“Some people reprove us for honoring images of the Savior, of the Mother of God and other holy servants of Christ.”
St. John Damascene, On the Orthodox Faith, 4, 16 (PG94, 1168ff.); Discourses on Images, 2, 16ff. (PG94, 1301ff.)
These are the words of St. John of Damascus, writing in the 8th century, but he might as well have written them today. I don’t know about you, but my whole life I have encountered rebukes from others against our veneration of holy images in the Catholic Church. The struggle against iconoclasm continues.
Today
in the United States, we may hear these criticisms most often from some of our
Protestant brothers and sisters, who accuse us of idolatry when they see us
bowing down before the holy images. And criticism continues to come also from
our Muslim brothers and sisters just as it has for around fourteen hundred
years.
In
fact, iconoclasm among Christians may well have initially grown as a movement
at least partly in response to the influence of Islam. The truth is,
iconography has had a place in Christian worship from as soon as it became
feasible for us to make them. We have surviving examples of Christian imagery
from as early as the 2nd century. If we go to the catacombs
where the early Christians worshipped, there on the walls we find iconography.
The use of iconography among Christians was only criticized and
threatened after the rise of Islam.
St. John of Damascus lived and worked among Muslims his whole life. It is an interesting irony of history actually that this was the means by which he was able (without being killed, that is) to defy the iconoclasm that had become so prevalent among Christians. The Emperor Leo forbade the use of icons, but St. John was immune to the persecutions of the iconoclasts because he lived under Muslim rule. That’s right, here is a Christian saint being protected… from Christians… by Muslims.
Yet
St. John was surely intimately familiar with the criticism leveled against our
veneration of the holy images. Of these critics he says,
But let them think for a moment. In the beginning God created humanity in his own image. Why ever should we have such respect for one another, if not because we are made in the image of God? In Basil’s words, ‘the honor paid to the image is in reality paid to its prototype,’ that is to say, to what the image represents. Thus, the Jewish people revered the Tabernacle because that, much more than the rest of creation, was an image of God. The making and the veneration of images are not a novelty. They are based on a very ancient tradition. God made the first human being as an image of himself.
Note
this: God himself is the first and best iconographer – the first image-maker.
He makes us in his image. Each of us are icons of God made by God. How can that
not be worthy of veneration?
St.
John continues: “Abraham, Moses, Isaiah and all the prophets saw God, not in
his true being, but in his image.”
God
reveals and gives himself to us through image as much as through word. As an
artist, this is especially important to me. God joins himself to us through all
of our faculties and encounters the whole human person. He does not limit
himself to our verbal headspace, or to propositions and ideas.
Yet, to the diminishment of the power of the image, sometimes people insist that icons are not “painted” so much as “written.” And they will point to the etymology of the Greek word, “iconography.” Εἰκών means “image” and γραφή means “writing”. “Calligraphy” is “beautiful writing” and “iconography” is “image writing.” So the claim goes. And I’m sure the intention of this is good – it’s thought by some that saying that icons are “written” gives them a more spiritual or theological sense – but there are two problems with this.
Firstly,
it’s really just a bad translation. You see, iconography could be used in Greek
to speak of depiction with images in general. It could be said of the Mona Lisa
or any street sign as must as of our icons of the Lord and his saints. Icons
are painted (or assembled in the case of mosaics).
Secondly,
and more importantly, this is really a kind of subtle iconoclasm, if you ask
me. What they’re claiming is that “writing” is more spiritual or theological
than “painting,” which suggests that words are more spiritual
or theological than images. And the whole point of what we
celebrating on the Sunday of Orthodoxy – the veneration of the holy images – is
that this is very much not true. God reveals himself through
image just as much as through word. Image is just as spiritual and theological
as is word. This is the iconodulia we celebrate.
The whole human
experience – and not just part of it – is divinized by God becoming the man
Jesus Christ. And even before this, as St. John observes, the prophets were
seeing the image of God as well as hearing his voice.
We
remember these holy prophets, as well as the holy icons, on the first Sunday of
the Great Fast, which is called the Sunday of Orthodoxy because we celebrate
the restoration of the holy icons after the triumph of orthodoxy over
iconoclasm. But even before that, this Sunday was set aside in memory of the
holy prophets. That is why our readings on this day make mention of the
prophets. Philip says to Nathanael of Jesus, “We have found him of whom Moses
in the law and also the prophets wrote” (John 1:45). I daresay our lectionary
is older that the Sunday of Orthodoxy. But God is with us in the Church, and so
I also daresay that the bringing together of the prophets and the icons is no
meaningless thing. St. John of Damascus is showing us a way that these two
commemorations are related. The prophets, you see, were the first to see God
in images, as well as to hear his word. They were the first iconodules, the
first to venerate icons.
For
example, St. John points out that “the burning bush was an image of the Mother
of God.”
You
see, the bush burned but was not consumed and the Theotokos conceived and bore
God, yet remained a virgin.
“When Moses wanted to approach [the burning bush], God said to him: ‘Put off your shoes from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’ [Exod. 3:5] If the ground on which Moses saw the image of the Mother of God was holy, how much more holy will the image itself be!”
The
holy images are worthy of great veneration. They are a means through which we
can experience God, by his grace.
Moses we also call the God-seer, for he saw the back of the Lord when his glory had passed by him (Ex 33:18-23). The fact that the Lord would not let Moses see his “face” but only his “back” is a metaphor for the reality that the prophets could not “see God in his true being,” as St. John writes, “but in his image.” The image becomes the way for us to venerate God without being destroyed by the power of his glory. “No one may see the face of God and live” (Ex 33:20). The honor we pay to the image passes to what the image represents, as says St. Basil, to God himself. Therefore, the image is a necessary part of our worship.
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