https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=J3u9jWeA6BM
Before I met Jonathan in the flesh, I might have a photograph of Jonathan there in my living room. Jonathan comes in and he moves into the house. I don’t need the photograph. It’s redundant. I’ve got Jonathan himself. It’s interesting because I’m so bound up in the question of symbolism, but especially in the Orthodox iconographic tradition, there’s some aspect of it which is you could call anti-symbolic in the sense that they’re moving towards saying Christ is the finality of these images. When you have Christ, you’re not necessarily wanting to represent him in these shadows, but you have the thing itself. It doesn’t mean that symbolism doesn’t continue to exist in this typological way. There’s a sense in which Christ is the end of the symbolic pyramid. This is Jonathan Peugeot. Welcome to the Symbolic World. I’m an associate professor in the Department of Practical Theology here at Princeton Theological Seminary. I’m also the founder and executive director of Scala Foundation, which is a non-profit whose mission is to renew culture through liberal arts education, beauty, and worship. I’m joining you here today from the studios at Princeton Theological Seminary where I have the pleasure of hosting Aidan Hart, an iconographer born in England, raised in New Zealand, now residing in England, and Jonathan Peugeot from Quebec, Canada, who was also an iconographer and icon sculptor. Both Aidan and Jonathan are here this weekend for the conference on Art, the Common Good, and the Sacred, being hosted by Scala and Princeton Theological Seminary. Before we do that public event, I wanted to sit down with them and talk to the two of them as artists about how they think about the relationship between scripture, image, and symbol. Specifically, we’re going to talk a bit about one particular icon, that of the transfiguration. But before we jump into that particular icon, I wanted to say that for the class I’m teaching on aesthetics and Christian education, I read very carefully Aidan Hart’s book, Beauty, Spirit, and Matter, Icons in the Modern World. What struck me about this book was this idea that images remind us that life with Christ is above all a relationship between persons. In that book, Aidan explains that in the tradition of icons, it’s both Christ’s divinity and his humanity are supposed to be represented. Just as the words of scripture are supposed to reveal to us who God is, so images are supposed to help us understand Christ’s divinity and his humanity. Aidan also explains in this book some timeless principles of liturgical art. Let me see if I get these right, Aidan. I don’t have them memorized, but I have them written down. One timeless principle of liturgical art is that, well, what I just said, that God became man, the incarnation. So Christ showed himself as a man. Second, that in the transfiguration, which is what we’re going to talk about today, we got a glimpse of demonized man. I want to unpack what that means and what that looks like in the icons of the transfiguration. Here, I think you’re taking on a big stance here, theologically, when you say that matter can be grace-bearing. I want to talk about that. Then you also say a fourth principle is that human beings are fulfilled in relationship. That’s why it’s important to see the faces of others. And fifth, the fifth principle of liturgical art is that we have what’s called the noose, a noetic faculty, the eye of the heart. That we don’t just know about God with the noose, we can know God. Did I get those five principles right, Aidan? Yeah. More or less? Yes. The noose enlightened by the Holy Spirit, where no man can see God, so it’s almost just God sees himself through the noose. It’s always a synergy, a union of the two. But yes, those five points are really important. Let’s stay on the noose for a second, because I admit this was a new concept to me. The noose, how do you describe the noose, Jonathan? The way to understand the noose, let’s say, practically, is to understand that there’s a capacity that humans have to grasp things directly. That’s maybe the best way to understand it, that is pre-discursive. It’s not a discursive, it’s not a description, it’s a contact that is direct and full. And so we actually, the noose is necessary for you to exist, but there’s something about our thoughts and about our desires and about our passions that clouds us from being able to live in that space. And much of the spiritual practice, in the Orthodox Church, for example, is there in some ways to purify the noose. That is to kind of still the thoughts, still the images, still the buzzing and the whirring, so that we can enter into the heart. You talked about the eye of the heart, enter into the heart. And then it’s in that position that all of a sudden the noose can be open to revelation, to the Holy Spirit. And then you can grasp things directly, like you can see them pierced with God, but then ultimately the contention is that you can also see the divine light. You can enter into God himself. Wow. See, okay, these are big claims. I do actually remember distinctly my senior year of college at Yale after I had taken classes in psychology and sociology. And I remember walking into church and thinking, this is a collection of rituals that human beings say mean certain things. And other people at other points in time have come up with rituals that they say mean certain things. And how do I know that any of these symbols or any of these rituals are actually anything more than a human creation? So when I read your book, now I’m still a practicing Catholic, I always have been, but as I’m teaching my students about these images, the students might be captivated, maybe their noose is being activated, they’re having an encounter, but they’re posing this question, how do I know that this image that I’m looking at is actually revelation or how do I know that it’s not something from my imagination? But another thing I loved reading in your books, Aidan, is that working as an iconographer, you have a way of approaching this question about what do we depict in art and why. So that’s what I wanted to talk to you about today. Can we just pick, the two of you, pick, I thought let’s go with the transfiguration because that figure is so centrally in your book, beauty, spirit, and matter, and I wonder if we can unpack the event of the