From Idol to Icon: Learning to See Through the Body

This paper starts from the assumption that the human individual and its concomitant, the human body, are conceivably idols of secularism. There is a certain irony, perhaps an irony shared with all idols, that such idolatry is so close to, and yet so far from, true Christian worship. This article explores the notion that idolatry of the individual and the body may be a form of idolatry that involves re-conception rather than replacement. Utilizing an affirmative approach to culture (albeit not uncritical) that is theologically rooted in Trinitarian relationality, or what could be called a relational ontological approach, this paper concludes that embodied difference naturally calls out for a unity of alterity that opens beyond itself and can thereby become a means of transforming idols into icons.