Christ, the God-Man, Illuminates The Abyss

So that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

A month or so ago, I posted on Twitter this Icon of Christ risen. For me, it generates awe, humility, and respect. Its symbolism can be read. Christ has risen from the dead, from the coffin, having discarded the funeral wraps; he carries a symbol of the cross to show he was crucified, but it is also a standard. He demonstrates the spear wound in his rib cage, and we see the nail holes on his hands and feet. The coffin sits within a fissure in the rocks, and beneath him, we see the darkness leading down to hell. 

Behind our Lord, we see a shape that contains a universe of stars and rays of illuminated light representing his divine glory. He is both God and man; the halo contains the Greek letters Ὁ ὬΝ which can be translated as - "He who is". When Moses climbed Mount Sinai and asked for the name of the God to whom he spoke, the answer, translated from Hebrew, was Yahweh - “I am who I am” – translate that into Greek, and you get Ὁ ὬΝ. All this is verifiable by study and captured in one Icon. 

So bridging the heavens and the rocky earth, the God-Man Christ has conquered death, and so can we - in Christ. Christ's resurrection is a triumph over Satan, who deceived Eve - and as a consequence of her rebellion and Adam's complicity - released death into the world and the universe.

For eastern Orthodox Christians, icons are not representational art. Rather they contain profound theological, parabolic, spiritual and Christological truths. As the thing symbolized and the symbol itself is unified. The icons may look like wood and pigment, gold leaf or modest reproduction, but in truth, they are spiritual mirrors of the infinite. Iconography has critical rules and symbolism carefully guarded and transmitted to new generations of icon writers; so we can be taught how to read accurately what is depicted. 

Christology – literally who Christ is - the incarnation in human flesh - without change - both man and God, in a hypostatic union - is impossible to underestimate: get the nature of Christ wrong, and the whole Christian project begins to collapse. If he is merely a man, a rabbi or a stoic philosopher, then we are soon away with the theists and, in time, become philosopher atheists; he can no longer restore our humanity to its intended state. He is just an exceptional one of us.

But if we underestimate Christ's humanity, we unwittingly negate the whole human drama; we end up misunderstanding what happened in Eden. Without the fall of man, there would be no death; there would be no need for the harrowing of hell. Without the death and resurrection of Christ, there would be no freeing of Adam and Eve and no restoration of life. It all becomes all rather unnecessary and pointless. Once, most Christian authorities knew this.

That Christianity is supernatural is obvious; take away the miracles and virgin birth, Satan and his demons and God's judgement and love; take away Christ's temptation in the desert, or Pentecostal tongues of fire, and the pages of the bible become brittle and crumble to dust. But today, we are surrounded by generations of nominal Christian leaders, anti-Christs, who lead us away from the true Christ and have allowed critical elements of the original teaching to be discarded or refuted and turn on those that point this out.

Let's return to the Icon above: that shape behind Christ is a Mandorla; it appears in many of the icons behind Christ and occasionally the Virgin Mary, the Holy Theotokos (God-bearer). It symbolizes the heavens, divine glory and light. Mandorla is Italian for almond which reflects its usual shape. The image is not accidental and has been faithfully passed down to us throughout history. It often captures the moment Christ revealed his identity to some of his disciples during the Transfiguration or after his resurrection, first to Mary Magdalene and then gradually to the remainder of his followers, culminating in Thomas. 

The Mandorla appears in icons depicting Pascha (the passion and resurrection), the Harrowing of Hell, the Ascension, All Saints, Christ's Transfiguration, and the Dormition of the Theotokos. Christ is inside and outside space and time. Those that painted it knew the symbols they were engaging with and the purpose of the image. 

Mystery, majesty, purity, light, the symbol is there for a purpose. It is educative and can be expounded by those knowledgeable in symbolic theology. And when Thomas inspected the wounds on Christ's side and hands, it was to confirm the reality of the literal triumph over death. It happened, and the scars existed. There must be an Edenic fall and a resurrection; otherwise, the bible is only parables and myths whenever it speaks decisively of the God-Man.

Whilst the eastern orthodox never portray God the father, they frequently portray the Logos, Christ, because he was incarnate in human form, born of the holy spirit and the Virgin. It happened: Christ walked amongst us; he was material, physical. Not portraying this event would negate it, and the iconoclastic battles in the church established this vital truth. 

For those who do not know, the model for human faithfulness is the Virgin Mary, who negates Eve (who unleashed death and fratricide), by her selfless obedience and giving birth to the one that triumphs over death and heals all humanity. These are rich truths and alignments, symbolic and material, in time and transcending it, the past and the present and the future remembered and experienced in community and present reality in each Sunday's Divine liturgy. 

Icons represent the incarnated state of the world and, therefore, its actual state; in their veneration, they redirect us to worship the Lord and revere and respect the holy Theotokos and the saints that have gone before. For the orthodox, or at least for me, time is flowing backwards; there is nothing ahead of us outside of Christ and his second coming, which will heal what was shattered in the beginning.

