Sup on this

Emil Bock:  "The present era is forgetting the way to read books. People seize upon pictures to look at; they want to look, not think. The approaching supersensible world nowadays manifests itself in the urge to look at pictures. The feeling for images, the ability to look, will be the beginning, the first stratum in experiencing a spiritual world that is drawing nearer to us all the time. When someone longs for a world of images, for the picture, that person is longing for the supersensible world, even though he may not know it. He is entering into the hidden recesses of his own personality. . . . As long as the pictorial sense is not awake, just so long will the gospel remain closed to modern humanity. In the external world people have acquired the ability to think. They enter the inner recesses with that power. Thought is not the key to the world of images, where slumbers revelation of an exalted region. Modern man is in the same situation as Faust. He has deserted the outer world; the inner world has not yet been unlocked.

If mankind does find the gospel, then people will find the rich content of the inner world. And they can find the gospel when they come to love the image and understand it. Pictures, images, are letters of the writings in which revelation speaks to us of things beyond this earth. To understand the gospel is the need of the present hour. When intellectual thought fails, the picture is the key. A general attitude of mind such as this is needed all the time if, later on, a new understanding of the gospel is actually to bear its fruits towards reshaping life."



Source: Studies in the Gospels, volume 1, pp. 136-137