Crystal Downing is Professor of English and Film Studies, Messiah College. She is the author of Writing Performances: The Stages of Dorothy L. Sayers, and How Postmodernism Serves (my) Faith.
Changing Signs of Truth: The Influence of Culture on Christianity
Speaker(s): Crystal Downing
Date: July 25-29, 2011
Length: 11h40m
Product ID: RGDL4118S
Purchase Options:
| MP3 Download - $26.00 | |
| MP3 CD - $34.00 | |
| CD - $45.00 |
Description
Why did people in 16th-century England blacken their teeth with pitch, whereas today they spend millions on teeth-whitening strips? Why did early Christians leave forty-one images of Noah's Ark in the catacombs but fail to sketch a single cross? These questions and many more are addressed in this course which provides an introduction to semiotics, "the science of signs". The course focuses on the way signs of Christianity have changed through the millenia - signs such as celibacy, atonement, and Eucharist - and discusses how semiotics and its heirs (structuralism, deconstruction, and cultural materialism) explain such changes. The course explores the question: resigned to the unalterable truth of salvation through Christ, how do we know when to re-sign Christian doctrine in order to communicate that Jesus is as relevant to someone with a twenty-first century aesthetic as he was to a third-century ascetic? Lectures include:
- Introduction to the History and Discipline of Semiotics
- Semiotics (Re)signed: Structuralism and Jesus
- Change in the Past: Church History and Cultural Materialism
- Signs of Distinction: Deconstruction and Christianity
- Charles Sanders Peirce: Trinitarian Signs of Life
See All Audio by Crystal Downing
Related Audio
Book Launch Lecture: Dietrich Bonheoffer's Christian Humanism
Speaker: Jens Zimmermann
Creation, Christians & Modernity (Some Ambiguities of Science & Technology) (CTC Lecture)
Speaker: Loren Wilkinson
Failure of the Moral Foundations of Western Society
Speaker: Iain Benson, Loren Wilkinson
Finding Liberty: The Christian Roots of the Modern Conscience
Speaker: Dominic Erdozain
God in the Painted Caves: Prehistoric Art & the Quest for Meaning
Speaker: Iwan Russell-Jones
Jacques Ellul: Prophet in the Technological Wilderness
Speaker: David Gill, Jeffrey Greenman
John's Gospel: Exercises in Spiritual Theology for a Post-Modern World
Speaker: James Houston
Lunchtime Lecture - God, Evolution, and Animal Suffering: Theodicy without a Fall
Speaker: Bethany Sollereder
Lunchtime Lecture: Thinking about History and Beauty in a Post-Secular World: Some Potential Intersections between the Digital Humanities and Theology
Speaker: John Bonnett
Rethinking the Categories of Theological Discourse: Ethics, Vision, and an Authentically Biblical Rhetoric
Speaker: Rikki Watts
Roundtable Discussion: 'Watch What You Say!': The Use and Abuse of Words
Speaker: Craig Gay, Iwan Russell-Jones
Roundtable: Psychological, Philosophical & Theological Perspectives of Calling
Speaker: Paddy Ducklow, Paul Helm
The Disenchantment of the World: Modernity, Secularity, Naturalism (CTC II Winter 2006)
Speaker: James K.A. Smith
The God of Nature and of Grace: The Philosophical Context of Evangelical Spirituality
Speaker: Bruce Hindmarsh
