Christianity & Judaism

Iconoclasm and Iconoclash edited by Willem Van Asselt, Paul Van Geest, Daniela Muller, Theo Salemink (Jewish and Christian Perspectives Series: Brill) A first difference introduced and explored in this volume that between (1) iconoclash and (2) iconoclasm. While it is clear that they are integrally and these studies aim at covering both themes, it is useful to distinguish carefully between them.

Iconoclash refers to a clash between and about (the use of) images. In our view this does not just concern the artistic status of iconic language, but conjures up the full spectrum of physical and mental imagination. Whether the clash of icons takes place inside a single individual or is spread across various collective wholes, ranging from religion to art and from advertising to politics, is secondary to its reality, as it involves a real collision of different (worlds of) images. The congress in Utrecht located the clash of icons and images spe­cifically within the religious sphere, concentrating on Judaism and Christianity, while trying to cover a historical time-span of nearly three millennia.

Iconoclasm, as our second term of reference, has a more technical meaning, pertaining to the destruction of and/or suspicion against physical representations of the divine, the sacred, the transcendent. An important question in this context is whether God can be accu­rately represented by human images, or whether any representa­tion does by definition detract from the divine original? Does the making of human images not force us into idolatry, or are some images more suitable to depict the sacred than others? While Rus­sian icons are generally seen to be especially suitable in portraying the divine, avant-garde art was by contrast nearly always considered blasphemous. Here the question becomes relevant whether words are more suitable as containers of divine presence than images. As for its theological roots, iconoclasm goes back to the prohibition in Ex. 20: 4-5: 'You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth; you shall not bow down before them or worship them'. Extrapolating from the specific Exodus-text, we can find iconoclasm in a wider sense in those situations where new groups or periods present us with a total makeover of earlier group or period identity.

Five Types of Iconoclash

Can different types of iconoclash, including iconoclasm, actually be ranked or classified? Obviously, taxonomies are always difficult, if not arbitrary. Still, it may be of help to try and situate one's own object and approach by integrating them as components in a larger matrix. In this regard we have tried to follow Bruno Latour, philosopher and sociologist of science by training, and co-author of the Iconoclash Anthology with Peter Weibel (Latour, 2002). Although Latour's clas­sification is not used extensively in the contributions to the present book, as a heuristic tool it was very helpful to articulate the concept of the conference. In his introduction Latour sums up five types of iconoclash for us, seeing iconoclasm as a mere subcategory. Dividing up humanity into different types of people, he distinguishes between their different degree of appreciation of and receptivity towards the value and validity of images.

1. A-people are those people who are principally opposed to the role of images as mediating truth, objectivity and holiness. This 'puritan' form of iconoclash can have a religious (cf. the prohibition in Exodus 20) or a political application (cf. Mao's cultural revolution). The aim of this radical type of iconoclash is to strive for purification, that is, towards the removal and deletion of all images representing truth or holiness. As demonstrated by the Byzantine image-controversy in the eighth century, however, worldly art was not considered equally dangerous in guarding religious or political purity.
2. In contrast to A-people, B-people are not principally sided against all mediation through images. They specifically wish to resist the notion of a 'frozen imagination'. Such a freezing is the case when certain elevated eternal images put a stop to the dynamics of a continuous stream of passing images.
3. C-people are not opposed to images as such, but reject the concrete images of their opponents as false. The burning of the enemy's flag or the destruction of images of other religions both belong in this category, as does the demonizing of one's foes, stereotyping them as inhuman, for example, or disqualifying them as diabolical.
4. D-people are those humans who unwittingly and involuntarily come to destroy images. In this category we find the example of craftsmen who in the process of restoring the original happen to destroy (other) images.
5. E-people, finally, are those people who suspend judgment towards the possibility of mediation through images. They do so not out of any opposition to images per se but because they relativize the usefulness of this kind of mediation.

Bruno Latour himself seems to favour position B, as he fiercely criticizes the freezing of images. Summarizing his position he states the following:

Thus, the crucial distinction we wish to draw in this show is not between a world of images and a world of no-images—as the image warriors would have us believe—but between the interrupted flow of pictures and a cascade of them. (Latour, 2002, 32)

Two Kinds of Images

Latour's classification of different types of iconoclash has its limitations to the extent that it applies exclusively to material images and statues, especially in the world of art and culture. With regard to iconoclash in the religious sphere, mental images play an important role as well. For this reason we have decided to distinguish between two kinds of images which feature alternatively in the different contributions to the conference. Hoping to heighten the effect of Latour's typology, we want to zoom in especially on the theological context in which the different icons and icon-clashes come to life. Based on these considerations, we suggest a distinction between the use and function of:

1. Material images. Here we think specifically of the portrayal of God and human beings in the visual arts (sculptures and paintings);

2. Mental images. Iconoclash may be directed against mental depictions of God and human beings, as they can become locked up in theologi- cal or philosophical models of thought. As an example we may point to the dogmatic 'wars' about the Trinity. In this context iconoclash refers specifically to the question whether the divine can at all be thought with the help of secular rationality (philosophy) and, if so, how to legitimate this rational approach. It seems that we are dealing here with a clash involving divergent models of thought. Controversy about mental imagery can be widened further to include the realm of metaphors as well, as these may or may not derive from human language or literature. The use of metaphors like 'father', 'shepherd', and 'fire' for God, or the metaphor 'bride' to indicate either the Jewish people or the Christian church provides ample grounds for such verbal iconoclashes (Cf. Van Geest, 2007, 21-67). Iconoclash here almost acts as a synonym for rivalling poetic applications of metaphors, as they are either deemed correct or incorrect.

