Aniconism, Images and the Divine: Part 1

Examples of aniconism -- the avoidance of images or idols -- can be found across multiple religions But what does it DO? What does it mean to employ religious icons or to avoid them in the contemplation of supernatural or natural objects and beings? In this Stuff to Blow Your Mind two-parter, Robert and Joe look for answers.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of
My Heart Radio. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick. Joe.
When I mentioned God, well, what do you imagine in

(00:23):
your head? What do you see? What's the vision that
comes to mind? I have to be honest and say
it's not a great answer, but it is God from
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, you know. So it
is actually an incredibly an incredibly literal depiction of like
an old man with a beard, wearing a crown, sitting
in a cloud and saying something angry at people down
on the ground. Now that that's probably not the full

(00:45):
picture of God in my head, but that was the
very first thing that came to mind. And it might
be because you specifically asked me to picture God, which
I don't normally do when I think about the concept. Yeah,
absolutely me. And I feel like I have a similar
situation going on, you know where if you just say
all right, think about God, picture God right now? Uh,
you know, kind of a gozer moment where you have
to just just come up with a mental image. My

(01:07):
mind does instantly go to this um old sky Daddy image.
I think of the Sistine Chapel. I think of you know,
various images of Zeus I guess and uh, and certainly
things like like like the Monty Python God are very
much in that vein. Um. There's also a sort of
a Sistine Chapel Chapel God gag that Stephen Colbert does

(01:29):
on his show, where like God appears on the ceiling
of the theater and speaks to him. Um. So those
are the images that are kind of initially hardwired into
my brain. Though It's interesting because you know, growing up, uh,
you know, in a Protestant church, those were not images
that we were ever presented with. It's not like that
was the illustration in the Bible or on the walls

(01:51):
of the church. That's not what they were trying to
inundate us with. But we were exposed to it at
some point outside of the church. And then that's just
what's dicks and that's what remains unless you know, obviously,
like you, if I'm dealing with a more specific example
of God or a deeper I think that you know,
thoughts about the nature of God. I can go in
any number of directions, but that initial gut response that

(02:14):
that initial mental image is the old sky Daddy. Can
I tell you the second image that came to my
mind after Monty Python and the Holy Grail? And it
was like, I don't know what this is from, but
it is basically a a very poorly three D animated
kind of late nineties c G I face of like
a lady with red eyes in a computer background, very

(02:35):
lawnmower man. I don't know why that, but that's in
there too. Yeah, I mean, and that is kind of
that's kind of goes Arian as well, right, because yeah,
lots of corners and the cheeks in the forehead. Yeah, yeah,
I'd say that I probably if I'm like my my
post gut image, I probably go into like a much
more sort of psychedelic kind of zone and abstract zone,

(02:58):
and I think of things that are that are certainly
not anthropomorphic, and I try to think of things that
are just like geometrically based. Um. But yeah, that initial
initial mental image is always going to be the sky Daddy,
and I guess it's just stuck there. I don't guess.
I guess it's just gonna remain there for the rest
of my life. Yeah, you can't escape what gets put
there in childhood. But I guess this should be a

(03:21):
good indication that for this episode and for the next
episode as well, we're going to be talking about the
idea of representation of the divine in the history of
of the religions of the world. Uh, specifically, we're gonna
be talking about the concept of an iconism. Yes, an iconism, uh,
discussing an iconic images. So the icon and there in

(03:45):
that word of is referringled like the icon that is
like the center of focus in religious ceremony, personal worship,
that sort of thing. Right, So what is an an
iconic religion or an an iconic cult. If something is
an iconic, then it is symbolic or suggestive rather than
a literal representation. It's not designed as a likeness. It's

(04:07):
not an idol. It is not an anthropomorphic representation. It
is not a humanoid. Uh, it is the opposite of that. Yeah,
So this is one of those subjects where actually a
lot of the interest can be found in trying to
figure out what the definition of an iconic should be.
It's one of those things where like just trying to
define it actually raises a lot of really interesting questions

(04:28):
about the subject matter itself. Um and I found a
really good overview paper dealing with this question of how
to define the concept an iconic or antichonicity that was
written by a Yale University art historian named Milette Gaffman,
and it was published in the Journal Religion in seventeen. Actually,
this specific issue of the Journal Religion, uh is a

(04:52):
themed issue that was all about anichonism and it and
this paper goes significantly into the problem of how scholars
have offered different and sometimes incommensurate definitions of these terms
over the years. But this paper is the introductory essay
to that themed issue of the Journal Religion, and I
think we're actually going to cite several other papers from

(05:12):
that same issue over the course of these episodes. So anyway,
this article is called an Iconism Definitions, Examples and Comparative Perspectives. Again,
this is from the Journal Religion in TV and it's
by Millette Gafeman and uh So, the short simple definition
of anichonism given at the beginning of this article is
that it is the demarcation of divine presence without a

(05:35):
figural representation. Now I'll get more into the details of
that as we go on, but I thought it might
be helpful to start with just an example, a concrete example,
and this one is cited in Engafeman's paper. So what
she looks at is a Cypriot copper coin created during
the Roman Empire roughly seventy five to seventy six CE,

(05:56):
so this would have been during the reign of Emperor Vespasian.
And there's an image on the coin I've got for
you to look at here, rob that is definitely not
a human form. It is some kind of geometrical thing.
It looks like there's maybe kind of a building or
shrine of some kind. And then in the middle of
the building or shrine there is just this shape that's

(06:18):
not a human it's just a kind of like tapering
or sort of triangular conical shape. And the evidence from
the archaeological and historical context makes clear that this coin
depicts an object that was worshiped at the shrine of
the goddess Aphrodite in Pathos, which which was a city

(06:39):
in in Cyprus that was sometimes believed to be the
home and the birthplace of the goddess Aphrodite. Now I
think we can agree that this image on the coin
does not depict the same kind of Aphrodite that you
find in a lot of other Roman art of Aphrodite,
of course, was the goddess of love and beauty, and

(06:59):
she's been shown in human form as a beautiful woman,
often like reclining nude or posing gracefully as in you
might find h you know, representations of her and a
bunch of frescoes from POMPEII that you may have seen. Yeah, yeah,
that the artistic depictions were accustomed to very much inform.
I think in many of us, anyway, that that gut

(07:20):
instinct image that comes to mind when we think of
the name Aphrodite, right, and in these frescoes from Pompei,
for example, afro Aphrodite is not only depicted in human form.
I would say probably that she is aggressively humanoid, aggressively
embodied in that her human shaped body is a major

