The Iconographic Fiction and Christian Humanism of Flannery O’Connor

Vigen Guroian

“What the word says, the image shows silently; what we have heard, we have seen.” That is how the Seventh Great Ecumenical Council, held at Constantinople in 787, summarized its defense of the use of icons in Christian worship. What the council confessed to have heard from scripture and to believe, is that God became man in Jesus Christ. According to the Gospel of John “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:13–14). Through an act of unfathomable kenosis, the infinite had become finite, the uncircumscribable was circumscribed in a human being, and the invisible was made visible.

When Chalcedon Meets Hollywood

Bradley Shingleton

 

Writing at the threshold of the twentieth century, G. K. Chesterton noted that “Words are perpetually falling below themselves. They are ceasing to say what they mean, or to mean what they say…”¹ Matters are no different today, thanks in large part to the impact of media on literary and cultural life. And perhaps no words have been susceptible to decay in meaning more than religious ones.