Saturday, January 9, 2021

John Meyendorff on Icon Veneration in Byzantine Theology

I have written a lot about the veneration of icons/images dogma in Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy:


Answering Fundamentalist Protestants and Roman Catholic/Eastern Orthodox on Images/Icons


Commenting on the theology of icons in Byzantine theology, John Meyendorff noted that the earliest Christians condemned such, with it coming from “their pagan past”:

 

From their pagan past, Greek-speaking Christians had inherited a taste for religious imagery. When the early Church condemned such art as idolatrous, the tridimensional form practically disappeared, only to reappear in a new, Christian two-dimensional version. (John Meyendorff, Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes [London: Mowbrays, 1975], 42)

 

Further, he admits that, in Byzantine theology, icons are indeed given (albeit, a diminished) form of religious veneration, not simply the figure in heaven (the “heavenly prototype”) they represent:

 

The image, or icon, since it is distinct from the divine model, can be the object only of a relative veneration or honor, not worship which is reserved for God alone. (Ibid., 46)