The Prohibition of Images and the Anthropological Turn

As said, we consider iconoclasm as a subcategory of the wider term iconoclash. We would like to focus more closely on the idea of a pro­hibition of images and explore its possible motives, as listed in Exodus 20. Was it necessary to protect the purity of God? (Boespflug, 1998, 44-6-468). Was it a struggle against demons and hence, from a more sociological perspective, ultimately a struggle to prevent apostasy and defeat paganism? Or does the history of the three monotheistic reli­gions revolve around the protection of human dignity and freedom over and against the threat of idolatry, that is, the divinizing of what must ultimately be seen as human products? In other words: can we perhaps see the Exodus-quotation as a form of religious criticism? Such an interpretation harbours the suggestion that the prohibition of images does not just come about as an attempt to protect God against wrong­ful devotion, but aims in the end at rejecting all images of all gods. If despite such caveats Jews and Christians still cling to images, then they are in fact seen to commit a form of adultery. For when strange gods are revered, it seems that the own identity, to the extent that it is rooted in worship, is severely at risk. Seen as a struggle against idolatry in the above sense, the prohibition of images has repeatedly given rise to iconoclastic outbursts against other religions and to violent wars against the adherents of other religions. At the same time it should be stated that the biblical prohibition of images does not need to have such implications.

Building on the above arguments, one could perhaps speak of an anthropological turn in the interpretation of the prohibition of images in Judaism and Christianity. Guiding thought of this turn is the notion that both religions reject idolatry not because God stipulates it but rather because idols insult and defame human beings. The power and influence that idols exercise over human beings ultimately derive from those human beings themselves. Seen in this way idols function as a kind of 'externalization' of human capacities and activities, of power, desire, and sexual appetite. They are 'frozen' human properties or acts, radiating a divine glance. This interpretation from the perspective of ideological and religious criticism connects nicely with the Exodus prohibition, as it brings out the anxiety and trepidation lurking in the desire to capture the divine in human and material form. Marcel Poorthuis has summarized this anthropological interpretation of the prohibition of images as follows:

Seen as the image of God, the human person is the revelation of abso­lute truth and a bearer of those properties that are specifically linked to the sacred: imperviousness, inviolability... Rather than teaching us the disappearance of metaphysics, the anthropocentric interpretation of the prohibition of images teaches us the elevation of the human body to where it represents the glory of the living God. (Poorthuis, 2002, 70-71)

This anthropological concern is also expressed by a chassidic anecdote from the beginning of the nineteenth century. In 1808, during the times of Napoleon, rabbi Nahman of Bratslav, a chassidic scholar, burnt a book containing 'holy thoughts' on which he had intensively worked during a long period. What remained of this holy book was only its title. Marc-Alain Quaknin, writing on this anecdote in 1986, compared Nahman's book burning with Moses' smashing the two tables on mount Sinai after the sin of the Golden Calf (Quaknin, 1995). Rabbi Nahman, Quaknin argued, burning his own idol (the book) exemplified a strange paradox: by burning the book he resisted the temptation of making an idol of his own written word. Rabbi Nahman concluded, therefore, that 'every image must include its own destruction, and every answer must include in its essence a question that may not be destroyed by the answer.'

The Image of 'Others'

In Judaism, Christianity (and Islam) the theme of iconoclash does not just refer to a struggle about how to portray God accurately or how to destroy images that are considered blasphemous, but also how to imagine the individual and collective other. Here the issue is demarcation rather than purification. The way in which religious communi­ties effectively typecast 'others' reveals much about their underlying self-image. The need to judge and condemn dissenters appears to be essential if drawing up a group's boundaries and protecting its internal cohesion (Ferziger, 2001). The three major religions of the Book have indeed created strong images about rivalling communities. Thus we have Christian stereotypes of Judaism (substitution theology, the killing of God, ritual murder, conspiracy theories, racial bias etc.) and of Islam, which is seen often as a pagan, sensual religion. Within Judaism and Islam comparable stereotypes developed about Christianity Often this religious stereotyping reflects broader cultural bias and prejudice. Here we may also make reference to the debates about orientalism (Edward Said) and occidentalism (Buruma, Margalit, 2004).

Limiting ourselves to Christianity for a moment, we soon notice how dissident movements are often typecast as 'heretical', their members called apostates or servants of Satan. We further see 'images' of various kinds featuring in a polemical context, with the help God and the sacred often invoked for a very earthly struggle. The emergence of heresy is not necessarily indicative of a process of religious fragmentation, however, or of unbridled religious pluriformity. The reverse may also be true, as heresy may well emerge in a time of growing uniformity. Times may be such that orthodox church leaders introduce new criteria and concomitant measures, leaving older and more traditional ones behind and thereby provoking dissent. This calls for a new investigation of what `orthodoxy' actually means as a church historical concept.

When we speak about the images of 'the others', a rather broad spectrum is laid out. In addition to being called idolatrous, the so-called others may be considered amoral, power-hungry unstable and volatile, fraudulent, uncivilized etc. Adding emphasis to more general terms of disapproval and condemnation, the charge of idolatry can play an important role, referring both to physical statues and images and to mental images. The 'others' are not just portrayed as 'different', but as unholy, sacrilegious, diabolical, and inhuman. In some cases the war of images resulted in the destruction of images and of those symbols considered typical of other religions or cherished by internal dissidents. Far worse, however, the clash of icons could also lead to the physical persecution and elimination of others as the ultimate attempt to suppress dissent.

For this reason, this volume also calls for a more general discussion of the typecasting of other religions and confessions by religious adherents. In doing so, our focus will naturally be on the transformation of otherness from difference to dissent as a tool to strengthen one's own position, but we will also reach further. In his study of hostile images about Islam in modern history, the political scientist Christoph Weller has made the following pertinent comment:

Gerade in Konflikten ist die Parteinahme, die Zugehörigkeit zur Ingroup besonders wichtig fur das Selbstbild des/der einzelnen, Konfliktsitua­tionen schaffen also `gute' Voraussetzungen fir eine iibereinstimmende Kategorisierung and damit fur die Entstehung von Feindbilder. (Weller, 2002, 56)

Weller evidently holds that by seeing themselves within the safe context of an in-group people are better able to structure and organize their social landscape, strengthening their personal and social identity in one sweep. Apparently, so he argues, this process of categorization leads people to see the adherents of the 'out-group' as more negative than those of the 'in-group'. In and of itself this functioning of what is largely a psychological mechanism does not need to be considered dangerous, as long as it is open to correction through experience. Also, since people generally belong to different 'in-groups', they mostly have the experience of being placed in 'out-groups' by others as well, giving them sufficient tools to negotiate a stable identity Thus they can be man or woman, church-going theist or atheist, Dutch citizen or immigrant, employer or employee, teacher or student. In the absence of any self-correction, however, negative forms of typecasting can become fixated, as when they are spread far and wide through the media or take institutional shape in ecclesiastical or administrative structures. In a further move, demonic images can become so enlarged that they lead to superhuman scenarios involving a cosmic dualism of good versus evil. As a result they become deadly in a multiple sense, as they literally unleash war. Such typecasting can easily become part of a propaganda machine to mobilize as many people as possible in the struggle against otherness. With dehumanization quickly followed by demonization, the enemy is stigmatized as the adversary of humanity at large. This stigmatization process validates in turn the struggle against the enemy, while reinforc­ing the correctness of the chosen image at the same time.

