The Holy Bible is the Normative Icon of Christ
The way many people read the Holy Bible is through the erroneous assumption that what is recorded within it, as it is understood in its simplest, most literal fashion, is how God intended the Holy Bible to be read. While it is easy to see the kinds of questions one can bring to this view, (what books are meant to be in the Holy Bible? do these books suggest this kind of interpretation? do we acknowledge this only for the originals, or does the rule also work when the Holy Bible is translated? et. al.), the Catholic understanding has always been more complex: the Bible, as a whole, is indeed the inspired Word of God, but this is because it is seen as the primary icon of Christ. It is to be read, therefore, in the way one reads an icon; and its status as word of God is because it is an iconographic derivation based upon the revelation of God’s truth through Christ.
An icon is symbolic, and it tells a story in symbolic form. What you see in its depiction does not resemble realistic art; it is, rather, written under its own symbolic rules. If you don’t understand them, you will not understand the icon. Its symbolic form leads it to appear unrealistic. To look at it as one would look at a realistic piece of art, looking for it to follow the dictates of such realism, will lead one to conclude that the icon is a poor piece of art. But the problem is that the demand upon the icon is what is truly unrealistic, for it expects art to imitate reality instead of depict it. In a similar way, we must understand that the Holy Bible, as an icon of Christ, is to be understood, not under the rules of positivistic science and its ideas of history, but under the aesthetic context which led it to be put together.
But as the Holy Bible is the central icon of Christ, we must not understand it as the only means we get to him. As the Word of God is the logos of all logoi, everything, in their own logos, reflects the Logos. In this way, everything, as being a logos of the Logos, can be seen as a book of God. This, for example, is how St Anthony the Great came to possess a great understanding about God. He did not own a Holy Bible, but he was able to get to know God, the author of nature, through nature:
A certain member of what was then considered the circle of the wise once approached the just Anthony and asked him: “How do you ever manage to carry on, Father, deprived as you are of the consolation of books?” His reply: “My book, sir philosopher, is the nature of created things, and it is always at hand when I wish to read the words of God.”[1]
While nature, if properly understood, can reveal something about God to us, we must also acknowledge that it requires much hermeneutic work from us to achieve such an end. There is much in nature, if improperly understood, that could lead us astray. What are we to make of the sheer brutality by which many animals survive? Is this what nature is about, the way God wants things to be? Are we really to fight one another to survive? If we do not think so when we encounter it in nature, why do we then believe it is the case when we open up the Holy Bible?
The key to reading nature is the same key to the reading the text of the Holy Bible: it is Jesus Christ. He is the final and only complete revelation of God the Father. All truths derive from him. The brutality of the world finds its place in him because he took it upon himself in his passion. But just as the passion ended, so must the brutality come to an end. The resurrected Christ brings to us the restoration of all things in him. He is the eschaton who has become immanent. In him, brutality is overwhelmed. It is under the mantle of the resurrection that the aesthetic icon of Christ, the Holy Bible, makes sense. Outside of the resurrection, outside of the immanent eschaton, the world and the Bible make no sense. Outside of the resurrection there is sheer brutality. To read the world in such brutality alone is the ultimate denial of Christ.
[1] Evagrius Ponticus, “The Praktikos” in The Praktikos & Chapters on Prayer. trans. John Eudes Bamberger, OCSO (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 1981), 39.
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It would seem that any reading that does not understand the text objectively (or “literally”), is necessarily a subjective reading of that text. Therefore, what it means to me is not necessarily what it means to you. Each of us, in discussing any given text, will be need to stay within the limits of the possible meanings of the words of the text, both as individual units of speech and as compounds of such units, in order not to speak nonsense about it, but that still leaves quite a lot of latitude for differing “takes” on the text. That’s fine, until such time as you tell me that your take is right, and my take is wrong. It seems that you can make this claim only if you are claiming total objectivity, on the one hand, or I am speaking total gibberish, on the other.
Rodak,
Objectively is not the same as literal, but more importantly, your claim would still be true if everything was merely “literal.” Different people will get a different literal reading from each other. The Bible is the icon of Christ. It has proper symbols which one must know how to understand in order to interpret it, like all symbolic writing. To say it is symbolic and not literal does not mean, then, anything goes; in fact, it points to the opposite. And where are the tradition in which these symbols are remembered? In the Church.
