Re-spatializing: Space-walking the Stars, a Multitude of Horizons

Being as event strikes at a metaphysics which accounts for two primary aspects of the 'event' in postmodern discourse. On one hand, following Vattimo, it preserves the "weakness of Being," in the Heideggarian sense that Being is not a "stable, necessary, and objectively knowable foundation."⁶³ On the other hand, that the event of being is an event of the divine life (open in the way it has been described) means that being does possess a concrete knowable foundation, but it is not "known" through over-determinant "knowing" (stable, necessary, objectively) but it is known through be-ing as being-itself implicates its openness to the beyond (i.e. the unconditional, the impossible).⁶⁴ This is why on one hand the event qua event solicits us, invites us, provokes us, and calls us from beyond the horizon; but also why, as Badiou gestures towards this paradox "if there exists an event, its belonging to the situation of its site is undecidable from the standpoint of the situation of itself."⁶⁵ That we are at the site of the event of being is what conceals the nature of the event itself from us.⁶⁶ If 'God' is 'one of our names for the unconditional, for the event of the impossible,' it is because being is the first impossible made possible from which we cannot discern the event on account of our standpoint in the situation itself.⁶⁷ It echoes the call of the divine life as a result of the very nature of being-itself as open and given unto its own horizons that qualifies being as 'event.'⁶⁸

This is a potential trajectory which Trinitarian thought can take beginning with the words of the Apostle that if "we are children of God [then] heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ" (Rom. 8:17 NASB). As "the Son" is born, so are "we born"—so is being born from beyond it, given to it and oriented toward it, all "abiding in [itself] alone" (Pd. 33.124). Consider the import of Barths' reflection on the above verse: "Quite apart from any conceivable change in us, we are constituted by eternity and qualified by what is to us invisible."⁶⁹ Despite the kerygmatic divergence with Tillich, the phenomenological import is in fact quite similar: whether God has irrupted into space time, or is located in the ground of our being, our phenomenological experience is constituted by its orientation toward the horizon of being. Not only insofar as we are propelled to be beyond ourselves, but because we are also constituted by our very self which lays beyond the horizon. Being, and I as being, share with the divine life as being-itself in the open economy of existence.

A parallel question can be framed thusly: is the Trinity an icon of being, or is being an icon of the Trinity? Let us consider it from both sides. The Trinity is the icon that gives icon-ness as that which can only ever refer to that which is beyond itself. From beyond-being it is the icon of icons— the ontological basis for the iconic phenomena. The Trinity is the ontological ground ('being'-itself) from which, in which, and toward which the open economy of being is given. This is what Marion observes as the phenomenal significance of the Trinity:

In a word, the Trinity offers not only the content of the uncovering, but also its mode of manifestation. Or better: the mode of manifestation (the phenomenal wie) coincides exactly with that which manifests itself (the Sich-selbst-zeigende).⁷⁰

It is what the gaze of Dante can rest on with motion. "Being," Tillich writes, "comprises becoming and rest, becoming as an implication of dynamics and rest as an implication of form." In this way the individual occupies an open space. A space which is defined by situatedness within an open economy. I, like Eve, "lay" beyond the horizon, but find myself there too, "a Shape within the watry gleam" (329, 4.461). And by moving toward the horizon, I move also always toward my-self.

To use a literal icon to depict the Trinity qua the divine icon, we turn towards Andrei Rublev's magnum opus. The 15th century work draws on the story of the angels of Mamre and the hospitality of Abraham (Gen. 18) to depict in the three hypostases in Bonaventurian circumcessio. It is a challenge of the highest order to let ones eyes rest statically somewhere on the icon. And yet, let us set aside the persons depicted and consider only their gaze. The viewers eyes are drawn immediately to the eyes of the persons, all three of whom direct their gaze towards the others. The two on the right (presumably representing the Son and Spirit) gaze directly toward the leftmost angel (presumably the Father). The Son's gaze falls directly into the eyes of the Father, whose gaze gestures outward somewhere it seems beyond the Son the Spirit while being at the same time captivated between them. The depiction leaves the viewer's gaze in constant motion, attempting to land the Father's gaze on one or the other. The Spirit's gaze also rests on the Father, but—unlike the Son—since his head is postured in genuflection, his eyes fall somewhere below the gaze of the Father.

The result for the viewer is a gaze which rests in its movement. To gaze into one of the persons eyes is to be drawn toward the horizon the particular hypostasis, only to discover his gaze rests upon and is drawn toward the horizon of another, and so on. The viewer is drawn into the restless-restedness of the Trinity in open circumcessio. The gaze of each person rests upon the horizon of the other and is drawn toward it. As a result the viewer looks and is immediately drawn from one gaze towards another resting in a divine aesthetic of motion. The depiction of the iconic nature of the Trinitarian gaze thus multiplies the power of Rublev's icon by the very nature of its reflexivity. It reveals the potency of the icon as art by depicting the nature of divinity as iconic. Furthermore, it envelops the gaze of the viewer who becomes then too an icon of the divinity by the very nature of their gaze which now rests upon the Trinity, in motion among the persons in the icon.

As far as this investigation is concerned the result is—from this side of being it—the icons of icons. It is the icon which gestures toward the very iconic nature of the divine life itself, and in turn spatializes the viewer in the same dynamic openness of the Trinitarian gaze which it seeks to represent. It is as though the fourth spot at the table is opened toward us, standing with Abraham 'near them by a tree;' Abraham, who in open hospitality welcomed the three strangers (Gen. 8:1-8), is invited into the inner deliberative life of the persons themselves (Gen. 8:16-33).

This is the deeper insinuation of the Augustinian doxology "our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you." It is precisely restful because the restlessness of being can rest in the primal rested-in-motion by the nature of the orientation toward the other and so beyond the self. Opposed to the Ouroboros and Dante's Lucifer which attempt to rest by idolizing the primally restless being (the self) and therefore achieve stasis. The same can be said then of the horizon of being as it carries our gaze into the divine life—just like Dante, our eyes cannot rest until they rest on that which takes us (in Marion's words) "from the visible to the invisible by the grace of the visible itself." Just as a 'doxology' is rendered in the liturgy as an orienting praise from, in, and toward which the parishioners leaves a service, so does this doxology spatialize us in the divine life: it is the horizon of being from which, in which and toward which we discover our space.