This congress focused on the transformation of the image of others into more negative stereotypes as a tool to strengthen the in-group's internal cohesion. But we did not only pay attention to the resulting struggles and wars. The opposite scenario may also hold, displaying the remarkable complexity of the matter. First, alternation between the dominant and the deviant group in the typecasting process does not just imply that the deviant group rejects the assigned images or labels, for it may well decide to embrace them. Inside Christianity this has led to new patterns of identity formation, in which being the victim of deviant groups or individuals became a central concern, and in which new cultural values appreciating guilt and suffering were brought to the fore. As a second point, there is always the chance that people criticize the standard images based on their different experiences in life, thereby putting into perspective the sharp dichotomy of friend versus enemy.

These observations also put in perspective the problem area of what is commonly labelled as orthodoxy and heterodoxy. The history of iconoclasm shows the remarkable phenomenon that in later times, opinions that were previously seen as a form of heterodoxy became standard for new forms of orthodoxy. This much broader problem area, however, is outside the scope of this book and should be incorporated in future research.

New Images of God in a Secular World

Finally, this conference called attention to the 'war of images' in secu­lar modern times. While the historical struggle concerning the image of God and the fight against idolatry clearly had religious overtones, in (post)modern times a new and secular dimension has been added. Secular movements such as liberalism, feminism, nationalism, National Socialism or socialism/communism struggled against the old monothe­istic religions. These old religions were seen as forms of superstition or ideology. The old religions on their turn often charged the new movements with neo-paganism, regarding some of their symbols as modern idols (Reason, Money, Market, Führer or Leader, Race, Class, feminism etc.), thus becoming heavily involved in the struggle against secular idolatry. The question then comes to the fore to what extent these new secular movements developed or may still develop new secular images of God or Transcendence. With regard to our chosen conference theme, some secular movements will be questioned both on their image-politics and on their recycling of the trodden images of old.

An example: the French Revolution destroyed Christian images and replaced them by images derived from the religion of Reason and Liberty. Annie Jourdan describes this 'substitution process' as 'a cleaning and purification of the public domain' and as a substitution of the old sacred symbols by new ones: temples, theatres and statues symbolizing the principles of the new constitution (Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood). It included the introduction of a republican calendar, new rituals, the tricolour, and mirabile dictu—a festival devoted to the Supreme Godhead. From this Jourdain concluded that, apparently, a modern state like the French Republic, in its search for a new identity, was not able to give up the sacred dimensions. At the same time, she wonders why humanity in general, even in the process of seculariza­tion, remains so forcefully attached to the transcendental dimension. She even suggests that the introduction of a religious dimension might be a requisite for a successful transition from the existing order to a new one ( Jourdan, 2003).

`Image Wars' are also exemplified by new 'political religions' such as the socialist and, especially, the communist movements in Eastern Europe, China and Asia which were characterized by the flourishing of new rituals and images, as well as the veneration of 'saints' (Marx, Engels, Stalin, Mao). Most of the time this process was accompanied by a 'war' against the images and symbols of the 'old' religions: Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism. In this respect, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the removal of the images of the 'new saints' (Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin) symbolized the changing of powers.

Within this context, mention must also be made of the political religion of the Nazi regime. After the tactical strategy of promoting a `positive Christianity' (1933-34), it introduced a new religion of race in which religious elements deriving from the old German tradition, Asiatic symbols, gnostic and apocalyptic ideas, were mixed with modern militaristic and nationalistic symbols and rituals (Ley, Schoeps, 1997). Recent scholarship has pointed out that National Socialism can be seen as a 'secular religion', a 'surrogate religion' or even a religious `Gesamtkunstwerk' (Wagner). An example of this new approach can be seen in the proceedings of the 1995 conference in Vienna organized by Michael Ley en Julius H. Schoeps under the title Der Nationalsozia­lismus als politische Religion (Ley, Schoeps, 1997; cf. Ley, 1993). In 2002 Michael Ley published his Holocaust als Menschenopfer. Vom Christentum zur politischen Religion des Nationalsozialismus, in which he defended the thesis that the Shoa was seen by the Nazi's as a necessary human sacrifice for the sake of an apocalyptic rescue operation for mankind. Ley also showed that National Socialism was a product of different strains in European history: a combination of an age old religious anti-Semitism with medieval chiliastic expectations, and influenced by secularization, romanticism and utopianism, it resulted in one of the most dangerous forms of 'political' religion.' In the eyes of the Nazi's the murder of the European Jews was a sacred rite, an expiation that was needed for the recreation of the world (Ley, 2002). The religious character of National Socialism had two faces: on the one hand it glorified the achievements of modernity, on the other hand it revived old religious traditions (Salemink, 2003, 160, 291-311).

A special role in the modern 'image wars' should be assigned to the Avant-garde in modern art. This movement aimed at a revolution in the creation of images. It was closely connected with a spiritual, and sometimes, a political revolution. During the First World War artists such as Kandinsky, Marc, Malevitch, Picasso, and movements like 'Der Blaue Reiter', Dadaism, and, later on, 'Bauhaus' and surrealism, declared traditional art bankrupt and inaugurated an iconoclastic outbreak sui generis. In contrast to earlier iconoclastic movements in Byzantine and Protestant Christianity, it aimed at the liberation of 'images and their language' from the nineteenth-century bourgeois culture as well as a liberation of images deriving from Christian metaphysics. Artistic images were not any more seen as a representation of reality or as a service to the Church or religious revelation, but as an secular attempt to discover the order of a new symbolic universe in oneself by developing a new `language of images' with its own form, colour and texture as pathway to a spiritual reality which the churches and political movements had neglected or lost.

