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It is often thought that the French Reformer John Calvin (1509-1564) had a negative attitude towards the arts, particularly visual art. However, in Calvinism and the Arts: A Re-assessment, Dr. Joby argues that in Calvin's writings and in the development of the Reformed tradition more generally, it is possible to discern a more positive attitude than has hitherto been recognized. He makes a start by examining exactly what type of visual art Calvin rejected and what type he affirmed. He goes on to consider how Calvin's epistemology and eschatology can be used to argue for the placing of certain types of art, notably histories and landscape paintings, within Reformed churches and then devotes s...
Central to Christianity is the work of Christ as savior of the world. In this book Geoffrey Wainwright presents the classical confession of Christ's incarnation and atoning work in ways that allow the gospel message to engage with contemporary culture. Amid social tendencies both to disown our physical nature and to be absorbed in it, Wainwright first argues that a comprehensively biblical doctrine of the Word made flesh will help to school our bodily senses as befits earthly creatures with a spiritual destiny. The incarnation shows God reaching us through sound, sight, taste, touch, and scent and inviting us to a rounded response of intellect, affections, and action. In the second half of t...
The aesthetics of everyday life, as reflected in art museums and galleries throughout the western world, is the result of a profound shift in aesthetic perception that occurred during the Renaissance and Reformation. In this book, William A. Dyrness examines intellectual developments in late Medieval Europe, which turned attention away from a narrow range liturgical art and practices and towards a celebration of God's presence in creation and in history. Though threatened by the human tendency to self-assertion, he shows how a new focus on God's creative and recreative action in the world gave time and history a new seriousness, and engendered a broad spectrum of aesthetic potential. Focusing in particular on the writings of Luther and Calvin, Dyrness demonstrates how the reformers' conceptual and theological frameworks pertaining to the role of the arts influenced the rise of realistic theater, lyric poetry, landscape painting, and architecture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Hollywood is a $40 billion annual business, one that is highly influential in culture. If we want to know who we are as individuals and a society, what we believe and what we value, we need to know and understand Hollywood and film. Make no mistake, Hollywood is neither philosophically, politically, nor morally neutral! Many studies demonstrate how movies “affect” us long before we have thought it through. In other words, Hollywood “smuggles” all kinds of ideas into our minds and hearts without us even knowing it. While Hollywood may be the biggest and most influential in the world, this book will demonstrate the growing international influence of film from India (Bollywood), Nigeria...
This book addresses the ongoing concept and effects of globalization, particularly on the socioeconomic life of the less developed countries like Tanzania. The author advocates for an alternative, better model of globalization.
A theological framework for the liturgical arts rooted in John Calvin Both detractors and supporters of John Calvin have deemed him an enemy of the physical body, a pessimist toward creation, and a negative influence on the liturgical arts. But, says W. David O. Taylor, that only tells half of the story. Taylor examines Calvin's trinitarian theology as it intersects his doctrine of the physical creation in order to argue for a positive theological account of the liturgical arts. He does so believing that Calvin's theology can serve, perhaps surprisingly, as a rich resource for understanding the theological purposes of the arts in corporate worship. Drawing on Calvin's Institutes, biblical commentaries, sermons, catechisms, treatises, and worship orders, this book represents one of the most thorough investigations available of John Calvin's theology of the physical creation--and the promising possibilities it opens up for the formative role of the arts in worship.
Technology is growing at an exponential rate vis-à-vis humanity’s ability to control it. Moreover, the numerous ethical issues that technology raises are also troubling. These statements, however, may be alarmist—since Telus would tell us “The Future is Friendly”. The Modernist vision of the future was utopic, for instance Star Trek of the 1960s. But postmodern views, such as are found in Blade Runner 2049, are dystopic. Theology is in a unique interdisciplinary position to deal with the many issues, pro and con, that technology raises. Even theologians like Origen in the third century and Aquinas in the thirteenth century made forays into Artificial Intelligence and surrounding iss...
Focusing on Havana Club rum as a case study, Isle of Rum examines the ways in which Western cultural producers, working in collaboration with the Cuban state, have assumed responsibility for representing Cuba to the outside world. Christopher Chávez focuses specifically on the role of advertising practitioners, musicians, filmmakers, and visual artists, who stand to benefit economically by selling an image of Cuba to consumers who desperately crave authentic experiences that exist outside of the purview of the marketplace. Rather than laying claim to authentic Cuban culture, Chávez explores which aspects of Cuban culture are deemed most compelling and, therefore, most profitable by corporate marketers. As a joint venture between the Cuban state and Pernod Ricard, a global spirits marketer based in Paris, Havana Club embodies the larger process of economic reform, which was meant to reintegrate Cuba into global markets during Cuba’s Special Period in a Time of Peace.
A major new authoritative and comprehensive biography, shedding new light on the life and personality of the great Reformer - and the milieu in which he lived and worked. Cottret's Calvin is not the 'static' theologian of earlier biographies, but a man of enormous vigour, constantly on the move in his thinking as well as in his life. Professor Cottret introduces the reader to the world into which Calvin was born, and follows him from childhood to humanistic and literary pursuits in Basel, to ministry in Geneva, to the halcyon Strasbourg years and finally back to Geneva. The vital issues of the day are encountered as it were through Calvin's eyes, as the author leads the reader through the dr...