5 New Titles in Theology and the Arts
by Mark McInroy
Mark McInroy is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of St. Thomas, and is the book review editor for ARTS. He has published academic examinations of Origen of Alexandria, Martin Luther, Karl Barth, Karl Rahner, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. He is the author of Balthasar on the Spiritual Senses: Perceiving Splendour (Oxford University Press, 2014).
Robert MacSwain and Taylor Worley, eds., Theology, Aesthetics, and Culture: Responses to the Work of David Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
Theology, Aesthetics, and Culture: Responses to the Work of David Brown began as an academic conference on Brown hosted by the Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts at the University of St. Andrews in 2010; to the twelve plenary papers given at that time seven essays are added in this volume. Each of the nineteen chapters responds to one of five works by Brown, all published by Oxford University Press: Tradition and Imagination: Revelation and Change (1999), Discipleship and Imagination: Christian Tradition and Truth (2000), God and Enchantment of Place: Reclaiming Human Experience (2004), God and Grace of Body: Sacrament in Ordinary(2007), and God and Mystery in Words: Experience Through Metaphor and Drama (2008). The resulting treatment of Brown’s thought is exceptionally broad in scope, and the highly esteemed contributors to this volume come from a wide range of areas of expertise.
In Chapter 1, William J. Abraham’s “appreciative critique” presses Brown to embrace fully a soteriological, rather than epistemological view of scripture so as to be more in keeping with the position he himself outlines in Tradition and Imagination. Richard Viladesau’s examination of Brown in Chapter 2 compares his approach with that of Karl Rahner and, to a lesser extent, other modern Catholic theologians interested in fundamental theology. In Chapter 3, Margaret Miles uses Brown’s idea that our understanding of revelation gradually emerges within cultural contexts as a jumping-off point for some of her own reflections about bodies and personhood in the Christian tradition.
In one of the more critical chapters of the volume, Richard Bauckham in Chapter 4 calls Brown to reconceive the cult of the saints for a modern age much more radically than he does in Discipleship and Imagination. In Chapter 5, Tina Beattie notes the tension in Brown’s work between, on the one hand, the “desire to celebrate the imaginative abundance of the Christian heritage” and, on the other hand, “his anxiety to reassure his less adventurous readers regarding the legitimacy of his enterprise” (65). Ultimately, Beattie is critical of Brown’s presumptions of progressive development, which, to her reckoning, unjustifiably embolden Brown to exclude important pre-modern aspects of the Christian tradition. In Chapter 6, Douglas Hedley offers illuminating comparisons between Brown’s work and that of Hans Urs von Balthasar, Alex Stock, Austin Farrer, and John Henry Newman, among others, in the interest of drawing out Brown’s emphasis on “the manner in which the creative imagination can reinforce and intensify the truths of revelation” (88).
Chapter 7, by Gordon Graham, examines Brown’s view of art and architecture as sites for the sacramental, as described in God and Enchantment of Place. In Chapter 8, Charles Taliaferro treats of Brown’s view of religious experience, and he also criticizes Brown’s characterization of contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. Mark Wynn in Chapter 9 encourages Brown to engage with phenomenological literature on sacred space, which he sees as converging helpfully with Brown’s own work.
Chapter 10 begins treatments of Brown’s God and Grace of Body, and here Kimerer LaMothe offers an appreciative supplement to Brown’s efforts at integrating dance into practiced Christianity. Although Jeremy Begbie in Chapter 11 lauds Brown’s exploration of classical music, he holds that Brown’s treatment requires greater “theological specificity” to achieve the goals he outlines. In Chapter 12, Gavin Hopps praises Brown’s engagement with popular music, which he sees as evidence of Brown’s “unprejudiced vigilance for the possibility of divine activity in dark, troubled, apparently barren and unpromising places” (167).
Judith Casselberry in Chapter 13 also examines Brown’s view of pop music, but she holds that he “undermines his project by failing to consistently and critically incorporate race, gender, and class in analysis of music production and reception” (182). In Chapter 14, titled “What if David Brown Had Owned a Television?,” Clive Marsh criticizes Brown for not going far enough beyond the high arts in his engagement with culture (certainly an unexpected remark, given Brown’s examination of popular music described above). Graham Ward in Chapter 15 focuses on the Christological implications of Brown’s treatment of the Eucharistic body.
