Page - 76 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 03/02

76 | Isabella Bruckner www.jrfm.eu 2017, 3/2, 71–77 Following this paradigm, as a final step the author analyses the relationship be- tween image and sacrament. the seventh chapter is very short and is dedicated to the question of how in the Protestant and reformed traditions the senses of seeing and listening were viewed in relation to one another and how this influenced differing teachings on images. similarly, chapter eight focuses on the history of theology. after il- lustrating the disputes over icons in the eastern Church during the Middle ages and the alternative path taken by the Western Church, the author depicts the hermeneutics of images in their strong relation with Christology. in light of theodor W. adorno’s and Max horkheimer’s criticisms of moder- nity and their reception of the image ban in their “negative dialectic”, in chapter nine Moxter draws lines that connect with a possible contemporary aesthetics in negative theology. he ends by considering contemporary artists and their multiple receptions of aniconism and the negative philosophical and theologi- cal or even iconoclastic tradition. Chapter ten reviews the threads and results of the earlier chapters. The systematic-theological section of the book offers many interesting per- spectives on the topic of imagery and its intersection with other areas of an- thropological relevance. Moxter refers to a wide range of modern and post- modern philosophers as well as to arguments made by the Church fathers and by Luther and Calvin. the ninth chapter is of particular interest, with its consid- eration of contemporary aesthetics in the light of a negative dialectic and of the interpretation of modern art pieces. the orientation and structure of the text are, however, confusing. the chap- ters differ vastly in length (compare chapters 4 and 7 for instance), leaving an impression of a lack of balance and unequal weighting. furthermore, it appears that various purposes are intertwined. on one hand, the discussion provides an overview of elaborated receptions of the image ban, which illustrate the shift in hermeneutics together with transformed parameters in the history of thought and differing (implicit) hermeneutics of the image itself (341). On the other hand, it seems that the authors wanted to contribute to a Protestant her- meneutic of the image (ban) and also to a general cultural debate. all three aims are approached diligently and well argued. the confusion stems from their overlap, when it is not always clear how the information presented is to be po- sitioned. in a short conclusion, the two authors state clearly the guiding thesis of the entire work. a conception of the image that gives account of it as the portrait of an original in a paradigm of similarity does not provide an adequate basis for understanding the image ban. an image “gives to see” and “makes present” while also concealing and hiding, and therefore the biblical image ban served and serves not to protect God´s invisibility (or the rejection of any mental im-