The panel will consist of distinguished contributors to the recently published Image as Theology: The Power of Art in Shaping Christian Thought, Devotion, and Imagination (Turnhout: Brepols, 2022). The volume maintains that images perform theology in a manner that is fundamental to the Christian tradition, yet has been historically overlooked, as the image has been subordinated to the word for much of the history of Christianity. As a corrective, this volume explores the largely unexamined ways in which images actually give rise to theology—not simply as illustrators of previously established theological concepts, but rather as generators of theology in an original and distinctive mode.Papers will (1) develop a metaphysics of the image according to which Being necessarily others itself in self-presentation, and therefore cannot be known only through the “imageless logos” (Pfau); (2) advance a treatment of images as both incomplete and revelatory, and as thereby awaiting eschatological fulfillment while proleptically illuminating the present (Wolfe); (3) probe the ontological and theological revelations that images provoke as they manifest an “invisible” reality to their viewers (McInroy); (4) suggest that images inaugurate an I-Thou dialectic between viewer and prototype that fosters contemplative engagement (Heath); (5) propose that the making of images among those experiencing involuntary migration elicits otherwise-occluded meanings from theological texts (Strine).Chair: Mark McInroy (University of St Thomas) Speakers:Thomas Pfau (Duke University), Image and Picture: Some Theological and Phenomenological DistinctionsJudith Wolfe (University of St Andrews / Australian Catholic University), The End of Images: Towards a Phenomenology of Eschatological ExpectationMark McInroy (University of St Thomas), Maurice Merleau-Ponty), Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Jean-Luc Marion on ‘Radiant Invisibility’ in the Image Jane Heath (Durham University), Mary’s Image as TheologyC. A. Strine (University of Sheffield), The Catalytic Image: Migration, Image, and Exegetical Imagination in the Jacob Narrative (Genesis 25–33)