The Sign of Jonas

This article by Christos Yannaras offers an exegetical and symbolic meditation on the biblical narrative of Jonah, read as an archetype of the human condition before God. The approach is both literary and theological: Yannaras interprets Jonah's flight as a universal figure of human estrangement from God, whose insurmountable limits paradoxically reveal the divine presence. The central idea is that the "sign of Jonah," as mentioned in the Gospel, prefigures Christ's descent into hell on Holy Saturday: God follows man to the ultimate depths of his revolt in order to bring about the Resurrection there. The theological contribution lies in the articulation between anthropology and Christology: only a God "commensurate with the human abyss" can transform flight into encounter, a theme illustrated by the Byzantine iconographic tradition of the Anastasis.