Närvaron bortom - en konstruktiv teologi om den visuella konstens förmåga att närvarandegöra det gudomliga

Sammanfattning: The objective of this thesis is to call attention to the need for a constructive theology, where visual art is taken seriously, and to develop a first outline of such a theology. The aim is to illustrate how visual art has the ability to make the divine present in a way that differs from that of spoken and written language. The thesis consists of three main parts: a theological-historical background, a theory from science of art and finally a contemporary theological perspective. In the theological- historical background the Byzantine and reformatory iconoclasms are discussed, as well as the Linguistic turn. The latter illustrates the western logocentrism, which is problematized further in the thesis. By emphasizing the non-lingual dimension of the image (as presented by the art historian and art critic James Elkins in On Pictures and the Words That Fail Them) and by connecting this to the apophatic theology and the method théologie totale, the visual art’s ability to make the divine present in a way that can not be fully substituted by the spoken and written language is emphasized. Théologie totale provides new perspectives on the arguments for and against images, presented in the chapters covering the two iconoclasms. The thesis explicates how a shift from Logos to Spirit provides insight about the divine presence in the image – a presence that goes beyond human imagination, thus comparable to apophatic theology.