I don’t find this helpful. You can’t look at an icon a little bit of the time and comprehend it. Now, I know the Catholic viewpoint is that the Bible is to be taken as a whole, but nevertheless, exegetes (by which I mean anyone who reads and interprets the Bible) take it piece by piece. The literature on anyone verse from the Gospels is probably too extensive for even the most dedicated scholar to read. The only way to take the Bible as a whole is to have somebody sum it up and tell you what it means as a whole, and of course the Church would like to take on that role. But if you let the Church take on that role, there would be no need to read the Bible. In fact, one who reads only the Gospels or even the New Testament could be accused of deliberately getting a distorted picture of the Bible. If it is an icon, you have to take it all in, and all at once.
Also, this isn’t really in accord with what I have been looking at lately. For example, in The One Who Is to Come, as I understand Joseph Fitzmyer, he is saying that the Jews did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah because the Jewish idea of the Messiah was quite drastically different from Jesus, and Jesus is the Christian Messiah, not the Jewish Messiah. “The one who is to come” in Judaism didn’t come. The Old Testament is not filled with “hidden” references to Jesus. Contemporary Jews and Christians should be able to agree on the literal meaning of passages from Hebrew Scripture, although the meanings are “closed” for Jews and “open” (to elaboration, I presume) to Christians. (I am sure I am not doing justice to the book, by the way.) Now, of course some people consider Fitzmyer (and Raymond Brown, and other extremely well regarded Catholic Biblical scholars) to be heretical, but nevertheless they are the giants of contemporary Catholic Biblical scholarship.
David
There are many forms of exegetics; looking at the pieces is indeed interesting and done, not just by Biblical scholars, but by the vivisectionist as well. That people can do that and learn something is one thing; whether one understands the intent of the Church in how it put together the Bible is another. There are forms of criticism, such as canonical criticism, which go on with this; indeed, I think Tolkien’s work on Beowulf is important for us in our understanding of the Bible, and such scholars who follow Canonical Criticism do not neglect the studies and observations of those who take the Bible apart, but they also understand that is not the whole of the story.
Can you explain the distinction between “literal” and “objective,” please?
One can be objective without literalism. For example, I don’t think one would take Bunyan literally with his symbols in The Pilgrim’s Progress, but there is an objective point he is making. Without resorting to literalism of symbols, Scripture has an objective point: Christ.
Bunyan wrote Pilgrim’s Progress in one single genre – religious allegory. A proper understanding of the literal sense of any passage in either Bunyan or the Bible takes genre into account. The Bible is not a through-and-through allegory, and the difficult passages that have been under discussion in another thread of this blog with reference to alleged perversity in the Bible and the question of inerrancy do not admit of a purely allegorical interpretation that would effectively remove the apparent difficulty of the literal sense of that passage unless the passage in question was written in the genre of allegory.
Kevin,
Scripture speaks of Christ, Scripture is all talking about Christ — that is the point of Scripture. To understand the texts of Scripture is to understand how they talk of Christ. You will note, for example, many Church Fathers WILL say such passages are not to be interpreted as positivistic history; the problem you have is that you read Scripture in the lens of modern theories of history. And, as I keep pointing out, the prophets could have understood their texts to mean one thing, while God uses them for another — we are not limited to their understanding, because we have Christ — the revelation of the Father, who they did not know as we know.
I’m not sure I’d call Scripture an “icon” of Christ, much less the normative one. An icon, it seems to me, is a representation that tends to simplify what it represents in order to render it more comprehensible.
Scripture and Christ seem rather to be two aspects of the same mystical reality, namely, the unutterable Word of God.
For what it’s worth, I would call the crucifix “the normative icon of Christ.”
Carl — As St John of the Cross, and many others point out, the prophets who wrote down prophecies can be in error in what they think the prophecies mean — this goes to the heart of the issue.
Second, an icon brings the presence of Christ to us, and the image of Christ is one with that same mystical reality.
Henry – I don’t think “literal exegesis” and “literalist exegesis” are the same thing. The literalist substitutes the meaning which seems to him most obvious (frequently reflecting modern materialism) for the meaning that was intended by the original writer. In other words, the literalist would tend to understand the assertion “my husband is a rock” to mean that the speaker married a large mass of physical stone, whereas the authentic literal meaning would, depending on context, perhaps be that the husband is her foundation or perhaps that he was thickheaded. Literalists fail to grasp the understand the idiomatic essence of human language.
Kevin’s 8:25 p.m. comments on Bunyan are helpful. It is obviously understood when reading fiction that nothing can be taken literally. But the Gospels are not fiction, and we are discussing (in a larger context), the Gospels.
