Art and Technology: From Death to Glory - Boston Talk pt.1

John's mojo is re teaching us the language of symbolism and showing us just how life-giving the level is if we have yours to see if you have ears to hear if we have eyes to see everyone that possibilies knows just how excited I've been to have Jonathan come so I'm really dirty am I supposed to have such high expectations but please do listen to this man as he's welcomed him today [Applause] [Music] this is Jonathan pezzo welcome to the symbolic world [Music] so I want to thank you Kelly thank you for inviting me and the Bossip fellows as well and thank you Father for having us here it's really wonderful to be in Boston and to see a bunch of a lot of people and a kind of this it's kind of the the crowd is without what I was expecting you know Hannah 20s early 30s that's my image of Boston I guess and I yesterday I was walking around Boston and I was pretty confirmed in my image there's all these young people walking around and so what I want to talk to you about today is I want to give you a story of art it's going to be a story of art that's going to be maybe a little different from the one you're used to hearing I want to try to trace the story of art in Scripture and how it relates to our life today or what it means for us today and when I'm going to talk about the story of art it's actually going to end up being more than just art in the very narrow way that we understand art today it's going to end up being the story of art as the entirety of human making the entirety of human activity what how can we trace this line in Scripture and how does it relate to us today in the church and also as we see Christianity erode in our culture what does that also mean for human making what does that look like in terms of human making in the Orthodox tradition for those of you are Orthodox there's an interesting little issue there is a kind of duality in terms of human making or in terms of let's say liturgical art or beautiful things beautiful architecture is that on the one hand we have an ascetic tradition and in this ascetic tradition here we have an image of st. simeon the skylight who stood on a pillar for most of his life and just stood there for day and night you know living this extreme ascetic life and the image of the Desert Fathers and the image of the life of the monk and the ascetic is the lifeblood of the Orthodox tradition it is it is what ensues 'as we the saints that we venerate the stories that we tell of the early Desert Fathers that is the the lifeblood and the mystical tradition of the church as well the hesychast ik tradition has these very extreme pronouncements about human activity about images about image making which is that the purpose of the mystic is to attain pure prayer without any images without any language without any exteriority whatsoever but to enter into the divine darkness and experience oneness with God without any form at all so how do we connect that to something like this how does that match how can we have a tradition that also celebrates this this this plethora of image making that we have this exuberance in terms of our art terms of ornamentation gold all of this when we go up into the church later you'll see you know it's it's gold mosaic and there is a you know carved marble and all of this kind of exuberance how do we connect those two together and we see tension even in the the Christian Church even in the Orthodox tradition will the tension appear once in a while in that issue you'll find a very sober priest will quote to you you know a homily of st. John Chrysostom which says that we shouldn't which would be careful we shouldn't have gold we should use gold for make churches we should help the poor and so you have this idea you know we have to help the poor we have to be ascetic we have to be this and then you also have the other side where we have Hagia Sophia which became the model for all the churches in the world and all the mosques in the world actually and became the cornerstone of architecture for the West for centuries right so we have this these two things so what I want to do is I want to go into the the story and look at why these two types of these two traditions how do they come together in Christianity one of my main the main people that go to is st. Gregory of Nisa because he is his understanding of Christian symbolism is is uh no one beats him in his understanding if you read the life of of Moses you get a very powerful vision of the Old Testament and this vision of the the mystical union with God in the Old Testament and but if you read st. Gregory Mesa it seems like he's really on the side of the let's say on the side of the ascetic um let me just read you a quote from st. Gregory in his text on virginity so so st. Gregory says that we need to renounce marriage right we need to renounce all these things and renounce toil the the work that was given to Adam we need to really renounce even to reject the deception that is given to us even through taste and sight itself and he talks about to be with God alone and enjoy this delight continuously and without interruption and no longer to mingle with with this repose nothing which draws us in the opposite direction and so we talked about being snatched up into the divine presence and Saint Gregory uses this story of Moses ascending the mountain if you look at the story of Moses ascending the mountain that's exactly the structure that that that is given by saint gregory of nyssa as Moses ascends the mountain he is returning to paradise the mountain of Sinai is also the mountain of paradise if you look at if you look at this image you can see Moses atop and you see this glory of God I don't know if you can see this little glory of God at the top of the mountain so he's going up and he's entering into the divine presence and to do that he has to get rid of all the external coverings he has to remove his sandals he has to also shed the people that were with him there's this image in the open in the Old Testament in Exodus where as Moses goes up the mountain at first he leaves all the people below and then as he's going up he's going up with all the elders he leaves the elders and then he goes up with Aaron with with with Joshua then he leaves Joshua then he finds himself alone at the top of the mountain and so this is really the image of the shedding of all the externals and moving into the oneness of God and in that you really do find this image of of hesychasm this image of the mystical vision of Orthodoxy which is this pure oneness with God and you can see the image of the mountain is exactly that right because you move from many things you move from a large base and as you go up and get smaller and smaller and that you reach the top then you know you can imagine it imagine almost like a pyramid at the very top there's room for only one point there's just one point at the top and that's the oneness and when you're up there then you look at the world and you can see the entire you have this this over you of everything because you've reached the top and you have joined with heaven so the very image is is that so then we can also understand the opposite as being related to this fall from oneness into the many and that is what we see in the story of the Garden of Eden the story of Moses is this going up into the oneness of God into the into the to the top where heaven meets earth and the fall of the garden is the opposite it's this moving away from the oneness up at the top of a mountain and then moving out into the many into the the all the things that are outside the distractions of the outside the so the imagery that's used in in Scripture is that and that's also the image that saint gregory of nyssa uses as well so imagine now Adam and Eve are in the garden at first Adam is not even separated into two he's 1 and this is actually an important thing that we see in the church fathers the tradition in the church fathers which is that even the the separation of Adam into two people to make this androgynous being into two was already looking forward to the fall so the separation into into male and female then finally Adam and Eve are seduced by the serpent and they have to leave the garden and leaving the garden is this going down into the world