Andrei Rublev

So in the church, the readings are just as rich.

In the early 15th century, the Russian monk Andrei Rublev painted the most famous icon in Eastern Christianity based on Genesis chapter 18, where three visitors come to Abraham's tent in Mamre and he feeds them under the trees.

Rublev painted the three as angels seated around a table with a cup in the middle, and the Orthodox tradition has read that scene ever since as an image of the Holy Trinity.

Martin Luther spent the last decade of his life lecturing on Genesis in Wittenberg, finishing in November 1545, three months before he died, and when he got to the binding of Isaac, he confessed that he couldn't have watched the scene, let alone done what Abraham did.

But let's, I mean, if you want a poetic interpretation that would be more accurate, then go to, uh, not Bernard of Clairvaux, but Dante at the end of the Commedia, where he has the vision of the divine, and the vision of the divine is three intersecting circles, the Borrominian circles, if you like, or rainbows, as he, he actually puts it, and that figuratively becomes, is much more the kind of sense certainly that you get the opening of the Athanasian Creed that in fact this is about oneness and it is about unity.

I mean, the, the, the same thing could be said with Andrei Rublev when, you know, when he painted the Trinity.

Mm.

It's three persons.

There's a, a wonderful phrase in, in John the Venerable, um, a fourth-century, um, mystic, who talks about this being like a pearl that we take into ourselves, and the Trinity is a pearl that sheds light and illuminates us from within.

And it's very much this notion that our relationship with God is a fulfilling relationship, and it goes back to the problem that Graham was, was touching on.

Is this a set of philosophical notions that work in a hierarchical or quasi-hierarchical way, and you work your way through them, and they, they, they affect salvation on them, on you, or is this actually something that you are invited into? So the Rublev fantastic icon of the Trinity, which is the three angels that met Abraham and Sarah, as recorded in Genesis, they're seated round a table On which there is food.

And, uh, Russian i- uh, well, particularly Russian icons, but all Orthodox icons, there are no shadows because you are not looking at the picture.