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After a day thinking about icons and iconography, Dr Mark Vernon looks for the links with the teaching of Plato.

Plato is not dead, I was once emphatically told. Go into any Greek Orthodox church. Icons are Platonism made manifest!

The face of Plato

We’ve seen many astonishing icons on day five of the pilgrimage, in the thriving Metéora monasteries and their churches. But why are they Platonic and should Christians care?

In his dialogue the Republic, Plato offers a series of analogies and myths that convey four levels at which human beings can perceive, make sense of, and know God and the cosmos. The most famous is the myth of the cave. It begins with the experience of prisoners strapped down at the back of the cave, only they don’t realise they are held because it’s the only reality they have ever known. They see flickering shadows on the wall in front of them and take them to be real.

It’s a metaphor for the first level at which we know things, the empirical level. This is the material level of seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling. There’s nothing wrong with it. When I took part in the icon retreat at Southwark cathedral last year, one of the loveliest pleasures was handling the egg tempera paints and colours. But if my attempts to write an icon had stopped there, I would have scarcely begun. So too, in general, if we treat the brute stuff of the physical world as the sum total of reality, life won’t take us very far.

In truth, no-one stops there. Human beings quite spontaneously interpret and analyse, gather and assess what their senses tell them. I don’t just see azure blue outside the window, I see the bright sky. Similarly, with the icon writing. After a day becoming familiar with the paint, we moved onto applying it on a board, and experimented with the imagery produced. When the skilled iconographer sits down to work, the elegant forms of Christ, Mary, angels and saints emerge. The materiality of paint and board are transformed into an object of belief and devotion.

It’s Plato’s second level of knowledge. In the myth of the cave, it corresponds to the moment a few brave prisoners loosen their bonds, peer into the gloom behind them, and see that the flickering shadows they had taken to be reality are the result of puppets dancing in front of a fire. There’s more to life than they first assumed. Plato called it the level of belief – living by the convictions we have about things that are fine insofar as they go, only they don’t go far enough either.

 There is a third level. Think again about the icon. What really matters is not the picture but what the picture conveys. The Greek “eikon” means image or likeness. So it’s the tangible manifestation of an intangible reality which the picture transmits or channels. Hence the sense of the numinous or transcendent when one enters an Orthodox church. The sacred space filled with icons becomes a thin place that opens your mind and imagination to a spiritual perception that is actually closer and more immediate than your physicality. The presence enters you like a breath. You step into an awareness of the aliveness of life at the level of soul.

St Paul uses the word “eikon” many times in much the same way, too. Just as we bear an earthy or visible eikon, he tells the Corinthians, so too we bear a heavenly or invisible eikon. In other words, our bodies are not only biological organisms but are breathing mirrors of our ensoulment. It’s why our character becomes etched into the lines of our face as we grow old, and why others know who we really are when they see into our eyes. 

Plato called this third level, flexible thinking. The seer now is one who is not held back by the literal or concrete but can work with, and live from, the metaphorical and symbolic. It’s closer to the truth.

In the myth of the cave, it corresponds to the next step that the escaping prisoners take as they realise they are in a cave. They see the mouth of the cave. It emits a uniform, illuminating light. They don’t yet see or understand the source of the warm glow, but they certainly now know that shadows and fire don’t explain much at all. They stay brave, inch their way towards the opening, and step out. To their astonishment and delight, they see the sun – or at least, they don’t see the sun but realise that there is a source of all light that gives life. They can’t quite look at the sun. It’s blinding.

It’s the fourth level of knowledge, the mystical. Plato calls it direct perception or true understanding. It’s ineffable, an awareness of reality that is known through and beyond all eikons, perceptions, or words. In the most common Orthodox icon, Christ Pantocrator, this most profound awareness is symbolised by three letters painted into Christ’s halo: ο, ω, ν. “ο ων” means “who is”. The letters are reminders of the Being of which Christ is the full manifestation; the image of the invisible God. To appreciate the icon at this level is to understand it fully.

It’s the goal of the Christian life. Such direct perception is to be united with the Being, with the divine. Union is possible because we can only understand what we can share in, participate with, or are akin to. We understand the material world because we are material as well. Similarly, we understand the immaterial world because we have an immaterial nature too. At the deepest level, the Platonists and indeed Paul risk saying that we can understand and know God insofar as we ourselves manifest the divine, which is to say that we have realised an awareness of the ground of our being and all beings.