In the 1912 almanac of Der Blaue Reiter, Kandinsky published his brochure Uber die Formfrage, and in the same year he wrote his famous essay Uber das Geistige in der Kunst, in which he discussed the 'prophetic function' of modern art. In his opinion modern art should not be viewed as an echo or mirror of reality, but as prophetic call to develop­ing a new spiritual life. He concluded his essay by saying that 'it was now the time to see the appearance of a new area in which the work of the painter is closely related to the intentional creation of a new spiritual domain: now it is time for a new epoch in which the great spiritual dimension of art will be revealed' (Kandinsky, 1982, 131-132, 219). Although the Avant-garde was a pluriform movement, perhaps abstract art presented the most radical form of iconoclasm, because it rejected all empirical references to reality outside the work of art but without destroying the image as such. Instead it used new media in order to transfer the spiritual dimension. A good example of this new form of secular iconoclasm is the 'Black Square' (1915) of Malevitch, one of the great icons of the Avant-garde that presents an image of the face of God in 'the essence of his perfection' in a secular world. Although his 'Black Square' was certainly inspired by the tradition and theology of the Russian icons, it freed itself from the supervision of the old churches: it created a new form of modern religion (Drutt, 2003, 89-95). In several contributions of this volume the iconoclastic motives of the Avant-garde artists and, consequently, the disapproval of churchly authorities will be addressed.

As in visual art, these iconoclastic phenomena can also be observed in music. A good example is the (unfinished) opera Moses and Aron com­posed by Arnold Schonberg (1874-1951): it extrapolates the traditional prohibition of graven images including the story of the Golden Calf to a new secular context.' In this opera, Moses is presented as a radical puritan who fights against all human natural inclination to venerate images of the invisible: he addresses God as the 'Unique, Eternal, Omni­present, Invisible and Unthinkable God'. For Schonberg, the human voice is equivalent to word, music to image; music has, therefore, the potency to become an idol trying to imagine the invisible. Thus in this opera, Moses does not sing, but only speaks.

Finally, we may refer to the Jewish museum in Berlin designed by Daniel Libeskind and opened in 1999 (Schneider, 1999). In this museum Libeskind created six empty shafts symbolizing emptiness (`voids', like the cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant) and articulating the fact that there are no images available to describe the sufferings of the Holocaust. Nevertheless, the 'voids' are images. The building can be seen as a 'reversed cathedral' and as an iconoclastic philosophy carved in stone. For his project, Libeskind entered into conversation with the twentieth century Avant-garde, the philosopher Walter Benjamin, the poet Paul Celan, and the composer Arnold Schonberg, the creator of Moses und Aaron. As heirs of modern criticism Libeskind, Benjamin and Schonberg have deeply gauged the new order and disorder of moder­nity and the potential force of secular idols, as well as the temptation of producing new images. But, at the same time, in reversing the old images they created new anti-images which enabled them to criticize the old ones, as is impressively illustrated in the famous painting Angelus novus of Paul Klee.

Word and Image: Fundamental questions

The various contributions to this volume are divided into four main parts. In the first part we have six essays which set up a general discus­sion of the field. In the opening piece Willemien Otten explores the complex relationship between World, Word and Image in Christianity. She discusses the general effect of the Word, especially as it relates to the Christian notions of creation and incarnation and shows how these notions due to the interrelated development of exegesis and doctrine—resulted in an ever expanding web of meaning. Whereas the world was seen as the product of divine creation and as such a reflected divine activity, the human person was seen as the image par excellence, with the iconic character of humanity being both heightened and redeemed in Christ's incarnation. After discussing the different approaches to images in the early-modern Catholic and Protestant traditions, she turns to the tradition of pre-modernity and, following Jean-Luc Marion's analysis in his book God Without Being, she points to the fact that being (esse) in classical Thomism could easily develop into an idol rather than an icon of the divine. She summarizes her view with a set of reflections derived from Augustine's On Christian Doctrine, revealing how Augustine locates the tension between word and images inside a larger integrative vision by means of a distinction between res and signa (See Pollmann, 1996). She concludes with a plea for the use of and need for images in communicating the word.

Likewise, Anton Houtepen's contribution deals with the constructive and de-constructive role image controversies have played in the forma­tion and transformation of religious identity, in the past as well as in the present. In a broad overview he analyses the referential character of religious imagination in pre-modern times. In modern and post-modern times, however, we are witness to an epistemological revolt. Seculariza­tion has reduced every form of religious imagination to a function of human need and desire without reference to any extra-mental reality. In addition, he argues that, after the collapse of conceptual systems of thought in post-modern times, Christian theology might be helped to rediscover and ground anew its referential character and its legitimate place in the world of thought by developing an iconic hermeneutic. Such a hermeneutics differs from aesthetics in that it does not interpret the icon in a representational mode, looking for the indexical meaning of the image, but concentrates on its 'deictic' function, either as 'logo' (Naomi Klein) or as 'scenery'. In other words: the icon invites its spec­tators to participate in its scenery and to be taken up in the life-goals and the divine communion with Christ. This hermeneutical function, he concludes, makes real participation in the life of the divine refer­ent of the icon (or liturgy) possible and, as any other hermeneutical process, it implies the transformation or re-figuration (P Ricoeur) of the participants.

Gerard Rouwhorst elaborates further the function of word and image in Christian liturgical rituals. Like all other rituals, Christian liturgical celebrations are composed of both verbal and non-verbal elements. He shows how in the course of liturgical history, the proportion of both the verbal and non-verbal elements to each other have consider­ably varied. Whereas the liturgy of the Early Church shared with the synagogue and, later on the churches of the Reformation, a strong focus on the reading and the explanation of the Bible, after the victory over the Iconoclasts the Byzantine traditions have been characterized by a strong emphasis on the visual dimension. Within this context Rouwhorst observes that in early medieval Western Christianity, the use of visual symbols dramatically increased since the introduction of the liturgical traditions of Rome in the regions north and west of the Alps. He claims that this radical shift from word to image relates to the increasing emphasis on the sacredness of liturgy as well as on the role of the priests. There is all the more reason for the plausibility of this claim since, in the liturgical reform movements, criticism of these aspects of medieval liturgy, sometimes designated as 'magical' and `clerical', and the separation between the sacramental and the profane realm, tend to go hand in hand with an opposition against the visual elements in the liturgy such as the ordination rites and the vestments of the priests.

