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