when they were in the garden they were naked and we need to understand this nakedness in the context of this image of the mountain keep this image of the one and the many you know just keep that image in your minds I'm going to keep coming back to it all the time in the garden they were naked they didn't need anything from the outside they had everything they needed within that communion with God they didn't need to add something from the outside to build something from the outside they just had all they needed was the communion and as soon as they fall then this nakedness the Church Fathers talked about how his nakedness was actually they were clothed in glory it wasn't that it was naked the way we think of it but it was rather that that they didn't need external thing they were emanating they were you know they were emanating light you can imagine it that way they were emanating glory they didn't need to cover themselves as soon as they fall then they have to they they become ashamed right they look up you know they they understand that God is there and all of a sudden they feel like they have to hide themselves from God so what do they do they take leaves and they try to cover themselves that is the very first human act act in the sense of the first human making the first things the human made was clothing first human art let's talk about it that way so you'll see where I'm going right away the first human art is clothing and what's its purpose its to cover it's to protect its to hide okay and so you can also understand it as you're moving down from the mountain so imagine now again the Sun above above the world the sun is shining down right and at some point the Sun becomes a threat to you just like for them God actually became to them in their perception God became a threat to them and so they wanted to cover themselves they wanted some shade from this from something that was above them and that is what art is and that is why art in the Old Testament is actually pretty negative has a very negative connotation and I'm going to show you I'm going to bring you through it but you're gonna see that actually human activity human making is actually a very negative aspect and it's not just even in the Bible but even let's say in Hellenistic culture it was the same idea they had this notion that true knowledge was at Eastham a true knowledge was the knowledge of the principles are the knowledge of the higher things and and Tecna craft or art it wasn't you know it's like applied knowledge and there's something about that that's almost like degrading of knowledge down into the world you know think of Plato and his idea of the shadows of the of the pure forms and then the shadows in the world and so it's not just it we don't only see it in the Bible we see it in other cultures as well where this idea that the higher things when you when you make when you cover yourself you're hiding yourself from the higher things it becomes a veil it becomes a separation all right so now using the word veil is probably a very good word for you to understand what it's referring to the veils in the temple the veils of the tabernacle it was all about that it was all about hiding you know protecting ourselves from the glory of God but also protecting the glory of God from being desecrated from the outside okay so that's the clothing and then as they fall God gives them garments of skin and the garments of skin are the best image to understand this clothing to understand this addition to our nature this adding that we put on top because the garments of skin are made of dead animals they're made of death it's using death to protect us from death taking something dead making it as a covering so that you protect yourself from death outside so why did they wear the garments of skin what were they protecting themselves from in the scripture from the thorns God says you go down the mountain you come down and then you encounter the hostility of the world you know being naked up in in a garden in the glory of God it's all fine but being naked out in the woods it's not fine because you get you get a step on thorns you you know you and that's why they wear these garments st. Gregory sangra Missa is amazing because he he says that Moses his sandals are the garments of skin it's a perfect image but because these skins sandals on the bottom of your feet to protect yourselves from the thorns and the spikes and the hostility of the ground is a very beautiful image to help you understand to understand this now what's what's important is that we need to understand this covering now not just as clothing you know clothing is the image it really ends up being everything that humans do in the world of the fall basically our whole state of death our whole state of living death you could say you know of fighting death of being in a world of death of constantly having to deal with the reality of the hostility of the outside so if you want to read a more about this this beauty idea of the garments of skin there's a wonderful classic orthodox book called deification in christ by by panayotis nellis I'm going to quote something from his where he talked about st. John Chrysostom and nellis says st. John Chrysostom teaches that before the fall man had no need either for cities or for arts and skills or for the covering of clothing these were then super superfluous he continues but afterwards they became necessary because of our infirmity and not only these things but everything else the whole throng of remaining necessities and death entered with all these dragging all of them in along with itself so there's a play between death and these protections from death there's a game happening between the two right as you go further out into the world you need to build stronger and stronger things and the classic example is let say I'm from Montreal you know when my you know when my ancestors maybe a very long time ago lived in warmer climates you didn't need much but now if I go outside without a winter coat and and boots I'm gonna die so to live further out in the world of death we need more and more covering more and more civilization more and more structures an army weapons a wall around the city etc etc like we need buildings to protect ourselves from the elements to protect ourselves from attacks to protect ourselves from the people viewing you know spying on us or whatever it is that we do that's why we need we need buildings right and now in the story of Scripture and now oh and medicine is the same by the way and medicine is exactly the same structure it it's a human activity which uses death to put death away because all medicine is poison at all the medicine it's all poison it's all something that can kill you we use something that can kill you in order to stop something that's killing you so we play this game and we have to be careful it's a fine line between you know you you you have cancer you go take chemotherapy and the chemotherapy is killing you when you're trying to heal your cancer so it's like this this line that you're always playing you you take a vaccine you get injected with a disease in order to fight off a disease right this is the this is the process of the garments of skin now in order to accentuate that this is really what you see in Scripture you have to read the genealogies in the Bible no one likes to read the genealogies but there's great stuff in the genealogies of the Bible every single human activity in scripture that the basic human activities are developed by the children of Cain Cain who killed his brother Cain who was chased out so think of it think of the garden again as this mountain sin Ephraim the Syrian he talks about the Garden of Eden as the entire cosmos he says that the Garden of Eden is a mountain whose summit reaches above all summits and whose base reaches across the ocean so he talks about this image this structure this mountain is basically being the entire cosmos is this mountain so Adam and Eve fall they get they go down they're chased down the mountain as they go down the mountain they're further from the oneness of the top they're going towards more many more quantity as they're moving away from from the top and then Cain kills his brother and he gets chased further down the mountain so the the children