Alexander Even-Chen's contribution focuses on the Jewish tradition and the 'holy controversy' in this tradition regarding the possibility of seeing the divine. By means of an analysis of the theology of Abra­ham Josua Heschel (1907-1972), he explores Heschel's conception of divine revelation and its corresponding anthropology which influenced his reading of Rabbinic sources. Within the Jewish tradition Heschel observed different schools of thought in answering the question 'whether it is possible to see God'.

Heschel presented Rabbi Ishmael's school as the one who taught that mortals can neither see nor comprehend the nature of the divine glory.

Rabbi Akiva and his school, however, based their view on the assump­tion that man, created by God and resembling his image, is able, in principle, to behold the divine glory and presence. Within this context Even-Chen further explores Heschel's position and concludes that the controversy is reflected in Heschsel's own soul and theology.

Daniela Muller's contribution deals with another important aspect of the iconoclash-theme of the conference. It presents a careful analysis of the mechanism developed within the medieval christianitas concept of the Western Latin Church to label opposition parties and their ideas with recurring stereotypes and rhetoric thereby creating an image of the 'others' resulting in an exclusion of deviant groups and the rein­forcement of the correctness of one's own religion. She illustrates the operation of this mechanism as present not only in visual representations but also in literary motives. It was especially pope Gregory VII who used the creation of images as a means of propaganda to mobilize the fight against 'the others', such as seductive women, heretics, Jews and Muslims. For propaganda reasons they all were accused of most evil deeds. Additionally, she explores the great variety of motives that was developed, all of which aimed at proving the dangers of the 'others' and legitimizing the fight against 'the others'. Muller also notes that through the depiction of debauchery of 'the others' fantasy was offered a means of compensation for the repression of sensuality which went hand in hand with the increasing moralization of medieval Christian society. She concludes her essay by pointing to the relatedness and interaction between the religious and social levels in producing an image of 'others' and, consequently, the reinforcement of one's own identity.

In his essay, inspired by Emmanuel Levinas, Marcel Poorthuis em­barks on some fundamental philosophical reflections regarding the conference theme. Philosophy, he argues, may be regarded as the plea for the integrity of the subject, combating irrational myths that try to overwhelm the subject with numinous experience and robbing the subject of its freedom and autonomy. In this respect philosophy may be considered an ally of monotheism in the shared rejection of idolatry. At the same time, however, this train of rational thought eliminates the primary experience of the other being as 'radically' other. By denying the difference between me and the other, the experience of the other is robbed from its dimensions of majesty and of transcendence. The other is reduced to the phenomenological realm to which I belong myself as well, and is seen as a re-definition or mirror-image of myself. Should this be considered to be a form of idolatry? Exploring the biblical prohibition of idolatry, Poorthuis argues that it primarily refers to the attitude of man rather than to something intrinsic in the object. Follow­ing Levinas, he assumes that the transcendent experience of the face of the other constitutes as it were the antipode of idolatry, whereas denying that transcendence might bring us close to idolatry. The experience of the transcendent breaking through the phenomenological appearance of the other is, according to Poorthuis, the philosophical expression of iconoclasm. His conclusion is that iconoclasm interpreted in radically human terms, constitutes the way to transcendence, to asymmetrical responsibility and to an ethics of donation to the other. A child look­ing in the mirror and recognizing the face of the other before its own face appears seems to have preserved the fundamental experience of the 'otherness' of the other.

Jewish and Christian Debates on Images Until the Reformation

In the second part of this volume a cluster of themes is presented exploring the developments within Jewish rabbinical thought on images, controversies on images in the Early Church of Western Europe (Augus­tine), and developments in Medieval traditions such as in medieval hagiography, apocryphal and liturgical apostle traditions, and the 'image war' of the iconoclastic Cathars versus the Catholic tradition.

It opens with an essay of Shulamith Laderman that focuses on the tension between the concept of the transcendent God that, according to Exodus 20, is not be represented by any visual form and the instruc­tions to create images of the Cherubim in the Holy of Holies of God's Tabernacle, as explained in Exodus 25. Laderman describes extensively the attempts in Jewish tradition to resolve the contradiction involved in these two 'divinely inspired messages' by pointing to the fact that the Cherubim covering the Ark were not meant to be iconic images, but rather designed as a metaphor for God's transcendence. In Jewish understanding, she argues, the symbolic schema of the empty space between the Cherubim's wings (`void') represented the invisible presence of God the Creator. Remarkably, she notes that in the Christian art tradition the empty space between the Cherubim's wings was inter­preted as pointing to the parousia of Jesus, as described in the Gospel of Matthew 25: 31-34. After discussing the long and complex history of the visual representation of the Cherubim in Jewish and Christian art (see the illustrations in her article), she concludes by saying that in both the Jewish and Christian traditions the visual image and the word—biblical, exegetical, theological, or typological were bound together in approaching the sacred.

In addition, Shamma Friedman continues the discussions on images in the Jewish traditions by focusing on the Talmudic-Midrashic debates. The first part of his contribution deals with Maimonides' struggle against traditional anthropomorphic concept in comparison with Augustine's work in the same area; in the second part Friedman discusses a passage from the mystical work Shiur Qomah, already attested in the sixth or early seventh century that insisted on perfect proportionalism of divine anatomy based upon the Greek tradition of ideal relative measurements of the human body. In this rabbinic source the patriarch Jacob is the outstanding representative of this paradigm, while, at the same, it explains the original meaning of the legend that Jacob's icon was engraved upon the divine throne. According to Friedman, this is a remarkable example in the Jewish tradition of a unrecognized presenta­tion of the divine image with human likeness, indistinguishable in both physique and physiognomy. Friedman's article allows for comparisons with the next contribution on Augustine's thought on images.