My point was not that the Gospels must be taken literally in their entirety. My point was, that whether you call the Gospels an “icon” or whether you call them an eye-witness account of historical events, or whether you call them poetry–perhaps one passage one of these, and one passage another–one must, inevitably, come to a subjective understanding of the message of any passages demanding interpretation in order to express meaning. My point was that you can’t say that a particular phrase, which is constructed so as to admit of other interpretations, means “this” and “only this” and that you are right and I am wrong about its meaning.
That said, in some instances, the words taken literally do express an objective truth: “on the third day He arose again from the dead” would be an example of that.
Rodak
Once again, the problem is reading the content in the eyes of modern historical understanding. Beyond that, the symbols are preserved and understood by the Church. We, 2000 years later, have more need of the Church because our cultural context is that much further removed. Everyone when they read a text, in any text, will always come to it with their subjective understanding. Saying “just the literal understanding” doesn’t preclude the subjective interpretation of what that literalism is about, too. But to understand it is not just a text for myself, but for the community of the Church, with its tradition and not scripture alone, is the way where the subjective is to be transcended. Beyond that, the point of Bunyan is to show how we can understand symbols without being literal, while not denying there is an objective value with the symbols. Once we understand that symbolism doesn’t mean “purely subjective” the better we will get. And as I have also explained, there is indeed this foundation for the scripture: Christ himself. He is the revelation.
…an icon brings the presence of Christ to us, and the image of Christ is one with that same mystical reality.
What is the difference between that statement and the manner in which Muslims make an idol of the Koran?
Rodak — Koran, while it does contain some good material, is not the Word of God.
This whole line of reasoning would suggest that those people of the first century who actually heard Jesus Christ preach, in real time, couldn’t possibly have understood what He was talking about because they didn’t have the benefit of 2000 years of Church tradition to instruct them. This would mean that Jesus was basically just using those crowds of people as prop to contribute to your edification, far in the future.
http://www.orthodoxresearchinstitute.org/articles/liturgics/scouteris_icons.htm
Has some good material on icons, and Scripture as icon. To quote:
rom this perspective icons and Scripture are linked through an inner relationship; both coexist in the Church and proclaim the same truths. There is a mutual supplementation and agreement between words and visual images. Scripture, says St John of Damascus, is a kind of icon. And the icon, from another point of view, is Holy Scripture.
[...]
The iconic dimension of Scripture and the scriptural dimension of icons correspond absolutely to the theology of the Eastern Church, and especially to its teaching concerning revelation and the knowledge of God. It is well known that from an Orthodox viewpoint the words of the Bible are not revelation in themselves, but rather words concerning revelation.26 In the same way an icon is not itself an independent, but rather guides us to that which is. From this perspective both Scripture and icons have an introductory and a pedagogic function. Both mediate historical events or historical persons. In both is salvation confessed; in the first through words, in the second through depiction. Both indicate the revelation, although revelation itself transcends words and images alike.27 It is remarkable that Nicephorus, Patriarch of Constantinople (806-15), considered that icons, although a more “earthly scripture”, have a powerful influence, especially on those who do not understand Scripture. Indeed, very often what escapes us when hearing words does not escape us when viewing icons.28 For their part the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council speak about the “scriptural vision” and the “pictorial formation” as the two symbolic ways through which we reach the supra-sensible realities.29
[...]
Nevertheless, the introductory and instructive character of both Holy Scripture and icons needs further clarification. Speaking of Scripture and icons as symbolic ways (symbolic in the primitive meaning of this Greek word) we simply mean that both have a limited function, since the mystery of God itself and the experience, the glory of the transfigured Christ and the unspeakable words heard by St Paul are revealed realities, which cannot be expressed and transmitted in created words, concepts or images. St Symeon the New Theologian refers to 2 Corinthians 34 (“And I knew such a man, [whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth]; how that he was caught up into paradise, and heard un- speakable words, which it is not lawful for man to utter”, and comments:
The “unspeakable words” are the mystical and truly inexpressible visions and supra-exalted unknown knowledge of the glory and deity of the Son and Word of God which is beyond light and which transcends knowledge. This revelation of the glory of God (called by Symeon the apprehension, in incomprehensibility, of things that cannot be grasped] is given to the saints by illumination of the Holy Spirit.30
Thus the saints, through divine illumination, come to hear the unspeakable words, which are above any hearing; they have a vision of what is above every vision. According to St Symeon, the man who has achieved illumination and has come to the vision of God has a new sense which is the unification of all the five senses and at the same time is above every sense.31 With this in mind it is possible to understand that scriptural, as well as pictorial knowledge concerning God leads to a supra-intellectual and supra-sensible know- ledge of God. Such knowledge is contained in the Bible and expressed on the icons (since every icon manifests the hidden)32; and yet it is above any description of, or any expression concerning God, either in the Holy Scripture or the icons.