transfiguration, the encounter, the symbols, the meanings, and from there just have a conversation about how do we know when symbols come together to reveal who God is or what’s the human invention? That’s a big question, I know. But let’s start with the transfiguration. What happened to the transfiguration? Well the Lord just going straight from the gospels, three of the gospels related, ironically the one of the three disciples, John, who was there, didn’t write about it in his gospel, but the other three gospels describe it. Christ takes Peter, James, and John up to a high mountain. It doesn’t describe what the mountain is in the scriptures, but by tradition it’s a table. And there it says that he’s transfigured and then Moses and Elijah appear with him and they’re conversing about his coming glory, which means his crucifixion. And then dear Peter, who always likes to blur things out, says, Lord it’s good to be here, let’s make three tenths. And then the voice of the Father speaks, and then Moses and Elijah go and they come back down again. So that’s the basic story, but there’s so much packed into that. I think that’s one reason, because it’s so pregnant, that traditionally, I don’t know how often it happens, when an iconographer is fully trained, that’s the first icon they paint. Is that right? Yeah. Why would that be? It says everything, the incarnation, communion. But also because much of the theology of the icon, and the theology of orthodox mysticism is related to the question of light and to this notion of divine light. And so the image of the transfiguration, right, is that’s what’s going on in that image. It’s about light. Icons are about light, especially painted icons. That’s what they’re dealing with. And this light, at least in orthodox theology, is God himself. God doesn’t create a gift of light and give it to us. Like the sun, we can’t of course enter the orb of the sun, but the sun comes to us, so the light and the warmth coming from the sun is sun, isn’t it? So this is the glory of God himself, the Shekinah glory, to use the Hebrew term, coming to us. So it’s symbolic, but it’s much more than symbolic, it’s actually in counter with the living God. A lot of the Old Testament is experiencing God via something. Moses and Elijah, who appear with Christ, they get an inkling of God, so Moses hears God, sees God in the Mount Sinai as sort of thunder and lightning, and he hears God but doesn’t actually see the Lord. And Elijah likewise, he comes to the mouth of the cave and hears God as a still small voice, so partial revelation. But there, in Transfiguration, they see the Lord face to face, incarnate Lord face to face. So it’s the opposite of symbolism. The symbolism leads them to the face of God. What do you mean it’s the opposite of symbolism? It’s the opposite of symbolism in the sense that that which they’re seeing is the combination of symbolism, maybe it’s the best way to understand it. The symbols are footsteps that lead to the face of God. Aidan’s got it exactly right. That is, it happens on a mountain just like Elijah, just like Moses. There’s a sense in which it’s going up towards that space where heaven and earth meet. But now what is seen there is the source of revelation itself. It’s the culmination of revelation at the same time, and that’s one of the reasons why, for example, Moses and Elijah are brought to see the very source of creation. You could almost say that it’s a little moment of eternity. It’s their encounter with God that is happening. But they ask God. When Moses asked, he said, God, show yourself to me. And God has said, well, I’ll show you my back. And now he’s getting the fullness of what he asked for. And this isn’t just Jonathan and I dreaming things up. If you look at the … People say, well, all this stuff, how do you know it? It’s in the Detergical Texts, the feast that the icon is brought out and put in what’s called an analog on the feast of the Transfiguration. And then we hear all these incredible hymns that are just full of theology. I have a book called The Fest of Menaeum, which has the translations into English of all the fixed feasts. And it’s just got underlining and notes. It’s just profound theology. So it’s from these texts that we’re talking about, really, these patristic texts that have been tried and tested. And always related to the scriptures, the translation into English has notations underneath referring to every biblical verse referred to directly or tangentially in the text. And there are only about five references there. So that much hymnographical text has got about five biblical references. So it’s rooted in the scriptures. So Moses died. God buried him, it says. Elijah went to heaven. So it talks about Moses and Elijah represent all the living and the dead, but together with Christ. And in the icon, the top half, you have Christ with Moses and Elijah who are in heaven. Down below, you have Peter, James, and John who are on earth, but they’re all within the rectangle of the icon. So in fact, this is the church, the church living and dead prophets all together. They are montans. All right. Let’s slow down for a minute here because I, we have five scripture references, all of this hymnology. So you’re saying that the icon evolved both from the scriptural references, but as it was, there’s also imagery or poetry, let’s say in these liturgical texts that talk about the feast. It express profound truth through poetry. And it’s, I mean, they’re expressing typology. And so it’s not, it’s not that the poet just thought up nice images is that the poet is versed in the Psalms, is versed in the Old Testament and that these insights through noetic experience, the insights of seeing all of a sudden the transfiguration hinted at, right. Glimmers of it in Moses, glimmers of it in different parts of the Old Testament. And then seeing that this is all being connected in the story of the gospel. It’s interesting to what extent, hymnography is actual a kind of the Bible interpreting itself, right. Referring to these old images, bringing them back and showing you how they connect and how all of this is brought together in the person of Christ. So one hymn talks about when you are transfigured, O Christ, you reveal the original beauty of the human nature. And this refers back to a lot of the fathers say that if I’m Syrian, for example, that when it says Adam and Eve were naked, they’d been clothed