What is the meaning of to See through a glass darkly?

Answer 1

Paul talks in one of his lettters to the church in Corinth (1 Cor. 13, 12) of 'seeing through a glass darkly'. This basically means that whilst on this earth we can only have a poor glimpse of the Kingdom of God as if we are looking into a dark mirror (the 'glass') where the reflection is very poor - in other words, we do not get the complete picture of what the Kingdom of God is actually like. However, when we die and our souls are released, then, when we meet God face to face, we will know the Kingdom of God fully - 'Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.' says Paul just a few words later.

Also Paul was juxtaposing; making the comparison of seeing through a dim and cloudy glass to the common artist practice of "perspectus," (per-through + spect, spicere or specere-to look + tus suffix of the Latin verb-ars or skillful action as in rendering from 3-d to 2-d) viz., looking through a glass/window/transparent picture plane and tracing a clear image (portrait, buildingscape, etc.) via monocular sighting from its mimetic source. Paul knew this elementary form of picture making and representation, of tracing images on glass, was familiar to his listeners so he made the analogous but contrasting link of not seeing clearly, through say a smoke tinted window pane, to that of seeing perfectly the traced images produced by the artists of his time. Moreover, Leonardo da vinci spoke of the ancient practice of "perspectus" being utilized in Renaissance times when he said, "There are some who look at the things produced by nature through glass, or other surfaces or transparent veils. They trace outlines on the surface of the transparent medium…"

(The Science of Art, Optical Themes in Western Art from Brunelleschi to Seurat by Martin Kemp, p.163).

There were two veristic kinds of ancient optical projections manually traced: (1) shadow projections (silhouettes--skiagrams and perspectographs) and (2) light projections (picture projections). Light or picture projections came from camera obscura that Alhazen (965-1039 A.D.), says "was not invented" but ubiquitous in nature. Also, Euclid's (300 B.C.) book, Optics, presupposes the camera obscura which was imperative to prove his assertion that light images travels in straight lines. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica camera obscura was "ancestor of the photographic camera. The Latin name means "dark chamber," and the earliest versions, dating to antiquity, consisted of small darkened rooms with light admitted through a single tiny hole. The result was that an inverted image of the outside scene was cast on the opposite wall, which was usually whitened. For centuries the technique was used for viewing eclipses of the Sun without endangering the eyes and, by the 16th century, as an aid to drawing; the subject was posed outside and the image reflected on a piece of drawing paper for the artist to trace."

Answer 2

This phrase comes from The Bible, specifically from 1 Corinthians 13:12, where it describes having a limited or unclear understanding of something. It refers to not fully comprehending or grasping the truth, similar to trying to see an image through a dark or cloudy glass.