Iconoclasm and the Veneration of Icons; Decorative Painting of Byzantine Churches (pp.135-158)
The Mandylion, also known as the Image Not-Made-By-Hands, is an icon of the face of Christ and His image represents the defense of venerating icons in the Church. It shows us that justice and beauty always overcome violence and death. In 721 AD, Arab Caliph Yazid prohibited icons in his territory. Also, Emperor Leo III the Isaurian from Syria promoted this “mentality” against holy images in worship. The violent forces within and outside of the Church were opposed specifically to representing Christ Jesus and the Holy. So, the incarnation and resurrection of Christ became strongly involved in the debates about iconography’s place in worship.
Metropolitan Hilarion calls iconoclasm the “first reform movement” in the history of Christianity. Critics and iconoclasts seem to have feared that an “exact” image of Christ will replace Christ Himself as an idol and the wood itself become a god. Icons do not aim to be exact but follow canonical measures that allow artists to portray Christ in terms of beauty, theology and how that symbolic meaning can bring us closer to the Holy Trinity. Other critics may have feared that Greco-Roman arts were too pagan in flavor. If we deny that physical objects can become holy, then how we can become holy is in doubt, and we are close to protesting the incarnation of Christ. If we deny that Christ can be depicted in a holy and canonical way as a human like us, we come close to rejecting Christ’s divinity in his flesh. What replaces Christ, whenever his holy icon is removed, is man’s nature, the type, separated from its prototype, Christ Himself. Nature itself becomes the icon instead with art that depicts “shoots of plants and swarming cranes, ravens and pelicans.” It is a picture of the natural world and man without a God in the middle of it all and who is one of us in form. The Dome of Rock at Jerusalem and the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus have such naturalistic beauty without the Risen Christ proceeding in hierarchical order and in relationship with all creatures and the cosmos, as we often see in Byzantine mosaics, frescoes, and icons. Orthodoxy presents us with an integral worldview.
The Arian view that Christ’s resurrected flesh “becomes a casual detail” or the Muslim and Protestant view that Christ’s depiction and veneration is idolatry fails to understand the incarnation and the Eucharist. The consequence of these ideas leaves humanity and Christ separated from each other without a relationship to God the Father and the Holy Spirit, and so the flesh never has a chance to become deified through Christ’s flesh, the Eucharistic communion we share together. By protesting icons, Christ’s body only becomes an “instrument.” By refusing that divinity can dwell in a body, Christ only becomes a great prophet or teacher. Iconoclasts much like the Bolsheviks and certain militant, Protestant reformers revolted against the processional hierarchy that brings us into a relationship with the Holy Trinity. The misguided zeal of rulers, philosophical reasoning, and false prophecies have had a part in fighting against icons. But Christians of the 4th c. did not share this Arian teaching, even though the veneration of icons had not yet formulated rules for artists and for what symbols could be used for Christian doctrines, Eusebius of Caesarea explains. A canonization of icons, then, occurred in the 6th c., perhaps in a similar way that writings and scripture were later codified within the Church as well. Exodus 20:4-5 is often used to prove that icons are prohibited by Christian doctrine. But that passage would also prohibit the natural decorative arts often found in the Abrahamic faiths that include birds, fish, plants, animals, vines, all things of the earth. The “image of the invisible God” was made flesh so that what remains invisible can become visible, which mediates for us to access the Holy Trinity (Colossians 1:15) The end of iconoclasm only smashes one image and replaces it with another one. The revolt only substitutes one hierarchy for another. It only establishes one kind of veneration for another kind. To idolize anything is to see something besides God in what is represented to us, not to see the symbolic reality in holy images, but bare materiality, a lack of Christ in creation. Materialism, rationalism, scientism, fanaticism then can fill in the spaces emptied of holy icons. But Christ’s incarnation has transformed everything so that physical fountains of life can pour out for us. The incarnation is our deification.
St. John of Damascus distinguishes two kinds of reverent honor in Orthodox worship. Latreia (adoratio, Latin) is an inner attitude that only offers worship to the Holy Trinity, not any creature. Honor or doulia (veneratio, Latin) is a term that designates the inner disposition of honoring someone higher than oneself, such as a parent, elder, pastor or ruler. Honor is a principle within the hierarchy of nature and in the divine realm as well. Making a metania or pyrokinesis (to prostrate, bow and kiss), making the sign of the cross and bowing down to the ground, is a common gesture of latria-worship and doulia-veneration in Orthodox temples. That the outward form may not differ very much from these distinctions in terms was not discussed by Metropolitan Hilarion. St. John of Damascus’s treatises formed in the 8th c. the standard view of iconodules (icon-venerators). He also has good definition of an icon, “an image is a likeness of the archetype.” He explains that the connection between the image and the archetype (a prototype or first image) is the name that they share. But the two images are different in essence or in other ways not the same. So, the image carries the name of the archetype, and that name also brings “divine grace to material objects.” Stuff doesn’t have grace in themselves, but only in connection to the name of the archetype. For example, the name of the saint sanctifies the image of the saint painted on wood because they share the same name, though they are different. In a way, this also mirrors Christ’s incarnation and our relationship to the Holy Trinity in our likeness. Iconography, then, opposes the camp of nominalist philosophy that rejects the inherent connection between name and image or objects.
Richard M. Weaver describes the philosopher of the Middle Ages. He says “the philosophic doctor” was someone who centered himself on humble wisdom and who had mastered all things; this philosopher stood at the center of things, not a striving backward in time nor by striving forward into the future; the wise are not bound by constraints of history. Icons show us that Christ has returned humanity and all things back to eternal “center.” The sections on Decorative Painting of Byzantine Churches (pp.148-158), Byzantine Mosaics and Frescoes of the 9th – 14th c. (pp.159-172), and Book Miniatures (pp.179-184) show us how physical nature works with divine nature, since the image bears the name of first image (archetype). What is often central in these iconographical scenes is Christ Ascended and Resurrected, the Communion of the Apostles with Christ sitting at the center, and Christ with the Most Holy Mother of God. Byzantine culture had found its “center” of all things in Christ Jesus, and in His Holy Name and Image. Icons fought for the doctrines of our salvation so that the Holy Trinity becomes the foundation and driving principal of our lives. Icons fight for the incarnation of Christ, His resurrection, His ascension, and our deification along with the whole cosmos. Icons teach us that we are only saved when we find the center of all in Christ and in our neighbor.