Once we understand that symbolism doesn’t mean “purely subjective” the better we will get.
It is always possible, in fact probably inevitable, that we read the words (or view the icon) first at the literal level. If we read a parable about workers in a vineyard, we read first about workers in a vineyard. And then we interpret: why is Jesus telling me about workers in a vineyard? In what way am I like those workers? Etc. My point is that MY way of being like those workers, will necessarily differ from YOUR way of being like those workers. I may be among the late-comers. You may be among those who signed on in the morning. Etc. There is a literal level, which is pretty much the same for all readers. There is an objective truth beneath the literal level which is unchanging. But each reader can take from that objective level only as much as his experience, and in the case of scripture, his spiritual development, will allow him to receive. That said, assuming he is reading with a sincere desire to receive a spiritual message, and not with some ulterior motive, that which he receives will be every bit a true–although tailored to his specific needs at that time–as what the next man receives. This is the case, although what is received may differ considerably from one individual to the next.
There is a literal level, which is pretty much the same for all readers.
Hermeneutics shows this is not the case. Indeed, even the literal level ends up being quite different for different people, in different times and different places.
This whole line of reasoning would suggest that those people of the first century who actually heard Jesus Christ preach, in real time, couldn’t possibly have understood what He was talking about because they didn’t have the benefit of 2000 years of Church tradition to instruct them.
Are Catholics of today better off than the original followers of Jesus? There is so much they didn’t have — no marriage by priests, no ability for regular confession (reconciliation), no understanding of the Trinity, no recognized canon of Christian scripture, no encyclicals, no Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, no understanding of transubstantiation, and on, and on.
Henry,
I think you are referring to Chapter 19 of Book Two in the Ascent of Mount Carmel, although you really ought to provide a reference.
In this text, John of the Cross has a more general meaning of the term “literal” than we find in the magisterial documentary tradition of Providentissimus Deus. Whereas John of the Cross usually means that sense which is closest to the senses (i.e. most material) and sometimes means “literal” in the sense of what was intended by the sacred writer in writing the passage, the magisterial tradition of P.D. always refers to this latter meaning, which is why you never see a “literal” used in a pejorative way in this tradition.
Here’s a text from John of the Cross that illustates this: “Anyone bound to the letter, locution, form or figure apprehensible in the vision cannot avoid serious error and will later become confused for HAVING BEEN LEAD ACCORDING TO THE SENSES…” (AMC II, 19, 5).
And once again we see the concept of those who are enslaved (“bound”) by the letter rather than using the letter as the basis and the launching point for spiritual contemplation.
St. John also does not say that the prophets may be in error but that they may fail to understand the words which God inspires them to speak, because in such cases, the prophets were not authors but only recipients of the divine word. St. John gives us the examples of Jer 4:10 and Jn 11:50, where Jeremiah and Caiaphas respectively misunderstand the words given to them. The words themselves are not perverse or in any sense erroneous. This is very different from what Kyle accuses against passages wherein God issues the charam (i.e. ban, curse of destruction, genocidal slaughter of the seven pagan tribes of Canaan). He is accusing the words themselves (e.g. 1 Sm 15:3) of being intrinsically perverse.
This is unacceptable.
Henry -
I certainly agree that Scripture has an “iconic dimension” inasmuch as it uses diverse symbols to communicate divine meaning. I think a comparison to the sacraments communicates this more effectively than a comparison to iconic. In any case, I can’t think of a text that communicates this more effectively than Divine Names written by the Artist-Formerly-Known-As-Dionysius the-Areopagite.
My contention, however, is not that a comparison of the Scriptures – which are so manifold and often dark in their expressions, images and symbols – to an icon (which is simple) is “doctrinally erroneous” but that it misses the mark. Secondly, to call it “the normative icon” of Christ doesn’t do justice to the image of the Crucifix.
It is two very different things to say that “Scripture has an iconic dimension” and “Scripture is the normative icon of Christ.”
Carl
Read a bit carefully from the passage, where it discusses what St John of Damascus says. You do realize it is because of the written image (Scripture) he was able to make a case in defense of pictorial images? It’s not “missing the mark” because it is a part of how Scripture has been traditionally understood, though not necessarily in modern, positivistic times.
