This volume takes readers on a fascinating journey through the visual arts of Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific Islands, contemplating the multivocal dialogues that occur between these artistic media and the texts and traditions of the Bible. With their distinctively antipodean perspectives, contributors explore the innovative ways that both creators and beholders of Oceanic arts draw upon their contexts and cultures in order to open up creative engagements with the stories, themes and theologies of the biblical traditions. Various motifs weave their way throughout the volume, including antipodean landscapes and ecology, (post)colonialism, philosophy, Oceanic spiritualities and the often contested engagements between western and indigenous cultures. Within this weaving process, each essay invites readers to contemplate these various forms of visual culture through Oceanic eyes, and to appreciate the fresh insights that this process can bring to reading and interpreting the biblical traditions. The result is a rich and interdisciplinary array of conversations that will capture the attention of readers within the fields of biblical reception studies, cultural studies, theology and art history.

What thresholds of theology would we cross if we engage the aches and despairs, wisdoms and hopes in and of Aotearoa New Zealand, and the neighboring sea of islands? What thresholds need to be jarred or moved (threshold as opening), probed and raised (threshold as limit, ceiling)? This book engages these questions, over two vaults: (1) "(re)Locating theological studies" contains essays that interrogate the purposes of theological studies (locally and globally), identify gaps due to the Western heritage and blind spots of "traditional theology," and provide examples of how those gaps may be bridged when local concerns are engaged; (2) "Nativizing theological studies" contains essays that present and engage the heritage and wisdom of tangata whenua (indigenous, native people) of Aotearoa and Pasifika. These essays reaffirm the "native" rhetoric with pride. Overall, this collection of essays affirms that theological studies have a future, and that there is a role for theologians in and from Aotearoa New Zealand and Pasifika to play in navigating (into) that future.

This volume takes readers on a fascinating journey through the visual arts of Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific Islands, contemplating the multivocal dialogues that occur between these artistic media and the texts and traditions of the Bible. With their distinctively antipodean perspectives, contributors explore the innovative ways that both creators and beholders of Oceanic arts draw upon their contexts and cultures in order to open up creative engagements with the stories, themes and theologies of the biblical traditions. Various motifs weave their way throughout the volume, including antipodean landscapes and ecology, (post)colonialism, philosophy, Oceanic spiritualities and the often contested engagements between western and indigenous cultures. Within this weaving process, each essay invites readers to contemplate these various forms of visual culture through Oceanic eyes, and to appreciate the fresh insights that this process can bring to reading and interpreting the biblical traditions. The result is a rich and interdisciplinary array of conversations that will capture the attention of readers within the fields of biblical reception studies, cultural studies, theology and art history.