The Power Of Symbols
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Long before language could articulate the deepest human longings, symbols spoke — and Frederick William Dillistone's The Power of Symbols is a masterful investigation into why they still do. Drawing on theology, anthropology, and the history of religion, Dillistone argues that symbols are not mere decorative shorthand but the very architecture of human meaning, capable of bridging the seen and the unseen in ways that rational discourse alone cannot achieve. He presents a sweeping survey of symbolic thought across cultures and centuries, illuminating how gestures, images, rituals, and words carry a numinous charge that continues to shape individual consciousness and communal life. From ancient rites to modern faith traditions, the work chronicles the enduring human compulsion to reach beyond the literal toward the transcendent. Dillistone writes with the measured authority of a scholar equally at home in biblical theology and comparative religion, and his prose carries the careful precision of a thinker who never sacrifices depth for accessibility. The Power of Symbols stands as a significant contribution to 20th-century religious thought, sitting comfortably alongside the works of Paul Tillich and Mircea Eliade in its seriousness of purpose. The book challenges readers to reconsider the symbolic dimensions of their own belief systems and inherited traditions — and to ask whether, in an increasingly literalist age, something vital has been lost.
Author: F. W. Dillistone
Format: Paperback
Genre: Religion
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: No dust jacket
Pages: Good
Condition remarks: Condition as shown in image
Long before language could articulate the deepest human longings, symbols spoke — and Frederick William Dillistone's The Power of Symbols is a masterful investigation into why they still do. Drawing on theology, anthropology, and the history of religion, Dillistone argues that symbols are not mere decorative shorthand but the very architecture of human meaning, capable of bridging the seen and the unseen in ways that rational discourse alone cannot achieve. He presents a sweeping survey of symbolic thought across cultures and centuries, illuminating how gestures, images, rituals, and words carry a numinous charge that continues to shape individual consciousness and communal life. From ancient rites to modern faith traditions, the work chronicles the enduring human compulsion to reach beyond the literal toward the transcendent. Dillistone writes with the measured authority of a scholar equally at home in biblical theology and comparative religion, and his prose carries the careful precision of a thinker who never sacrifices depth for accessibility. The Power of Symbols stands as a significant contribution to 20th-century religious thought, sitting comfortably alongside the works of Paul Tillich and Mircea Eliade in its seriousness of purpose. The book challenges readers to reconsider the symbolic dimensions of their own belief systems and inherited traditions — and to ask whether, in an increasingly literalist age, something vital has been lost.