Stephen M. Hildebrand, in a volume on Basil of Caesarea, wrote the following about Eusebius, a contemporary of Basil:
The great fourth-century disciple of Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea,
spiritualized the resurrection of Christ. Constantine’s sister, Constantia, had
written to Eusebius asking for an image of Christ, and Eusebius’s response is
more an admonishment for asking rather than an answer.
You wrote to me regarding a certain icon of Christ and your wish for me
to send you such an icon: what did you have in mind, and of what kind should
this icon of Christ be, as you call it?… Which icon of Christ are you looking
for? The true, unchangeable image that by nature shows the likeness of Christ,
or rather the other image that he has taken on for our sake when he clothed
himself with the form of a servant (cf. Phil. 2:7)?… I cannot imagine you are
requesting an icon of his divine likeness. Christ himself has instructed you
that nobody knows the Father except the Son, and that nobody is worthy to know
the Son except the Father alone who has begotten him (cf. Matt. 11:27).
Thus, I presume, you desire the icon of his form as a servant, the form
of the humble flesh with which he clothed himself for our sake. Yet about this
we have learned that it is intermingled with the glory of God, that what is
mortal has been swallowed up.… The servant’s form has been transformed,
entirely and thoroughly, into ineffable and intangible light, the same light
that equals God the Word.… How could anybody presume to paint an icon of this
marvelous and unfathomable form, provided such divine and spiritual essence can
at all be called a “form.”
Thus the body of Christ was spiritualized out of existence, dissolved,
as it were, into his divinity. This communicates clearly that there is no value
in the flesh of Christ apart from that which it possessed as an instrument of
the Logos in his earthly sojourn. (Stephen M.
Hildebrand, Basil of Caesarea [Foundations of Theological Exegesis and
Christian Spirituality; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2014], 29–30)
In an endnote to
the above, the authenticity of Eusebius’ correspondence to Constantia is
questioned by Hildebrand:
Eusebius, Letter to Constantia, cited in Christoph Schönborn, God’s Human Face: The Christ-Icon,
trans. Lothar Krauth (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1994), 58–59. The authenticity
of this text is debated, and it is preserved only in the work of a much later
author, Nicephorus of Constantinople (d. 829), who wrote a treatise against
Eusebius in the course of the Iconoclast controversy. The critical text is in
H. Hennephof, Textus byzantinos ad
Iconomachiam pertinentes (Leiden: Brill, 1969), 42–44; and in PG 20,
1545–49. (Ibid., 174 n. 51)
For a case in favour of the authenticity of Eusebius’
denunciation of icon veneration, see:
Brian E. Daley on Eusebius' and Epiphanius' Opposition to the Veneration
of Images
