-idolizing god called ‘Man’; the ‘God’ who is a projection of his power, and the idol of the feminine called ‘Woman’ that the god-called-God created for ‘Man’. Examining a period of feminist theory, theology, and culture from about 1965 to 2010, this book shows that secular, as well as Christian, Jewish, and post-Christian feminists drew on ancient and modern tropes of redemption from slavery to idols or false ideas as a means of overcoming the alienation of women’s being from their own becoming. With an understanding of feminist theology as a pivotal contribution to the feminist criticism of culture, this original book also examines idoloclasm in feminist visual art, literature, direct action, and theory, not least that of the sexual politics of romantic love, the diet and beauty industry, sex robots, and other phenomena whose idolization of women reduces them to figures of the feminine same, experienced as a de-realization or death of the self. This book demonstrates that secular and religious feminist critical engagements with the modern trauma of dehumanization were far more closely related than is often supposed. As such, it will be vital reading for scholars in theology, religious studies, gender studies, visual studies, and philosophy.
Download or read book No Other Gods written by Kelly Minter and published by David C Cook. This book was released on 2008 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Minter explores what happens when good desires become false gods, robbing people of an intimate relationship with the heavenly Father. (Christian)
Download or read book War Against the Idols written by Carlos M. N. Eire and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1989-01-27 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the second decade of the sixteenth century medieval piety suddenly began to be attacked in some places as 'idolatry', or false religion. Wherever these ideas became accepted, churches were sacked, images smashed and burned, relics destroyed, and the Catholic Mass abolished. This study calls attention to the centrality of the idolatry issue for the Reformation. It traces the development of Protestant iconoclastic theology and practice, provides a survey and synthesis of its unfolding from Erasmus through Calvin, and lays a foundation for understanding the Reformed ideology that stood in conflict with Catholicism and Lutheranism. Professor Eire's main thesis is that the argument against 'idolatry' was central to Reformed Protestantism, both in its theological aspect and in its political ramifications, and that it reached its fullest and most enduring expression in Calvinism.