(07:40):
expression of her meaning as a divine presence, you know,
as the goddess of love and beauty, she is supposed
to represent beauty. So you might always expect Aphrodite's presence
to be indicated by a painting or a statue of
a humanoid female form that was thought, at least by
the artist to be beautiful, but apparently that was not

(08:01):
always the case. The object of worship at the cult
center for the Cypriot cult of Aphrodite and Pathos looks
more like a weird cone. It's Aphrodite in her dollic form.
You almost want to give her an epithet. Remember we
talked about the Roman epithets of different versions of God.
So you've got you know, Jupiter, Pluvius or Jupiter whatever,
a Jupiter who brings rain. This is sort of Aphrodite dolicus. Yeah,

(08:25):
it's almost as if like this is the God in
its true form that has arrived, and people are like, whoa,
we don't know what to make of this, We don't
we don't understand what you're trying to lay out here.
And then the God realizes, oh, I need to take
on a humanoid form that communicates at a base level
with these humans what I represent. I'm going to have
to speak to them through physical appearance and body language

(08:46):
and facial expressions and pose and all of this other
just sort of the innate communication stuff, as opposed to
taking on my true form of the weirdly top comb. Yeah,
it's almost like, you know, if they saw the cone form,
it would I have the mad Then you know, we've
got to represent ourselves. I mean, I want to be
very clear. I'm not saying I think that was actually there. Uh,

(09:07):
their their theology, there's no indication of that. But yeah,
my mind goes to the same place. Yeah, and part,
I mean part of that is, yeah, well, there's this
long history at this point in like weird fiction and
you know, science fiction and horror where you have the
god whose true form you know, is just ineffable or
it is too monstrous to behold. And the weird thing

(09:29):
is those traditions they do get into this, maybe accidentally,
they get into this idea of an iconism, you know,
this idea of of like, well can you can you
show what that real god is? Oh no, no, it's
too horrible. We have to have some some other things
stand in right, paying no attention to the cone behind
the curtain um. But so the Roman historian Tacitus actually

(09:49):
describes the shrine in Pathos, and he tells us that
the Latin quote is simulacrum day non effigy humana, meaning
the image of the goddess was not in human form,
and then to quote Gaifman, additionally, he noted that the
deity was represented by a circular mass that is broader
at the base and rises like a turning post to

(10:11):
a small circumference at the top. And it looks like
this is the same thing that's depicted on this coin here.
And so Giveman writes that all evidence suggests that what
the cult of Aphrodite and path Fosse worshiped was a
conical stone. And this is actually not even particularly unusual
in its historical context. Apparently, at many sanctuaries and cult

(10:33):
centers in first century Cyprus, rituals appear to have been
focused around some kind of large stone. You would have
a cult center, it might be a cult center identified
with the named god that elsewhere would be represented often
in the statue or a painting, is having a human form,
but here it's represented by some kind of big rock.

(10:53):
And this raises all kinds of interesting questions about, you know,
when we want to understand the religion of these ancient people.
So I want to read a paragraph here from from
Gaifeman that gets into these questions. Quote, the information we
can learn about the Cypriot cult of Aphrodite is illuminating,
Yet it also illustrates a fundamental challenge for our assessment
of an aniconic cult. Even if we can identify an

(11:17):
example of an aniconic object, we may not be able
to establish its significance in the eyes of worshippers. In
the example of the Cypriot cult of Aphrodite and Pathos,
we cannot know how participants in the rights at the
site perceived the conical stone. Did pilgrims to Pathos see
the stone as an embodiment of the deity? Did they

(11:40):
hold it to be more venerable than the more familiar
figural statues of the goddess of Love Like Tacitus, We
only have an outside perspective, Baffled by the choice of
object for the sanctuary's primary focus. We're reminded of the
Roman historians assertion set Razzio in obscure a quote, but
the reason is obscure. Uh so, yeah, we were left

(12:02):
with all these questions. I mean, there there is no
conclusive explanation for what the people who went to this
cult center in Pathos thought this conical stone meant. It's
clear that it somehow represented the presence of aphrodite. But
yet did they think this is Aphrodite's true form? Did
they think that it it indicated some quality of aphrodite?

(12:24):
Did they think this is just what we have here?
This is the closest we could get to the form
of aphrodite. And to be clear, it seems that they
also used other images of aphrodite as well. Right, well,
there were other images of aphrodite, like throughout the Roman Empire,
but I don't know about at this specific cult center.
At this cult center, this might have been all they had.
It's not clear. So, yeah, that does raise a number

(12:45):
of interesting questions. Yeah, like is this just is this
to a certain extent the best they could do. Was
this the uh you know? Or was this a deliberate
aesthetic choice based on various like theological concepts. Uh? This
is gonna be an rising question for us to keep
in our mind as we we look at different um
and iconic traditions and values in different cultures. Yeah, and

(13:09):
to the point of some of the difficulties in in
the job of you know, studying comparative religions, gave mean
also emphasizes an important point that I'd like to talk about.
She writes this near the beginning of her essay, quote,
what can the historian of religion gain from considering in
tandem traditions such as the worship of trees in modern
India which we'll get into later in this episode, the

(13:31):
Dead Pillar of Osiris, and the biblical prohibitions on depicting
the God of the Israelites. Examining together geographically and chronologically
divergent religious practices is fraught with methodological pitfalls and intellectual challenges.
At the very least, this exercise risks implying that all
phenomena clustered under a single heading have a single meaning.

(13:52):
And that's a very good point, because I love the
study of comparative religions. I think it's it's great to
compare different religions to each other and understand and their
their similarities and their differences. But I think it's also
important while you're doing that um to follow the standard
guiding principles of empirical science, even when you're studying something
like a complex social phenomenon like art and religion. Uh,

(14:13):
And those principles would be things like, of course, correlation
does not necessarily imply causation. You can't assume that because
two different religious traditions share a similar feature that those
features have the same underlying cause. Yeah, like like, for instance,
it would be very tempting to just broad strokes to
say something like, well, religions or cultures that that have

(14:36):
actual anthropomorphic manifestations of their God, they have just more
of a physical mindset, and whereas and uh and and
iconic traditions have more of a spiritual mindset. Like that's
just such a broad statement to make that it it
runs a high risk of just being you know, completely
untrue on both sides. You know, you're just everything is

(14:57):
going to be a lot more nuanced than that. And also,
as we'll discuss, you can't really talk about like, Okay,
this religion is is an iconic and this one is iconic,
because generally you're gonna see both trends in any given
religion over the course of of its of its lifetime.
That's exactly right. And you know, as we've already seen,
there are clearly, you know, there are both kinds within

