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)