In Chapter 16, David Fuller commends Brown for the connections he makes between poetry and revelation in God and Mystery in Words. Chapter 17 contains Trevor Hart’s appreciation of the same connection in Brown, but he also nudges Brown toward “a more sustained engagement with the biblical and classical doctrine of the incarnation” (236), which he sees as offering resources for a yet “wider poetics” than Brown has achieved. In Chapter 18, Ben Quash first offers his assessment that it is liturgy, above all else, that ties together the different parts of God and Mystery in Words. Quash then suggests that Brown should develop more rigorously criteria for good and bad liturgy, and that he must account for “how God can be understood to be encountered in liturgy in a way that does not reduce God to an object of experience like creatures are” (244). The last chapter, by Ann Loades and Bridget Nichols, again treats of Brown’s view of liturgy, this time with an emphasis on the various imperatives that must be followed if Christ is to be made present to the world through the church and liturgy. An introduction by co-editor Robert MacSwain offers helpful orientation to many of the key issues that will be examined in the volume, and a postscript by Taylor Worley argues that contemporary theology of the arts should be done in an “ekphrastic mode” (298).
Brown himself offers a thirty-page response to the issues raised in the volume, which will certainly be of great interest to readers. Although Brown’s five volumes take on a dizzying array of theological issues, he holds that the fundamental thesis of his series is that “both natural and revealed theology are in crisis, and that the only way out is to give proper attention to the cultural embeddedness of both” (God and Mystery in Words, 272-3).
Theology, Aesthetics, and Culture offers an erudite, thought-provoking introduction to the many manifestations of this cultural embeddedness. It is noteworthy not only for its assessment of Brown’s multi-faceted achievement, but also for the ways in which it substantially furthers so many important conversations that Brown has begun.
Kenneth Vaux, ed., The Ministry of Vincent Van Gogh in Religion and Art (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2012).
Although it is most bibliographically precise to list Kenneth Vaux as the editor of The Ministry of Vincent Van Gogh in Religion and Art, in fact all but thirty of the volume’s 200 pages were composed by Vaux himself. Appendices from Cliff Edwards, Jan Van Eys, and Chris Glaser offer brief reflections at the conclusion of the study, but the bulk of the volume advances Vaux’s thesis that Vincent Van Gogh’s life and work should be regarded as a ministry in which he was a “painter-evangelist.” Tracing Van Gogh’s spiritual and artistic formation through his most influential locales, Vaux begins in Chapter 1 with Van Gogh’s time in Aldersgate, England; it was there that his imagination was captured by English piety and hymnody. Chapter 2 examines Van Gogh’s alienation from Dutch Calvinism in Amsterdam. Chapter 3 treats the unsanctioned, worker-priest direction his vision of ministry would take in the mining district of the Borinage. Chapter 4 gives an account of Van Gogh’s artistic maturation in Antwerp, where he became familiar with Reuben’s works and came into his own in his technique. Chapter 5 examines the merging of Van Gogh’s artistic and religious development in the Parisian suburb of Asnières-sur-Seine, where, according to Vaux, he learned “biblical meditation and to translate this to a vibrant screen” (164). In Arles (covered in Chapter 6) Van Gogh painted some of his most iconic works, such as Starry Night, and Vaux argues that the city represents “a point of unspeakable divine glory—of resplendent color” (142) in Van Gogh’s life. Chapter 7 examines Van Gogh’s time in Auvers-sur-Oise, where a remarkable flurry of activity (70 works were produced in 70 days) serves as the culmination of Van Gogh’s life and work. Chapter 8, “Accession” offers concluding comments. Some readers may find challenging Vaux’s serpentine argument, but his central claim concerning the religious dimensions of Van Gogh’s life and work merits careful consideration.
Stephen M. Garrett, God’s Beauty-in-Act: Participating in God’s Suffering Glory(Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2013).