of Seth are above the higher up on the mountain and the children of Cain are lower down in the mountains they're closer to the hostility in Scripture it says that he's chased out into the Land of Nod into this land that he's like you know like a wilderness and so because of that Kane himself founds the first city anybody else knows anybody who know another story of someone who founded a city after you killed his brother Rome yes remember that remember that okay Rome is also founded by someone who tried to kill his brother okay and as as Kane goes down the mountain as his descendants go down the mountain we have this idea that the children of Cain become the ultimate outsider the ultimate foreigner you would say the ultimate thing that you don't know what it is and this is this is a tradition that spans in very strange ways all across storytelling you even find it in the story of Beowulf where in the story of Beowulf Grendel and his mother are actually descendants of Cain these these like primordial monsters that live in the swamp and in the forest are actually these descendants of Cain but you can imagine it like this you command unit that the on the top of the mountain we are these these humans in the image of God and as we get further and further down the mountain we resemble God less we resemble the animals more we wear animal skins on us and as we go down then we start to become monstrous as we get further and further out but it's not just Cain and founded the city his descendants also did other things and then in his line you have these Lamech has these different kids one is named jebel who is the father of those who dwell in tents his brother's name is Jubal and he was the one who created the musical instruments and then finally one of his children is tubal Cain and tubal Cain is the instructor of every craftsman in bronze and iron so we have Kane founds the first city so he found sedentary lifestyle Cain's children are the first nomads who live in tents and carry livestock his children are the first artists they are the first musicians they create musical instruments and his children are the first artists they are the first craftsmen they are the ones who make make med-alert use metallurgy to make things and so you can see that all civilizations it comes from the bad side it comes from the dark side you could say and I'm sorry everybody's like all this girls don't worry there's a happy ending okay everything's gonna be okay but for now we need to understand this first if we want to understand the salvation that Christ brings you have to understand the dark part first and in in the in the tradition other traditions that say extra-biblical tradition it goes even further than what I'm telling you here in the extra-biblical traditions for example nutritions around the Book of Enoch it's the demons who teach human beings their skills so it's not just that Cain develops these the skills but it's actually fallen angels who are teaching the skills and think about it in terms of think about in terms of what I've been telling you like we get all hung up about the images of fallen angels and all this but think about this the image I had about the mountain of coming down the mountain how applied knowledge is moving is coming taking something above and bringing it below okay and so it's not that strange to imagine that these angels these principalities these higher beings are falling and they're the ones who are teaching the skills to human beings like whether you think it's a legitimate tradition or not just try to understand it it can help you understand the story and why in the time of Christ these these traditions were very very prominent so in the book of Enoch it talks about different demons one major demon and is as Iselle and it says that as Iselle taught men to make swords and knives and shields and breastplates and Maino to them the metals of the earth and the art of working them now think of the the metal part is really important very important because metal is digging in the ground remember the mountain remember this this pyramid right metallurgy is digging in the ground taking stuff from underground bringing it up and then using that right it's a very dark thing and all the all the imagery around metallurgy and every culture is very dark you know you have the image of hephaistos this this deformed God in Greek and Roman myth that lives in Hades you know that lives in this dark firey place and is pounding and making and just the even think of a blacksmith and any you know in any kind of fantastic story that you get living in this soot and banging on metal and taking this ore out of the ground you know it's a very dark imagery so how does though teaches people to make weapons but he doesn't only teach them to make weapons he also teaches them to make bracelets and ornaments and to use antimony now antimony is very strained but the reason it seems to me why he says to use antimony is because in the ancient times antimony was a metal that was used to decorate the eyelids so he's connecting metallurgy and weapon making with ornaments with decorating and and so he says they use antimony and the beautifying of the eyelids and all kinds of costly stones and all coloring and tinctures and there arose much godlessness and they committed fornication they were led astray and became corrupt in all their ways so why is ornamentation connected with this making something beautiful why wouldn't we want to make something beautiful you know now ornamentation is the ultimate garment of skin does the ultimate thing that you add you can think about it this way and I tried to explain it think of someone why would someone need to wear makeup sorry it's all the ladies like why do you wear makeup right do you wear makeup in order to enhance your beauty okay all right so you and so you you you put something you add something in order to enhance your beauty now if you push that a little further right and you you say you put on more makeup you put on more makeup when is where's the line between enhancing your beauty and hiding what's there okay that's the line right that's the line that I'm talking about if this this idea of adding something in order to enhance but then you're also hiding your your kammath you know your camouflage Inge what is there your your supplementing in order to hide as well okay that's the that's the line that is going on in this in this whole game and that's why the ornamentation that the demons teach ornamentation is related to making cities and making walls and weapons because why do we we use why do we need why would you want a sword you want a sword to enhance your strength right that's the same thing too every technology has the same function every single technology has the same function it's to enhance something but it also can be a way to hide that which is lacking the example I like to use is always a book of matches I can my ancestors had a lot of pain to start fires like they suffered to start fires I don't suffer just take out my book of matches there you go I've got fire well what do I do if I don't have that book of matches can I start a fire I don't know how to start a fire all right my ancestors knew how to start a fire if they didn't have a book of matches they can still start a fire it's the same for everything around us right we have cars you can go very far and now our whole society shifts and now if you don't have a car what do you do if you live in the suburbs can't believe without a car because you actually the grocery store is too far away from your house you would actually die of hunger if you didn't have a car okay um trying to help you to think that way in order to help you understand the problem of the problem of supplementarity and the problem of of craft and so there is a there's a relationship between death and glory those two are very connected because that's what an ornament is that as well right.we ornament something to help you see its glory why would you ornament something usually is because you want people to think it's special right you have a plane chair you have this special chair if you have the chair you used to eat and then you have the chair for the king and the chair for the king has got to be fancier than the chair that you just sit in for dinner right