Tuesday, December 14, 2021

The Great Council of Moscow (1667) and Leonid Ouspensky (1902–1987) on the "Ancient of Days" being the Son, not the Father, in Eastern Orthodoxy

The following comes from chapter 43 of the Great Council of Moscow (1667):

 

We decree that a skilled painter, who is also a good man (from the ranks of the clergy), be named monitor of the iconographers, their leader and supervisor. Let the ignorant not mock the ugly and badly painted holy icons of Christ, of His Mother, His saints. Let all vanity of pretended wisdom cease, which has allowed everyone habitually to paint the Lord Sabaoth in various representations according to his own fantasy, without an authentic reference . . . We decree that from now on the image of the Lord Sabaoth will no longer be painted according to senseless and unsuitable imaginings, or no one has ever seen the Lord Sabaoth (that is, God the Father) in the flesh. Only Christ was seen in the flesh, and in this way He is portrayed, that is, in the flesh, and not according to His divinity. Likewise, the most holy Mother of God and the other saints of God . . .

 

To pain on icons the Lord Sabaoth (that is, the Father) with a white beard, holding the only-begotten Son in his lap with a dove between them is altogether absurd and improper, for no one has ever seen the Father in His divinity. Indeed, the Father has no flesh, and it is not in the flesh that the Son was born of the Father before all ages. And if the Prophet David says, “from the womb, before the morning star, I have begotten you” [Ps 109/110:3], such generation is certainly not corporeal, but unutterable and unimaginable. For Christ himself says in the Holy Gospel, “No one knows the Father except the Son.” In chapter 40, Isaiah asks: “What likeness will you find for God or what form to resemble his?” Likewise, the holy Apostle Paul says in chapter 17 of Acts: “Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to believe that the Godhead is the same as gold, silver or stone shaped by human art and thought.” St. John of Damascus likewise says: “Who can make an imitation of God the invisible, the incorporeal, the indescribable, and unimaginable? To make an image of the Divinity is the height of folly and impiety” [On the Heavens, Bk IV, chapter 17, on the image]. St. Gregory Dialogos forbade it in a similar way. This is why the Lord Sabaoth, who is the Godhead, and the engendering before all ages of the only-begotten Son of the Father must only be perceived through our mind. By no means is it proper to paint such images: it is impossible. And the Holy Spirit is not, in His nature, a dove: He is by nature God. And no one has ever seen God, as the holy evangelist points out. Nonetheless, the Holy Spirit appeared in the form of a dove at the holy baptism of Christ in the Jordan; and this is why it is proper to represent the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, in this context only. Anywhere else, those who have good sense do not represent the Holy Spirit in the forms of a dove, for on Mount Tabor He appeared in the form of a cloud, and in another way elsewhere. Besides, Sabaoth is not the same of the Father only, but of the Holy Trinity. According to Dionysius the Areopagite, Sabaoth is translated from the Hebrew as “Lord of Hosts.” And the Lord of Hosts is the Trinity. And if the Prophet Daniel says that he has seen the Ancient of Days sitting on the throne of judgment, that is not taken to mean the father, but the Son at his Second Coming, who will judge all the nations with His fearsome judgment.

 

Likewise, on icons of the Holy Annunciation, they paint the Lord Sabaoth breathing from His mouth, and that breath reaches the womb of the Most Holy Mother of God. But who has seen this, or which passage from Holy Scripture bears witness to it? Where is this taken from? Such a practice and others like it are clearly adopted borrowed from people whose understanding is vain, or rather whose mind is deranged or absent. This is why we decree that henceforth such mistaken painting cease, for it comes from unsound knowledge. It is only in the Apocalypse of St John that the Father can be painted with white hair, for lack of any other possibility, because of the visions contained in it.