(15:18):
Greco Roman religion. You know, you have an iconic Greco
Roman religion and you have highly iconic Greco Roman religion
existing side by side even at the same time, and uh,
and that's true of many. I think we're gonna look
at some of the spectrum in uh, some of this
so worship in India and things. You'll you'll even see
the same contrast within within similar branches of Christianity, more

(15:40):
an iconic sort of forms of Christian worship versus more
iconic ones. Yeah. Yeah, because again, that's what's so interesting
about the sky God thing is because uh, in most
like Protestant churches, you have a you know, at least
the one I grew up in, it's very uh an
iconic inside, you know, and for the most part, there's
a there's a large uh shift, in a large trend

(16:03):
in an iconism in there. But it's from elsewhere. It's
from like the broader culture that you end up getting
these iconic emblems of the sky Daddy. Now to the
point of the difficulty in defining these terms and all
the interesting questions that raises, uh, Gaifman sort of conducts
a review in this essay about the many different ways
that the terms an iconic and an iconism have been

(16:24):
used in the history of religious studies. She notes that
one of the earliest instances, at least in the modern
world of these terms comes from the German archaeologist Johannes
Adolf Overbeck, who lived eighteen twenty six to eight, who
coined these terms. I think he was writing in German,
so it's an ikon niche and an ikonsmas, and I
guess those would be based on Greek formulations, but not

(16:47):
terms that the ancient Greeks would have actually used too
in the same way that they're being used here. But
she says that Overbeck was trying to promote a particular
perception of the earliest history of Greek art. So over
had a speculative interpretation of what the prehistory of Greek
art and Greek religion looked like, and in trying to

(17:09):
describe that speculative interpretation, he used these terms. And his
idea was that in prehistoric antiquity, the Greeks believed their
gods did not have human forms and could not be
represented anthropomorphically, and so as a result, they were not
depicted directly, but rather indicated by mediating symbols, including trees, stones, pillars, spears,

(17:32):
and scepters. Now not to say that Overbeck was necessarily
correct about that, but that was the idea that he
was trying to illustrate with this term. And I think
this would be somewhat analogous to how you can't really
like show a picture of a person to represent an
abstract concept today, for example a nation, so you might
instead represented symbolically with the flag. And Gaifman sites other

(17:56):
uh much earlier uses of these words, not so much
in religious at ease, But for example, she cites the
early Christian theologian Clement of Alexandria, who's you know, considered
one of the earliest known Christian church fathers. And and uh.
In Clement's writings, he uses an an ancient ancestor of
the term an iconic, but with a different meaning, the
Greek word and I kissed on, which means basically not representable.

(18:20):
It's a word that would mean something in English kind
of like undrawable or unrepresentable. And St. Clement is saying
there that it is impossible to indicate the nature of
the divine in a representative form. He's essentially just saying, like,
there's no way to draw God, you can't do it.
I want to drive home something here that well, perhaps uh,

(18:40):
elaborating something I said earlier, Like I thought I asked
the question regarding the cone um of aphrodite, you know,
asking what was this all they had? I don't want
to imply that that is a question of is this
all they could do? Because, as we've discussed on the
show before, the creation of anthropomorphicum are of creating human

(19:01):
and animal likenesses and combinations of the two. These are
very ancient trends in in in human culture, in our
in our in our crafting of our environment. So if
if one is creating something that is abstract that does
not embody some version of the human form or an
animal form, like that is a that is a deliberate choice.

(19:22):
It's not a situation of someone of a culture being like, well,
we'd love to be able to draw the lion man God,
but we just don't have the technology yet, so we're
going to use a square. That's not how it works.
Oh yeah. I mean, both both iconic and an iconic
religious imageries appear to go way back into you know,
deep prehistory. So both of these traditions have long been

(19:42):
present and um and I could imagine a scenario where, say,
for example, if you a cult, a local cult might
say like, well, we can't afford to pay an artisan
to create this kind of statue, but we have this
other kind of statue. But but you definitely want to
don't want jump from that possibility to thinking that the

(20:03):
that an iconic versus iconic religion, that one is in
any way superior to the other, because it's actually been
written about both ways. Like some scholars have written about
an iconic religions with a kind of um, a kind
of preferential bias towards them, like, oh, they're more spiritually
pure because they don't have to, you know, represent things
figur eally um. And obviously that's not true. But you

(20:25):
also don't want to think like iconic representation of God's
is superior because I don't know it it takes more
artistic skill or something like that, which it doesn't even necessarily.
So yeah, we're we're not going to be pursuing an
idea that one is in any way better than the other.

(20:46):
But coming back to the history of the definitions of
anticonicity um so, Gifman sites a few other ideas to
illustrate some of the problems here. One is that there
was a definition in the nineteen eighties by a scholar
named Berkhard Gladigau who defined an iconic cults as cults
in which quote no images are known or accepted as
objects of worship, especially not in the form of anthropomorphic images.

(21:09):
And this this, uh, this one comes in for some
criticism here because it complicates things by saying like no images.
So you know that's one problem, Like is the conent
Pathos at the Pathos Shrine not an image? I mean
it is an image, it's not, but it's not a
figural representation of a goddess with like a human or
animal body form, So it's not anthropomorphic, but it is

(21:31):
an image. So this definition might seem to conflict with
some other uses. And also it is specifically specifies objects
of worship, which you know, you could get into complications there.
In fact, I'll talk about a complication there in a second.
There's another definition that was refined by a scholar named
Mettinger in the nineteen nineties to argue that an iconism

(21:52):
should refer to cults where quote there is no iconic
representation of the deity, either anthropomorphic or theeomorphs it which
means an animal form serving as the dominant or central
cultic symbol. But here it would mean that for a
cult to be an iconic if there is a central
cultic symbol, that's the terminology. It can't take human or

(22:13):
animal form. And these definitions are also complicated by what
object or symbol you're actually talking about. What what actually
counts as a central cultic symbol or an object of worship? Like,
there are a lot of religious symbols that I think
would be difficult to figure out whether they fit in
those categories or not. If you think about a Catholic Church,

(22:34):
is the crucifix an object of worship or a central
cultic symbol? I think you would get people arguing both
for and against those propositions. Yeah. And and one reality
that will touch on again later too, is is it Yeah?
These these uh, these framings, these definitions, they often depend
on insider versus outsider um analysis. You know. Yes, so