Stephen M. Garrett’s God’s Beauty-in-Act: Participating in God’s Suffering Glory argues that emphasis on the beauty of God allows one to avoid the problems inherent to perfect-being theology in the Anselmian tradition. Garrett describes his project as having a “diptych” structure, the first panel of which is constituted by the opening two chapters of the book. Chapter 1 outlines the celebration of God’s beauty by ancient and medieval figures, and it also gives an account of the modern dismissal of beauty from theological reflection. Chapter 2 draws extensively from Hans Urs von Balthasar’s well-known treatment of beauty in order to argue, with Balthasar, for a retrieval of beauty for modern theology and a connection between aesthetics and ethics. Chapter 3 is the “hinge” of the diptych, where a thorough biblical treatment of God’s glory occurs with special attention to the Suffering Servant motif and its New Testament appropriations. Chapter 4 begins the second panel of Garrett’s diptych, which offers his constructive proposal to the problems outlined in the first panel. Here Garrett develops notions of God’s incarnate and Trinitarian beauty, and he places those ideas in conversation with discussions of the impassibility of God. Chapter 5 describes in detail what beauty-in-act means by focusing on the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ as the foundation for a transformative participation in God’s Trinitarian life. Scholars of theological aesthetics will value the extensive relationships forged among distinct systematic loci in Garrett’s presentation.
Deborah Haynes, Bakhtin Reframed: Interpreting Key Thinkers for the Arts(London: I.B. Tauris & Co., 2013).
In Bakhtin Reframed, Deborah Haynes addresses a curious state of affairs concerning the oeuvre of Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975): namely, that many of his seminal ideas have not been used to analyze visual art and culture, despite their widespread adaptation in poststructuralist literary criticism. To remedy this situation, Haynes applies Bakhtin’s theory to various pieces of visual art (“epi-eikons,” as she calls them), and in so doing demonstrates the relevance of Bakhtin’s ideas for such analysis. Chapter 1, “Bakhtinian aesthetics,” offers a detailed introduction to Bakhtin’s aesthetic theory, and then applies those ideas to a carved atal stone from Nigeria. Chapter 2, “Creativity and the creative process,” uses M. C. Richards’ sculpture Dream Angel as a jumping off point for Bakhtin-inspired reflections on the ability for artists to form worlds in their artistic endeavors. Chapter 3, “The artist,” applies Cindy Sherman’s Society Portraits and Marina Abramovic’s performance piece The Artist is Present to Bakhtin’s well known dialogical writings. The result is a treatment of visual art as the “other” with whom the self engages. Chapter 4, “The work of art,” uses Bakhtin’s concepts of “chronotope,” “prosaics,” and “genre” to analyze Hamilton Finlay’s Little Sparta (which is a conglomeration of sculptures, buildings, pathways, and plantings near Edinburgh, Scotland) and Morris Graves’ The Lake.Chapter 5, “An interpretive study: Claude Monet,” examines Monet’s Cap Martin, near Menton (1884) and Grand Canal (1908) through a number of Bakhtinian lenses in order to argue for their usefulness within art history. Last, Chapter 6, “Context, reception and audience,” uses Margot Lovejoy’s Turns (an online artwork) as an occasion for reflection on the ways in which cultural context inflects the reception of works of art. Readers will find illuminating both the explication of Bakhtinian terminology and its application to particular pieces of visual art.
Christopher Deacy, Screening the Afterlife: Theology, Eschatology, and Film (Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2011).
In Screening the Afterlife: Theology, Eschatology, and Film, Christopher Deacy aims to fill a gap in scholarship on theology and film by comprehensively examining the portrayals of death, afterlife, and eschatology in contemporary cinema. Although some may be critical of the flippancy and eclecticism with which such themes are often dealt in film, Deacy insists, following Clive Marsh, that “any theology which fails to draw on agencies of popular culture simply misses the point about how and where theological reflection is already taking place” (ix). Deacy treats a remarkably wide range of films, including Bedazzled, Fallen, Flatliners, Ghost, Heaven Can Wait, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Lovely Bones, The Shawshank Redemption, Vanilla Sky, What Dreams May Come, Wings of Desire, The Witches of Eastwick, and Working Girl. In examining these pieces he hopes to add some “scholarly ballast,” as he puts it, to the culturally important—if often theologically simplistic—cinematic depictions of death, afterlife and eschatology. And yet, he insists, “It would be a misnomer … to suggest that, due to the reductionistic and terrestrial nature of most afterlife-themed films, film is an impoverished, patchy or defective site of eschatological meaning” (153). Theology, according to Deacy, can and should be transformed by engaging with such themes in popular culture.
