Natalie Carnes, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Theology
Foster 120.06
Associate Professor of Theology
Education:
- Duke University, Ph.D. (Christian Theological Studies)
- University of Chicago, M.A. (Religion)
- Harvard University, A.B. (Comparative Religious Studies)
Biography:
Natalie is a constructive theologian who reflects on traditional theological topics through somewhat less traditional themes, like images, iconoclasm, beauty, gender, and childhood. For this work, she draws on literary and visual works as sites of theological reflection, and her interest in doing so takes her into questions of religious knowledge and authority. What are the possibilities and limitations of different theological genres?
In addition to authoring articles in Modern Theology, Journal of Religion, and Scottish Journal of Theology, among other journals, Natalie has published two books. The first is Beauty: A Theological Engagement With Gregory of Nyssa, and the second is titled Image and Presence: A Christological Reflection on Iconoclasm and Iconophilia.
Her third book, forthcoming spring 2020, is a theological narrative entitled Motherhood: A Confession. It mirrors the structure and themes of Augustine's Confessions to offer a different story, that reflects on different flesh as to consider what it means to be human in the face of the divine.
Currently, she is working on a new project, co-authored with Matthew Whelan, that explores intersections of poverty, aesthetics, luxury, and art. In it, they pursue the question: What is the place of art in a world of poverty and suffering?
Natalie lives in Waco with her husband and three children. You can find a recent essay on beauty and affliction , a blogpost on Confederate monuments , and a blogpost on Rihanna dressed as a pope . For more information on events, blogposts, and other writings, you can visit her website .
Academic Interests and Research:
Systematic theology, Christology, theological anthropology, theological knowledge, theological aesthetics, images, iconoclasms, children, childhood, feminist theology, patristic theology.
Books:
Motherhood: A Confession. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2020.
Image and Presence: A Christological Reflection on Iconoclasm and Iconophilia. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2017.
Beauty: A Theological Engagement with Gregory of Nyssa. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014.
Peer-Reviewed Articles:
“How Love for the Image Cast Out Fear of it In Early Christianity.” Religions. Special issue on Platonism and Christianity. J. Warren Smith, ed. 8.20 (2017): 1-15.
“Embracing Beauty in World of Affliction.” Republics of Letters: A Journal for the Study of Knowledge, Politics, and the Arts. Forum on Beauty and Form. Thomas Pfau and Vivasvan Soni, eds. 5.1 (January 2017): 1-14.
"That Cross’s Children Which Our Crosses Are’: Imitatio Christi, Imitatio Crucis.” Scottish Journal of Theology 69.1 (January 2016): 63-80.
“Receiving the Fragments of Balthasar: Critique and Community in Christian Theology.” Pro Ecclesia 24.4 (Fall 2015): 432-38.
“We in Our Turmoil: Theological Anthropology Through Maria Montessori and the Lives of Children.” Journal of Religion 95.3 (July 2015): 318-336.
“A Reconsideration of Religious Authority in Christian Theology,” The Heythrop Journal 55.3 (May 2014): 467-480.
“Prelude to a Theology of Iconoclasm: Making, Breaking, Loving, and Hating Images.” LOGOS: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture 16.2 (Spring 2013): 15-32.
“Possession and Dispossession: Wittgenstein, Cavell, and Gregory of Nyssa for Life Amidst Skepticism.” Modern Theology 29.1 (January 2013): 104-123.
“The Mysteries of Our Existence: Estrangement and Theatricality.” Modern Theology 28.3 (July 2012): 402-22.
Courses Taught at Baylor:
- REL 1350 Introduction to Christian Heritage
- REL 3351 Introduction to Theology
- REL 3397 Gender, Feminism, and Theology
- REL 4300 Theological Language, Theological Silence
- REL 4300 Images and Idols
- REL 4355 Salvation
- REL 5363 Christology
Natalie Carnes, Image and Presence
Image and Presence: A Christological Reflection on Iconoclasm and Iconophilia
(Encountering Traditions), 1st Edition, by Natalie Carnes (Author)
~ The Construction and Destruction of Images ~
Images increasingly saturate our world, making present to us what is distant or obscure. Yet the power of images also arises from what they do not make present―from a type of absence they do not dispel. Joining a growing multidisciplinary conversation that rejects an understanding of images as lifeless objects, this book offers a theological meditation on the ways images convey presence into our world. Just as Christ negates himself in order to manifest the invisible God, images, Natalie Carnes contends, negate themselves to give more than they literally or materially are. Her Christological reflections bring iconoclasm and iconophilia into productive relation, suggesting that they need not oppose one another.
