Stephen Scheidell | How to Theologize with a Hammer

"The idol always moves, at least potentially, towards its own twilight, since already in its dawn the idol gathers
only a foreign brilliance." Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being.
In Chapter 1 of God Without Being, "The Idol and the Icon," Jean-Luc Marion argues that the
fundamental difference between the idol and the icon lies in the different ways each one is venerated: the idol
freezes the gaze of its beholder, the icon directs the gaze upwards. I will focus on illuminating the movement
from the status of idol to that of icon, and argue how this movement affects Scriptural interpretation.
Nevertheless, while I see the strength in distancing God from our concepts, one might ask whether Marion's
criteria for the conceptual icon require a problematic level of restrictions.
"The black sun of nihilism" traverses the sky, and as it shines down from high noon to expose the earth
beneath, the worshipper finally sees the idol as only a disguised mirror. The worshipper seems delivered, or
simply deprived, "of Ideas, of Idols and of their priests'" (17). The idol presents a mere low-water mark of the
divine that the human gaze first experienced: the First Visible; it dazzled his gaze, and the religious man, as an
artist, tries to bring the First Visible out in his material (14). However, once exposed, the idol allows for the
movement toward its twilight and toward the dawn of the icon. When the idol stands emptied of its borrowed
radiance, the gaze of the worshipper unfreezes to follow the radiance back to its origin. The idol thus takes on a
new function; hollowed and laid bare as mere reflection, it offers a new revelation, that of the foreign brilliance
itself, that "offers an abyss that the eyes of men never finish probing" (21). The idol loses its characteristic as
gatherer and collector of that brilliance, and now acts as the point of reference for the worshipper's gaze toward
the infinite depth, that which cannot be grasped by the human horizon the invisableI (21), which comes from
"elsewhere whose invisible strangeness saturates the visibility of the face with meaning" (21). Thus, the idol
passes through its twilight to allow the dawn of the icon. The icon shows, from itself, nothing; it teaches the
gaze that it cannot rest or settle in order to go back up the infinite stream of the invisible. In this sense, the icon
makes visible only by giving rise to an infinite gaze" (18); "the gaze no longer belongs here to the man who
aims so far as the First Visible," this gaze now belongs to the icon itself "opens in a face" (19). "The invisible
summons us, 'face to face, person to person' (1 Cor. 13:12)" (22). Contemplating the icon, therefore, exchanges
our gaze for the gaze that envisages us (21). The icon "could not but subvert the idol" (24). The idol is not
replaced or destroyed by the icon, because "certain beings can pass from the idol to the icon, or from the icon to
the idol, only changing thus in status when venerated" (8).
Our concern, however, lies not only in the structure that draws the aim of the worshipper. The
philosophical or theological concept constructed, not given captures what the mind first understood of the
divine; the worshipper comes to see that concept as a name, which he then attributes to God thus reducing the
I

Marion coins this word to differentiate the merely invisible and the aim of intention that cannot be understood within human
capacity.

excessive amplitude of such infinite depth to the meager measure of human capacity (16). Nevertheless, this
inappropriate reduction can leave the worshipper taken aback struck, stunned, and startled. He begins thinking
anew. With attention now drawn and aim gazing once more into the abyss, the worshipper abandons the
constructed name. The gaze, again unfrozen, aims at the invisable, which the intuition cannot contain and leaves
unnamed. All categories belittle it; all titles betray it. In fact, no single understanding fathoms the depth of the
Immeasurable. "Every pretension to absolute knowledge therefore belongs to the domain of the idol" (23). The
hermeneutic cycle rolls ever on; the worshipper gazes and pierces the icon to see the abyss and the invisable
gazing back, transforming the worshipper according to its own glory.
Any understanding of the divine, and thus Scriptural understanding, therefore finds itself simultaneously
liberated and problematized. All denominations and traditions boldly proclaim their understanding of God
complimented and critiqued by every other voice each at best capturing only a glimmer of the invisable glory.
None have a final authority; none freezes the gaze. As there will never be a "perfect" or final translation of a
text from one language into another, there will never stand a final interpretation only a hermeneutic circle
never stopping the gaze.
What, then, remains to serve as conceptual icon? Marion argues that the only fitting concept must at
once unite the visible and invisable, but differentiate the two (23). As the physical icon provides the visible to
the intuition, it nonetheless guides the gaze toward the infinite. What concept provides for the mind, but still
distances from it? Marion later in the book offers agape an infinite, unconditional, and self-giving love.
Yet, even this raises the possibility for idolatry. Cannot concepts of God exceed even agape? How neatly
would "The Lord is a warrior" (Exodus 15:3) fit into Marion's agape? While agape provides for us a strong
infinite presence, it cannot be established as the only one; other voices must still be permitted to humbly
proclaim.
Perhaps, one might be tempted to stray from speaking at all. This may actually be a very plausible, but
not exclusive, alternative. Rather than expressing knowledge of God conceptually, we might focus on
expressing the agape of God, but embodying the agape of God. "With face unveiled and revealed, serving as
optical mirror to reflect the glory of the Lord, we are transformed in and according to his icon" (2 Cor. 3:18).
We, as worshippers, move and act as icons embodying eternal agape. Here, the Infinite appears in time.