Stephanie Rumpza, Phenomenology of the Icon, Mediating God through the Image

One who comes to this book to deepen their understand of Byzantine iconography will find the opening chapters on Phenomenology a heavy lift. As those who come to this book test the capacity of phenomenology to make a case religious art will find its closing chapters a descent into, God forbid, prayer! Regardless, I would commend this book as profoundly worth the effort it takes to read it. Which is not to say that the text itself is a problem as Rumpza’s narrative skills are engaging, but that its analysis is deep.

                What the framework of phenomenology does for Byzantine Icon, is twofold.  Firstly overcomes the divorce between art and the icon.  The recovery of icons which is rather recent. Rescuing them from a long season of decline not a little to coping western art and limitation to enclaves of piety led to an attack on the realism of western art as idolatrous and as art that in general was spiritually irrelevant.  This schism is bad enough confined to art, but it bears on life itself.  Secular life is separate from spiritual Life which means poverty for the former and irrelevant for the latter. Secondly it open the encounter with an icon by means of a language which can take to in the very foundation of being human. In terms of phenomenology that is “response” to “call,” the call to thinking/being/conscious.

               The book deserves to be discussed and I hope this contributes to that possibility. If you would like more information see "Review in Depth" Anglican Theological Review  vol 7 issue 3 Summer 2025. Page 294 "A New Frontier for Iconography" by Lance Green St. Paul MN