Escher and the Trinity

Thinking about perichoresis or about Gregory Nazianzen’s famous “No sooner do I conceive of the one than I am illumined by the splendour of the three; no sooner do I distinguish them than I am carried back to the one” always makes me think of Escher. I find now that I am not the only one. Citing a study by James Loder and Jim Neidhardt, Robert Letham points out how the doctrine of the Trinity points to the limits of logic, noting that “while logic is of value in everyday life or in ‘trivialities’ (as they call them), when we approach the boundaries of the universe, it breaks down.” Loder and Neidhardt “illustrate the point with Escher’s famous line drawings, including his Mobius Strip II ( Red Ants ) (woodcut, 1963) . . . . Escher’s work shows ants crawling along the surface of a two-sided Mobius band. As the eye follows the ants around the band, the two sides are disclosed to be only one side.” Voila ?Eperichoresis.