https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=t3RNbzKJq3o
But my question would be there. Uh, I like that you said the, the, the scripture is really kind of a, uh, a lexicon of symbols in a way. And one thing I, uh, when I was Roman Catholic, I read John St. John Damascus and his defense of icons. And I remember him kind of presenting iconography like another way to read everything, right? So in other words, reality is kind of like a, an iconographic text that we read. Our experiences, we read them, reinterpret them. The Bible is a book we read and interpret. And icons do that. We do the same thing. So at that stage, you know, when I was coming into the Roman Catholic world, I just saw, oh, well, icons are just, uh, you know, a neat thing. That’s like maybe another form of religious art, right? But I think there’s something significant that I didn’t know that, that, you know, eventually as you get into orthodox, you kind of learn, but before we get into the significance and distinct set apart nature of iconography, um, could you go into maybe your take on how you see what John Damascus calls like an iconographic representation of the world, the way that we can, we can see the world as kind of a, uh, well, I forget the word you use, but like a network of symbols or something like that. Yeah. I think that, you know, we realize, I think it’s, we’re in a good moment right now in terms of even secular people. Like they can kind of understand the problem of multiplicity, right? The problem of, uh, you know, what is it, uh, this kind of explosion of detail that everything is too complicated. If you, if you, if you don’t have patterns that organize reality, right, then, then everything has a million of details and it’s like indefinite amount of details. And so what you realize is that even our just basic perception of the world is always patterned. It’s always, it’s, it’s, it’s teleological, right? You’re always judging something, whether it’s a good, whatever it is you’re looking at. And that lays itself out in a, in a hierarchy. And that’s what I think is going on in scripture and in icons. That is it’s a condensed form of your everyday experience. It’s kind of like a map or like the most condensed version of something that you can actually experience every day. Uh, and so, so I think that like, for example, like if you read, look at the text in Genesis, you really have this amazingly condensed, like the, one of the most condensed stories that has ever, probably the most condensed stories ever existed and just lays out this image of reality, this lineage of heaven above and below. And then this hierarchy of this ontological hierarchy, uh, and you know, the problem of going down the ontological hierarchy and the possibility of, of let’s say being up in the garden, all of these, all of these things are actually related to our experience of the world. And then icons, they do it in a visual way. It’s a, it’s not in time, but it’s in space. And so in icons, you can actually do things that you can’t totally do in scripture because it’s, it’s simultaneous. So you have this kind of simultaneous experience of a, of a space that’s laid out exactly like in Genesis. So you have above, you have below, and it’s very graphic in, uh, in an icon compared to like, uh, let’s say a Baroque image where the perspective can be from anywhere, can be from underneath or whatever. And there’s all this idiosyncrasy in an icon. You have, you have the top part, which is heaven, the bottom part, which is earth. And then inside that things will be laid out in a, in a, in an ontological hierarchy. So you won’t have the hand of God coming from below. That’d be stupid. I mean, it’s so intuitive. It’s so intuitively right that we don’t even question it, but nonetheless, that’s how the, that’s how the icon will present itself. The glory of God will peer above or the hand of God will appear above. And then the things that are at the bottom, you’ll have this cracked earths often with like openings into the darkness at the bottom of icons to kind of show you this cosmic image, you know, even in the, the, even in an icon, that’s not talking about that, it will still have that pattern, that pattern within it. Yeah. That makes me think of, um, uh, approximations in scripture. There’s, there’s, like you said, not an exact one to one because of usually scripture, if it’s not like a, a poetic text or prophetic text, it’s presenting things in a, you know, linear storytelling model. Uh, and, but if you look at apocalypse 12, you have that excellent example of with Mary, she’s also an image of Israel. She’s also an image of the church and she’s also an image of the historical battle of the serpent with the people of God. So you have basically all of time and space, you know, squashed into this image of Mary as queen of heaven. And I think, uh, it just made me think of that when you were talking about how it’s kind of presenting a series of patterns condensed into one event. I remember when I was Protestant, uh, or coming into it to that back in the 2000s into Roman Catholicism, I was, I was having a problem with this. And I was thinking, how as a Protestant could I, could I convey what I’m understanding to, you know, people? And I thought, uh, well, if you, if you think about the, the way that the Bible for a Protestant is, is called the Holy Bible, right? I mean, it’s like, it has this notion of it being set apart as a special book. But, and then when you try to like, uh, explain iconography to people who, who are reticent to go down that route, if you think about when you read Luke one and two, the story of the, of the, of the Annunciation and you’re, you’re getting this kind of image in your head. I’m not saying that we should, you know, come up with imaginary images. I’m just saying that you, it’s kind of unavoidable as a human. When you read the text, you kind of get the story in your head. And then when you look at the icon of the Annunciation, you’re looking at a, like you said, like a single encapsulated image that’s telling you the whole presentation of Luke one and two about the, you know, the birth or the message of the incarnation of our savior. So it really clicked with me one day where it was like, you know, if you can, if we can convey that to the Protestant, then, and that’s a huge hang up, you know, for so many Protestants is this idea of images, we can convey the fact that it’s really not doing anything different than what scripture is doing. It’s just doing it in a different medium and a different form. And it’s creating different, it does end up creating different, different possible insights into the mystery of Christ that scripture doesn’t do exactly in the same way. You know, you look at an image of the crucifixion or one of the best versions, one of the best images to kind of understand this is an image of the Ascension, for example. So you have this image of the Ascension, you have Christ up above, you know, being brought up by the Merkabah. He actually has wheels underneath it. And so that’s not in the text, right? That’s not in the text, but the icon is connecting you saying, you know, those times where Elijah went up, you know, where this chariot that Ezekiel saw, it’s like, this is, this is related to this Ascension, you know, and so you have Christ going up into the heavens and then at the bottom you have in the center, you have the mother of God often standing on a, on a pedestal, which is interesting. So it’s like Christ, the heaven is his throne and the earth is his pedestal. Right. And so the mother of God in the center and then the disciples all gathered around, and then you look at the icon and you’re like, well, why is Saint Paul there? Because Saint Paul wasn’t there, wasn’t there at the Ascension in scripture, right? Good point. But he’s there because it’s that concentration. It’s like that possibility of saying, this is an event that happened. It’s an image of an event that happened, but we’re going to show it to you in a way that is actually revealing the mystery of the church itself and the mystery, the cosmic mystery of what Christ is doing. And, and it’s a, and it becomes an image of both the Ascension and the, and the last moment and the return of Christ at the same time. This is something that is hard to do in a text, but in an image, you can create these, these cosmic maps that are just astounding when you start to think about it. That’s a great point. There was a, a, one of the debates that was, that was had at the Moscow icon synods, somebody was discussing how icons can tell us things outside of time and space, they can tell us things in that higher dimension because, and he, he used an example, I want to say it was an example of some of the icons that present other people at, at Pentecost who weren’t actually present at Pentecost. Yeah. The same thing as Ascension St. Paul is there and the evangelists are there. And yeah, that’s a great point because one thing that really struck me when I got into Orthodox theology was that the mysteries and the theology is being presented in time and space, but also above time and space. And so even the, um, the perspective, the perspectivalism of icons is intended to, to give you that window into heaven so that you’re outside of just the here in the now. So just like Christ’s cross, uh, as St. Maximus says, the benefits can be applied before and after the actual event, the same idea is going on with iconography, where we’re actually looking into the eternal realities and so they’re windows into heaven.