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)