In this essay Paul van Geest defends the thesis that on the one hand, Augustine may be seen as the precursor of apophatic theology (Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite), in which it was argued that God 's being and activity cannot be defined in terms that mirror or refer to earthly conditions. Analysis of Augustine's first commentary on Gen­esis, his sermons, and De Trinitate, reveals Augustine's fear to perceive God as having corporeal qualities. At the other hand, however, Van Geest points to the fact that in the Confessions Augustine 'negates the negation' by looking for human experiences by which he tries to make God perceptible in his imperceptibility. Within this context Augustine, following the hermeneutics of Ambrose, did not hesitate to evoke an awareness or experience of God by appealing to man's sensory faculties and using tangible metaphors and anthropomorphisms. In a similar way, Augustine presented the memory of sensory and affective experiences as parallel to the experience of God. At the same time, however, he opposes those metaphors and anthropomorphisms as inadequate for representing God. In this way Augustine avoided the dualism between God and world, the finite and infinite, into which between several apologists ( Justin, Minucius Felix, and Tertullian) in their debate with Greek philosophy had become embroiled.

In her contribution, Nienke Vos explores how in early medieval hagi­ography, biblical images functioned in the formation of the saint as icon. She focuses on three Latin hagiographical sources which followed in the wake of the Greek Life of Antony in the middle of the fourth century: the Life of Martin by Sulpicius Severus (ca. 400 CE), the Life of Benedict by Gregory the Great (ca. 600 CE) and the Life of Willibrord by Alcuinus (ca. 800 CE). These vitae recount the lives of their respective saints in order to entertain and motivate the reader. On a fairly literary level, she discusses the way in which the different saints operated as missionaries in a pagan context. In this context she analyses the central notion of `miracle' in these narratives and the many violent scenes which can easily be defined as instances of iconoclash. Subsequently, she presents a more metaphorical sense in which iconoclash, or rather `icono-change' occurs. Further analysis brings Vos to the conclusion that in all three vitae, the saint encapsulates religious and political interests and that he—in a sense becomes the icon of the entire situation. Finally, she points to the importance of biblical material in the styling of the saints and shows how the biblical imagery in these vitae is transformed, due to the interests of the authors.

Additionally, Else Rose's essay deals with apocryphal traditions on the apostolic missionary activities after Pentecost and draws some lines of comparison between the narrative apocryphal traditions on the one hand and liturgical sources on the other hand. In considering these sources she concentrates on the clash between the apostle as representa­tive of the new, Christian religion, and representations of the existing, `other religion' which are depicted as 'idols', 'demons' and 'magicians.' She shows how in the Latin rendition of the apocryphal acts of the apostles both iconoclash and iconoclasm are occurring themes which reflect the foundation of a new religious identity which played a crucial role in the development of a liturgical cult of the apostles. Especially, the imagination of a struggle between 'apostle' and 'demon' is shown to be an important example of the reception of apocryphal traditions in medieval liturgy. This development makes also clear that the clash between different religious world views with their own religious imagi­nation and their own gods becomes a clash between sin and salvation within one Christian community, even within the soul of the individual Christian.

Babette Hellemans focuses on the problem of incarnation as a `creative act', especially in gothic art and texts. The selected examples turn around awareness of being and not-being by ocular proof and, analogous to the notion of the Eucharist's hoc est corpus meum, to seeing and not-seeing. The thirteenth century Bibles Moralisées, consisting of and enveloping the totality of the Christian faith, serve as a case study. It will be argued that 'reading' these Bibles is an entirely performative act, and should therefore be 'three-dimensional' in the same way one sight-sees a gothic cathedral. In the last two sections the topic thus indicated is illustrated by giving some examples taken from sources in modern literature and philosophy.

The following contribution of Anne Brenon relates the theme of the conference with Catharism, which the Roman Church denounced and rejected as heresy. The Cathars established their own religious course by identifying themselves with the true and authentic Christian Church over and against the 'false Roman Church' as the church of wealth and persecution. They rejected and often mocked practices they found superstitious, in particular the cult of saints and relics, transubstantia­tion, and all forms of miraculous intervention. Brenon points to the fact that the fundamental Christian dualism of Cathar theology seems to imply that no room was left for anthropomorphic representations of divinity and that among the Cathars there was no possibility for artistic expression. She shows that this idea is refuted by the fact that while these heretics Christians of the Book neither built nor sang nor sculpted, they did copy Bibles, and probably very productively. One of these bibles escaped from the Inquisition (present in the Municipal Library of Lyon as ms PA 36) and contains a complete New Testa­ment translated into Occitan. It can be dated to the thirteenth century and includes lovely illuminated initials, painted in red and blue, but no representation of human or animal figures, except the fish, an early Christian symbol for Christ. This kind of `Cathar art' in the thirteenth century, Brenon argues, should be linked to the heretical brothers of the Cathars, the Waldensian Bibles.

Beverly Kienzle addresses the conference theme by focusing on the theory and praxis related to the cross and its veneration in the Middle Ages. It involved a wide array of practices, from liturgical veneration and processions to meditations and visions, from gestures of signing to wearing crosses for protection, healing and punishments. Moreover, those whose lives or ideas did not conform to the theology and practices of the cross were called its enemies (inimici crucis). For medieval authors, the phrase designated sinners, heretics, Jews and Muslims. This theol­ogy and practice was set forth in the crusades in order to preserve the land of the cross for the Christians and to pursue the so-called enemies of the cross in the Holy Land and various areas of Europe. Dissident Christians objected to the theology of the cross, the everyday practices involving it, and the development of crusading ideology. In her essay she focuses on three thirteenth and fourteenth-century texts related to preaching that exemplify representative views from both sides.

Finally, Gerard Pieter Freeman provides a contribution related to medieval spirituality and practice. He discusses the mental image of the 'poor Christ' that determined the identity of the first Friars Minor. This image was not an abstract idea that needed to be exemplified, nor was it an ideal that ought to put into practice. It was the result of a choice to 'leave the world', that is, to leave the city of Assisi and to give up the values of its citizens. After discussing the way in which they formed their identity, Freeman concludes that the Friars cannot be seen as a iconoclastic movement, although the situation changed during the conflict of the spiritual Franciscans with pope John XXII. Paradoxically, the image of the poor Christ was very successful in medieval Christianity and, in his essay, Freeman traces the consequences of the mental image of the poor Christ for the material images the first Friars produced. He does so by investigating the oldest versions of their general constitutions in which some restrictive regulations are found on Church building and Church design. A recurring theme of these prescriptions is that art may not threaten charity, as well as the theme of credibility. According to the author, this implied a complex paradox between poverty and alms-giving. Receiving alms implied a loss of poverty and refusal of alms was not seen as an option, because such a refusal might offend the benevolent benefactor. During the thirteenth century this paradox was exemplified in important churches like the Church of San Francesco in Assisi.

