Nowadays, mirrors are crafted too well to see God through them. At first glance, such a statement might seem peculiar, but it becomes less so after reading C.'s Mirrors of the Divine. In late antiquity, mirrors, distorting reflected images, could be seen, or literally looked at, as portals into the divine. The book, centred around this topic, raises a question in the context of late antique Christianity about vision (specifically, subjective vision, as emphasised throughout the book) and its mediation between an individual and the world, as well as mirrors and their mediation between an individual and God. Even though C. formulates the book's concerns in this neatly structured way, the book reveals a more complex and sophisticated interweaving of the four elements of the argument – vision, mirrors, the word and God – in the perceptions of late antique Christians. C. focuses on four authors and three thematic topoi within the ways in which they accounted for Christian vision: Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine, and their constructions of Christian identity, agency and epistemology as identifiable from their use of discourse, rhetoric and metaphor, respectively. These are, again, the terms C. employs to set reader expectations (which might sound overly schematic). The central conclusion that she derives from the analysis is that all four writers conceptualised the human body as ‘distinctly flawed’ and, precisely because of its flaws, enabling one to grow spiritually. Yet, I was not convinced that Augustine shared such enthusiasm about the body's flaws; C.'s presentation gives the impression of a more pessimistic theological anthropology. After providing an overview of the book's composition, I will, therefore, briefly discuss the ‘flaws’ in Augustine's perspective.
The introduction provides clear and informative insights into the book's approach and scope. It helpfully explains what is assumed under the three above-mentioned terms that might sound cryptic to readers outside academia – discourse, rhetoric and metaphor. This also, whether intentionally or not, locates the book within the field of late antique studies shaped by such intellectual shifts of the previous century as critical social and literary theory. Chapters 1–3 form the book's first part, dedicated to vision, contrasting with the second part (Chapters 4–6) on mirrors. Chapter 1, preceding the inquiry into vision in Tertullian and Clement, surveys how vision, and specifically its subjectivity, was addressed in antiquity and in the Bible. C. brilliantly explains, in a detailed yet accessible way, ancient scientific and philosophical perceptions of vision by dividing them into three groups, namely visual rays (or extramission), atomist (or intromission) and non-material theories. By the end of the chapter, one learns that the New Testament merges these earlier conceptualisations with those from the Hebrew Bible (though, it might have been more appropriate, in this case, to discuss the Greek Bible). Chapter 4 serves a similar function to Chapter 1: preceding the study of mirrors in Gregory and Augustine, it surveys the history of their use as well as scientific and ethical theories of their functions in the ancient world and then turns to their role in the Bible and in Plotinus’ writings. C. concludes that mirrors were never seen in those contexts as morally neutral, being connoted either positively or negatively.
Chapter 2 demonstrates how Tertullian accounted for the subjectivity of vision by employing visual ray and atomist theories that, on the surface, are irreconcilable as they envisage an active and passive viewer, respectively. The former theory is pertinent to how God sees, while the latter applies to human beings. Still, among humans, there is a further hierarchical difference detectable between females and males: in contrast to females’ more porous bodies, the impenetrability by gaze is akin to males, as signalled by their beards. Ironically, however, women can penetrate men's bodies with their particles that, according to the atomist Epicurean theory, pierce men's eyes. To safeguard the intactness of men's bodies, women must veil themselves (and a veiled virgin can gain the privilege of the closest vision of God). Chapter 3 tackles a similar problem of vision in Clement's writings; in particular, it centres on how he, merging the atomist and the Platonic theories of vision, compared baptism with cataract surgery. Within this analogy, baptism not only gives spiritual sight to an individual but also involves some risk during times of persecution. It also functions, as C. argues, as a sign of inclusion, even though one could observe more of exclusion here, as the unbaptised are deprived of the ability to see properly.
Chapter 5 focuses on one work by Gregory, namely In Canticum Canticorum. Before delving into the text, C. provides an excursus into Gregory's general concepts of spiritual senses and the vision of God. To present the vision of God as both transformative and synergistic, Gregory combined atomist and Stoic theories. Here, C. employs a term recurring throughout the chapter that, I believe, would hardly align with Gregory's understanding of God's simplicity: ‘divine particles’ received by human eyes. The chapter's main body consists of a careful analysis of the mirror metaphor in Cant., which could have benefited from occasional comparisons or, at least, references to Gregory's De Beatitudinibus, where the metaphor also occupies a prominent place. Chapter 6 primarily investigates Augustine's De Trinitate. Like the other authors, Augustine made use of more than one theory: in his case, the Platonic and the Stoic ones. In Augustine the concept of vision is interwoven with the entire Christian narrative of creation, the Fall, salvation and consummation, including his allegorical interpretations of Genesis 1–3. When it comes to mirrors, Augustine presents a sharply distinct picture in comparison to that of Gregory: while the latter used the mirror metaphor to point to the very means of seeing God, the former, instead, used it to refer to the ontological division between God and humans and as an illustration of how human vision is profoundly flawed by sin.
Chapter 7 serves as a synthesis of the preceding analysis, identifying common threads and differences in the four authors’ conceptualisation of vision. For instance, it insightfully compares their various stances on whether human transformation, in principle, could be evaluated positively. The chapter also traces several patterns from chronological and geographical perspectives. In the book's conclusion, there is again an emphasis on the significance of the body's flawedness for spiritual growth that was allegedly shared by all four authors. At this point, I would like to reiterate that I am not sure if Augustine fits into that formulation. C. makes it clear that, in Augustine, distorted human vision can get a glimpse, through an enigmatic mirror, into the divine only by virtue of being aided by grace. If it is true that, in this context, ‘Augustine focuses less on human effort and more on divine grace’, and, as C. continues, ‘[h]umans have the ability to deform themselves, but only God has the ability to reform them’ (pp. 175–6), I do not see much space for agency from the human side: the human being is sooner acted upon than acts. Accordingly, the exclusive source of human transformation and the vision of God is, for Augustine, God's grace, whereas the body's flawedness remains to be precisely a hindrance rather than a means. Thus, Augustine could be seen as shifting into anthropology noticeably less optimistic about human flaws (an anthropology I, myself, would not admire): it is grace from God, and nothing in human beings themselves, that gives hope to see God.