Mark McInroy is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of St. Thomas, and is the book review editor for ARTS. He has published academic examinations of Origen of Alexandria, Martin Luther, Karl Barth, Karl Rahner, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. He is the author of Balthasar on the Spiritual Senses: Perceiving Splendour (Oxford University Press, 2014).
Robert MacSwain and Taylor Worley, eds., Theology, Aesthetics, and Culture: Responses to the Work of David Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
Theology, Aesthetics, and Culture: Responses to the Work of David Brown began as an academic conference on Brown hosted by the Institute for Theology, Imagination, and the Arts at the University of St. Andrews in 2010; to the twelve plenary papers given at that time seven essays are added in this volume. Each of the nineteen chapters responds to one of five works by Brown, all published by Oxford University Press: Tradition and Imagination: Revelation and Change (1999), Discipleship and Imagination: Christian Tradition and Truth (2000), God and Enchantment of Place: Reclaiming Human Experience (2004), God and Grace of Body: Sacrament in Ordinary(2007), and God and Mystery in Words: Experience Through Metaphor and Drama (2008). The resulting treatment of Brown’s thought is exceptionally broad in scope, and the highly esteemed contributors to this volume come from a wide range of areas of expertise.
In Chapter 1, William J. Abraham’s “appreciative critique” presses Brown to embrace fully a soteriological, rather than epistemological view of scripture so as to be more in keeping with the position he himself outlines in Tradition and Imagination. Richard Viladesau’s examination of Brown in Chapter 2 compares his approach with that of Karl Rahner and, to a lesser extent, other modern Catholic theologians interested in fundamental theology. In Chapter 3, Margaret Miles uses Brown’s idea that our understanding of revelation gradually emerges within cultural contexts as a jumping-off point for some of her own reflections about bodies and personhood in the Christian tradition.
In one of the more critical chapters of the volume, Richard Bauckham in Chapter 4 calls Brown to reconceive the cult of the saints for a modern age much more radically than he does in Discipleship and Imagination. In Chapter 5, Tina Beattie notes the tension in Brown’s work between, on the one hand, the “desire to celebrate the imaginative abundance of the Christian heritage” and, on the other hand, “his anxiety to reassure his less adventurous readers regarding the legitimacy of his enterprise” (65). Ultimately, Beattie is critical of Brown’s presumptions of progressive development, which, to her reckoning, unjustifiably embolden Brown to exclude important pre-modern aspects of the Christian tradition. In Chapter 6, Douglas Hedley offers illuminating comparisons between Brown’s work and that of Hans Urs von Balthasar, Alex Stock, Austin Farrer, and John Henry Newman, among others, in the interest of drawing out Brown’s emphasis on “the manner in which the creative imagination can reinforce and intensify the truths of revelation” (88).
Chapter 7, by Gordon Graham, examines Brown’s view of art and architecture as sites for the sacramental, as described in God and Enchantment of Place. In Chapter 8, Charles Taliaferro treats of Brown’s view of religious experience, and he also criticizes Brown’s characterization of contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. Mark Wynn in Chapter 9 encourages Brown to engage with phenomenological literature on sacred space, which he sees as converging helpfully with Brown’s own work.
Chapter 10 begins treatments of Brown’s God and Grace of Body, and here Kimerer LaMothe offers an appreciative supplement to Brown’s efforts at integrating dance into practiced Christianity. Although Jeremy Begbie in Chapter 11 lauds Brown’s exploration of classical music, he holds that Brown’s treatment requires greater “theological specificity” to achieve the goals he outlines. In Chapter 12, Gavin Hopps praises Brown’s engagement with popular music, which he sees as evidence of Brown’s “unprejudiced vigilance for the possibility of divine activity in dark, troubled, apparently barren and unpromising places” (167).
Judith Casselberry in Chapter 13 also examines Brown’s view of pop music, but she holds that he “undermines his project by failing to consistently and critically incorporate race, gender, and class in analysis of music production and reception” (182). In Chapter 14, titled “What if David Brown Had Owned a Television?,” Clive Marsh criticizes Brown for not going far enough beyond the high arts in his engagement with culture (certainly an unexpected remark, given Brown’s examination of popular music described above). Graham Ward in Chapter 15 focuses on the Christological implications of Brown’s treatment of the Eucharistic body.
