Author: Matt Jenson

Jenson sets up the essays and letters that follow addressing the controversy and context that surround the Word mural, a twenty-seven foot painting of Jesus at the center of Biola’s campus. He notes the different perceptions held by the greater community, minority groups and the arts community at Biola. He also notes the role of Biola’s president, Barry Corey, in deciding the future of the mural and the process Corey took in making his decision.

Using the second commandment as a starting point, Jenson examines the biblical context for images of God, noting that at times God assigned an image for himself, including humanity. Humans, though, have misappropriated worship to man-made idols, even perverting images given by God, such as the golden serpent. He then quotes John of Damascus and John Calvin to show varying views of image making in the Church. Placing the biblical and historical discussion on images into the context of the Jesus mural at Biola, Jenson discusses the inevitability of image making and how it influences our devotion and view of Jesus. He also notes the difference between how images are used in a church and university context. In the end he asks for an examination of the use and effect of the Jesus mural by the two things that gives us the clearest picture of Jesus—Scripture and the body of Christ.

Contemporary political discourse tends to either languish under lazy appeals to tolerance or devolve into the violence of irreconcilable difference. In her recent book, Theology, Political Theory, and Pluralism: Beyond Tolerance and Difference, Kristen Deede Johnson examines the tradition of political liberalism exemplified by Rawls and its recent post-Nietzschean critics whose agonistic political theory finds conflict basic to politics. Proposing a constructive model of ‘conversation’, Johnson calls for a more deeply Christian political engagement that resists a privatization of belief in the name of ‘tolerance’ while
refusing to resort to the rhetorical violence of a triumphalism that would equate state and church.