(22:57):
somebody within, say like the Catholic Church would probably say, oh, well,
of course we don't worship the crucifix, it's just this symbol,
you know, etcetera. Where someone outside might say, whoa, look
at this crucifix. Clearly they're worshiping this. And you said,
and you also see like more um, I guess sharpened
analysis to sometimes where uh, you know, depending on you know,

(23:18):
which group is judging the other. Yeah, once again, I
mean this is an area where uh, writing about the
artistic representations of various religions, especially if you go further
back into history, you will sometimes come across analysis that
seems sort of biased or judgmental. You know, it's almost
like this is why this religion's UH art is is
not as good as I don't know, my my Christian

(23:40):
UH denominations art or something like that. Obviously, we want
to be careful not to not to fall into those traps. Plus,
I think it's it's it's pretty safe to say any
humans relationship with a with a deity, with a divine concept,
with the idea of a god, it's gonna be complex.
It's gonna be it's gonna be the kind of thing
where you can have multiple even conflicting ideas at once

(24:04):
in your head, kind of like how we're talking earlier
about how you can think about God and say, you know,
a Christian sense and you're you're at once you're imagining, like, uh,
the symbol of light coming out of a cloud that
you might be presented with. You're you're also imagining the
burning bush. You're also imagining the sky Daddy or sky Granddad,
zeus form of God like all these things. Yeah, they

(24:27):
can all sort of compete for your attention at the
same time. And there may be the one that you
were leaning into when you were engaging in worship, and
then there might be the gut instinct the image as well,
and so you can have all these. I mean, we've
we've talked about this in terms of say, ideas and
concepts of the afterlife before like how you know, any
given person within a faith, they may you know, they

(24:48):
may have have like three or four different ideas of
what happens when you die. Some of them are grounded
in like the scripture of a given faith or the
doctrine of a given faith, and others are just like
purely based on movies you've seen, you know, Yeah, yeah, totally.
So the final definition of of an iconism that Gaveman
lands On, I think is a really good one. She argues,
this is the better idea, and it comes from a

(25:09):
scholar named Alfred gel And it is the term here
for what you would be talking about when you're arguing
whether something's iconic or an iconic. Is uh, something that
is an index of divine presence. Uh, the index of
divine presence of is any marker that quote indicates to
the worshiper that a divine power is present at a

(25:29):
particular site, at least potentially. And I like this definition
because it doesn't necessarily require that the object is the
the thing that you're worshiping. But it's a marker that
shows you this place is sacred and reminds you of
the divine power here. So finally, she says, quote, I
propose to deploy an iconic to describe a physical object, monument, image,

(25:53):
or visual scheme that denotes the presence of a divine
power without a figural representation of the deity or deities involved. Similarly,
an iconism can be defined as the denotation of divine
presence without a figural image in both religious practice and
an imagery and visual culture. More broadly, so, it's a

(26:13):
non figural index of divine presence. It shows you there
is the divine presence here, reminds you of it. It
says you know, this is a place where you can
be reminded of God or the Gods or whatever the
divine presence is. But it doesn't have a body. It's
not like a human or like an animal form. So

(26:33):
there's this specific religious definition, but obviously it's also important
to keep in mind some other distinctions, such as the
distinction between an iconism in religion and just general non
figurative art, right uh. And then the other thing would be,
UM the difference between an iconism as we've been talking
about it here, which just means any kind of religious

(26:55):
uh index of divine presence that does not include figural representation,
versus what might be called anti iconism or even in
some cases iconic classm the explicit prohibition against or condemnation
of various kinds of figural representation in a religious context.
An Iconism is not necessarily anti iconism. It can be

(27:17):
in some cases, but it doesn't necessitate it. Yeah, and
we'll come back. I think we'll get more into two
um iconoclasm in the second episode. But but I do
want to touch a little bit more about the idea
of idols uh and icons UH. Some of the key
examples of an iconism that they stem from the the
Abrahamic religions, so they are key injunctions against the creation

(27:40):
of idols and Judaism. And it also follows in Christianity. Uh,
one of the ten commandments is thou shalt not make
under the any graven image. Right. That it's the second commandment,
and that uh that it's I remember that was one
that I didn't fully understand when I was a kid.
But I think that is brawly taken. As you know,

(28:01):
it's interpreted actually in a lot of different ways in
terms of how far that commandment goes, what all it
applies to, but in general it has taken as some
form of commandment against the creation of idols. Well, I
remember I had had this. I think I've mentioned this before.
I wish I could have to hunt up a copy
of it. I had this book of Bible stories and
it had illustrations in it, and so the way that

(28:23):
tended to explain this to me was just that, Okay,
you have these scenes where you know, God is speaking abstractly,
like through the burning Bush. That's clearly Bible stories illustrated
in there. But then it also illustrates the various stories
that involve the idols of rival religions and those the
the you know, the idols often took on this kind

(28:44):
of spooky or sinister quality. You know, they were imposing
and and you know, cool but also kind of weird.
And so I think that's an area where we have
to recognize that, um, the term idol often carries a
certain degree of negative connotation in some cultures due to
uh uh and i uh and iconic tendencies. But the basis,

(29:06):
but really the basic idea of a cult image a
human created object that is venerated for the deity and
the place of the deity. You know, this again is
quite old and it is not universally viewed as negative.
So I think it's it's important that we'd be able
to sort of step back from that sort of some
of this uh often sort of childhood indoctor nation about
about idols. And there's also a great deal of back

(29:28):
and forth about again what constitutes an idol in the
same way we're talking about, you know, what is an
icon and what isn't an icon? Yeah. So, yeah, if
if we keep using the words idol or icon in
these episodes, remember not to uh, not to automatically apply
a kind of stink to it. Right now, we'll we'll
get more into Islam in the second episode. But of

(29:49):
course an iconism and else it's also an important aspect
of Islam and one of the reasons you see so
much geometry and abstraction in Islamic art. Though this doesn't
mean that there are no depictions of lifelike figures in
the history of Islantic art. And again we'll get more
into that into the in the second episode. Now, they're
all kinds of interesting questions to ask here, one of
them that in many cases is difficult to answer, but

(30:12):
it's interesting to think about. Is in an iconic and
even anti iconic religions, why the lack of the icon
so a few examples. Is it, as a Clement said earlier,
that it's impossible to represent God in human form or
even impossible to represent God visually at all, meaning that
icons would just necessarily be incorrect and futile. Or is

(30:35):
it more a matter of manners and respect as in
whether or not you could potentially represent the divine it
would be inappropriate for a human artist to do so,
you know, the interpretation that icons would somehow be disrespectful
or could it be more about the impact of the
icon on the beholder? Is you know, is there a
belief that somehow picturing the divine presence in a human