In Chapter 16, David Fuller commends Brown for the connections he makes between poetry and revelation in God and Mystery in Words. Chapter 17 contains Trevor Hart’s appreciation of the same connection in Brown, but he also nudges Brown toward “a more sustained engagement with the biblical and classical doctrine of the incarnation” (236), which he sees as offering resources for a yet “wider poetics” than Brown has achieved. In Chapter 18, Ben Quash first offers his assessment that it is liturgy, above all else, that ties together the different parts of God and Mystery in Words. Quash then suggests that Brown should develop more rigorously criteria for good and bad liturgy, and that he must account for “how God can be understood to be encountered in liturgy in a way that does not reduce God to an object of experience like creatures are” (244). The last chapter, by Ann Loades and Bridget Nichols, again treats of Brown’s view of liturgy, this time with an emphasis on the various imperatives that must be followed if Christ is to be made present to the world through the church and liturgy. An introduction by co-editor Robert MacSwain offers helpful orientation to many of the key issues that will be examined in the volume, and a postscript by Taylor Worley argues that contemporary theology of the arts should be done in an “ekphrastic mode” (298).
Brown himself offers a thirty-page response to the issues raised in the volume, which will certainly be of great interest to readers. Although Brown’s five volumes take on a dizzying array of theological issues, he holds that the fundamental thesis of his series is that “both natural and revealed theology are in crisis, and that the only way out is to give proper attention to the cultural embeddedness of both” (God and Mystery in Words, 272-3).
Theology, Aesthetics, and Culture offers an erudite, thought-provoking introduction to the many manifestations of this cultural embeddedness. It is noteworthy not only for its assessment of Brown’s multi-faceted achievement, but also for the ways in which it substantially furthers so many important conversations that Brown has begun.
Kenneth Vaux, ed., The Ministry of Vincent Van Gogh in Religion and Art (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2012).
Although it is most bibliographically precise to list Kenneth Vaux as the editor of The Ministry of Vincent Van Gogh in Religion and Art, in fact all but thirty of the volume’s 200 pages were composed by Vaux himself. Appendices from Cliff Edwards, Jan Van Eys, and Chris Glaser offer brief reflections at the conclusion of the study, but the bulk of the volume advances Vaux’s thesis that Vincent Van Gogh’s life and work should be regarded as a ministry in which he was a “painter-evangelist.” Tracing Van Gogh’s spiritual and artistic formation through his most influential locales, Vaux begins in Chapter 1 with Van Gogh’s time in Aldersgate, England; it was there that his imagination was captured by English piety and hymnody. Chapter 2 examines Van Gogh’s alienation from Dutch Calvinism in Amsterdam. Chapter 3 treats the unsanctioned, worker-priest direction his vision of ministry would take in the mining district of the Borinage. Chapter 4 gives an account of Van Gogh’s artistic maturation in Antwerp, where he became familiar with Reuben’s works and came into his own in his technique. Chapter 5 examines the merging of Van Gogh’s artistic and religious development in the Parisian suburb of Asnières-sur-Seine, where, according to Vaux, he learned “biblical meditation and to translate this to a vibrant screen” (164). In Arles (covered in Chapter 6) Van Gogh painted some of his most iconic works, such as Starry Night, and Vaux argues that the city represents “a point of unspeakable divine glory—of resplendent color” (142) in Van Gogh’s life. Chapter 7 examines Van Gogh’s time in Auvers-sur-Oise, where a remarkable flurry of activity (70 works were produced in 70 days) serves as the culmination of Van Gogh’s life and work. Chapter 8, “Accession” offers concluding comments. Some readers may find challenging Vaux’s serpentine argument, but his central claim concerning the religious dimensions of Van Gogh’s life and work merits careful consideration.
Stephen M. Garrett, God’s Beauty-in-Act: Participating in God’s Suffering Glory(Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2013).