Investigating such images as the biblical golden calf and paintings of the Virgin Mary, Carnes explores how to distinguish between iconoclasms that maintain fidelity to their theological intentions and those that lead to visual temptation. Offering ecumenical reflections on issues that have long divided Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox traditions, Image and Presence provokes a fundamental reconsideration of images and of the global image crises of our time.
Natalie Carnes - Image and Presence
Jan 15, 2019
Episode: Welcome to the inaugural episode of OnScript's new Theology Stream. OnScript's newest co-host Amy Brown Hughes talks with Natalie Carnes of Baylor University about icons, iconophilia, iconophobia, and iconoclasm. This topic has loomed large in church history, and carries important theological implications.Guest: Natalie Carnes is a constructive theologian who is interested how Christian doctrine can speak to modern life in the world. She draws on literary and visual works to interpret traditional theological ideas through somewhat less traditional themes, like childhood, beauty, art, iconoclasm, and gender. She trained at Harvard, the University of Chicago, and Duke before coming to Baylor, where she is currently an Associate Professor of Theology. In addition to a number of articles, she has published two books, Beauty: A Theological Engagement with Gregory of Nyssa, and Image and Presence: A Christological Reflection on Iconoclasm and Iconophilia.
On Beauty by Dr. Natalie Carnes
Nov 2, 2017, @ Dallas Theological Seminary
Dr. Natalie Carnes, Assistant Professor of Theology, Baylor University in Waco, TX, talks about beauty as one of the names of God and its healing quality. The opinions expressed by guest speakers do not necessarily reflect the positions of Dallas Theological Seminary.
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Books by Natalie Carnes
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In praise of (imperfect) imagesDepictions of Jesus reveal God - but never adequately.
Short Book Review by The Christian Century
"When we interact with religious images—from an icon of Christ to a pixelated picture of Jesus on a computer screen, from the plastic bobble-head Jesus on the youth pastor’s desk to a famous medieval altarpiece—what do we experience? Revelation, longing, closeness to God, danger, mystery, hope, disappointment, peacefulness, fear?"Theologians have long understood that when we talk about God, we need to be aware of language’s limitations, lest we turn our theological concepts into conceptual idolatry. Our relationship to even our most cherished images needs to include critical suspicion of what those images can and cannot do."
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Image and Presence
by Natalie Carnes
9.3.19 | Jack Pappas
Symposium Introduction
It is perhaps inevitable that the question of images, that is, the question not only of their value but their power to simultaneously represent and conceal, to seduce and to deceive, to make holy and to profane, would emerge as a primal locus of both theological and philosophical reflection in recent decades. Indeed, we (post)moderns live in an age which is, perhaps more than any other, saturated by and fascinated with images. Enraptured by our screens we increasingly inhabit a world of mediated immediacy, where the virtual is interwoven with the real so thoroughly and so intimately that the line separating these two poles of experience becomes ever harder to distinguish. Nonetheless, the questions which arise out of our peculiar contemporary relationship with images are themselves hardly new (as any reader of Plato is likely to observe) and have served as persistent points of theological controversy and confrontation for centuries, especially within Christianity, a fact reflected by the historical upheavals of Byzantine iconoclasm and the Reformation. The resulting divisions between those who would name their opponents “idolators” and those who would name them “iconoclasts,” suggests an incommensurable opposition between two utterly contradictory ways of conceiving the possibilities of imagining (and imaging) the Divine, and of how images in general operate. They either tell the whole truth or they lie.
Natalie Carnes in Image and Presence insists on the other hand that this familiar either/or is ultimately but a Manichean binary which misunderstands the phenomenality of images in such a way that occludes a proper understanding of their very efficacy altogether. In place of this false dichotomy, Carnes offers a conciliatory both/and, pressing in on an uncomfortable paradox at the very heart of images themselves: images only tell the truth when they admit of their own falsity, and they only lie when they purport to be identical with the truth. That is, the very difference between a true image (an icon) and a false image (an idol) is marked by whether or not the image admits of an excess beyond itself through its own self-negation (iconoclasm), or whether it occludes this excess by deceptively insisting upon its own comprehensiveness. Ultimately then, an icon is differentiated from an idol only insofar as it bears within itself a moment of iconoclasm which manifests precisely the excess which the icon analogously depicts. In Carnes’s own words, “The negation at the heart of imaging is not an eradication or an erasure . . . it is a breaking open that leads to greater revelation, it is a way of saying images mediate presence-in-absence and likeness-in-unlikeness. When absence and unlikeness are elided, the image becomes an idol” (7). Far from being incommensurable, Image and Presence instead supposes that iconoclasm and inconophilia are rather two dialectically interwoven expressions of fidelity which must be held together in revelatory tension.