so you ornament the chair of the king in order for you to know that it is special to reveal the glory right to manifest the glory but that the game is still there because you can also fake it right okay all right so hopefully I've got you thinking in the right direction so sadly art is related to the fall it is related to this problem of the world of death and every all human activity in this world of death is a problem but now we come to this moment where God starts to reveal himself to the people in Scripture and we start to see what God does with the fall this is where the good part of the story starts to appear we see how God is constantly changing if we in the fall changed our glory into death God is constantly taking that death and changing it back into glory and this is the story of salvation this is the story of salvation all the way to Christ all the way to the end of the obscure in Revelations and so I told you that in the story of Moses to ascend the mountain and really in the version that st. Gregor Mesa gives you is the is the best version because he really captures this ascetic movement this removing now in order to enter into the presence of God he has to remove all the veils the veils of the heart he talks about we have to remove them even he has to remove his sandals he has to remove all these people and he moves up and up and up into the unity into the one oneness of God and there he has shed all of this exteriority all of the outside and said Gregor of Mesa uses crazy imagery to help you understand what he's referring to he talks about he talks about the the idea of the Egyptian for example the Egyptian as this foreign power which is not connected to the god of Revelation and so the Egyptians who died in the flood are being shed away shedding away this foreign thing and the the foreign thing is also the the shedding of the foreigners also circumcision the shedding of this extra skin right shedding the extra skin shedding the foreigner all of this imagery and then moving up the mountain entering into the divine darkness and it's amazing but then so you think that's it right everything we do is useless and everything we do is pointless all of this human activity it's all pointless it's all nothing it's all and to a certain extent that's true we always have to remember that to a certain extent that's true but then something happens up when Moses reaches up there in the divine darkness something happens which flips it what does God give Moses gives them two things really he gives him the law he also gives him something else what does he give him anybody can guess he gives them the plan for the tabernacle okay and say okay says he gives them the archetype of the tabernacle and he says that the archetype of the tabernacle is Christ himself he gives he gives Moses a vision of Christ in this plan of the tabernacle and in the tabernacle so here's the tent of the tabernacle so in the tabernacle what do we have we have the same structure that I gave you he's giving him a little version of the whole structure that I told you about the tabernacle has different courts in the outer court outside of the tabernacle the foreigners can be there only Israelites are allowed to enter into the the actual inner court of the tabernacle and then and then from that only the priestly Casa is allowed to enter into the into the the holy place there's a veil and a veil and then in the inner inner inner part only one person the high priest is allowed to enter once a year in the very high place in order to come into the presence and the glory of God so tabernacle is a mountain it's a mountain it's the mountain in the sense that there's many on the outside and there's fewer and fewer and fewer and there are these levels these veils and when you go into the Holy of Holies you're going back into the Garden of Eden - there's a reason why there are they're on the outside of the Garden of Eden there's a cherub which protects the garden and why there's a cherub on the veil of the temple because entering into the temple is also entering into the garden and it's also going up the mountain all these things are all the same image okay but what's fascinating is that God is giving Moses this pattern this whole pattern he's telling him this is how you make the Vails this is how you make the courts and even on the outside of the tent there are these animal skins which are dyed red so the garment that the tabernacle has garments of skins understand that the same garments of skin that Adam had when he left the garden so this is the wildest this is the craziest thing Moses spent all this time stripping away all these externals and then when he gets into the presence of God what does God give him he gives them all back to him the whole thing even the garments of skin he gives him back and in st. Gregor Nisa you read you read you can read in st. Gregory Nice's words when he's talking about this almost this scandal like he asked him he has to tell us don't be don't worry when you see the garments of skin in the tabernacle like don't worry about it don't go get freaked out because you think that you wouldn't see that this dead thing in the pattern of the tabernacle but he says don't worry and then he says that it's the sacrifice of Christ we'll get to that a bit later and what's interesting is that God tells Moses that he he tells him who's going to build the tabernacle he names them he gives he gives Moses the name of the people that are going to build the tabernacle and the two names are bezalel and oholiab the name Bezalel means the shadow of God and the name oholiab means father's tent okay you see that those two things are the same they're the same image the shadow the tent the covering and so the names of the people that are building the tabernacle are related to this very pattern they had in their name that and one of them oh holy odd is in says that he's from the tribe of Dan which is if you know what the tribe of Dan is you'll understand how a wild that is because the prophecy about the tribe of Dan when Jacob prophesizes on his sons is he says let Dan be a serpent by the roadside a horned Viper by the path that bites the horses heel so that the rider tumbles backwards so Dan is related to the fall itself he's the serpent he is that which makes you fall oholiab is his descendants is also very strange he is a descendant of calleb callebaut means dog and calleb is ambiguously also a foreigner he seems like he's a kena sight and he takes the margin of the of the country so there's this whole thing going on where God is actually taking the very imagery of the fall itself he's taking the very imagery of these animals on the periphery and he's flipping it he's saying okay I'm gonna use this and I'm actually going to turn it into glory and that's where you see the beginning of the incarnation Allah principle the one which will culminate in Christ we already see it what do we say that Christ did when he descended into Hades when Christ was on the cross we say he trampled death by death that it is his death which trampled death and by doing that Christ's death is his glory thank you when you see Christ on the cross you were seeing the highest thing when you see Christ on the cross you are seeing the most glorious thing that you've ever seen and that is this flip that happens this incarnation 'el principle and it goes on you'll see like it goes on because you know I I really try to show you how the the craft is related also to something that is outside something that you need to add from the outside in order to protect yourself right and so it's that's why it's also related to this idea of something which is foreign like the foreigner is related to craft making can you kind of see how that makes sense which is why a holy act which is why Bezalel is from is from a Kennedy descendants from this kind of foreign group because you have to kind of take that which is from the outside in order to make the wall you know that's always what you're doing when you're when you're protecting yourself from the outside you're gathering something in and you're making a wall out of it in order to protect yourself from the outside you see that the story of humanity is there are so many examples of that where you hire a barbarian tribe to fight off the