before, they’d been clothed in light, the glory of God. So when they sinned, as it were, they lost that light. Like if I pull out a plug or turn off a switch, these lights go out. So it’s a lamp, but yet it’s not a lamp because it’s not irradiant through electricity with light. So this shining Christ is actually the new Adam who’s put back on the garment of light. In other words, he’s not just human, he’s shining with divinity. And it’s really there in the story because this is also happening during the Feast of Tabernacles. So the question that Peter asks, it’s almost a joke in the story, Peter says, can we give you a garment? Can we cover this? Can we make a house for it? And Christ, this moment is beyond that. This is more than a moment that can only be held within the tent, even the tent of the Tabernacle, because that’s what it’s being alluded to. Here is the glory of God appearing to us. Can we build a tent around it to contain it? Not this one. So what you’re saying is that dialogue between Peter and Jesus, just that simple thing, can we put a tent around it, is actually a reference. Yeah, we are. He didn’t realize it probably. No, no, it doesn’t matter. He was just in the moment in saying it, but then when you see it in retrospect, just like the disciples themselves at Pentecost all of a sudden saw all these things that Christ had done and how they connected, they participated in that too. And the Feast of Gwinnese, let’s build a few Tabernacles, that refers to the Feast of Tabernacles, and that was to remember when they lived in the desert and God was with them in the desert, because of course during the daytime the Lord led them forth with a pillar of cloud at night and a pillar of fire. So the Feast of Tabernacles was to remind that God was with them in the desert. So here, in fact, he’s prophesying in a way, Peter, saying, this is the fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles. The pillar of fire is here before us, it’s God himself. And then Jesus’ response that no, we cannot put a tent around it is to say this is not the symbol of the glory, this is the glory. Exactly. This is the real thing. You don’t need the symbol now. This is the real thing. Before I met Jonathan in the flesh, I might have a photograph of Jonathan there in my living room. Jonathan comes in and he moves into the house. I don’t need the photograph. It’s redundant. I’ve got Jonathan himself. And so it’s interesting because I’m so bound up in the question of symbolism, but in the Orthodox, especially in the Orthodox iconographic tradition, there’s some aspect of it which is you could call anti-symbolic in the sense that they’re moving towards saying Christ is the finality of these images. And so when you have Christ, you’re not necessarily wanting to represent him in these shadows, but you have the thing itself. It doesn’t mean that symbolism doesn’t continue to exist in this typological way, but there’s a sense in which Christ is the end of the symbolic pyramid. It’s the prototype of which symbols are represented. Right. Well, and to go back to the anecdote I shared with you before about myself as a senior in college, it’s a little bit frightening when you begin to realize that there’s other rituals and there’s other symbols and there’s other meanings and there’s other ways of thinking about worship. Because I think for me as a young person, I wanted to believe that these rituals and these symbols truly were what I had been told they meant and that I could have this encounter with God because the alternative is to say, well, none of this means anything and all of this is just made up and whatever I choose to believe the symbols mean is what they mean and that’s what it means to me. And it’s all the same. Right? And that wasn’t very satisfying to me either because if I just make up the meaning, then I’m not really getting the meaning of my life because I can just claim it to be one thing. But what I hear you saying is, well, there’s a rich history of symbols and symbolic thinking, but Christianity is actually claiming this isn’t just about symbols. We’re actually claiming you can meet God in his glory. Is that right? Well, that would be the point of symbols also. I mean, the point of, you could say that the point of creation is so that it can meet God. And so even the symbols or the symbolic hierarchy or these inklings are there to act as a ladder. That’s the only thing they’re there for. They’re not just for our enjoyment in thinking about concepts, but they have to, if they don’t provide levels of insight that can bring you closer to a divine encounter, then they’re kind of pointless. You can be just turning around, going around in circles. In fact, the word symbol is a combination of two Greek words, sim and volus, which means literally to throw together. So the aim of a symbol is to draw us together with the architect who is Christ. So once you’re together, then the symbol has fulfilled its function. You don’t discard it. You’re sort of thankful for that tree or whatever that brought you closer to God. I came to believe in God’s existence through trees. I used to hide in trees as a child, playing hide and go seek. And I, in a sort of quiet way, I came to believe there must be a God who made these incredible things called trees. So when I was a hermit living in 28 acres of land, I planted 5,000 trees and thanksgiving to God and thanksgiving to the trees, if you like, for being like saying John the Baptist leading me to God. So it’s not as though now Matt has done his job, I can spit it out. It could have makes a symbol richer. It remains there, but beside Christ instead of in Eastern and Western Christianity, you have these three stages of movement toward Christ. In the West it’s called purification, illumination and union. And in the East it tends to be called practical theology from praxis, something you do. You’ve got to act and make an effort to repent. And then physiky theologi or natural theology, perceiving God in the nature and the created world. And then mystiky theologi or mystical theology. So the first is repentance, being purified as Jonathan was saying. You can’t see unless you get the cataracts off. But the second, which is related to symbolism, is perceiving the words of God within each created thing. So this plant behind us, it didn’t just come out of nothing. God spoke, plant whatever it is, rubber plant, and the rubber plant