The Notion of Image. Towards an Encounter of Theology and Bildwissenschaft

The project describes a specific understanding of pursuing theology in connection with considerations of visual studies/"Bildwissenschaft" concentrating on a concept of images. The project will start with an analysis of the different proposals of "Bildwissenschaft" derived from the various academic disciplines that participate as well as from the challenging variety of different specifications of images in order to gain a convincing thesis for its implementation within a genuine systematic-theological scope. Although the image-covered caves of the Upper Palaeolithic indicate a mature practice of image fabrication an extraordinarily influential concept of images was established by Plato who declared with the help of his somehow narrow focus on ideas that each sensuous thing can only be seen as effigy of an idealistic prototype. During the modern era completely new basic conditions have emerged with the transition from images that operate in a cultic environment to images that have to prove their value increasingly within the framework of the art market has become apparent for the first time. After a review of these different image types and their concepts the project will limit itself to three typologically well-founded sections. This ideal typological approach will be semiotically oriented, phenomenologically oriented, and performance oriented. After these clarifications of different concepts of images the project deals with five theological themes that are connected to each other to varying degrees and that have biblical origins that will be discussed considering the improvements of "Bildwissenschaft" from a systematic-theological perspective. These theological areas of image interdiction, of man in the likeness of God, of Jesus as the image of the invisible Father, of the eye as the lamp of the body, and of the healing of the blind will ask if illusionist images would be better images of God since they try to do away with the difference between image and thing with artistic means and if the notion of "image" with its integrated reference reveals the difference between God and man more precisely than supposedly relativising "similitude". The theological part will discuss such parallel aspects as that of Merleau-Ponty`s argument in the light of Cézanne`s paintings that we have access to the spirit of other people insofar it is an incarnated spirit and the simultaneous use of doxa and eikon in the New Testament. The two remaining theological fields approximate a theory of image for theological reflection as well as from the opposite starting point, that is to say from seeing. In the first case the eye is an autonomous source of light for the body instead of a mere organ of transformation. If this source malfunctions for whatever reason and the whole body lacks light. For such cases the New Testament provides reports on the healing of blind people. The interdisciplinary setup of the project will resort to methods of research "on the arts", "for the arts", and "in the arts" as it was discussed during the last couple of years, entitled "arts-based research", for these genuine systematic theological fields.