(30:58):
or animal form would give you the wrong kind of
religious experience. Is it about the person worshiping um? Or
sometimes is it just a matter of um of of
like local convenience of like you know, what kind of
of icon is convenient for you to have at a
particular place in time. Maybe it is actually not a
figurative icon. So I I started thinking about all this

(31:21):
as as a bidential episode for a couple of reasons. So,
first of all, I was, I was reading about undeciphered
writing systems, and so I was thinking about the power
of words and symbols, and you know, and and what
happens if you can't actually decipher ancient examples of this.
And then I was I was revisiting the writings of
a spiritual teacher at Cartole from his book The Power

(31:43):
of Now, And I was reminded of this passage which
I'm going to read quote. Even a stone, and more
easily a flower or a bird could show you the
way back to God, to the source to yourself. When
you look at it or hold it and let it
be without imposing a word of mental label on it,
a sense of awe or wonder arises within you. It's

(32:04):
essence silently communicates itself to you and reflects your own
essence back to you. Now, this got me thinking about
the rather complex web of language and images that we
attached to virtually everything in life. Like, I think one
of the things that's that's neat about about Totally's advice
there is that, Yeah, when when you think about things

(32:25):
like a flower or a bird, there's just so many
connections your mind makes, like things that the bird or
the flower are used to represent, like sometimes symbolically, other
times metaphorically. Um, and those are going to connect to
various uh, fears and anxieties in your life, you know,
and it's where it makes it. But then at the base,
like why are you why are we dragging all of

(32:46):
that in? If I'm looking at a bird, if I'm
looking at a flower, and so if you can, if
you can just focus on the actual objective reality, the
actual sensory information, without dragging all of these associations into it,
you can at least, you know, some people uh have
expressed this in this feeling of peace that emerges from

(33:06):
that experience. And this also brought to mind a quote
from Umburdo Echos the name of the Rose. I don't
know if you remember this this part, Joe. But brother
Williams says, quote, the order that our mind imagines is
like a net, or like a ladder built to attain something.
But afterward you must throw the ladder away because you

(33:27):
discovered that even if it was useful, it was meaningless.
And I should point out that in this brother William
is is site. Basically this quote is a medievalized quote
of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, known as Vitckenstein's Ladder.
So it is not a medieval concept exactly, but he
has Umburdo Echo has taken it and made it medieval

(33:49):
so that it may come out of brother William's mouth
in this tale. Okay, So how does this connect to
Anichonism for you? Okay? So, I mean it's not a
one to one obviously, because um, you know, an Eichonism
is generally more about visual represations and art um though
the use of descriptions also becomes important in some traditions. Uh.
And the quotes I mentioned are you know, are generally

(34:11):
concerned with the the with aspects of objective reality again, birds, flower, stones,
et cetera. Things where you can you can behold them
and see the thing itself, uh, and strip away potentially
strip away all of these associations. But what happens when
we consider supernatural entities and deities, saints and profits or
you know, divine places as well, um, Because I think we,

(34:35):
you know, can generally agree if we're talking about a god,
we're talking about something that does not have an objective reality.
It has the subjective reality, you know. Um, though I
guess in general they're they're basically three ways you might
approach the concept of a god. Um. So, either our
words and images are describing something that does have a reality.
You know, you're going with the idea that that that

(34:56):
God or God's they have an objective reality. In our
word and images are describing something, uh that actually exists.
Another way of looking at it would be all of
our words and images are describing something that exists purely
in the domain of myth. Uh. So it is, you know,
it's it's entirely dependent upon these various depictions, but it
has its own important reality as well. But then you

(35:20):
could say that you could also look at it and say, well,
our words and images are describing or embellishing some feeling
or array of feelings or experiences that do have a reality. Um.
So you know, I was thinking like if I was
just if I was asked draw a picture of your hunger,
and I drew a picture of like an angry face goblin.
You know, like that is that is serving as a

(35:42):
like you could almost you know, lean into that and
say like this is this God represents my hunger, you know.
So it's it represents something that has an objective or
at least objective reality within me, but it is it
is not based on an actual creature or sentient existence somewhere.
Oh yeah, I see what you're I think I see
what you're saying. So it is interesting how in all

(36:04):
of our human attempts to represent ideas like God's, there's
this constant process of bouncing back and forth between some
kind of vague sense of meaning that we feel internally
subjectively and then some external representation. Um. And so like
the uh that that maybe the way of God is depicted,

(36:25):
whether figurally or non figure, really represents something people feel,
some association they have with the presence of this God
or the idea of this God. But then of course
once it is depicted, that feeds back into how people
think about the God, and so it creates this feedback loop. Yeah,
and it can create all sorts of opportunities, but also
all sorts of challenges and and outright problems and depictions

(36:47):
of gods and key religious figures like you know, I'm
in my mind instantly goes to the various depictions of
of Jesus that you see in Christian traditions, because you
really see, you see so many different versions. You see
you know, depictions of of of Jesus as a as
a Middle Eastern individual. You see depictions of of Jesus

(37:08):
in which Jesus has African features, in which he has
highly Caucasian features, in which he has Asian features. You
see depictions of of Christ particularly. There's some interesting medieval
trends where that lean into the feminine nature of Christ
and depict a very feminine uh Christ, which I think
has and certainly had to the people who leaned towards

(37:29):
that interpretation very positive ramifications for the way they beheld
the divine, but clearly for others it was a problem. Uh.
And and they they they took issue with it. Uh.
They are also monstrous depictions of Christ where you know,
people uh where and especially in the medieval period, they
leaned into trying to use uh, fantastic variations on Christ's

(37:52):
swarm in order to try to relay information about theological
concepts like uh, you know, the Trinity by showing Jesus
with three heads or three faces, or there was one
I think Jesus had like a bird's knack or a
bird's beak, and it had to do with this saying
about about that the time it takes words leaving your
heart to reach your mouth, and how you know, Christ

(38:15):
would be very um patient in the way that he
would express himself, and therefore he has this like long
long neck and bird head stuff like that. And then
he also today, I mean, on the other side of
the feminine Christ, you also will find just at times
just laughably masculine Jesus's you know where it's like he's
just tremendously ripped, like the like the crib, like the
cross of the crucifixion is some sort of exercise machine. Sorry,

(38:41):
I was thinking about a specific example that came to
mind when you were talking about images of Christ from
the Middle Ages that could look monstrous if if certainly
viewed from the outside without the you know, the interpretation. Uh,
like when they're supposed to represent a theological concept. And
I was thinking about Christ Pentocrat or do you know
this one, the one where I do off hand, maybe