comes into existence. But that word that the Lord spoke actually keeps that in existence. So when I see the rubber plant, I don’t just see a plant. It’s a gift of love to me. You know, like my wedding ring, it’s just a chunk of gold. But when I look at that, I see my wife’s love for me. And then following these footsteps, these logoi and plural, these words embedded in creation, eventually come to feet and I look up and there’s the face of the Lord, the logos himself. We can’t perceive, we can’t look at the sun straight away, but gradually our eyes adjust until eventually we can look at the face of the sun himself. Well, speaking of that kind of gradual ascent maybe to the face of God, I would say that the Transfiguration is a feast in the church or a part of the scriptures that I always struggled to relate to. It’s not that long, not that many words going on there. And I wasn’t until a little bit later in life that there was something about the Transfiguration that captured my imagination and I wanted to try to understand it more because I wanted to believe that in the midst of these struggles that I was having and these issues and these problems that God still loved me and he loved the people around me and that things were going to be okay. And I think that this is a very visceral human desire, right? That in the midst of struggle and suffering, you begin to ask, okay, is this faith that I’ve been given, is it really real? Like, can I really see God even in the midst of all of this difficulty? But I will say the Transfiguration is not something I remember being taught about in catechism or having much of a way to think about it. So when I picked up your book, as I mentioned, Beauty, Spirit and Matter, I said, oh, finally, here’s someone’s kind of unpacking the meaning of this to me. So let’s talk a little bit about, you mentioned that when an iconographer begins to train, this is the first one. Well, once they finish the training. Once they finish the training, the first one they would paint. So what are the pieces of the icon? We mentioned Moses and Elijah. What is it? Describe the icon of the Transfiguration. What are the elements in it? I know Moses and Elijah, there’s some rays, there’s Simon, Peter. No, Simon is Peter, right? Simon, James and John. Peter, James and John. Peter, James and John. There’s some mountains. Okay, so just describe the image for me. Don’t think I’m supposed to. I bet you’ve described it. So there’s variation in the image, but usually there’s a mountain. Sometimes there’s three peaks and Christ is in the center. And then there’s a glory around him. His vestments are white. And then you have Elijah and Moses on either side of Christ. Below, then you have in the mountain, you will have the three disciples that are reacting to their vision. Usually James and John are kind of tumbled over, falling back, looking away. And then Peter is sometimes kind of looking towards Christ. It depends on the icon, but there’s a sense of when he’s gesturing towards Christ. And that’s when he is asking the question about the tabernacle. There are some little details that are interesting that appear in the Transfiguration, for example. Often you’ll have one or two of the disciples losing their sandal during the kind of being bowled over by this vision. And so those are the basic elements of the Transfiguration. And from the glory, it can be a circle, it can be various shapes. You have rays coming out. That’s important as well. Sometimes underneath Moses and Elijah you’ve got caves with golden. Some later on have the disciples going up on one side and coming down the other. And that’s quite important. It has importance. It has importance in the idea also of how revelation works. It’s like Moses going up and bringing something down with him. And so having that image is definitely… But don’t stay up in a state of ecstasy. They’ve got to go down. Christ’s got to be crucified. They’ve got to carry the grace of God into the world. Alright, so in that one image, I’m hearing movement up and down. I’m hearing Old Testament. I’m hearing dialogue. I mean there’s a lot happening in one image. Now, sorry, we’re going to have to go back to basics here. What are Moses and Elijah doing there? There are several things that they’re doing. One is that they are fulfilling the question they asked. Most of them asked… Moses asked to see God. And both of them had a partial revelation. Elijah heard that quiet voice and Moses saw the back of God as he walked by. And so they’re there to see the fullness of the glory of God. That’s what they’re there for. They’re there to kind of finalize their movement towards revelation. So it’s like it’s what it’s saying is this is the final… This is it. The fullness of revelation is being shown here. If there’s an image without saying it that is saying, this is God, it’s the transfiguration. Because why are Moses and Elijah there looking at standing next to Christ in the center who is revealing this glory completely? And so that’s why… Of course the law came through Moses. Yes, they have law and the prophets. And Elijah is a prophet. So Christ is the fulfillment of the law and the prophets. The not only the Ten Commandments, but the Tent of Meeting and the Temple are all types, which types are really physical prophecies, all of Christ. So this is the fulfillment of them. Okay, so they’re beholding the glory of God in Christ as the fulfillment of their… Everything they prophesied about, all the law, everything is there. Okay. And then Jesus has invited Peter, James and John to be there. And you said that sometimes Peter is shown looking at him? Yeah, he’s kind of gesturing towards either he’s looking or sometimes he’s gesturing. It depends on the image. But most of the time he’s looking towards Christ and gesturing towards him. And each of the three postures relate to the age. So the oldest one is Peter, he’s looking at Christ. John is the youngest, he’s probably about 19. He’s the one normally looking away. James is middle-aged, he’s sort of between the two. What’s interesting is that John is the mystic. I don’t like the word, but his symbol is the eagle, so the eagle flies really high. But interestingly, he’s often curled up. And there’s a lot of teaching about the Jesus Prayer. When you do the Jesus Prayer, often you make a circle out of your body, but you don’t want your thoughts to shoot out there. You want to meet