While human beings have probably always been fascinated by images we live in an image-obsessed
age in which images powerfully shape our lives. The writers in this volume are keenly attentive
to the ways in which we all are both image bearers and image makers. Although their reflections
often arise from and relate explicitly to religious imagery their explorations have much wider
implications. They delve deeply into such issues as the ways in which images both reveal and
conceal the ways in which images are interpreted and the ways in which we use images to
define ourselves and tell our stories. This is a powerful volume full of thought-provoking
analyses of the phenomenon of the image and its role in human being-in-the-world. Topics such
as embodiment mysticism ritual touch creation and suffering are explored with sensitivity
nuance and insight. In short the authors show us a great deal about how images embody
whatever it is we take to be 'sacred'. Bruce Ellis Benson University of Nottingham This volume
presents new findings on religious images in their relationship to appearance and
phenomenality to being transcendence liminality reduction original self-giving evidence
and other topics of regressive and constitutive phenomenology. Drawing on Christian Islamic
and cross-cultural folk testimony the volume creates an incisive reference that opens new
avenues for phenomenological research.