(39:01):
I would recognize it if I saw it. Uh, I
think you would, because these tend to be the images
where not always but in in some depictions, Christ is
shown as having a sort of divided face where one
side of the face looks different than the other side
of the face, like one side of the face the
eye looks different than on the other side. And I
think this is sometimes interpreted to um to represent God

(39:25):
in in both of his forms, Like it represents a
theological concept that God, you know, maybe both fully human
and fully divine at the same time. And that's shown
by giving him, you know, two different faces smashed together
that looked like they're drawn by two different artists. Yeah,
it's almost like Christ is is using his Instagram filter

(39:45):
for half of the photo and in the other half
is just you know, all natural. Yeah. I think that
the specific example I'm thinking of where the face is
divided like that is the Christ Pantocrat at the at St.
Catharine's Monastery in the Sinai Peninsula. Yes, I think that's
that looks to be what I'm looking at right now,
And yeah, it's it's a it's an interesting image especially.
I wonder what it would be like to look at

(40:06):
it if you did not know what was going on there,
you know, uh, you know why there appears to be
like it's I want to be clear, it's not like
a straight up batman's tooth face scenario, like you could
easily look at this image of Christ and miss what
was going on there. Yeah. So I guess one of
the things I'm trying to to say here is that, Yeah,
anytime you depict a god or a goddess or you know,

(40:27):
anything from a pantheon like this, anytime you depict them
as a human being, is you depict them physically, you
lean into an anthropomorphic vision of what they are. Like.
There's just so many there's so much stuff that you
end up drawing in. There's so much human body language
and and physicality. There various uh you know, cultural associations, um,

(40:49):
you know, etcetera like it. There's there's so many ways
that you can get it right and get it wrong
that you can convey very specific meanings. Uh, some complex
theological problem ms while you could also potentially create new
theological problems. Um, you can create heresies in the eyes
of others, etcetera. Thank Thank Now, in exploring this topic,

(41:16):
one can of course drift towards the absolutes traditions that
are very strict um in um an iconism and those
that don't seem particularly concerned with it. But uh, ultimately
I thought it might be more illuminating to at least
first consider a case where both seem to be employed.
So we're gonna turn to another paper from that that
same publication. Uh. This is by David L. Haberman titled

(41:39):
drawing Out the Iconic in the an Iconic Worship of
Meme Trees and go Varden Stones in Northern India, published
in the journal Religion. So. Haberman is a professor of
religious studies at Indiana University Bloomington's and has long been
fascinated by Hindu worshipful interaction UH as he calls it,

(42:00):
and an area of particular interest for him is worship
involving an iconic objects, specifically trees in northern India. He
even wrote a whole book on this particular topic inten
titled People Trees, Worship of Trees in northern India. Okay,
so this would be an example of worship of trees
that aren't just being uh worshiped as trees, but in

(42:21):
some sense stand in for the power of a particular god.
Right and in this article he points to the worship
of trees, mountains, and rivers as an iconic objects of devotion.
Name Trees in particular are considered to be the embodiment
of the goddess Sitala, while the stones of Mount Govarden

(42:42):
are the embodiment of Krishna. Now this is of course
particularly interesting because both of these deities certainly have have
described and depicted forms anthropomorphic forms in Hindu traditions. Krishna,
of course, is a major deity the eighth Avatara New
an important figure in the Mahabarata and often described as

(43:04):
a blueskinned humanoids, sometimes depicted as a child, even often
shown with a flute. Sitalia is an incarnation of pavaty
cure of diseases, often depicted as a maiden riding a
donkey with a broom to cleanse away the germs and
a pot uh full of pulses in cold water to

(43:25):
also help in the In the curing of diseases. So
Hindu iconography, of course is very rich, at very detailed,
highly symbolic, and also highly anthromorphic, or at least that's
where I think a lot of our minds tend to go. Uh,
you know, we think of these very ornate depictions of
the divine in which there are a lot of symbols,

(43:46):
a lot of you know, their multiple arms in many
cases holding multiple objects, and they all mean something. Likewise,
there may be a vessel a vehicle that they're writing on,
you know, and that also has meaning. And so like
the whole image is, it's conveying a lot the information.
It's not just mere uh you know, it's not just
merely a fantastic other worldly representation, though I guess there's

(44:06):
an aspect of it as well. But there's a lot
of information in the image. Yeah, that I would agree
with that they often feel highly informative, even sometimes maybe
kind of busy. Yeah, But the specifics that that Haberman
gets into her fascinating here because he points out that
in Banaras, on the banks of the Ganges in northern India,
you can find people worshiping Sitala, both in anthropomorphic or

(44:31):
iconic form and engaging in an iconic worship of the
tree as a focus that name tree that we mentioned earlier,
And he describes conversations with devotees here and points out
that both are considered important forms of the goddess um
and so this this is one of the things that's
really I really liked about this particular particular paper because

(44:53):
it was a lot of there are a lot of
like interviews fragments in there where he's quoting people that
he talked to about it, like asking them, well, how
do you relate to the to the god or goddess
in this form versus this other form or both? So
he just he ultimately touches on these two concepts. One
is uh murder rupa and the other is uh proctor rupa.

(45:17):
And the murder rupa as he describes is quote the
embodied form of divinity that has been ritually installed in
the shrine. So it's anthropomorphic shaped like shaped by human hands,
and priests have also invited the divine into it via
specific rituals that established the life breath inside of the

(45:39):
statue or the form. But then the proc three rupa, however,
is the natural form of divinity that appears without the
aid of any human intervention. So the idea is, yes,
the the God can be found saying this tree or
this mountain, but it is there already naturally, whereas in
the in the icon, we have to have somebody create

(45:59):
it and then it has to be uh, it has
to be made sacred through the intervention of humans, then
by the intervention of priests. This is the picturing of
God almost as a kind of liquid substance in a
way that can that can pour into different kinds of vessels,
and some in the natural world in which the God
has poured into already, and there are others in which

(46:20):
the God can can pour in once it's been prepared
and sanctified. Yeah, so the devotees here that you talked to,
he writes that they pointed to, say the tree, for example,
as the prior and most important form of the God.
Now and again these are just individuals he talked to.
This doesn't mean like this is not like a necessarily
universal opinion on the matter. But they were telling him that, yeah,

(46:41):
it existed before the temple, before human made images came along.
But it doesn't seem to be an either or scenario.
You can get engage with these deities in both ways.
You can choose to go iconic or an iconic, like
depending on you know which route you want to take personally.
And he writes that there does seem to be a
strong preference of some um Hindus for the natural forms.