barbarians the Romans do it all the time you you you you take something from the outside and you turn it against the that's what that's what's medicine is all of that is the same and that's also what ornamentation is if you look at ornaments they are very spiky they're they're made out of foliage they're made out of labyrinths they're made out of all this imagery of knots of all of this is related to this this idea of taking something bringing it together and holding out the outside you know when you know you everybody has this idea we talk about how ornaments used to be protection they use their magical they people would put ornaments on things in order to to protect themselves right you put ornaments on buildings people kind of joke about it you know you put a Greek key on the building to stop the evil spirits from coming in you know you put in you put a labyrinth outside to stop the evil influences from coming in and we think ha ha ha it's all superstitious all silly it's all nonsense but when did you start to understand this this process you can understand that that's what we do all the time right that if you don't like the ritual version of it right if you don't like that then you have to understand that when you make an army or if you hire mercenaries from the outside or if you if you do all this kind of things then you're actually participating in the same pattern even if you're not doing it ritually you know the ancients just did things ritually as well in order to manifest the pattern in in in a very proper way all right so as this story keeps going in Scripture the same pattern just repeats itself over and over and over and over that's what that's what Scripture is like I want to beat you over the head with this pattern so that you can see it because people don't seem to see it so when they now from the tabernacle they build the temple King David gets the plan of the temple but this King David build the temple who builds a temple Solomon but not really Solomon Solomon manages it kind of but he's not the one who actually builds it you know who built it the Phoenicians build it the king of Tyre its foreigners foreigners build the temple okay it's the same story over and over and if you read that text where it talks about Solomon building the temple it's very fascinating because the biblical authors are just so amazing they there's this strange relationship between Solomon building the temple but him also being visited by the Queen of Sheba and so in the same text talks about how Solomon is associating himself with the king of Tyre in order to build the temple but then he's also being visited by this Queen this ultimate foreigner in a way you know the Queen the Ethiopian Queen who comes from the ends of the earth who's coming to now to to to interact with Solomon and so these two things are actually related together and then in the king and the story of Solomon you actually see the downside of that because he goes too far if you go too far and that what you end up happening the end of having foreign gods right if you go too far out and you're not careful of that line then you pick up things from the outside which are not or not don't connect you then you end up having these serving these foreign gods and that will make you fall and you have to think about it think about it already now in terms of our own Christian tradition it's always been this tension as Christianity develops its forms it was taking things from the cultures that it lands in taking things from Roman culture taking things from Greek culture taking things from Ethiopian from Armenian from Georgian from all these cultures its gathering these things in and then it's it's developing its craft its art its beauty its ornaments all based on these foreign things that they're bringing in and there's always this line this tension sometimes maybe they go little bit too far sometimes they you know they so it's like you can see a play that's happening all right now then we come to Christ Christ has everything every strain in the Bible culminates into him every symbolic strain that you find from Genesis it all culminates into Christ and so does this one Christ is called what Hey Crysis Crysis is called the carpenter and it's interesting because in the scripture you actually see in the moment where Christ is being called the carpenter you see this pattern that I'm telling you about because when the Pharisees say that Christ is a carpenter are they doing it to his glory no they're doing it to demean him they're doing it to mock him they're saying isn't he that carpenter right because being a carpenter is a very low thing compared to what Christ is supposed to be you know in the idea that he would be the Messiah who or he would be the chosen one that would be the anointed that he would be the the the prophet that he would be all these high things like oh no he's just a craftsman of course the Pharisees did not understand what Christ was going to do which is that he was going to enter into all the dark places that he was going to go down into death that he was going to fill death with light that he was going to fill death with glory and that is one of the things that Christ is doing by being called a carpenter even if it is in a mocking manner he is filling that aspect of the world with divinity he is his infusing it he's transforming it and the transformation was already happening before we can see it in the in the tabernacle can see it in the temple you can see it in all these moments where God uses these externals all these garments all these additions all these human acts and flips them changes them turns them into glory now the story doesn't stop there right the same thing happens with Christianity the same thing happens with Christianity even more so even more so than what's in the Old Testament did is it is it is it the Jews that developed the arts of the Christian Church no that's not who is it it's the Romans the Romans who developed the Christian arts and and a lot of people they say that to criticize it they say that to mock the Christian tradition as if this was a scandalous moment in our church where all the sudden Christianity took on these Roman forms but no no no this is the story this is the story we have to understand that Christ is one other thing Christ it's not all these doing Christ is doing everything but one of the things Christ is doing is saving cane he's redeeming came he is the first born you ever noticed that in Scripture it's always the second born after cane canes the first born and then everybody else who's important in Scripture is always the second or the last right and then Christ appears and Christ is the firstborn and not only is he the firstborn but he is he is he converts the Romans he converts the ones who killed him he converts the the ones who killed their brother and founded the city so the story of the conversion of Rome is is in one of the most important aspects of understanding what Christianity is what Christ is doing and so what's important when we think of art we have to keep in mind the two images of Christ there are many images of Christ but basically really there's really two images of Christ the two basic images of Christ is Christ in glory and Christ crucified Christ dressed as a Roman Emperor a Roman senator holding a book making a Roman gesture of a dress and Christ on the cross being killed by the Romans those two images solved the problem they solve the problem as you go up into paradise as you move as Moses goes up into the top of the mountain as Christ entered into the Holy of Holies when the veil was ripped while he was on the cross he was entering into the garden right as that happened he was also going down into the bottom of the mountain all the way to the edge of the world all the way to the edge of death he was doing both at the same time while he was being crucified he was spanning the entire cosmos all right that's why when we have Christ with his hands stretched out and we have the Sun and the moon on the side Christ filled the world when he died on the cross was doing both and so when you and so we have now as Christians we have those traditions and they're fine together we have an aesthetic tradition of those who go up the mountain and remove the garments and these monks who