God, the Holy Spirit in your heart. So you create a circle. So he’s seeing the Lord, but mystically through his heart as it were. So the plenty of stories about lay and monastic people experiencing the Lord through that inner prayer. So it’s three different ways of encountering God, and they’re not contradictory, they’re just different ways. So it’s not that one posture is superior to the other, it’s that there are different ways of seeing the mystery. Each of us are three distinct people, and each of us will experience God in distinct ways. Wow. And why would the sandal be falling off? I think I have noticed that before. Why is the sandal falling off sometimes? Well, at least for me, now this becomes a land of speculation, but I do think that it has to do with St. Gregory of Nice’s vision of what’s called the removing of the garments of skin. So there’s an image in the Ascent of Moses as he goes towards the burning bush where God says, remove your sandals for you’re in a holy place. And say Gregory sees that as this kind of ascetic practice where you remove the passions, you remove the externals in order to enter into the heart once again. So when I see that sandal falling off, I feel like this is a gesture towards that saying, like this is the removing of the outer garments, moving into the holy place. And it’s not that flesh is bad, it’s not saying, oh, the flesh is bad and the only way you can see God is to get rid of that bad material stuff called the flesh. It’s, Jonathan used the term passions. We tend to think of passions predominantly, but the passions are God-given energies, but you’ve got to direct them toward God. And I’d say there’d be two other elements as well, is that you’ve already alluded to it, Jonathan, that the Lord tells Moses to take his sandals off. He’s encountered God and this is holy ground. So this shows us that Christ is the burning bush. A bush is physical stuff, but then it’s got this fire which doesn’t consume it. So obviously the fire is not a created fire, it must have been a divine fire because otherwise it would have consumed the bush. And thirdly, if you’re afraid and you’re shaking, your sandal might fall off. So that’s also to show that this light is actually not just bright physical light, but this is divine light. It’s a completely different order. It’s an encounter with something that’s completely beyond anything we can imagine in the created order. So this sort of fear and the shock and this falling over and the disorder of the disciples is to emphasize that this light is divine light. And you see this in icons of the Mother of God with Christ sometimes. The sandal falls off Christ’s feet and that’s because as God, he knows he’s going to die and rise, but also as a human, he’s afraid of death. So the child is shaking out of fear. So it’s a normal thing to be afraid of death. So this sort of sandal falling off in the Vlodima icon it’s called is an indication of a firm in Christ humanity in that case. In this case, it’s a firm in Christ divinity and the supernatural nature of this light. Okay, so now let’s go to Christ in this image. As I mentioned at the start, you say that one of the purpose of icons is to reveal Christ in his humanity and in his divinity. So it would seem to me that the icon of the Transfiguration, we’re clearly seeing Christ in his divinity, but are we also seeing Christ in his humanity? What does Christ look like in the Transfiguration when you paint the Transfiguration? I mean, he looks like it’s an image of Christ. It’s a recognizable image of Christ. Christ has certain characteristics that makes us recognize that it’s him. So it’s definitely represented representing him in his humanity. You can’t represent the divinity of Christ. You can’t represent it. You can gesture towards it. You can here’s a place where you can kind of symbolize or gesture towards Christ divinity. And that’s what the glory, that’s the role that the glory plays in this image, right? The rays of divine light that emanate from him. But the important thing, theologically, it’s the person of Christ we’re depicting. The icons only, and the fathers who defended icons against the iconoclasts were always affirming we’re not depicting the divinity of Christ. We’re depicting the person of Christ. But the person of Christ is divine. He’s not a human created being whom God popped into because he was a good lad. The personhood, the apostasis to use the Greek term of Christ, is that of the second person of the Trinity. So you’re seeing this man, Jesus Christ, whose personhood is divine. But as I mentioned earlier, what is interesting is that the texts say that he has shown us what it is to be truly human, which is to be not merely human, but to be deified, to be God-bearers. So I think the miracle is not so much that Christ is transfigured, but the fact that he wasn’t transfigured, the whole time, it would have freaked people out. So in fact, the miracle is that he clothed himself as it were to hide his divinity. And one of the aspects of the mandorla or the glory that is around Christ is usually that it’s represented as a darkness that moves towards light. And so usually in the middle it’s dark and on the outside it’s white and moving different tones of blue towards the light. And that has to do with this idea that God is beyond, is beyond the description. St. Peter’s dark, therefore. Yeah. And so there’s a divine darkness is what Howe St. Gregory… Divine darkness. Yeah. What is that? Tell me more about that. I thought you said it was about light. Well, that’s it. So it’s represented in aporia. It’s always represented paradoxically. So there’ll be different ways of saying it’s something like a light so bright that it blinds you, something like that. Or the idea of that which is beyond light even, that is the source of light. So how do you figure that? That which is beyond description, which is beyond name, which is beyond all capacity to frame. And that is the highest aspect of God in the mystical experience and in the description, even in theological descriptions, this idea that I talked about St. Gregory of Nyssa and the ascension of Moses. And when Moses goes up he moves into the divine darkness. And it says that there was darkness covered the mountain and there was lightening. Yeah. You’ve got darkness and light together. In the story of the Transfiguration you get that because it says a very contradictory thing in the