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And so, to today. The assault on Christ has a new front. It proposes to look at icons and the more unreliable heterodox western portrayals of Christ and ignore context, the testimonies of those that generated the images, the genre in which they were established or the descriptive language associated with them. Revising history requires a disqualification of Christ, for all history flows from him. So, blasphemies are voiced without challenge, primarily because they are embraced within the dying parts of the Church of England and Academia. 

"The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye is evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. Therefore, if the light in thee is darkness, how great is that darkness!" Matthew 6: 22-23

Once, the feminists sought to transform God into a woman, continuing Eve's rebellion and Ashtoreth's horrors. The methodology of this particular darkness is probably Queer theory, whereby centuries-long accepted notions are inverted, distorted or completely redefined to accommodate queer notions of sexuality and gender and to force Christian teaching to not only accommodate but, in fact, conform to them.

Someone I do not follow responded to my Icon tweet on social media to point out that Christ was obviously standing in front of a vagina. This was something that centuries of iconography and veneration had apparently missed. Pagan, Jungian, Queer theory, or whatever projections onto historically well-attested and transcribed Christian symbolic theology & discourse serve to misdirect us from the revelation. When I explained what the mandorla was, it had no effect.  

Even though western Christian art is not the same as Eastern Orthodox Iconography, the assault is the same. Project onto the image your perversities, ignore the witness and veneration of centuries, ignore the Icon writers or theological commentaries of the women or men that commissioned or executed the work. This approach, whereby secret wisdom, and hidden truths, unknown even to the saints, can be expounded, is a form of Gnosticism, where an enlightened minority know better; they point out our "false consciousness" and brook no quarrel. When they have finished, nothing will be left standing. The inherency claims of their interpretation make it more potent in the west.

I later learnt that Joshua Heath, a junior research fellow at Cambridge University, delivered a "sermon" at Trinity College chapel last November, in which he added his "research findings": that artistic depictions of the side spear wound (where roman shoulders assault Christ's body to see if he were dead or not - the wound witnessed by Thomas, Mary Magdalene, and all apostles as a spear wound), in fact, in a particular image, looked a bit like a vagina. 

He also suggested that paintings showing Jesus' “penis” 'urge a welcoming rather than hostile response towards the raised voices of trans people'. (Why this should be the case he did not dwell upon). At this point, we wonder what on earth he is talking about. He may have misrepresented the lines on Christ's chest and abdomen - representing Christ's abdominal muscles, either emaciated from fasting and torture or muscular with power and restored life (as above) - as, I jest you not, suggest a penis.

Heath went on, "In Christ's simultaneously masculine and feminine body in these works, if the body of Christ as these works suggest [is] the body of all bodies, then his body is also the trans body,". This sleight of hand cannot be overlooked. He looks and projects what he sees, then makes a tenuous incomprehensible link to gender dysphoria. In all of the portrayals of Christ crucified, he is a bearded man. The variation is only on the degree of the emaciated or well-formed body of the portrayal, and none of the images on the cross are feminine. Even in the more heterodox western imagery, there is no feminine crucifixion or descent from the cross.

And again: "…if the body of Christ as these works suggest [is] the body of all bodies, then his body is also the trans body…." This play on words seems to say that Christ can appear feminine and masculine and, therefore, is trans. Two falsehoods lead to a third. Perhaps it alludes to the church being the body of Christ, but when we participate in the church and the divine mysteries, this does not take away our sex distinctions. Christ is the bridegroom, and we are collectively the bride. 

"For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ, we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us." Paul Romans 12

Heath went on to claim a picture from the 14th-century Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg of the side spear wound was 'a decidedly vaginal in appearance'. If you go to the prayer book, you see Christ on the cross pointing to the spear wound on the previous page. But the origin of all this conjecture is in the Queer movement that sets out to impose its backdated psycho-sexual projections on the image.

At this point, the authorities in any church would refer to theology, biblical teaching, the Church Fathers’ commentaries, the contemporaneous views of those who commissioned such images, and their lived testimonials. And chastise and expose these ludicrous revisions.

But it turns out that Mr Heath, whose PhD in theology was supervised by the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, had the support of Dr Michael Banner, the dean of Trinity College, who defended Heath, claiming his sermon "suggested that we might think about these images of Christ's male/female body as providing us with ways of thinking about issues around transgender questions today. For myself, I think that speculation was legitimate, whether or not you or I or anyone else disagrees with the interpretation, says something else about that artistic tradition, or resists its application to contemporary questions around transsexualism". 

After further complaints, a press release stated, "The College would like to make clear the following…Neither the Dean of Trinity College nor the researcher giving the sermon suggested Jesus was transgender…The sermon addressed the image of Christ depicted in art and various interpretations of those artistic portrayals,"… "The sermon's exploration of the nature of religious art, in the spirit of thought-provoking academic inquiry, was in keeping with open debate and dialogue at the University of Cambridge".

Christ, how he is depicted and presented, and his Christology is fundamental and non-negotiable. Before we become too complacent, the Queer Trans onslaught targets the Orthodox and the heterodox. So in the spirit of “…thought-provoking…” and “…open debate, and inclusion…”, I bow to the authority of the apostle Paul:

"For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things.

“Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.

“For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due.

“And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practice such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them."

~ Paul's Epistle to the Romans 1:18-33

Amen