Ikons or idols?
The meaning of ikons
One of the things that persuaded the Church to accept ikons was John 1:18: "No man has seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has revealed him." When God became incarnate in human form, when the Word became flesh, then men could see the incarnate God in the flesh, and Christ was the image of God. A picture of Christ, then, was a picture of the incarnate God.
Not only was Christ himself depicted in ikons, however, but so were the saints of the past. When Christians gathered to worship, the ikons of the saints helped to make them aware that we are "surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses" (Hebrews 12:1). The ikons therefore helped to make visible the invisible. They were also a reminder that the Church is a community not bounded by space and time. The ikons remind us that in Christ we have fellowship, communion, with Christians of other times and places.
This is perhaps seen most dramatically in the Paschal Vigil, where we celebrate the resurrection of Christ. Members of the congregation come forward to greet the priest with a kiss, and they also kiss the book of the gospels, the deacon, the ikon of the risen Christ, and one another. We greet the risen Christ and our fellow Christians, both those who are with us in the flesh, and those whose presence is seen through their ikons.
Dead saints?
At this point some Protestants raise another objection. They object to the idea that we should either ask the dead to pray for us, or that we should pray for them. They see this as interposing dead saints as mediators between ourselves and God. Most Orthodox Christians find this objection very difficult to understand. St Paul insists that death cannot separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:38-39). Those who raise this particular objection seem to be revelling in being the most pitiable of all men (I Corinthians 15:18-19), for did not our Lord Jesus Christ himself say that "he who lives and believes in me shall never die"? Orthodox Christians therefore usually find such objections incomprehensible, and think that those who make them are denying the fundamentals of the Christian faith, yet still claiming to be Christians.
Windows into heaven
When Christians gather for the Divine Liturgy, they gather at a place on earth,
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