story. It says they were covered by a cloud of light. It’s like what? What is that? It’s like two contradictory things. A cloud is something that is shade. Stop, stop, stop. It stops the light. But it’s a cloud and it’s light at the same time. So even in the actual text there seems to be a kind of aporia that’s presented that is implying both light and dark at the same time. So it sounds a bit freaky. The darkness of God. Dark’s bad, isn’t it? But really what we’re just saying is that is the unknowability of God. In Orthodox theology we distinguish between the essence of God, which even in the age to come is unknowable. And the energies of God, it’s rather unfortunate translation, but basically it’s the living person or God and his nobleness. Like if I said I’ve known you for two years, I know you entirely. You’ll be a bit offended by that. Even if I know you for two thousand years, Margarita will always be unknowable to some extent. Each of us is created in God’s image. So each of us is eternal in the sense that we never entirely know. I mean both of us are married, we’re all married. But we know we’re never going to know our spouse in their entirety. So this is a noble essence in a way. And if it’s the history of humanity, surely it’s true of God. So the darkness is just darkness from our point of view. It’s not darkness in God himself. But we can know we’re getting closer to knowing. You can know you’re… Oh yeah, of course. And Gregor Nysser, whom Jonathan’s referred to a lot, he uses the term from glory to glory a lot. He puts it in St. Paul’s term, that even in the age to come we’re ever growing closer to God. It’s an eternal journey. So now in the Transfiguration, Christ is filled with light. And I believe you’ve told me, Aidan, that also it’s important to depict the garments are also filled with light. It’s not just his face, it’s not just the rays emanating out from his noose maybe, but his garment is transfigured? That’s what the scriptures say. They say that the face shines with light. But all three gospels talk about the garments. They do. Yeah. This is, I don’t know if you want to speak to this, it’s one of my favorite subjects. Yeah, go ahead. The clothes we wear, they’re just inanimate, aren’t they? They’re not personable. They’re just woven linen. But this inanimate matter participates in this uncreated glory. So that this is, and in Greek one of the terms used for what we now call nature rather sadly, but this is called the created world, is cosmos. God created the cosmos. Cosmos in Greek means adornment. Cosmetics comes from that. So cosmos, Christ’s garment is really the whole of the created world which is wrapped around himself and he’s filled with light again. So Maximus the Confessor talks a lot about this, that each stage of Christ, he’s gathering something which had been discarded by the fall. Adam and Eve discarded creation by not giving thanks. It just sort of became dead then. If I take this garment off, it just becomes dead. It just flops. If it’s on me, it takes on my form. It actually participates in my personhood. So really what’s happening in the Transfiguration is that the person of God who’s taken on our humanity, therefore also it’s the second Adam who’s transfigured, but through the second Adam who’s like a priest between the creator and the rest of creation, the whole of the cosmos participates in his Transfiguration. St. Paul talks about this in Romans 8. The whole of creation sort of groaning, waiting for the redemption of the children of God because it too then will be filled with glory. All of creation, but I mean, are my clothes part of creation? Yeah, of course. They are? I thought somebody… But there’s a very deep understanding of, even in terms of the story of the fall, garments are very important because Adam and Eve are clothed in glory. That’s the way that at least St. Ephraim presents it in many of the Church Fathers. Then in the fall is when they kind of see themselves as naked, as lacking. Then they feel like they have to add something to themselves. So these dead garments of skin get added to them, but that doesn’t stop there. It becomes also civilization. So Cain goes further down into the fall and he builds this city and he builds these walls and technology and these weapons. The idea is that that is somehow a reaction or it’s a movement of the fall that’s going deeper and deeper down into basically going all the way to the flood in the biblical narrative. The surprise of Christ is that he fills all of that with light. So the final image, let’s say, of the transfiguration is the heavenly Jerusalem, which is now… It’s like now it’s really just the entire world that is filled with glory, but the hint of that or the promise of that is exactly like Aidan said, is that this garment that Christ wore is now no longer a dead garment of skin, but is now filled. It’s full of the very glory. By participation in the person of Christ, because the garment takes on the form of the person wearing it. It’s only transfigured because it’s part of him. It’s not him, but it sort of takes on his image as it were. So what you’re saying, I think Aidan, has really profound theological implications that the person of Christ has… His garments are part of the person of Christ? Is that what I hear you say? Distinct, but yes, like I had to put it. Or they help to reveal the person? Yeah. The whole of creation is in God’s image. We are persons with freedom, so we are more in the image of God, but everything in creation, even to a rock, is a symbol that reflects some aspect of God’s life. So in fact, the whole of creation was created as a temple for us to worship God. We don’t talk much about this. You’re talking about how do we know the rituals have significance. If it’s true worship, it should reflect heavenly worship. This is why God had to reveal to Moses exactly how to build the Tent of Meeting and exactly how to model the year liturgically, because it wasn’t just man’s invention driving it up. It had to reflect, it had to be an icon of heavenly worship. So the whole of creation was created by God as a temple for us to worship him in, and it reflected the truth of who God is. Okay. So in some ways, because we believe that human beings are created in the image of God, my clothes aren’t created in the image of God, but yet they somehow reflect God’s glory, which is different. They take on your shape, and you’re in the