Stephen M. Garrett’s God’s Beauty-in-Act: Participating in God’s Suffering Glory argues that emphasis on the beauty of God allows one to avoid the problems inherent to perfect-being theology in the Anselmian tradition. Garrett describes his project as having a “diptych” structure, the first panel of which is constituted by the opening two chapters of the book. Chapter 1 outlines the celebration of God’s beauty by ancient and medieval figures, and it also gives an account of the modern dismissal of beauty from theological reflection. Chapter 2 draws extensively from Hans Urs von Balthasar’s well-known treatment of beauty in order to argue, with Balthasar, for a retrieval of beauty for modern theology and a connection between aesthetics and ethics. Chapter 3 is the “hinge” of the diptych, where a thorough biblical treatment of God’s glory occurs with special attention to the Suffering Servant motif and its New Testament appropriations. Chapter 4 begins the second panel of Garrett’s diptych, which offers his constructive proposal to the problems outlined in the first panel. Here Garrett develops notions of God’s incarnate and Trinitarian beauty, and he places those ideas in conversation with discussions of the impassibility of God. Chapter 5 describes in detail what beauty-in-act means by focusing on the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ as the foundation for a transformative participation in God’s Trinitarian life. Scholars of theological aesthetics will value the extensive relationships forged among distinct systematic loci in Garrett’s presentation.
Deborah Haynes, Bakhtin Reframed: Interpreting Key Thinkers for the Arts(London: I.B. Tauris & Co., 2013).
In Bakhtin Reframed, Deborah Haynes addresses a curious state of affairs concerning the oeuvre of Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975): namely, that many of his seminal ideas have not been used to analyze visual art and culture, despite their widespread adaptation in poststructuralist literary criticism. To remedy this situation, Haynes applies Bakhtin’s theory to various pieces of visual art (“epi-eikons,” as she calls them), and in so doing demonstrates the relevance of Bakhtin’s ideas for such analysis. Chapter 1, “Bakhtinian aesthetics,” offers a detailed introduction to Bakhtin’s aesthetic theory, and then applies those ideas to a carved atal stone from Nigeria. Chapter 2, “Creativity and the creative process,” uses M. C. Richards’ sculpture Dream Angel as a jumping off point for Bakhtin-inspired reflections on the ability for artists to form worlds in their artistic endeavors. Chapter 3, “The artist,” applies Cindy Sherman’s Society Portraits and Marina Abramovic’s performance piece The Artist is Present to Bakhtin’s well known dialogical writings. The result is a treatment of visual art as the “other” with whom the self engages. Chapter 4, “The work of art,” uses Bakhtin’s concepts of “chronotope,” “prosaics,” and “genre” to analyze Hamilton Finlay’s Little Sparta (which is a conglomeration of sculptures, buildings, pathways, and plantings near Edinburgh, Scotland) and Morris Graves’ The Lake.Chapter 5, “An interpretive study: Claude Monet,” examines Monet’s Cap Martin, near Menton (1884) and Grand Canal (1908) through a number of Bakhtinian lenses in order to argue for their usefulness within art history. Last, Chapter 6, “Context, reception and audience,” uses Margot Lovejoy’s Turns (an online artwork) as an occasion for reflection on the ways in which cultural context inflects the reception of works of art. Readers will find illuminating both the explication of Bakhtinian terminology and its application to particular pieces of visual art.
Christopher Deacy, Screening the Afterlife: Theology, Eschatology, and Film (Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge, 2011).
In Screening the Afterlife: Theology, Eschatology, and Film, Christopher Deacy aims to fill a gap in scholarship on theology and film by comprehensively examining the portrayals of death, afterlife, and eschatology in contemporary cinema. Although some may be critical of the flippancy and eclecticism with which such themes are often dealt in film, Deacy insists, following Clive Marsh, that “any theology which fails to draw on agencies of popular culture simply misses the point about how and where theological reflection is already taking place” (ix). Deacy treats a remarkably wide range of films, including Bedazzled, Fallen, Flatliners, Ghost, Heaven Can Wait, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Lovely Bones, The Shawshank Redemption, Vanilla Sky, What Dreams May Come, Wings of Desire, The Witches of Eastwick, and Working Girl. In examining these pieces he hopes to add some “scholarly ballast,” as he puts it, to the culturally important—if often theologically simplistic—cinematic depictions of death, afterlife and eschatology. And yet, he insists, “It would be a misnomer … to suggest that, due to the reductionistic and terrestrial nature of most afterlife-themed films, film is an impoverished, patchy or defective site of eschatological meaning” (153). Theology, according to Deacy, can and should be transformed by engaging with such themes in popular culture.