Protestant Reformation and Catholic Reformation

In the third part of this volume ample attention is paid to the renowned iconoclastic movement during the Reformation, its theological back­grounds, and, specifically its impact on sixteenth-century Dutch Calvin­ism, especially in the city of Utrecht where the conference was held. Moreover, it discusses the different views of the three main Reform­ers (Luther; Zwingli and Calvin) on the prohibition of images and their impact on Protestant identity, including also the production of polemical cartoons by which the Public Reformed Church in the Dutch Republic provided an ideological justification for its existence. Although

the Council of Trent defended the practice of the Catholic Church as regards the veneration of images, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries witnessed two important papal prohibitions of depicting the Holy Trinity in a particular way. These debates show that the image controversy was not a prerogative of the Reformation.

In the first essay on the relationship between the prohibition of images and Protestant identity Willem Jan van Asselt argues that although the image question was not a central theme of the Reformation, and that the controversy broke out when the Reformation movement had already found strong popular support, the rejection of the medieval cult implied by the rejection of images, altered in a drastic way the life of a large part of the European population. It divided the continent into several types of religious societies, each visibly different from its other. The prohibition of images did not only divide Catholics and Protestants, but also the Reformed and Lutheran Churches. At the same time, Van Asselt shows that Protestantism did not imply a complete break with the Roman Catholic world of images, symbols and rituals. In early modern times the Lutheran and Reformed too developed a religious tradition (exemplum tradition) in which they created their own visual culture in which 'living saints' were celebrated: the prophetic reformer, the protestant martyr, the godly preacher etc. His conclusion is that despite its impressive theological enterprise and its iconoclastic attempts to reform medieval piety, the Reformation was not so radical and successful as suggested in traditional historiography.

Additionally, Caspar Staal offers a sketch of the iconoclastic move­ment in the Low Countries, especially in the city of Utrecht. He shows how in Utrecht the iconoclasm movement with its defacement of cultic objects of previous generations that were burned or reduced to rubble, tested and strained the political system of the local authorities, since it challenged civic as well as ecclesiastical authorities.

Jo Spaans relates the conference theme to an analysis of a seven­teenth-century cartoon which is alternatively designated as Fraticide near Alphen village in South-Holland or Pig-war. It shows two men wearing city clothes and hats that are fighting off a troop of pigs, which have overrun a third man. The attendant rhymed dialogue points to the fact that the picture does not refer to some innocent rural activity but is meant as a cartoon, in which an incident is satirized, probably a local theologico-political conflict that fits the wider context of the rivalry between two opposing factions of Voetians and Cocceians. After a sharp analysis of the historical events lying behind the satirical print, she points out that the print on the Alphen Pig War should be classified as satirical-moralistic emblem rather than as a cartoon in the modern sense. It was not designed for a popular audience, for its meaning was skilfully hidden, so that only insiders would get the mes- sage. It was meant as an indictment of 'fanaticism' referring to the way religion had been abused to embarrass and upset political authority. Being an interesting link in the development from allegory to cartoon, the picture confronts the viewer with conflicting images of peace and conflict, of order and disorder, of clerical fanaticism and the duties of an enlightened sovereign. Published at the end of the seventeenth cen­tury, it endorsed the 1694 resolution by of States of Holland 'towards the peace in the Church'. For the Dutch Republic this was a crucial moment, because at that time new theological controversies seemed to trigger again a political crisis, like the Arminian one at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Thus, the print of the Alphen Pig War is an intriguing example of the image war that proclaimed and defended the then current religious regime.

A complete new field of research is uncovered by Jan Hallebeek who investigates seventeenth- and eighteenth century papal prohibitions against a particular way of depicting the Holy Trinity. After dealing with the historical developments prior to these papal prohibitions, he discusses the decree De invocatione (1563) of the Council of Trent which did not touch upon the image of the Holy Trinity. Especially, he focuses on the brief of Pope Benedict XIV, Sollicitudini Nostrae (1745). In order to put to a stop to certain monstrous excrescences in popular devotion, and to formulate an authoritative guideline, Benedict drew a distinction between three categories of the Trinity: those prohibited (monsters, figures with one body and three heads etc.), those tolerated (three more or less identical human figures) and those approved (the Trinity depicted in a vertical or horizontal way with God the Father as 'ancient of days', Christ as a human being and the Holy Spirit as dove or as tongues of fire). Subsequently, Hallebeek discusses the implications of Benedict's brief for ecclesiastical life and shows how in religious art in spite of Benedict's guidelines, the critical approach of images of the Trinity in circles of the Louvain Augustinism of Port Royal, including the decree of Council of Pistoia (1786-1787) to remove all images of the Trinity from the churches the Holy Spirit continued to be depicted in a human form, while in popular art three-faced Trinities were still produced. Apparently, there was within the Catholic Church no longer room for the view that the Holy Trinity should not be depicted at all, although this opinion was based on undisputed theological premises, on authoritative writers.

Modern Times

Finally, this volume is completed by an examination of how icono­clasm has been debated in the modern period. It comprises a variety of modern iconoclastic phenomena, such as the 'image wars' of secularized political movements (nationalism), conflicts between the traditional Roman Catholic Church and the Avant-garde in modern art as religiously inspired form of iconoclasm, and finally, the 'written' (iconoclastic) images of the divine in modern Dutch poetry.

