My Big Fat Greek Baptism

Abstract

Pavel Florensky, in Iconostasis, his great theological work of 1922, describes the screen, covered in representations — icons — of Christ, the Holy Mother and the Saints, separating the nave from the sanctuary in an Orthodox church, as a boundary between the visible and invisible worlds. In the Orthodox Church, the altar — where, Florensky writes, ‘God is, the sphere where heavenly glory dwells’ (my emphasis) — is that which is hidden by the iconostasis. Were we, Florensky explains, ‘wholly spiritualized’, there would be ‘no iconostasis other than standing before God Himself’. That which cleaves, of course, both brings together and places apart; the wall of saints mediates two worlds, and as such is a window, ‘proclaiming the Mystery’ through the ‘cloud of witnesses’ to that which ‘is from the other side of mortal flesh’ (1996, p. 62). The iconostasis, then, does not so much hide as it mediates, enables, empowers.