live in caves and have nothing and eat almost nothing and pray without ceasing we have that tradition and we have the glory of a church covered in gold mosaic and resplendent filling the world of the world with this light and using ornamentation you know if you look at Hagia Sophia a friend of mine pointed out that all the ornamentation in Hagia Sophia is Persian it's not even Rome it's going further it's taking Persian ornamentation and bringing it into the Roman the Roman Church and manifesting through its ornamentation the radiation the rate the radiance of the kingdom of God and the final image of that the ultimate image of that is in Revelations how does the world end does the world end in a garden the final image is not a garden the final image is a city right New Jerusalem that's the final image the garden is in the middle the Tree of Life in the middle you know the water of life in the middle and around it this glorious city of gold and jewels and that's the ultimate image everything has been filled all of human activity has been sanctified has been glorified has been changed into glory that's the final image so that is the first part of my talk I wanted to give you kind of a story of art help you understand the problem and how Christ and the creep and the Christian Church bring a solution to that problem and so this afternoon I'm then I'm gonna try to talk about how we can do that in terms of artists there are people making things in the world and how to deal with that so this is going to be the end of my first part with what time is it 11:15 and so I have some questions that they would like to ask yesterday we're glad you're here because I always wanted to ask you this question it seems that you're giving them a negative stance to creativity and art it all makes sense sort of scheme are they however it seems to me that part of being in the image and likeness of God is creativity because the greatest artist is God and God obviously he creates and he has no Givens to limit him but we have Givens because were created and therefore we kind of like bump into these Givens that's kind of like the annoyance of an artist like Michelangelo this is a block of marble he says you know I wish I could get rid of this marble and you can see the pure program there it seems to me that that which makes the human made in the Internet and the fact that pain always wants to vomit and sand the Gibbons because this give a seed of this total freedom of God who has no Givens therefore we have this Gibbons and what we do is if you have a dog let's say you bring them in this beautiful Paul after three months look at worst if we put a human being here vacuum on people but his or her personal stamp onto this room with art and so on so but it seems to me that part of being human is his art and yet you seem to be connected with the four now even before the fall because you're not talking about is the scientific way in symbolically human being was told to be creative and transformed the Gibbons in other words the gift that was given he was not told to just sit there inert because that's an atom an animal would do nothing or make it worse but we put our personal stamp onto whatever is given us and you say that's before the fall hmm and it seems to me that's inherent in what it means to be a human being in other words this idea of transforming putting our personal statment making cities is another example of that because it's art and that seems to me if it's connected with being human human connectedness specifically with with the former God now the human being he's supposed to in Genesis transform the garden cultivate it and give it back to God so God and his turn can give it back to us as communities basically that's what we do in our liturgy we don't bring in you know wheat and grapes but we bring in bread and wine animals can't do that and so the human being is not the image in light of God because we're smart because animals are smart too but we are creative there are artists and a God is the great artists that were made in His image so that they could come and connect before let me just say one more thing to make you happy because stone hmm we like to say in what's been Europe you know carpenter Tecton yes he was actually a storm they can have wood Indian next there's no wood you know they're not gonna waste wood so far yes he could have been a stone carver Tecton really means he was an artisan it's like he could have been like an art and applied and applied hey it's a general term to talk about art of it one of the greatest types of Christ in the Old Testament is milk isn't it yeah and he was there know where he was from and he was a form yeah yet he was giving a blessing to Abraham so again it fits in with this beautiful schema I love the way you do this and I think it's a great service there to one of them I thank you for your podcast and your youtubes yeah well I think there are a few things going on here did anybody have everybody hear the question yes most yeah okay I'll let me repeat it so father was mentioning the difficulty that he sees in what I'm saying because he says seems like God creating Adam carrying the human being in the image and likeness of God that creation creating would be part of that and that Adam in the garden was creative in the sense that he tended the garden there are other aspects as well and so he's wondering why is it that I want to relate it to the fall so much rather than related to this idea that in creation itself as God created man then man is also a creator and so I think I think father I agree with you I agree with you I think that you you're kind of you're kind of eating into my second talk you know but the way to the way to understand it but there are some things that you said that I would probably wonder about like that would make me think is that I I'm not sure so for example Adam names the animals and that's a great example of him acting like as a small creator you know and so God creates the animals and then Adam names them and naming something is is part of participating in its existence you know you you give it you point at it then you give it a name and so you actually pull it out of the of the world and in a similar way that God pulls creation out of primordial earth let's say but I think that I think that when for for that to be true it has to be us acting in the image of God which is that the stamp that we put on the world has to be God shaped that it's not so much that we're putting our personal individual stamp and because we faced with so many so many ideas of expressing yourself you know everybody has heard that so many times like that that we have to express ourselves I think that that's I think that we need to express God that's what I think we need to Express I think that we need to be the vehicles to manifest God out in the world and that of course is going to be beauty that of course is going to be certain patterns which are true and and sin so we do participate in God let's say radiating out into the world through our actions but that's when that's when that flip happens that's when we're not that's when we take something which was the V do live in the world of the fall right and so but what ultimately happens I think is that the New Jerusalem is higher than the garden that God that this whole story this big big big story although we don't we can't say that God wanted the fall to happen but we can nonetheless say that what's going to come out of it is going to be higher than what was there before and that the state that we will be in at the end of this big story is going to be higher than the state that Adam was in at the beginning and so this whole process of the fall and this Redemption is also part of making human making into something which is closer to what God wants closer to to revealing God in the world so hopefully that helps a little bit no I don't I don't think that I don't think that that's how the way to see it I do I think that that everything we do is read is is a everything that Christ does is a form of redeeming and so we have to we have to have the fall as part of the story like the fall is part of the story and then there's this this lifting up you know I know it's not that it's not that it's good or bad it's that the the Christianity changes