Running around like crazy trying to get things sorted for a new academic year (I’m teaching full time now, by the way, so writing going to be even more stretched) – but wanted to flag up a piece in Prospect that caught my eye.

It’s a review of From Christ to Coke: How Image Becomes Icon by Martin Kemp, an art historian and world expert on the Mona Lisa.

The key question is this: what actually is an icon? There are ‘iconic’ brands and images, but are these genuine icons? As for images in general, Scruton writes:

Images lodge in the mind and remain there, influencing our thoughts and actions, governing our tastes and purchasing habits, and drawing on deep and hidden emotions for their power.

He goes through some of the many examples Kemp has in his book going-  as the title suggests – from the image of Christ through to the design of the Coke bottle, via various famous photographic images and works of art. But Scruton is critical of Kemp’s conclusion, which is that nothing really connects these images at all.

Instead, he offers this analysis:

Only what is consecrated can be desecrated, and although the Mona Lisa is not a liturgical object she is consecrated in our feelings. Her image resides in a higher realm, where our aspirations find their fulfilment. Even if the painting were destroyed, the image would remain in that realm, alongside the Venus of Botticelli and the David of Michelangelo, as a “point of intersection of the timeless with time.” Nothing like that is true, or could be true, of the Coke bottle.

In other words, an icon is something that is can be desecrated. Other things may be revered or much loved, and then smashed or abused, but desecration is a higher category of offence.

It’s something I’ll be mulling over for a while. Can a Coke bottle become an object that could be desecrated? If so, it would suggest something about our spiritual state. Indeed, one would have to think the deeper question: is consumer capitalism even capable of generating icons? And if it is, what does that say about the sorts of things we are venerating?

Whilst doing some sessions at St John’s College in Durham recently, the question of what community is was raised. There’s a whole lot of talk about ‘living in community’ and ‘faith communities’ and going out to plant ‘missional communities’ – but whilst a lot is written about what faith and mission may be, there seems to be a tacit understanding of community, and the word is often used without much thought – something I’ll admit I’m guilty of too.

Community is, at its most basic, people sharing something in common. This ‘life together’ might be geographical – sharing the same place – or tied to some other interest, like a local club or society. The strength of community is proportional to the importance of the thing held in common.

Christian community is, however, called to be something different. Where community draws people into commonality around a shared place or interest, Christianity draws people around…an absence. At the centre is an ascended, transformed, disappeared figure.

Let’s be clear about this: as Christians we do not gather around Christ. Though we may metaphorically talk about Christ being present with us, this is not physically true. Remember: it could have been. Jesus appeaered in flesh and blood after the resurrection, and shared life with his followers for a short period of time. There is no reason why this could not have continued, but it didn’t: Jesus left.

The Zizekian understanding of this – which I think fails to deal with the post-resurrection appearances properly – is that on the cross God really did die: we are left to take responsibility for our actions in the absence of a Big Other, and this draws us into community.

I’d want to modify that in the light of the resurrection: God has not died, but has chosen to be paradoxically present-absent, and thus chosen to leave us to gather around an absence. Why? Because it is only by gathering around absence that we begin to care for the other.

Communities that form around a present commons tend to work to protect and enclose that commons. This is the history of priestly religion: we gather in the holy temple because this is where our special common grail is. What is distinctive about Christian community is that it gathers around this paradoxically present absence. The resurrection thus entitles us to hope, to faith in the Big Other, but denies us the opportunity to collapse this into an enclosed religion that simply serves those on the inside. It is the absence – the divine ‘black hole’ as it were – that creates the gravity around which we gather, but with nothing at the centre we cannot enclose it, and are thus urged on by the present/absent spirit of Christ to serving those who are other.

To be honest, I think this is something that has been very rarely modelled as it is too challenging. It requires us to be the true atheists – to live as if there were no God – and thus to be the god that the other requires.

I’ve just finished reading Philip Pullman’s new book The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. As Barry Taylor notes, it’s likely to ruffle a few feathers. But I hope any feathers are from good birds who have actually read it. Seriously – don’t judge this book without reading it.

The back of the book (UK edition at least) makes it clear: This is a story. In fact, it is a story about how stories are created – and comes as part of a series of books from Canongate engaging with the idea of myth. It will give nothing away to outline the plot: Mary gives birth to twins, one called Jesus, the other called Christ. Christ is rather sickly and observant. Jesus is a live wire, but undergoes a profound conversion and begins his ministry, which Christ then documents – under the rather dodgy guidance of ‘The Stranger.’