As a quick example St John of Damascus, in his defense of icons, says: If, therefore, Holy Scripture, providing for our need, ever putting before us what is intangible, clothes it in flesh, does it not make an image of what is thus invested with our nature, and brought to the level of our desires, yet invisible? (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/johndam-icons.html ) Here we see very clearly Scripture is seen as an image, an icon. Now if we combine this with DV, where we see the revelation is Christ himself, while scripture and tradition attest to that revelation, it is easy to see how scripture is an icon and the icon of Christ (which Jesus himself points to when he says scripture speaks of him).
they may fail to understand the words which God inspires them to speak means their understanding is wrong, and therefore, the meaning they intend with the words will be different from the meaning God has for them. I think a good example of this is the psalms. And the point that “the examples St John gives” are not “perverse” gives strength to the point that if in minor things this is possible, in other instances it is also possible. That is what you neglect. And there is more than St John of the Cross on this matter — but he has pointed out, the prophet doesn’t understand the words; that means, writing down, they have a different intent and meaning than God does. Simple, and to the point.
Beyond that, you are misunderstanding Kyle projecting your own hermeneutic into him. He does not say the worse themselves are intrinsically evil. He says the interpretation you give to them leads to God promoting an intrinsic evil, thus, in the end, one must point out that such an interpretation is invalid. This is how St Augustine would also show that elements of Scripture are not to be understood via the methodology you are engaging — no one did so until modern times.
The Church’s traditional method of looking at the senses of the scripture readings (the literal sense as well as the spiritual senses – allegorical, moral, and anagogical) seems very wise. The concordance of these four senses guarantees richness to the living reading of sacred scripture.
Literal sense – the meaning intended by the inspired author, conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation. All other senses of Sacred Scripture are based on the literal.
Allegorical sense – their significance in Jesus Christ. Thus the Israelites’ crossing of the Red Sea is a sign (or type) of Christ’s victory and also of Christian Baptism.
Moral sense – how it leads us to act justly. As St. Paul says, the events were written “for our instruction.”
Anagogical sense (Greek: anagoge, “leading”) – what it means in terms of its eternal significance, leading us toward our true homeland: thus the Church on earth is a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem.
This is the ancient way of reading the scriptures, but still seems very sound today.
Bruce
The Fathers were not all into the literal level, and could be, and were critical of it. This is because they understood that the truth of God transcended human reason, and the human writers, limited as they were, could only understand so much at a given time, and often that meant their intended meaning is different from God’s intention for the text. The Psalms are a prime example of this, but not the only one.
The Psalms are a prime example of this, but not the only one.
Henry,
Could you give an example from the Psalms? I understand the dual meaning of the “prophecy” of Caiaphas, but he meant what he said literally, and we understand it literally, but in a different way.
David
The psalms traditionally have been understood as containing prophecies of Christ, even if they were written as complaints by David about his own circumstances. David didn’t have any messianic concept, but even before Christ, they were seen as messianic.
Henry:
On what basis do you claim that David didn’t have any messianic concept? Was it not precisely David’s messianic concept (e.g. 1 Sm 24:6) that stayed his hand from slaying Saul. There is no doubt that David sensed something mysterious in the events of his life, his many troubles and God’s providence. I’m not saying that he clearly foresaw the image of the Incarnate Child of Bethlehem to whom the Magi would bow, but I don’t think its fair to reduce the psalms to “complaints by David about his own circumstances” or claim that he “didn’t have any messianic concept.”
As for the iconic dimension of Scripture, if you think it is a wonderful and inspiring way to describe the relationship between Christ and Scripture, by all means go ahead. Our disagreement is not over a matter of doctrinal but over efficacy of expression, which means we are probably not likely to change one another’s minds.
Carl,
Take the sentence in context. I was pointing out David didn’t have a messianic concept — this was in relation to his writing of the Psalms.
Henry,
In relation to his writing of the Psalms, I believe David sensed something mysterious in the events of his life, that as “the anointed one of Israel” he was the forerunner of someone greater than himself.
I therefore disagre with the assertion that David didn’t have a messianic concept. His “messianic concept” might be only a “blastocyst” compared to the full grown Christology of the Third Constantinopolitan Council (680-681), but his messianic concept was the seed of everything that followed.
If David was “just complaining,” why would he conclude Psalm 22 by saying, “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord…Posterity shall…proclaim his deliverence to a people yet unborn” (vs. 27, 30-31)?
David saw the deliverance from his sufferings in the context of the history and tradition of Israel, typifying God’s merciful love toward his people and undoubtedly foreshadowing things-to-come. Certainly David could not have anticipated the exact manner in which his prophecies would be fulfilled, but how can anyone doubt that he intended his psalms to convey a prophetic element?
It’s just belongs to the genius of the ancient Jewish mentality to reflect on the events of one’s life with one eye to the past and the other eye to the future. The psalms embody this more than most writings of the Old Testament.