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Orthodox Christian Iconography

© Stefan Crisbasan

The icon (gr. eikon, lat. imago - portret, representation) is a sacred image, in two dimensions, that represents Jesus Christ, the Mother of God or the saints possible to be painted because of the body that they had, to whom is given worship or veneration after the principle: the praise given to the icon passes on to the person represented. As pictorial representation, the icon can have its historic aspect, esthetic or archeological, but it is not just sacred art to the Church. Together with the Holy Scriptures and Holy Sacraments, the icon is a means to the divine. The icon is not an ornament, a picture or a figurative representation, but the visual communication of the divine invisible reality, manifested in time and space. This is why the visual contemplation, as well as the oral confession or the written message has the same value for the reception of the mystery of God revealed in the history of salvation. For Orthodox theology, the basis of the icon or the symbolic representation is the reality of the Incarnation of the Son of God: "And the word was made flesh." (John 1:14). The icon is a consequence of the Incarnation, because Jesus Christ is " the image of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15).

The attitude of the Church towards the veneration of the icons was defined with time. Origen and Tertullian were not in favor of icons, as well as Eusebius of Cesarea. Saint Basil compares the function of communication of the icon with that of the word: what the word is for hearing, the same function has the icon for vision. Saint John Chrysostome said that the icon is a guarantee of the real visible incarnation of God. He who has established the theology of the icon in its classical form was Saint John Damaschinos. For him, the icon is placed on the fact of the assumption of the human nature in the person of the Word.

Against the iconoclasm, the Seventh Ecumenical Council (Nicea, Bythinia, 787), with the contribution of the Patriarch Tarasius (784-806), established the Orthodox teaching about the representation of the icons, that can be summarized thusly:

- The icons are not venerated on the basis of matter, substantial (the icons are not venerated on an idolatrous way as 'gods'), but on the basis of resemblance of the image represented with the person of whose name must be indicated on the icon. Through the indication of the name of Jesus Christ or of the saint, the icon is sanctified. If the border or the number of the sacred persons is erased, the icon looses its symbolic and analogic value and therefore is burnt. The same is for the Cross that receives its holiness through its form. If its form or the wood is degraded, she is burnt. Thus any veneration given to the icons comes to the person depicted (the original), not the matter from which is made.

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