To make it clear from the start, Pullman does not believe that this is historically what happened. It is an imagination, a way of reflecting on the story of Jesus in a new way. As one would expect from Pullman, the writing is very good. Structurally, it will be very familiar to those who know the gospels, though there are some surprising and refreshing combinations of events that work really well.

The main thrust of it is to be highly commended too. In one of the central scenes, Christ is trying to persuade Jesus that the Kingdom would be a wonderful and powerful thing:

‘I can see the whole world united in this Kingdom of the faithful – think of that! Groups of families worshipping together with a priest in every village and town, an association of local groups under the direction and guidance of a wise elder in the region, the regional leaders all answering to the authority of one supreme director… I can see the majesty and splendour of the great temples, the courts, the palaces devoted to the glory of God…’

Jesus is unimpressed:

‘You phantom’, he said, ‘you shadow of a man. What you describe sounds like the work of Satan. Do you think your mighty organisation would even recognise the Kingdom if it arrived? Fool! The Kingdom of God would come into these magnificent courts and palaces like a poor traveller with dust on his feet. The guards would spot him at once, ask for his papers, beat him throw him out into the street. “Be on your way,” they’d say. “You have no business here.”‘

It’s this desire for the church to be poor, and his anger at the wealth and power of the (especially Catholic) church that fires Pullman. And I share that passion. It reminds me of a joke whereby Peter and John are walking in the Vatican, and Peter turns to John and says, ‘well, we can’t say “silver and gold have we none” anymore can we?!’ To which Peter replies, ‘and nor can we say “take up your mat and walk.”‘

Pullman’s good thus stands as a challenge to the church. A challenge to return to poverty of spirit, humility of thought and openness to truth. In an excellent interview on BBC 5 Live, (download it here [Phillip Pullman on Jesus] ) Pullman is very thoughtful in his approach, and not the idiotic atheist that Dawkins can be. He refuses to ‘slag off’ thoughtful faith and wants, he says, people simply to read the Bible better, though this is perhaps where his book falls down on occasion. One incident in particular: he has Jesus preaching at the synagogue, saying:

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour…

What Pullman leaves out is “today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” And in one sense, it leaves you with a nagging feeling that you can’t have it both ways. If you want to tell a story about how stories are manipulated, you need to make sure you don’t manipulate too much yourself. In general, Pullman gets it right, and it’s well worth reading.

In the previous two posts I’ve been trying to explore some of the implications that the ‘new physics’ might have on our theology. It is worth emphasising that I strongly believe that the new physics must have an impact on our theology. If it, or indeed any new scientific discovery, does not then we are failing in our task as theologians. Which is why there may be an announcement forthcoming about a new venture some of us may be beginning in London to address this specifically: technology/meta/physics – we need to be working to co-evolve these disciplines.

In the previous post I shared some thoughts regarding dimensions, and the impossibility of creating an experiment in one dimensional universe to show the existence of a higher dimensional one. It is, however, possible to show what shaped universe we live in. Imagine a flat piece of paper, representing the space-time we exist in. We could fold that paper into a cylinder, and then (and this is lovely flexible paper!) connect the two ends of that cylinder together… to create a hollow donut shape, called a torus. Theoretically, two spaceships could be sent out on perpendicular paths and, if our universe was of this ‘shape’ they would not meet at any point other than the point of departure.

But, while it’s possible for us observing the animation above to consider the space outside of the torus, the space within which the torus exists, for those living within the dimensional space of the torus this is totally impossible. They cannot leave the dimensions they are in to become external observers.

Incarnation: Entering the Maze

This is fairly standard stuff, but it is the converse of this fact that I think is of interest to us theologically. Those within the torus cannot properly concieve of life outside of it, but nor can those in a higher dimension properly conceive what life is like within it.

Walking in the gardens of a large country house the other day I was struck by the parallels with solving a maze. To the external observer, looking from above, solving a maze may take time, but is essentially a trivial task: you just look for the route to the middle. But this big-picture perspective is totally unavailable to those who are in the maze on the ground. For them the only possible way to solve it is to engage with it and experience it, to walk it step by step. There can be no abstract solution.

This, I think, is a profound truth about the incarnation: it was necessary for God to enter our dimensional space, because the ‘abstract solution’ from above was insufficient. It was only by walking the maze himself that God in Christ could empathise fully with the human situation. Or, as Zizek has put it in The Monstrosity of Christ:

“Christ had to emerge to reveal God not only to humanity, but to God himself.”

Human experience, God learns, has no abstract solution. It must be lived to be understood. So the incarnation is not simply essential for us, but, strangely, essential for God too.

What this required, put in quantum terms, was the ‘collapse of the divine wave function’ into a specific space-time. And as to what the hell that means, I’ll try an explanation in the next post.