(47:04):
And a lot of this comes down, uh, he writes,
to the multiple or even innumerable forms of Hindu deities.
So Krishna, for instance, I mentioned you know that sometimes
he's depicted as a as a baby. You see this
kind of like toddler Krishna, who is is kind of mischievous,
and then you see the adult Krishna. But even the
adult Krishna, depending on how he's depicted, he might might

(47:26):
be depicted as more of a philosopher, he might be
depicted as a strategist or a warrior um. But as
Habermin points out, this means that the fixed form of
the handcrafted icon limits you to the form it presents,
while the an iconic form allows you to engage which
with whichever version of that god you want to align with,

(47:50):
like which form suits you best in general or at
a given moment. That's interesting. I did not think about that,
But yeah, now that seems obvious and introspect that the
the aniconic representation of a god would seem to give
the God more power to realize different forms. It makes
the God more conceptually protean that you know, can can

(48:12):
be a shape shifter of sorts. Yeah. Yeah, And and
again I think it touches on like some of these
ideas that was expressing earlier about how any version, any
depiction of a of a god or a divine being
or an important religious figure, like you're going to draw
in all of these associations, and and what the one
that is attractive to this person may not be attractive
to this person, the one the the the like the

(48:34):
version of Krishna that is important to you in the
morning might not be the one that you need in
the evening. Uh. That sort of thing that seems to
be the point of what he's saying here. Oh and
by the way, with in particular when we're talking about
Krishna Um, it's the So there's this this mountain, Mount Govardan,
and this mountain itself may be seen as an an

(48:56):
iconic focus, but also there's a tradition of using stones
from the mountain gearage stones and uh and I'll get
into a little bit of the details about how uh
some people interact with these stones here in just a minute.
But let's turn back to the name trees um so
Haybrimamin points out that this is just one of several

(49:17):
key sacred Hindu trees uh And there are sacred trees
in most cultures, and some scholars think that tree worship
might well be one of the most archaic forms of worship.
There are important symbols that are trees found in Buddhism
as well, and um and and they and even in
Buddhism they also have often take on this an iconic

(49:37):
focus as well. But the name tree in particular is
long lived. It has medicinal uses and they were that,
you know, stuff from the name tree was used in
treatments for pox uh. And also they are incarnations of Satalia.
And he writes that some sacred trees are said to
take on darker qualities at night um, which reminds me
a little bit of our discussions of beans, you know,

(50:00):
the idea that at night, maybe some sacred trees are
not safe to be around. But he stresses that that's
not the case with the name. The name is sacred
and positive all of the time. It's the sort of
sacred tree that you would want in your yard. You
would want it as a kind of protector for you
and your family. And this is interesting. Worshippers don't tend
to worship all the name tree, so it's not a

(50:22):
matter of like that name tree and that name tree,
and this one and the one down the road and
the one uptown, but rather one or two that they've
forged a relationship with. Now, as for the stones of
mount good Varden Habremin points to an account in the
the Bakavita Purana in which Krishna takes on two forms
at once, both as a boy lifting up the mountain

(50:44):
and the mountain itself, and the mountain again is sacred.
The mountain is Krishna. The sacred stones of the mountain
are Krishna. So you might engage with Krishna or the
idea of Krishna through the contemplation of the mountain itself.
But as Habren points out, that's kind of it's a
big mountain. You can't that might be a little challenging
to really like take it all in. So you have
this particular stone from it that you forged a bond

(51:06):
with and this is important, like this is your stone,
but it is also Chrishna, so you have ownership of it,
but it itself is also the divine and so you
know it's it's on one level. You know, we're used
the point here where we're thinking about. Okay, I can
see where like the stone is an an iconic version
of Krishna. I can look at it, and I can
I can imagine these various anthropomorphic ideas of Krishna, but

(51:29):
it itself is not anthropomorphic. But there's also what Haberman
calls the quote intentional anthropomorphism of all of this, and
and this seems to be quite literal, not merely leaning
into the human like qualities of the stone, but actually
adding quote eyes, ornaments, clothing, and sometimes even arms to

(51:49):
the garage stones. The process is is said to give
form to the formless, to imbue personality, and above all
allow for the growth of relationship, to strengthen this bond
between the worshiper and this um, this item that is
aiding them in their worship. So I think this is
a great example of how the the iconic versus an

(52:12):
iconic categories are not always cleanly separated, and they form
a kind of spectrum where each tradition can easily blend
into the other one. So here here it sounds like
you've got something that begins as a classical an iconic
index of of divine presence. It's a object from the
natural world that doesn't really take a human or animal form,

(52:34):
but just indicates to the believer that somehow the divine
is present when you are in the company of this object.
But then you can start dressing it up in increasingly
anthropomorphic ways, right, yeah, And if if anyone wants to
look up an example of this, uh, the garage stones.
The way that it's spelled in this article is G

(52:54):
I R I R A J. And yeah, there's there.
It's it's beautiful the pmples I was looking at in
the photos provided with this this paper, because there's it's
not it's not like full on anthropomorphic. It's um like
like I don't want to overstate it, like it doesn't
look like a little person, but like you can certainly

(53:15):
still see the formless in the form, if you know
what I mean. You know, it's like it's not like
a straight up Mr. Potato Head or something. And actually
there's documentation of not just the stones, but the same
thing happening with the neeme trees right right, and with
the name trees. This same practice takes the form of
first wrapping the trees with fabric and then eventually attaching

(53:36):
a face mask of the goddess to the tree as well.
And again this is these are quite quite beautiful. You
can look up examples of of this. But one of
the interesting things with this is that he points out
that there's a process with the name tree. So you
don't just add all of these things at once, you
kind of you you start with the bear tree, and
then you begin to add the wrap and eventually the face.

(53:58):
So again Haberman right that this anthropomorphism it serves to
intensify the personal connection with the god or goddess. It
brings the worshiper closer, and it's also said to draw
the deity out of the stone or in this case
the tree more as well, which I find quite interesting
and he he From here, he goes on to discuss
just the idea of anthropomorphism in general, and he argues

(54:20):
that these examples should force us to reconsider anthropomorphism to
a certain extent, because, especially in in the modern world,
and in the Western world, there are a lot of
negative connotations that are that are thrown at anthropomorphism, especially
in the sciences. And and we've discussed this as well,
like there's there's this um you know, you shouldn't anthropomorphizes everything,

(54:41):
especially if it's a study. You don't want to anthropomorphize
your say, experimental rodents, right. That anthropomorphism in the context
of the sciences usually is is a pejorative because it
means you are making unjustified assumptions. You are assuming human
like qualities of saying animal or something like that when
those aren't necessarily actually there. Yeah, and and even in

(55:03):
the arts too, you see this trend um Joe, and
I assume you encountered this as well. And like creative
writing courses and all um. I remember I had a
creative writing professor who who who talked about uh, student
writers anthropomorphizing like mad gods, which I have always stuck to.