 

It is good and proper to place a cross, that is, the Crucifixion of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, above the Deesis in the holy churches in place of Lord Sabaoth, according to the norm preserved since ancient times in all the holy churches o the eastern countries in Kiev, and everywhere else except in the Muscovite State. This is a great mystery kept by the holy Church . . . (Acts of the Councils of Moscow of 1666-1667 [Moscow, 1983] as found in Leonid Ouspensky, Theology of the Icon, 2 vols. [trans. Anthony Gythiel; Crestwood, N.Y.: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1992], 2:371-72, emphasis in bold added)

 

As Ouspensky notes that,

 

if we consider the patristic commentaries on the Old Testament prophecies, as well as the liturgical texts, it becomes clear that to see visions of God the Father in such prophecies is flagrantly to contradict the manner in which the Church viewed them. The Church related such prophetic visions not to God the Father, but to the Son of God. All of them prefigure His Incarnation and have no other aim than its preparation, including Danie’s eschatological song (“I saw a dream at night”) which prefigures the Second Coming of Christ. John of Damascus has left us the most systematic account of the patristic view on theophanies and Old Testament visions:

 

And Adam saw God, and heard the sound of His feet as He walked in Paradise in the cool of the evening, and hid himself Gen 3:8). Jacob saw and struggled with God (Gen 38:24), for it is evident that God appeared to him as a man sitting upon a throne (Is 6:1). Danie saw the likeness of a man, and one like a son of man coming before the Ancient of Days (Dan 7:13). No one saw the divine nature, but the image and figure of what was yet to come. For the invisible Son and Word of God was to become truly man, that He might be united to our nature, and be seen on earth. (De imaginibus oratio III, ch. 26, PG 91(I):1345)

 

It is precisely in this sense that the Church explains the visions in the liturgical texts and celebrate the prophets in those of the Sunday of the Patriarchs, and especially in the Liturgy of the feast of the Presentation of the Lord in the Temple. . . . all the theophanies and prophetic visions of the Divinity are revelations of the future. They are understood by the Church in a christological context, and the name “Ancient of Days” is applied not to the father but precisely to Christ. There is not one liturgical text that ascribes the prophet visions or the title “Ancient of Days” to God the Father. (Ibid., 374-75, 376, emphasis in bold added)

 

Elsewhere, on the Council of Moscow’s interpretation of Rev 1:13-14 and applying it to the Father, Ouspensky noted that this represents

 

the confused thinking of this epoch . . . Indeed, to the injunction not to make an image of the Father is added: “It is only in the Apocalypse of St John that the Father can be painted with white hair, for lack of any other possibility, because of the visions contained in it.” Certainly, the Council had reason to view the representations from the Apocalypse as illustrations, since they were not cultic images. But since what was at stake was the possibility or impossibility of a representation, the Council’s own explanation became self-contradictory. On the one hand, it interpreted the vision of Daniel as a vision of Christ, Judge of the Second Coming. On the other, it applied to God the Father the attributes of the apocalyptic “Son of Man” (white hair and clothing), those of the Ancient of Days, and of Christ, the Judge of which the Apocalypse speaks. Moreover, the thought of the Council is expressed in such a general way that one no longer sees the difference between the two visions, which in the Apocalypse are clearly differentiated: the first vision, “one like unto the Son of Man” with white hair (1:13-14), and the second vision, “one who sat on the throne” (4:2-3), which has no anthropomorphic image. A commentator of the Book of Revelation explains this second vision as follows: “Since he [St John] presents the father in his second vision, he does not apply to Him any corporeal stamp, as he had done in his preceding vision, that of the Son. He compares Him to precious stones.” That is, he describes the One on the throne in a symbolic way (Commentary on the Apocalypse [Russian edition] [Moscow, 1889], 51, by Andrew, Archbishop of Caesarea [eleventh century]. Another commentator, Arethas, Archbishop of Caesarea, repeats the former [PG 106:568]).

The lack of distinction between these two visions introduces into the evaluation of the Council an uncertainty approaching a contradiction. Even I the interpretation of the second apocalyptic vision as that of God the Father is acceptable, nothing allows one to give Him an anthropomorphic image, that of an old man. Nonetheless, the incongruity in the thought of the Council does not in the least diminish the significance of its decision concerning the portrayal of the Godhead in a cultic image. (Ibid., 384-85)