The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History
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Book Overview
This provocative exploration of the nature and history of the word in some of its social, psychological, literary, phenomenological, and religious dimensions argues that the word is initially aural and in the last analysis always remains sound; it cannot be reduced to any other category. Father Ong contends that sound is essentially an event manifesting power and personal presence, and his descriptive analysis of the development of the media of verbal expression, from their oral sources through the laborious transfer to the visual world and then to contemporary means of electronic communication, shows that the predicament of the human word is the predicament of man himself. Examining the close alliance of the spoken word with the sense of the sacred, particularly in the Hebreo-Christian tradition, he reveals that in a world where presence has penetrated time and space as never before, modern man must find the God who has given himself in the Word which brings man more into the world of sound than of sight.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0300099738
ISBN13:9780300099737
Release Date:September 1967
Publisher:Yale University Press
Length:378 Pages
Weight:0.90 lbs.
Dimensions:0.9" x 6.0" x 8.1"
Customer Reviews
1 rating
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Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 17 years ago
This book is simply amazing. Walter Ong focuses on an epistemology of hearing, contra Plato. Simply amazing. If you want to know what covenantal epistemology is, and what it means to "hear" God in the person and work of Jesus Christ, then pick this book up and read it, pen in one hand, coffee in the other. There is a lot of good stuff here for anyone interested in Luther's theology as well, even though the author is a Jesuit. There is a lot here for Protestants to appreciate.
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