image of God, so they’re obviously a lower image of God than you are, because they’re just inanimate. But you could understand, I mean, if you want a simple example that’s not, that doesn’t, that I see it’s kind of confusing, but you can imagine that, let’s say, when you go to church, and then you have a chalice, right? It’s like, here’s, this is kind of a chalice. Like we have cups, we have things, but then all of a sudden, there’s this possibility of taking something, which we use in common day life, and then bringing it into service and bringing it into worship, then it participates in this movement towards God. And so, you know, so in some ways you could say that for, let’s say, it’s a liturgical movement, but think about it in terms of what the promise is that this will fill the whole world, right? That is what, the promise is that the reason for creation is that it can be theophantic, that it can be a place where God reveals himself. I mean, in some ways, that’s the reason for creation. Without that, why did God create the world? Like, God created the world out of this- To get in the way of him. No, surely it’s there to reveal him. Tried to get in the way of him. Okay, so all of creation from, you know, plants and trees and clothing can participate in the glory of God. Is that- Well, God created it, but it says in Hebrews that by the word of his power, all things sustained. So God just didn’t create, and then he walks away and that thing has its own- God remains in that and gives it life. So Bishop Calistos Weir says that Christians aren’t pantheists, but they are panintheists. You know, God is in everything, sustaining it. This is the meaning of the logoi, the words. I mean, it’s in the second stage of the spiritual life, is to discern, see, hear the words of God within each created thing. There’s a hierarchy, obviously, an animal is higher up on the hierarchy than a stone, but nonetheless, everything in its own way is an image of reflection, takes on some element of God’s form, inverted karma. So that means that the word monocost means one who is alone, and all of us call to be monarchy, monastics, in the sense that wherever I look, if I look at Jonathan, look at you, look at a tree, I’m seeing God in that. You’re not God, but I see God coming through you. So everything becomes iconographic. And this is, I think, the essence of the fall that I think it’s Efram who suggests that the tree of knowledge, good and evil, is the whole created world, and it will become knowledge of good, fadamani, i.e. us, if we give thanks for it. So when you give thanks, you see the person, the giver, in that gift. If I just grab that gift and turn my back, then it becomes knowledge of evil, becomes dead for me. So this is why the Eucharist, I think it’s wonderful, but the central Christian act is the Eucharist to give thanks, that everything then is a means of beholding the Lord. So then we’re all living like monarchy, monastics, and that we’re living alone with God, and in fact, the whole universe is gathered in. So wherever I look, there’s the Lord. Well, I like the word, I’ve been teaching this class on the Virgin Mary, and I like the verb gathering, and it sounds like from what you were saying a moment ago, Jonathan, that the transfiguration of the clothing, the matter, were meant to gather all of the creation of God and bring it back, give thanks, bring it back to God. So all of these things God created at this point in time, but they’re meant to be gathered and brought back, and then thereby participate in this glory. See, that did help me, because as a young person, well, what’s the alternative to that? Well, you use things and you do things, but it’s completely unrelated to your march towards God, right? You just go towards God in your head, but all these things that you’re interacting with, nature, objects, et cetera, that’s sort of superfluous to the spiritual journey. And what I hear you saying is, no, no, no, all of those things are part of our spiritual journey. They don’t have a soul, they don’t have a noose, but we’re meant to gather. We’re meant to steward and to appreciate the presence, the creation of God and all of matter, and steward that, gather it, bring it back to him. And that to me was very moving to think that that’s a beautiful way to think about life rather than using and throwing away or consuming just for pleasure that all of these things can come together. So I guess in the time that we have left, I wondered if you could share with me what this feast means to you or what the Transfiguration means to you. I mean, was there a moment in time when you asked yourself, what really is the meaning of the Transfiguration? What does this look like in my life? Why do I need to meditate on this or to ponder this particular feast? I mean, I think that Christ in the gospels, there are moments in his story and each moment reveals an aspect of the mystery that Christ is. And so to me, I see in some way the Transfiguration, the crucifixion as almost kind of standing in contrast with each other. Here’s this moment of where Christ is revealed in his divinity through a kind of glory, really using all the symbolism of the Old Testament, all the symbolism of the glory of God, the Shekinah, all this imagery is brought there. And then you have this other contrasting images where the glory of Christ is actually being shown on the cross as well, but in a very strange, inverted and hidden way. And so to me, I love that. There’s something about having it holding those two stories in tension, which I think is important for us, even in terms of the churchical artists, for example. And so we understand that the beauty of the church, the beauty of all the things that we make, the frescoes, the mosaics, all of this is in some ways participation in the Transfiguration. And so, and that we’re called to kind of hold these two things in tension, one which is the self-sacrifice, one which is the helping the poor to care for those in need to kind of give ourselves, to empty ourselves for others. But then there’s also the possibility and the importance of celebrating that glorious aspect where all creation comes together and celebrates God. And so to me, the image of the Transfiguration as an artist is in some ways a guiding light to say like, no, there is this possibility of participating in that. And like you said, gathering the elements, gathering bits of wood, bits