An Interview with Jonathan Pageau (3)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal (Unpublished)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/02/28
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: That leads to a question about: What the highest possible is to you? In other words, what is God to you, in particular? I would like you to really that to your own art as well, of course icon carving.
Jonathan Pageau: Well, I think it’s the classical definition of God. I have no problem with it. I think I’m fine with the classical definition of God. I tend to like the version, like the definition that is in Orthodoxy, obviously, more because, let’s say, in the West that there’s a definition of God. Irt would be something like ‘God is being in itself’ or something like that; whereas, in Orthodoxy, it’s actually God is being and non-being together. God is infinite itself; the infinite not just in terms of space and time, but the categorical infinite – you could say. So, I think that would be like the highest form of God, but then in terms of the Christian revelation you could say that the Christian revelation is a way to express that, express what that could be like, “What is this infinite? What does it mean for being and non-being to coexist?” So, I always kind of joke around and tell people like it is perfectly fine to say that God does not exist in terms of being a Christian because God is not a being in the sense of a thing that exists in the world. That God does not exist. That God is beyond existence. God is beyond being and non-being; either being and non-being at the same time, you could say. And so, then the Christian revelation is to express that in a way, that is like a kind of aporia – let’s say, a kind of contradiction in terms, which points to the impossibility of the infinite. If you try to think about the infinite, your mind is going to start to play tricks on you pretty fast. So, idea of the Trinity has something to do with that. So, God is both; one and multiple at the same time on an equal status, let’s say. So, it’s an impossibility, obviously. You can’t have something that is both one without parts and multiple at the same time; because if it’s multiple that means it has parts, but if it’s multiple and one at the same time, it’s a contradiction term, obviously. But then, if you try to explore the problem of infinity, you’re going to end up with similar questions in terms of how can you go beyond being and you get the same problem. Even when scientists go, and go back and back and back and reach the Big Bang, they come to a point where they can’t see because you can’t see the origin of everything because it’s not the same. It’s not possible. If you’re trying to look for the origin of the entire universe, you’re going to run into a big problem because you can’t get the definition of a set inside the set. It just doesn’t work. It’s just not how it is. It always reaches beyond. So, that’s the problem of infinity. That’s the problem that is being revealed in the Christian tradition, which is this notion of a Trinity. Which is one and multiple at the same time and whose divine essence is beyond all category, beyond all thought, beyond all possible definition, and beyond being itself, but, at the same time, fills up the entire cosmos with being, and so, you can see how it is. It’s really a way to try to deal with the aporia, which comes in trying to find the origin of everything. And so, that’s what God is [Laughing].
Jacobsen: [Laughing]
Jacobsen: On the icon carvings that you have done, what one did you put the most, as they say, sweat, blood, and tears into in order to try to convey that form of message about faith, about the Eastern Orthodox faith?
Pageau: Well, I think it’s a carving I did of Christ pulling St. Peter out of the water. In that carving, it was a pretty big carving. It’s a 4×5 in wood. And I put a lot of work into it. I made the water extremely detailed. I was really excited to make that image because it condenses what I think about the possibilities of Christianity what I was telling you about before; this idea that Peter goes out to walk on water. And so, to walk on water, it would be hard to go into all this symbology of walking on water, but the idea of walking on water is the notion that water is this primordial chaos, right? Water is the lack of order. It’s the chaos of your own thoughts and desires and passions that kind of mull over in your mind, but it’s also the chaos of something before it finds an identity. So, Peter goes out to walk on water and then as he’s kind of doing that; he’s afraid and he freaks out and he stops to look towards Christ. He stops looking at his center, let’s say. He stops looking at the thing that binds his being together and binds all the disciples together and because of that he starts to sink and he sinks in the chaos and that’s what I was telling you about before in terms of that’s how I see what’s happening in society right now, which is this fragmentation such as in the Western world. It is this breaking apart of the capacity to be one. And so, there’s this falling into chaos, and then Christ catches him and kind of pulled him out of chaos. So, there’s actually some interesting play on symbolism in that story because the word Peter means stone, right? It means rock, so Christ is pulling this stone out of the water and, so he’s pulling dry land out of the water. He’s pulling – let’s say – the earth out of the water kind of like in all these primordial mists. You get this sense of, at first, it’s just chaotic water, and then somehow the dry land kind of comes out of the water and becomes the possibility to this. So, he’s pulling Peter out of the water to show how he’s able to bring order out of chaos, basically, to take something that’s falling apart. That’s fragmenting. That’s going into chaos, and to bring it into being one. And so, to me because it really represented how I see, this is the highest aspect of Christianity. I kind of really gave myself into that carving and if you look at it, if you find it on my website; you’ll see it’s quite detailed and there’s a lot of energy going into it.
Jacobsen: Do you have any final feelings or thoughts and conclusion based on the conversation today?
Pageau: I think I said enough, don’t you think? [Laughing]
Jacobsen: [Laughing].
Pageau: I think that one of the things that I would maybe encourage people to do is especially if this is going to go out to atheists, is really to not be limited in their understanding of Christianity by kind of American Evangelicalism. I think that that’s been one of the staples of the New Atheist movement is that a lot of them were kind of going after the creationism, is going after the kind of biblical literalist in the US, and that is actually a very small and recent aspect of the very profound mysticism of Christianity. So, I would kind of challenge and encourage atheists who want to take on Christianity to look at the mystics, to look at the deeper aspects of it, and to also to look not only at the text, but to understand or to look at how music and art and architecture and liturgy and all these things are like a giant social dance, which makes society possible. Which makes it possible for disparate individuals, people who are completely different and have their own whims and their own thoughts commune and come together into a whole and, maybe, look at it through that lens and think of it differently.
Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and the time, Jonathan.
Pageau: Alright.
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