(55:24):
I think I know what you mean, But do you
do you have like an example in mind, like um,
just in the way you describe everything, Like if you're
setting the scene where instead of saying, you know it
was it was a dark and stormy night, you might
just go overboard and say like the you know, like
the storm clouds were battering and assaulting the castle. Um,
clouds were angry. Yeah, the clouds were angry, etcetera. And

(55:47):
if you you know, it's one of those things where
I get it's like spices and something right, and certainly
you can overdo it and and uh, and I think
that's what my teacher was, it was criticizing in that case. Yeah,
I know what you mean. Now, I think it's especially
true of a lot of like younger writers who are
trying to find ways to write expressively. One of the
easiest ways to do that is to imbue non human

(56:10):
objects with human characteristics. That that's just like one of
the easiest places to go to if you're trying to
find a way to say something in a creative way, right,
But then, yeah, ultimately it ends up overbalanced. And that's
ultimately not how we interact with the world usually though,
as we'll get to I mean, anthropomorphism is something that
our brain easily does, so a case can also be

(56:34):
made that we we do live in a highly anthropomorphic world. Um.
In this paper, though, Habrman points to eighteenth century philosopher
David Hume, who argued that anthropomorphism was a cognitive strategy
for coping with insecurity about the world and that it
was an aspect of quote vulgar religion and ignorance. And
these attitudes also influenced Edward B. Tyler, who's regarded as

(56:58):
the founding father of anthropology, who also had a negative
view of the anthropomorphism of non living things. So for
a while, anthropomorphism was just looked down upon, almost as
a kind of insult to human personhood at times, like
you know, we're the only well we're the only persons,
you know. Don't don't turn everything else into a person

(57:18):
as well? It reduces what we have. But Habrmin points
out that the more we learn about, say, facial recognition,
and the human brain and its role and how we function,
that this casts a different light on anthropomorphism, especially the
sort of anthropomorphism on display in the prior examples. Here,
He charges, quote anthropomorphism creates an empathetic connection with non

(57:41):
human agents, So what's wrong with this if it benefits
the human involved? Right? Uh? And Haberman argues, you know
what's wrong with it if it benefits some targets of
anthropomorphism as well. Such as Mother Earth and environmental campaigns.
You know, the idea that well, you know, maybe somebody
doesn't care as much about about helping out the environment

(58:02):
if they're thinking about it is just place and setting.
And you know, this, this this unpersoned world we live in.
But if you start calling it mother nature, if you
start sort of dragging the you know, basically the rough
idea of the goddess into it, then uh, then it
makes people maybe care a little bit more because you're
not just hurting the planet, you're hurting a person. You're

(58:23):
hurting an individual. I can totally see that. But I
can also actually see the exact reverse, where you know,
you've probably heard people say things anthropomorphizing nature in a
way that's like, uh, we don't need to worry. You know,
mother Nature can take care of herself. You know, we
we don't need to. It doesn't matter what we do,
She'll take care of herself. Right. And then well, of

(58:44):
course also there are examples of people saying, oh, mother
Nature strikes back, you know, the wrath of mother Nature.
And I don't know, I guess you could you could
probably make a case for their situations like that, where
you start talking about things as just an act of
God as opposed as to an active environment or uh,
you know. A part of saying, um, you know climate change, etcetera,

(59:06):
you you can sort of take human responsibility out of
the scenario by saying, well, clearly the gods are at it. Again,
what can you do? So in closing Hyman Rights quote
with regard to the cases under consideration, the anthropomorphic adornment
of a name tree or govarden stone brings forth its
divine personality. It is always there, but the ornamentation makes

(59:29):
it more fully perceptible. The anthropomorphic appendages, then are key
to the development of a close relationship with divinity in
these forms, and as we have seen, intimate relation reality
is the very goal of the religion associated with Govardin
stones and certain trees. I conclude by hypothesizing, then that

(59:50):
the transformation of an iconic objects into anthropomorphic icons, what
Michael Actor calls anthropomorphic iconicity, most commonly occurs and in
increasing degrees in a religious cultural context wherein relationality is
highly valued. Now, obviously this is again it is a

(01:00:10):
particular case within a particular culture, and we do have
to be careful about drawing, you know, universal aspects of uh,
an iconism out of these examples. But I think this
is very interesting to consider, you know, the the idea,
this sort of interplay between um, the aniconic and the iconic,
and and even engaging with with concepts of deities by

(01:00:32):
utilizing both of these. Yeah, yeah, And I do wonder
that does raise a good question like, yeah, is um
would anthropomorphizing or iconic representations be more common uh in
religions or interpretations of religions that highly value the idea
of a personal relationship with the God or an intimacy

(01:00:53):
between the believer and the God. Yeah. So I think
this whole scenario does it raises a number of questions,
you know, like what happens when we give God a face?
What happens when we we work to prevent that face
from manifesting or we limit or prohibit the ways in
which that face is manifested? Is there a tendency to

(01:01:16):
give God a face anyway, even if you know, through
mental images, if visual images are prohibited, and so what's
and also what sort of things can happen when someone
else gives God a face? For you? Uh? You know,
I again that comes to mind when I think about
these various visual representations of Jesus that you see in
different modes of Christianity, Like what happens when someone says, hey,

(01:01:38):
here's your here's your big muscle Jesus. Uh. You know
that that may not be the version of of Jesus
that really resonates with you the most. It might be
a form that scares you a bet and it's is
you know that you get into a lot of these
complications with specific imagery like that. I think some of
the questions you just raised will really be illuminated by
some examples we look at in episode two. I was

(01:01:59):
gonna talk in this episode about the concept of divine emptiness,
but I think we need to call part one here
and we can come back to that in the next episode. Now,
in the meantime, you know, obviously there's more that we
want to unpack on this topic, but feel free to
go ahead and right in with with your thoughts. Um.
Sometimes those are those are really interesting emails where they
come in sort of halfway between a conversation. So sometimes

(01:02:21):
you bring up something that we're going to get to
in the next episode, um, but sometimes not. So you know,
it's it's always great to hear from our listeners. In
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(01:02:43):
Huge thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer Seth
Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch
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(01:03:06):
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