that which was fallen into something even higher than what was before in a pre lepsy pre-fall environment were a man adam has made according the image and the likeness in a state of becoming but that creative ass aspect existed after the fall and that becomes corrupted it's the same thing you mentioned Eve before Chris's film talks about before the fall the relationship Adam Eve is made as an image of God that there an image it's a nice scene in which a tearing image that the remote coping or was persons of the trigger co-equal the third part is Christ that makes them an image of God so that in Eden before the fall that godlike impulse that creative godlike angles existed but then becomes corrupted and that Christ redeems that restores that because for Chrysostom there's the prelapsarian paradigm post webster and on the eschatological which restores would exist in any and you're seeing beautiful even higher though because of Christ but that restores that to its rightful yes and I think I think you're right I mean it's clear in the story in Genesis that that that creation that the man acts as a small creator that is there because that's what naming the animals is and also the the the idea of tending the garden that is for sure there and like you said I think that that's the story the story is that do we have something before it falls but then that fall ends up being the vehicle by which God fills the world and and God fills the world through even even the scandal of the fall the whole idea was to avoid death as much as possible and the whole construction of Egypt was a giant machine to sort of keep yourself alive as much as possible and keep your possession with you as much as possible like the whole month of mummification process I died and I died my cave all my stuff with me you want to put in a nice little jars it's going to be alive with me in my little tomb for all eternity but if I do it outside of Egypt out of this thing I've created I know I'm going to die forever and be dead forever but when your price comes in he doesn't avoid that embraces them and by embracing does he actually nullifies the effect of death that the Egyptians were worried about which had said that which published Egypt also said be artistic tone for the whole world - by doing that as well yeah so I I would agree I think that like I tried to explain I think that the intuition that the Egyptians had was was right on like it was right on intuition because everything we do is to avoid death right I mean everything everything we everything we do all human activity is to avoid death and so I think that that is their intuition was right and it's still most of it is still true today but like you said I think that Christ gives us a new possibility and that the church architecture and the the icon and the tradition that the Christian Church developed is a way to show the alternate possibility which is this filling up of the world with the glory of God and so we'll talk a bit about that later today but that's that's the way that the church is made even the architecture if we do go toward the church to talk about it that is really made to kind of connect things together and to show us how everything fits and everything is directed towards this glory of God which is which is manifesting itself in the altar like yeah yeah I told you it's attention if there's a tension in Scripture and there's a there's a constant tension between this problem you know that if you go too far on the outside you lose yourself right that's just true just go out into the woods go walk you around in the woods you'll lose yourself if you go too far outside of yourself but you also need to take that if you're going to add something to you you can't take it from you that's the whole point of adding something to yourself you have to take it from the outside right your call clothes isn't made from your body this house isn't made from your body all of this was taken from the outside okay and so that's the whole problem of the the supplement problem of the supplement that's the whole issue and so if you look at Scripture you'll see I mean the Israelites didn't come up with cherubs there's cherubs there sphinxes Ani in Egypt if you go to the MFA here you'll see Babylonian cherubs you'll see these types of there's these bull creatures with wings and human heads and or different types of animals with wings I mean this is all something that was there before the Israelites built the tabernacle the idea of a tripartite structure and in a temple is in every single culture in the world so it's so so there's nothing made up in the but then the question is how much like how where's that where's the line and in Scripture there's this play you know between the inside and the outside and it's far more mark in the Old Testament in the New Testament we have this idea of Pentecost we have this idea that the fire the holy spirit can fill up the whole world fill up the entire cosmos and so it changes it doesn't mean that it's it's still there to a certain extent but the the nature of it ends that say the extent of it changes in air with Christ I haven't questioned as much as I'm enjoying the content of what you're saying also thinking about what you're doing and if you have a specific work of execution you mean in terms of Scripture yeah I mean I have a I think everybody should know their by well if you're a Christian you should know your Bible I don't care what denomination you are you should know the Bible if you don't know the Bible you're in your you're in trouble because you know for for centuries I can understand for centuries people could surf on the common culture and and the fact that the experts really knew the Bible and we trusted them and so we kind of we kind of surfed and it was fine they was okay but we're not in that world anymore I mean we are we are living in the world of thorns like we are surrounded by hostility and so we have to know our Bible and and I think that that's my I would say that know your Bible that's my that's my exhortation to the Orthodox in the room and understand the Bible that's my exhortation to the essentials like the church fathers have given us amazing amazing insight into Scripture like I said the best reading of the Old Testament that has ever been done that I know of is st. Gregory of nYSSA's life of Moses there is so much packed into that were reads and Ephraim's hymns of on paradise there's so much in those texts to help you understand the threads in Scripture these that that that Scripture isn't just these isolated bits of stories that don't connect but that there are massive symbolic threads which go all the way through Scripture and connect to Christ and so I think that if we're going to be Christians today we really need that because not we're going to we won't know what to answer to the to the world because the world is bashing at our door with a massive hammer so we have to be able to answer that it also sort of God's call and Adams Lanza kind of like sort of harmony and I see sort of in this pattern like crisis as the second atom using certain special that you said stretches that is partly to like Oliver Asian kind of like going about that garden and bring all things into heartbeat the task that was initially counselor wears out so can maybe this is more like the illogical like what is me so the the idea that Christ was the lamb slain before the foundation of the world comes in tonight so Christ's like deep this stuff before chaotically ever ensued how much would this is kind of just like a mental constructs I so if if crisis Arnie why don't we write well because we're free that's one part the way that I the way that I kind of understand it is is you can see it at these as these loops these loops that are getting bigger something like that where Christ plants the seed and in crisis like the seed for the kingdom of God and the kingdom of God is gathering all of us also into that kingdom so it has to have a cosmic there has to be a cosmic version of what Christ did and we're playing that out right we have to participate in that in our own in our freedom and so some people totally experience that completely absolutely we call them Saints they they completely enter our deified enter into the life of God become one with God you know