The Phenomenology of the Icon

Abstract

Is it possible for a finite thing to mediate an infinite God? Would it not be as futile as a hand trying to grasp the entire earth, or a seashell to contain the ocean? A finite thing is by definition limited, and thus its attempt to reveal an infinite God seems to lead immediately to two possible outcomes: (a) idolatry, where the finite fails to adequately capture God, where mediator becomes imposter, and (b) iconoclasm, which recognizes the inevitable failure of mediation and seeks to avoid or destroy any further attempts to carry it out. While taking different courses of action, their opposition reveals a deeper unity: both posit an implicit competition between the infinite God and finite reality. And yet most religions still claim mediation of God is possible. How do they avoid this impasse? To explore this possibility of mediation, I turn to the things themselves, focusing on the particular case of the icon. As something to be looked at, touched, or kissed, the icon reminds us how deeply rooted we are in the senses we prefer to take for granted, and cuts short any attempts to “spirit away” the finite limitations of human existence. The Introduction contextualizes this first problem, but upon turning to the icon in Chapter 1 a second problem immediately arises. What is an icon, and how do we approach it? Aesthetics, history, patristics, and contemporary theology have a legitimate claim on its identity, but also suffer from significant blind spots. By untangling the lines of these debates, I show that two questions critical to my inquiry remain without a satisfactory answer: 1) What is an image, and how does it mediate the truth in what it shows? 2) What would it mean for God to “show” himself? I argue that phenomenology will serve as a productive way forward on both these fronts. Chapter 2 uses the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer to address the first of these questions with a hermeneutic phenomenology of the image. Chapter 3 addresses the second in dialogue with Jean-Luc Marion. Although Marion does engage with the question of the painted icon in several places, the “icon” for Marion is not primarily a question of images, but of the unique way that God shows himself. When combined with Gadamer’s aesthetics this will offer the launching point for my phenomenological analysis of the icon in Chapters 4 and 5. The icon is something to be seen, but also something to be touched and kissed. It is a kind of representational art, with a unique style and clearly defined content, but also embedded in a practice of substitutional prayer and shared with a liturgical community. I show how each of these dimensions of meaningful mediation arises within ordinary human experience and how its structure changes as it is extended in prayer. Chapter 6 closes the inquiry by drawing these particular results into a final and general model of “iconic mediation.” This begins to explain how a finite thing in its limitations and particularities can mediate an infinite God, but only once we have exposed and subverted the layers of iconoclasm implicit in the original question.