The first essay by Angela Berlis compares two forms of the politics of representation in the nineteenth century: a secular and an ecclesiastical form. Using Willem Frijhoff's distinction between idols, icons, and saints, in combination with Jan Assmann's consideration of 'cultural memory', she explores the development of the cults and myths surrounding the protestant queen Luise of Prussia (1776-1810) on the one hand and the canonization in 1867 of the Ruthenian catholic archbishop Josaphat Kuncevycz (Kuncewycz, ca. 1580-1623) and the Spanish inquisitor Pedro de Arbués on the other hand. She analyses this development in terms of a social process, carried and supported by a particular group. Considering this process in terms of role models and in terms of the politics of representation, she comes to the surprising conclusion that the Prussian politics of representation of Luisa did not differ essentially from the politics of canonization regarding Kuncevycz under Pius IX. Both were intended to reinforce identity both internally and externally by offering a transcendental justification. She concludes her essay with a brief investigation played by the mass media in the shaping of such politics of representation.

Christopher König discusses several paintings of Jesus produced for an 1896 Berlin art exhibition. They were created by well-known German artists for this occasion, among whom Franz von Stuck and Hans Thoma. Koenig traces the reception of these paintings in Ger­man Protestant periodicals in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He concentrates on the religious debate on a 'modern' image of Jesus in the period between secularization and religious renewal. At the same time, he investigates the role of nationalistic patterns that contributed to the debate on National Protestant attitudes in Wilhel­mian Germany exemplified by an analysis of a 'German Christ.' From

his analysis it becomes clear that a modernized image of Jesus was experienced to have a paradigmatic impact not only on the diverse and cultural and religious visions of liberal Protestantism, on various reform movements in Germany, but also on the radical nationalists of the völkische Bewegung'. All these groups were linked by and con­tributed to, the formation of national identity in contrast to Judaism and the Catholics.

Jaap Goedegebuure presents an essay on the written icon images of God in modern Dutch literature. He uses the notorious image of `God as donkey' introduced by Gerard Reve as an example of the way heterodox images of the divine can clash with religious beliefs, dogmas, rules and conventions. Although iconoclashes may be of all times and places, he argues, nowhere is their manifestation as vehement as in the art and literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. From the days of romanticism onwards artists and writers have been choosing images that closely connect to their deepest personal identity, thereby evoking a complete inversion of the qualities and values of conventional images of the divine and the sacred. He observes that in the field of aesthetics this inversion manifests itself as a violating renewal of artis­tic norms and devices. At the same time, these new representations of the divine can be interpreted as projections, resembling the inner self. In the last part of his contribution Goedegebuure deals with two Dutch poets who looked upon all images of the divine as projections, without cherishing hope of being set free from these 'Annoying Gods' (Hans Faverey). These poets express the need for a definite and resolv­ing iconoclasm, but in the end the reader observes once more a clash of endlessly re-emerging images. The author concludes by saying that this rapid change of position and the inversion of the usual hierarchy underline the inescapable and highly ambivalent character of religious projections. God is dealt with in an aggressive but still positive way. God is absent, but in his absence he still represents a one too many clashing icon.

Theo Salemink addresses the conference theme by focusing on a conflict between ultramontane Catholic Church leaders and the Avant-garde in the first part of the twentieth century. According to Salemink, the Avant-garde movement presented itself as 'a new iconoclasm' and `a secular spirituality'. Initially, the Catholic Church condemned the movement as being a form of modern heresy and neo-paganism. After 1960, however, the Catholic Church changed its attitude and considered the spirituality of the Avant-garde as compatible. The author illustrates this international conflict with a special case from Dutch history. In 1949 the Vatican ordered the bishop of Roermond, Mgr. G. Lemmens, to remove from the old chapel of Wahlwiller, in the south of the Nether­lands, the Stations of the Cross painted by the young artist Aad de Haas in modern style. A Catholic fascist from pre-war time started a campaign in some Dutch Catholic media against De Haas, classifying his work as a form of `entartete Kunst' and as a violation of the papal vision on art exposed in the encyclical letter Mediator Dei et Hominum (1947). More than thirty years later, in 1980, the Stations of the Cross were replaced in the chapel, but now with approval of the conserva­tive bishop Mgr. Jo Gijsen. The bishop of Roermond called this work of art 'a dream of the Resurrection'. From this, Salemink concludes that the 1949 intervention of the Vatican was an opportunistic move that had nothing to do with the biblical prohibition of images, but was inspired by the fear of ultramontane catholicism for the Avant-garde in art and for modern lifestyle.

The final contribution to this volume is written by Alexander Demandt in which he approaches the conference theme by an historical analysis of the phenomenon of vandalism—sacred and profane—as a form of `Kulturzerstörung'. He defines vandalism as the conspicious deface­ment and destruction of a structure or symbol against the will of the owner or the governing body. It can be done both as an expression of contempt or creativity, or both. Vandalism, he argues, only makes sense in a culture that recognizes history and archeology. Although originally an ethnic slur referring to Vandals, who sacked Rome in 455, the term was coined in 1794 during the French Revolution by Henri Baptiste Gregoire, bishop of Blois, in his report directed to the Republican Con­vention, where he used the word vandalism to describe the behaviour of the republican army. Gustave Courbets's attempt, during the 1871 Paris Commune, to dismantle the Vendôme column, a symbol of the past Napoleon III authoritarian Empire, was one of the most celebrated events of vandalism. Perhaps, Demandt has borrowed the title of his contribution from Nietzsche, who meditated after the Commune on the 'fight against culture', taking as example the intentional burning of the Tuileries Palace on May 23, 1871. Throughout history the (ritual) destruction of monuments of a previous government or power has been one of the largest symbols, showing the attempt at transition of power. The author shows how the criminal fight against culture is only the reverse side of a criminal culture. For example, vandalism of Jewish properties and Jewish owned businesses was part of the criminal Nazi program, surfacing in the widespread coordinated vandalism of the Kristallnacht (November 9, 1938). Recent cases of vandalism in this vein include the toppling and deconstruction of Soviet monuments, the Taliban destruction of Buddhist statuary in Afghanistan, and the well-known toppling of a Saddam Hussein statue in Iraq.

We want to end this introduction by stating that all the essays in this volume articulate the importance of iconoclastic controversies and their impact on the process of creating religious identity. It includes a discussion of images in society and politics, philosophy and theology, rituals and liturgy, yesterday and today. We have little doubt that the debate on religious identity will continue and, therefore, this volume does not offer final solutions. But at the same time we want to express our hope that the research done in this volume will contribute to a bet­ter understanding of the struggle for religious identity in past, present and (even) future.