While this rather radical thesis about images and their paradoxical nature is developed with a stunning multivalence which considers everything from political cartoons, pornography, to religious art, the central axis of this rewarding and challenging book is fundamentally ecumenical and explicitly christological. Indeed, Carnes prepares a veritable feast for the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic “iconophiles” as much as for the Protestant “iconoclast” which is sure to simultaneously delight, scandalize, and provoke all parties into revisiting (and rethinking) a central locus of differentiation across the plurality of Christian traditions (and indeed, across Abrahamic faiths more generally). Drawing on the classical Chalcedonian formulation of the union of Divine and human natures in the person of Christ, Carnes overcomes the oppositional dichotomy between seen and unseen, by recovering a view of Christ himself as the prototypical icon, the visible form which manifests the invisible God.
In the coming days, this symposium will continue to probe and to challenge the boundaries of Carnes’s project, bringing it into conversation with a variety of perspectives. Andrew Prevot wonders about the potential and inherent limitations of encountering the suffering and the oppressed as embedded within an analogical relationship between the face of Christ and the face of the other. Both Kathryn Reklis and Amaryah Shaye Armstrong seek to challenge the hidden power relations which underly not only much of our modern fascination with images and aesthetic categories but also the limitations of the Christian tradition itself for confronting the legacies of coloniality, slavery, and the oppression of indigenous communities. Jennifer Newsome Martin interrogates the relationship between an ontological conception of the image and the constitutive role of an apprehending subject in order to further elucidate the philosophical dimensions of the theological-aesthetic claims at the very heart of Image Presence. Taken together, this cacophony of voices, each with their own concerns and insights, as well as Carnes’s own thoughtful engagement with them, undoubtedly reveals the rare richness and complexity of this exciting book which surely invites ever greater conversation.
Andrew PrevotProsoponic Likeness
- Reply by Natalie Carnes
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CHRIST AMONG THE DISCIPLINES
CONFERENCE NOTES
https://www.christamongthedisciplines.com/
by R.E. SlaterNovember 20, 2020Please note: I write these notes to myself. They are not intended to be exact transcriptions from the speakers themselves. What I have written are not their words but my own thoughts. - resPlease note: All panelists provided textual statements for comments to attendees. These are not allowed to be publically published as they are intended to form to the moment-in-time not replicable beyond the panel discussions themselves as very specific conversations to one another in the AAR setting
Panelist Bios
Matthew Novenson: Matthew Novenson is Senior Lecturer in New Testament and Christian Origins at the University of Edinburgh, where he is also director of the Centre for the Study of Christian Origins. He has been visiting professor at Dartmouth College and Duke University Divinity School and visiting research fellow at Durham University. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Biblical Literature, Journal for the Study of Judaism, New Testament Studies, Novum Testamentum, Scottish Journal of Theology, and elsewhere. He is the author of Christ among the Messiahs (Oxford University Press, 2012) and The Grammar of Messianism (Oxford University Press, 2017) and editor of Monotheism and Christology in Greco-Roman Antiquity (Brill, forthcoming) and The Oxford Handbook of Pauline Studies (Oxford University Press, forthcoming).
Makoto Fujimura: Fujimura is also an arts advocate, writer, and speaker who is recognized worldwide as a cultural influencer. A Presidential appointee to the National Council on the Arts from 2003-2009, Fujimura served as an international advocate for the arts, speaking with decision makers and advising governmental policies on the arts. His book “Refractions” (NavPress) and “Culture Care” (IVPress) reflects many of his thesis on arts advocacy written during that time. His books have won numerous awards His books have won numerous awards including the Aldersgate Prize for "Silence and Beauty" (IVPress). In 2014, the American Academy of Religion named Fujimura as it’s 2014 “Religion and the Arts” award recipient. Fujimura currently divides his time between Princeton, NJ studio and Pasadena, CA studio. A popular speaker, he has lectured at numerous conferences, universities and museums, including the Aspen Institute, Yale, Princeton and Oxford Universities, Sato Museum and the Phoenix Art Museum. Fujimura founded the International Arts Movement in 1992 and Fujimura Institute in 2011. In celebration of the 400th Anniversary of the King James Bible, Crossway Publishing commissioned and published The Four Holy Gospels, featuring Fujimura’s illuminations of the sacred texts which was featured at the inaugural exhibit at the Museum of the Bible in Washington DC. He holds four honorary degrees, most recently from Roanoke College. He also serves on the Board of Trustees at his alma mater, Bucknell University.
Brian Lugioyo (Lu-hee-you-hee-yo) is a professor of Theology & Ethics at Azusa Pacific Seminary. He is a Cuban-American theologian whose research interests are in theological anthropology and neuroscience, liturgical theology and ethics, and 16th-century theology, focusing on the work of Martin Bucer. He is the author of Martin Bucer’s Doctrine of Justification (Oxford University Press, 2010), co-editor of Reconsidering the Relationship between Biblical and Systematic Theology in the New Testament: Essays by Theologians and New Testament Scholars (Mohr Siebeck, 2014), and recently the chapter “Martin Luther’s Eucharistic Christology” for the Oxford Handbook of Christology (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). He is also ordained in the Free Methodist Church.