It’s the mystery of the incarnation, which Plato’s fourfold schema unpacks too. First, there is the biological materiality of Jesus the man. Second, there is the historical actuality of his birth and death – the beliefs captured in creeds. Third, there is the theological meaning that is drawn out of these details, from the kenotic emptying Paul describes in his letter to the Philippians, to his notion that we too can become children of God or akin to the divine.

‘The Father gives birth …’

And fourth is the most basic reality of all. The incarnation reveals that in all eternity, the Father “gives birth” to the Son within God, as God. And so also God is born in creation within the human soul, alongside the cosmos as a whole. Hence, Paul writes of creation groaning with birth pangs. It’s the fullness of the icon. We see God. We see Christ. We see Jesus. And we see the awesome truth of ourselves.

Dr Mark Vernon

We are privileged that we will have travelling with us on our pilgrimage ‘In the steps of St Paul’, Dr Mark Vernon.  Mark is well known as a broadcaster, speaker and writer who has done a great deal in seeking to make philosophy accessible.  His books on philosophy, love and the good life have a great deal to contribute to contemporary spirituality.  During our journey Mark will be setting the Greek philosophical scene into which Paul travelled and which he encountered particularly in Athens.  Here he begins his reflections as he muses on the person in whose footsteps we will be travelling.

What would it have been like to meet Paul as he travelled around Greece? What might he have looked like? Would the encounter have been memorable? We can never know for sure, of course, but speculating is possible. And the hints and suggestions about his appearance and character are surprisingly revealing of the man we seek to follow on pilgrimage.

Luke makes several references to Paul that suggest the writer of Acts likened Paul to a Cynic philosopher. The Cynics were the shock-jocks of the ancient world. They felt that human problems arise from blindly following conventions: you can be free, said their founder Diogenes, if you live like a dog (hence their name, as “cynic” probably comes from the Greek for dog).

When you need a bed, curl up in the sun. When you need some food, nature will provide. Don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will have worries enough for itself. Actually, Jesus said that, of course – though Jesus too has been likened to the Cynics by some New Testament scholarship.

If it seems a bit farfetched to think that Luke used Cynic sources to imagine Paul, consider this portrait of the ideal philosopher, recorded by his near-contemporary, Epictetus.

The ideal philosopher is unmarried, and recommends the single life, so as not to distract from the “service of God”, Epictetus said. He follows his conscience rather than political or religious authority. He is kind-hearted to the extent of taking on the troubles and physical hardships of others. He can expect to be “beaten like an ass”, though he must love those who beat him. He is an “enslaved leader”, responsible only to God, not the masses. His friends and followers will be equally dedicated to his calling. He will be free, regarding God’s will as better than his own. He will be despised and praised, desired and derided, a slave unto death.

Remind you of anyone? This is the man, Paul, whom we follow.

If that speaks of an awkward yet compelling character, what of his actual looks? They too might have been unsettling yet alluring. The iconographic tradition suggests that Paul was thin in the face, had a dark beard, large eyes, a monobrow, bandy legs, and was strong but short of stature. In fact, the name “Paul” may be a pun on the Greek for “short”.

According to the scholar Abraham Malherbe, many of these features seem to pick up on another ancient Greek image, that of the hero, Heracles. So what might be the link between Paul and Heracles?

Well, there is a strong association between the hero and Paul’s hometown, Tarsus. It was an important place in Asia Minor: the Greek historian, Strabo, said it rivalled Alexandria and Athens in cultural significance. You might imagine that Paul, travelling through Greece, would have played up his links with Tarsus. They might impress, or at least get him a hearing. So too the link with Heracles might have stuck in the remembrance of his appearance.

But there is a deeper association with Heracles. In the myth, Heracles is remembered for his great labours. So too Paul, in Acts and in his own letters. And further, Heracles’ labours included visiting the underworld, which is to say that in some sense, Heracles was thought to have conquered death.

Here we get to the heart of Paul’s message as he travelled around Greece. His gospel is one of dying and rising, of being buried and reborn. New life, alongside the acceptance of struggle and suffering, is his driving agenda. Might this be the God-orientated man we seek to follow on pilgrimage? He’s not for the fainthearted, with his inner authority, tough kindness, arresting features, cultured background, and life-promising message. I, for one, yearn to know more.

Mark Vernon