of gold, bits of stone, and being able to hopefully offer something up so that it participates in that process. Oh, that’s beautiful, John. And let me see if I heard what you’re saying that for you and your vocation is to be a liturgical artist. You make sculptures, you do design, iconographic, that the image of the Transfiguration, the meaning of the Feast of the Transfiguration in some ways is like, it gives meaning to your vocation or gives inspiration that what you’re doing as an icon carver and iconographer, you’re taking created material and you’re working with it and putting it together in ways that participate even further in the glory of God and it gives meaning. Is that? You hope. Like I said, it’s the anchor. It’s part of the anchor of what makes a liturgical artist do what they do, at least for me. Is this idea of kind of stewarding and gathering the materials and then creating an image that’s kind of bringing creation back to God and an act of thanksgiving. I liked very much what you said that part of our calling as people of faith is to serve the poor and to care for the needy but we’re also called to gather and to co-create with God and to make beautiful things that give glory, that celebrate, that lead us into this place of rejoicing and celebrating that God’s presence has come into the world and therefore matter can be sanctified and can be gathered and brought back. I think that goes beyond liturgical artists for any kind of vocation, for anyone working in the world doing anything. This is so inspiring because otherwise, you know, then your faith and your work are just completely separate from each other. So that’s a very inspiring message. Thank you. What about for you, Aidan? As you’re talking, I was thinking perhaps there are three things. Face, community, and matter, I think. I sort of nominally raised an Anglican but never really had a conscious faith but when I was 15, I had a conversion experience just as man was speaking about the faith. I saw a face full of light but also there was a crowd behind, there were people behind and this is what converted me. So it was the face of Christ but also it wasn’t just him isolated and that sort of ended my heart and I sort of measured everything against that in a way. So when I encountered the Transfiguration icon, there you have it, the face of Christ but not alone. But being an artist, I started off as a Baptist which I really loved, I got to know the scriptures well but I felt matters hasn’t really got a place here. The material world is sort of just not mentioned really. So my journey kept going and when I discovered the icon tradition and the orthodox affirmation of the material world, when I saw the Transfiguration icon and started reading about the theology, I realized, ah, now I’ve got the face of Christ, got the community of the church, here’s matter transfigured. You were describing this process of taking God given matter up and making it even more articulate in the worship of God, that artistic process. Here it’s all in the Transfiguration icon. That’s why the idea of Christ’s garment being cosmos means a lot so much to me. The garments aren’t just raw flax, someone has taken the flax, spun it, woven it. So here this idea of man as prophet, priest and king and I understand kingship is like an artist, like Jonathan’s got to be master of his stereotype when he’s carving it but he’s not master to crush it and grind it, he’s master of it to raise that hunk of inanimate stone to become the face of Christ. So kingship to me is the kingship of an artist to make creation more articulate in the praise of God. So that’s what the Transfiguration says for me. That’s very inspiring and I know we’ll hear more from you on priest, prophet and king in your lecture tomorrow at the PTS and Scala Foundation Conference and you know Jonathan I wondered if you could just give us a few minutes, just a few words really. What are you speaking about tomorrow at the Scala Conference like PTS? Well actually it has a little bit to do with what we’re saying. There’s something about especially modern, especially contemporary art, there’s a sense in which the artist is there to question, the artist is there to poke at the system and to to try to break the structures that are there and what I want to explore tomorrow is how traditional art and how especially liturgical art is in some ways there to celebrate and to bring together and to kind of build identities and so we’re going to look at that, the dangers of that also, there are dangers in that and so we’re going to try to look at in scripture and how it all kind of comes together in the person of Christ like most stories. That’s great and you know as I mentioned at the start the Scala Foundation’s mission is to restore culture through liberal arts education, beauty and worship and this event that we that I’ve put together this weekend is going to bring together artists with educators with scholars to experience the beauty of the campus here at Princeton Theological Seminary, the university chapel, sacred music and I wondered if you could comment on what was it that attracted you to be a part of Scala’s mission? What do you find about Scala’s mission that made you interested in being a part of this? I mean you know I think the world is hungry for exactly the things you mentioned you know people are heavy because the world is quite ugly especially in America. In Europe you have more luck than we do, we have more chance than we do you know the suburbs, this plastic world in which we live and also this world of consuming I think it in some ways it’s sad but it also is a kind of hunger and people are looking for meaning and looking for beauty and so if we can help people move in that direction it’s wonderful. Great well I would encourage everybody watching this to look at Aidan Hart’s website, Aidan Hart icons. They’re beautiful images, wonderful essays. Please do check out his books Beauty, Matter and the Sacred also his book Festo Icons which was Beauty, Spirit, Matter. Beauty, Spirit, Matter excuse me Beauty, Spirit, Matter thank you. His book Festo Icons was released just in 2022 is that right and his book on drawing icons. Techniques of icon and wall painting. Techniques of icon and wall painting. It’s the best book on painting icons that exist I mean I think it’s pretty unanimous so if you’re interested in icons that book is the book to get. you