Joanna Leidenhag joined the School of Divinity in 2018 on a project in Science-Engaged Theology, funded by the John Templeton Foundation. She completed her PhD in systematic and philosophical theology at the University of Edinburgh (2019), focusing on discussions in analytic philosophy of mind and the doctrine of creation. She graduated with a joint Honours degree in Modern History and Theology from the University of St Andrews (MA 2013), and went on to complete a MA in Theological Studies at Princeton Theological Seminary (MA 2014). She also holds an Advanced Diploma in Fine Arts, and specialises in oil painting.
Author: Natalie Carnes is a constructive theologian interested in how Christian doctrine can speak to the complexities of modern life. Drawing on literary and visual works, she interprets theological ideas together with a range of themes, including images, iconoclasm, beauty, gender, and feminism. In addition to Image and Presence, she's published two other books, Beauty: A Theological Engagement with Gregory of Nyssa and Motherhood: A Confession. Natalie trained at Harvard, University of Chicago, and Duke before coming to Baylor, where she is an Associate Professor of Theology in the Religion Department and an affiliated faculty member of Women’s and Gender Studies.
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Observation by Matthew Novenson
see his statement
Matt had many astute observations. Too many to write down.
Observation by Makoto Fujimura (Reknown Artist)
Introduction - We create false dichotomies, demonize the opposing view, and create a wasteland between either poisoning the very soil of future discussion.
NT Wright quote- "I'm learning to lean into the theology of the New Creation" - MK
This means my new aim is to "Invoke the abundance of creation and to learn to journey into this New Creation". Thus I am working with colors of interdependence rather than colors of independence. Mixing binary, opposing colors bears this out. Whereas if we learn to use these binaries as complements to one another like Matisse did than we have a whole other result. One of intended beauty. Similarly with jazz, music, etc. An intentionality to create in oppositions bring out powerful, dangerous images into another reality of new creational beauty.
Wikipedia - Woman In A Purple Coat or The Purple Coat is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1937. It depicts Matisse's assistant Lydia Delectorskaya. This painting is an example of Henri Matisse's mature decorative style. Matisse depicts his model and companion of many years, Lydia Delectorskaya, in an exotic Moroccan costume, surrounded by a complex of abstract design and exotic color.[1] This is an example of one of the final groups of oil paintings in Matisse's career, in 1950 he stopped painting oil paintings in favor of creating paper cutouts.
Learn to affirm differences while learning to co-create with one another. This is my advice for ours and future generations. - MK
MK had many, many, many excellent observations. very helpful. paper statement is ok but not as full as the presence of the artist's verbal statements
Observation by Brian Lugioyo
see his statement
Brian remembers his Los Angeles protests for BLM this past summer and its meaningfulness to him as a tangible presence of God in his individual and social experience as well as with those he was surrounded by in similar protests. Presence makes speaking of God/Christ less abstract. Being in the moment brings Christ into the moment too in the experience of mankind. Not as an abstract spiritual force but as well as a visible, living, breathing, vernacular presence that is not transcended to the experience of the moment.
What is the role of liturgy in transforming presence in our Christian lives? Worship + the mediating presence of the Spirit creates powerful moments of godliness, inspiration, bonding, healing, etc, with one another.
Observation by Joanna Leidenag
Excellent insights - See her extensive statement
Response by Natalie Carnes
see her astute statements online
MY last thoughts: I found the discussion on "image and presence" of great interest to myself. I loved the complexity of how God is expressed artistically, architecturally, scientifically, medically, publically, socially, personally, anthropologically, economically, industrially, in literature, poem, music, etc. How does one express process based images of biblical statement, assumption, ideology, theology, philosophy, etc, in profound ways. One thing which stuck with me came from the reknown NYC artist Makoto Fujimura who spoke today. He mentioned he is struggling to learn how to lean into New Creation personally and as an artist when taking opposing societal ideations and repurposing those iconoclastic juxtapositions into subjects of beauty, healing, bonding together, solidarity, etc. One simple example is the falsities that conspiracy communities hold on to as opposed to known facts and truths. Similarly with destructive images of justice as opposed to reconstructive images of restorative justice. The question of tying to blend (but not syncretise) opposing images into images of godly new creation is something we should all pursue. Matisse had done this in Paris using garish colors which clashed with one another to produce pleasing images to the eyes (thoughts, settledness, relaxation, reaffirmation, etc.) - re slater
