Through a unique and stunning collection of paintings, sculpture, rare books, and works on paper, Divine Mirrors examines the complex relationship between sacred imagery and secular identity in the art of the Madonna. This magnificent work--born from a multi-year project that included a museum exhibition, scholarly symposium, and reinstallation of a segment of the permanent collection of the Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College--features the work of such renowned artists as Il Pintoricchio, Mantegna, Munch, and Leger, alongside fresh, undiscovered masters and little-known works of art. The book's fifty catalogue entries range from a rare thirteenth-century panel painting to a specially commissioned artwork exploring the intersection of religion and modern life. This volume investigates everything from non-Western perceptions of European religious practices to the Virgin Mary's voice in musical composition. In the opening essay "The Many Names of the Mother of God" noted scholar Robert A. Orsi considers why images of Mary offer contemporary Americans such a powerful visual experience. Unlike paintings and sculptures created solely for aesthetic contemplation, Orsi writes, images of Mary are more than just artistic representations--they become for us an embodiment of the Virgin Mother herself. Then, moving into the historical realm, editor Melissa R. Katz guides us on a twenty-century chronological tour that explores the intersection of art history and world history in representations of Mary. Katz's essay "Regarding Mary: Women's Lives Reflected in the Virgin's Image" takes the elements of Marian iconography most relevant to the study of art and weaves them together to provide a guide for modern audiences to engage with the religious origins of our common artistic legacy. Filled with fascinating information, this important work requires no particular background in art history, religion, or the Bible. Readers of all levels will be rewarded with an in-depth encounter of a remarkable and complex figure."

Mirrors of the Divine brings into focus how four influential authors of the late ancient world--Tertullian of Carthage, Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa, and Augustine of Hippo--employ language of vision and of mirrors in their discursive struggles to construct Christian agency, identity, and epistemology. Early Christian authors described the vision of God through the Pauline verse 1 Corinthians 13:12: "For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face." Yet each author interpreted this verse differently, based on a diverse set of assumptions about how they understood seeing and mirrors to function: does vision occur by something leaving or entering the eye? Is one impacted by seeing or by being seen? Do mirrors offer trustworthy knowledge? Spanning the second through fourth centuries CE in both Eastern and Western Christianity, Mirrors of the Divine analyzes these four authors' theological writings on vision and knowledge of God to explore how contradictory theories of sight shaped their cosmologies, theologies, subjectivities, genders, and discursive worlds. As Emily R. Cain demonstrates, how the authors portray eyes reveals how they envisioned one's relationship to the world, while how they portray mirrors reveals how they imagined the unknown. Both have dramatic impacts on how one interprets what it means to see God through a mirror dimly. She shows that arguments about the phenomenon of visual perception are deeply intertwined with broader debates about identity, agency, and epistemology, and uncovers some of the most self-conscious ways that late ancient Christians thought of themselves, their worlds, and their God.

This unique series of paintings takes the viewer on a graphic, visionary journey through the physical, metaphysical, and spiritual anatomy of the self. From anatomically correct rendering of the body systems, Grey moves to the spiritual/energetic systems with such images as "Universal Mind Lattice," envisioning the sacred and esoteric symbolism of the body and the forces that define its living field of energy. Includes essays on the significance of Grey's work by Ken Wilber, the eminent transpersonal psychologist, and by the noted New York art critic, Carlo McCormick.

John Calvin's perspectives on the nature, calling, and destiny of the human being is scattered all over his extensive corpus of writings. This book attempts to provide an accurate account of the main theological motifs that governed Calvin's doctrine on the human being, while keeping in mind variable factors such as the historical development of Calvin's thought, the pastoral and often unsystematic orientation of his theology, and the formative impact doctrinal controversies had on his thoughts. The contribution focuses specifically on Calvin's understanding of the created structure of the human being, her sinful nature, the human being's union with Christ, the limits of human reason, the anthropological roots of human society and gender. The primary aim is to make the original Calvin speak. But the contribution also addresses some of the most recent debates on Calvin's theology and identifies those impulses in his theological anthropology that bear potential for modern reflections on human existence. Like most of us, Calvin was a child of his time. However, his intellectual legacy endures and readers may well find his thoughts on the human being surprisingly refreshing and stimulating for modern anthropological and social discourses.

The essays in this book bring together postmodern theory, philosophy, psychoanalysis, anthropology, literature, cultural studies, and women's studies to show how a persistent and classical theme in western theological studies (the alterity of the divine reality) has become creatively transcribed and theorized within the postmodern landscape.

In the context of our increasingly global legal order, Pierre Legendre’s God in the Mirror reconsiders the place of law within the division of existing bodies of knowledge. Navigating the texts of Ovid, Augustine, Roman jurists, medieval canon lawyers, Freud, Lacan, the notebooks of Leonardo de Vinci, and the paintings of Magritte, this third volume of Pierre Legendre’s Lessons focuses on the relation of the subject to the institution of images. Legendre tracks the origins and vicissitudes of the specular metaphor within western history, carrying out a critique of its dependence on the discourse of the Imago Dei. A crucial landmark within Legendre’s ongoing reconsideration of a medieval ‘revolution of interpretation’, this book dissociates the western normative tradition from its mythic foundation, separating theology and law. It thereby documents the advent of modern rational doubt, as a new legal foundation or ground: one that, for Legendre, was not only a revolutionary invention, but one that produced the modern European idea of the State.

Lila is Sanskrit for play, the play of the gods. It is the self-generating genesis of Bliss, created by Bliss for the purpose of Bliss. It is the uninhibited, impulsive sport of Brahman, the free spirit of creation that results in the spontaneous unfolding of the cosmos to be found in the eternity of each moment. It is beyond the confining locks and chains of reason, beyond the steel barred windows looking out from the cages of explanation, beyond the droning tick-tick-tick of the huge mechanical clocks of time. Come, let us enter the realm of the madman and the finely wrought threads of Clotho as they are measured out by Lachesis and cut by Atropos to create the great tapestry of life, including the intricate, intertwining designs of dementia with the trickster, the shaman, the scapegoat, the shadow, the artist and the savior. Come, let us join in the divine madness of the gods.