Wednesday, November 23, 2022

Excerpts from Theodore Abū Qurra, A Treatise on the Veneration of The Holy Icons

The following excerpts come from:

 

A Treatise on the Veneration of The Holy Icons Written in Arabic by Theodore Abū Qurrah, Bishop of Harrān (C.755-C.803 A.D.) (trans. Sidney H. Griffith; Eastern Christian Texts in Translation [Louvain: Peeters, 1997)

 

You have asked us to compose a tract on this subject. In it we should return the reproach to those who reproach us for something in which there is no reproach. We should bring those who frightened away from prostration to the holy icons back to the practice of prostration in them. (Chapter 1, pp. 29-30)

 

A person who refrains from making the prostration to the icons because of its repulsiveness to the outsiders must disregard other mysteries of Christianity too, because of their loathsomeness to those same people. First of all, I shall being with amazement at those Christians in whose hearts the ridicule of strangers lodges, so that it turns them away from paying honor to the icons, and form making the prostration to them. (Chapter 2, pp. 30-31)

 

Maybe someone of those people will say, "How can we know that making the prostration to the icons grew up in the church at the commission of the apostles, since we cannot find a scripture to speak of it?" . . . Whoever will not accept from us the practice of making prostration to the icons of the saints . . . (Chapter 7, p. 42)

 

A sufficient consolation for any Christian who makes prostration to the holy icons is to know that in his practice of making prostration to them he is following the teachers. Enough for those dull-minded people, who out of shame avoid making the prostration, is their being at variance with them; it is what proves against them the disavowal of Christianity as a whole. And for us, this is really the standard by which we would bring back to the Christians altogether to the practice of making prostration to these icons. (Chapter 8, p. 48)

 

The definition of the act of prostration. One must make an act of prostration before the icons, and touch them in the prostration. God used to appear to the prophets only in representations. . . . no one should disallow the Christian to imagine Christ and his saints in their minds, and then to give them honor in their icons, just as the prophets used to show honor to the model in its icon evident in the eye. One should know that God appeared to the prophets only in representations not in the actuality of being. Listen to him telling Moses, "No man sees me and lives." (Exod 33:20) Listen to Isaiah saying, "I have seen the king, Sabbaoth, the Lord with my own eyes." (Isa 6:5) Again, listen to God saying in Hosea the prophet, "I have spoken with the prophets, I granted many visions by means of the prophets likenesses were made of me." (Hos 12:10 LXX) Accordingly, when Ezekiel made prostration to God sitting on the throne above the chariot in the likeness of a man, he was making prostration only to a likeness, as we said. But the likeness was an icon (Chapter 11, p. 56, 61)

 

Whoever makes prostration to a saint's icon rouses the saint to pray to God in his behalf. The saints are intermediaries between God and man; in both their life and their death they make him pleased with man. . . . great profit is at the disposal of the Christians, on the occasion of their making the act of prostration to the icons of the saints, since it is this action that puts them into contact with the saints. (Chapter 14, p. 67, 68-69)

 

The Christians who make icons of Christ and his saints in their churches, and who make prostration to their icons, are thereby likewise acting graciously toward Christ, and they deserve the best reward from him. Anyone of them who abandons this practice cuts himself out from what the others deserve. (Chapter 24, p. 93)

 

Further Reading:


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