Navigating life with mirrors

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known (1 Cor 13:12).

This invites a comparison and contrast with Plato's famous allegory of the cave. In Plato, the observers are born in a cave, with their back to the opening. All they see are shifting shadows cast by a fire behind them, projected against the wall of the cave. They infer what the world is like from the shadowy images.

Plato's allegory is about epistemology, and the discrepancy between appearance and reality. In particular, the real timeless world of immutable ideas, abstract universals and archetypes compared to the fleeting, mutable, sensible world, which is a shifting, evanescent copy. Their perception of reality is distorted.

Paul uses a somewhat different metaphor to illustrate a different point. For Paul, this isn't about epistemology in general or sensory perception but about the mystery or inscrutability of providence and revelation. Through providence and revelation we have a representative sample of God's plan, as far as that goes, but not enough to be fully comprehensible from our sublunary perspective.

The point of contrast is not between seeing your face in a mirror and seeing your face directly. It isn't possible for humans to see their face directly. The point, rather, is the distinction between mediated and unmediated knowledge of other things. It's like trying to drive using wing mirrors and the rearview mirror to navigate. We perceive providence through partial reflections.

For Paul, the distinction goes back to Num 12:6-8. Most prophets experience God in dreams and visions but Moses encounters God face-to-face in the person of the theophanic Angel. Even that is mediated in the sense that God manifests himself to Moses by an angelophany.

In his poem "Lady of Shalott", Alfred Lord Tennyson has a character who was cursed to live in a tower where she can only safely see the outside world through a mirror. She finally succumbs to curious temptation and ventures outside to her death. Painters like John William Waterhouse, William Holman Hunt and Dante Rossetti illustrated the poem.

For Paul, the distinction isn't between time and timelessness, appearance and reality, or direct and indirect sensory perception, but between the present and future revelation, reflections that give way to a complete perspective.

For Paul, in addition, revelation is verbal as well as visual. Not just what we can piece together based on personal observation and experience, but divine clues–like a treasure hunt. Not enough to answer all our questions, but enough to guide us to the prize.