our become pure glory we read the stories of people not that long ago who seemed to have gone gone through that and so we can but but we have to it has to be real like we actually have to participate we have to participate in this process for it to happen Farage was about which is participate we have a choice to participate in the continual yeah yeah we need to you have to understand that's one of the things that one of the one of the diseases of the modern age and and modern biblical understanding is that we've made put the Bible out there and now we are here and we are interpreting this thing that's out there and and it's something that's outside of us and so it's like a scientific and it's like a phenomena that we have to analyze but that's not right that's not Christianity we are in the same story that Bible at the end of that Bible that story keeps going we're part of the same story that's there that's our story we're in that story it's not something outside of us it's far it was developed to dwell in the Shekinah the presence of God that idea of communion with God and the Christian liturgical space that same that same idea of Kino neo Communion when we looked when to speak to the 24th I mean even in the West the Mystics the early Christmas Catholic you know Western mystics experienced that kind of ecstatic experience right after communion so how does that the liturgical space as as heaven on earth that type of idea that idea of coming into the presence of God now for for the Israelites it was in hamako it was one place they had to be on the Temple Mount in that specific place where in the Holy of Holies is where Abraham went to sacrifice Isaac Isaac how does that relate into the Christian the church but in the hole or just probably stuffing that part no no yeah yeah but it's okay no we searched the church structure is based on the old test but it's not completely there's a there's some flips in there that are interesting and so one of the things that like father was saying the Old Testament there was the temple and then if you wanted to experience the presence of God you had to actually go into the temple but you never really could experience the presence of God because only only the Holy only the priests only the high priest could actually enter into the the Holy of Holies and so in the Christian tradition what we've done is without confusion because this is one of the problems that we actually see in the modern world today is that without confusion without without annulling the distinction between us and God without annulling the distinction between that which is profane that which is holy we've created a way to participate all of us in that process and so it's not that we destroy hierarchy which is something that certainly modern Christians think is the result of Christ not that we destroy hierarchy is that the hierarchy is this per Mia's thing of love coming from above and of us participating from below all of this is this is there's this organic relationship happening and one of the things that Christ does is he joins opposites together like I hope that you've seen it just in this image that's what Christ does one of the crazy things about the Christian churches would people I don't know why people don't talk about this the Old Testament in the Old Testament the temple and the tabernacle was flipped from us it was it was the other way around which is that the Holy of Holies was in the West and the entrance of the tabernacle was in the east so you can understand it as the presence of God rising up in the east and landing onto the onto the altar hello unto the yes the Holy of Holies the the the the Ark of the Covenant that's what I was looking for sorry so rising oven eats and landing onto the Ark of the Covenant and the altar was on the out was in the outer Court so there was this there was this flip between the Ark which was inside the Holy of Holies and the altar which was on the outside where the sacrifice occurred okay so there's relationship to the outside and the inside the sacrifice the glory from east to west now in the Christian tradition the very first churches that we have are actually in that direction the first church is in Rome all have the holy place in the West but soon very soon it it flipped where the holy place got put in the East but what's in our holy place we have an altar and the Holy of Holies that wasn't the tabernacle the tabernacle the altar was outside and the Ark of the Covenant was inside and we have actually joined the inside and the outside together we've taken the altar we've brought it into the Holy of Holies but it's still the Ark of the Covenant as well so on the altar you find the menorah you know you often you'll have a menorah on the altar you'll have certain tropes that are there to refer you to remember that this is also the Ark of the Covenant and that if you understand what Christ does that's what Christ does all the time he joins the opposites together into one and so what we've done is we still have a hierarchy but we so we still have a veil we still have a separation between the Holy of Holies and the knave but that veil will open and the holy thing will come out into the world and we will participate completely in that holy thing right that none of that was in the old tech none of that was in the temple there was none of that we are actually participating in the holiest thing when we engage in the Liturgy is that does that make sense there's a lot of stuff we could talk about there's so much to talk about in terms of the difference and the relationship between the Christian temple and the Jewish temple it's other Christ to nature's the divine join indivisibly and confused exactly and that's the the key to Christianity is to understand unity without confusion that's that's if you want to understand everything about Christianity it's unity without confusion if you want to understand what love is love is unity without confusion that's what love is because when you when you love someone you are completely united with them but you don't fuse into them right you don't you don't swallow someone you know you don't drink you don't completely annul their individuality when you love them know you respect their separateness from you but you are in complete communion and that's that the image of the Trinity is exactly that three distinct completely absolutely distinct persons without confusion but completely one without division it seems like an aporia but it's the key to understanding how reality works actually it's the key to understanding how everything exists and so yeah that in Christianity that's what that's that's what it does and as we watch Christianity break apart we see the confusion set in then we see elements of Christianity which are then taken on their own you know the word heresy that the word heresy means that like a choice means to choose something that seems to me but most heresies are which is that you take one aspect and then you just take that one aspect and you don't you don't keep it so it's true but it's not true alone it's true when it's related to everything else and so there is an aspect for example that that we participate in the glory of God and that we have access to the glory of God and that the glory of God comes down to us but in the Christian tradition there's never been this idea that there's no hierarchy at all just not there it's a modern idea that there's absolutely no hierarchy that we're all the same that's not true and yeah and and so it's the same with there's there's so many things like that where we've taken one aspect out of out of Christianity want to make it only about that want to make Christ just the really nice guy who helps and loves people and takes care of the widow and the orphan and he does that he definitely does that right but he's also the one with the whip who goes in and you know and whips the moneychangers and he's also the one who was constantly rebuking his disciples and telling them that they don't understand anything so it's Christ is everything you're boiled into one all right I think I think I think we've got

Channel: Jonathan Pageau

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Id: IlYY1JQXF6I

Length: 87min 49sec (5269 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 18 2020