. . . the horos
of the council, as it survives in the sixth session of the acta of the
Seventh Ecumenical Council, whose primary purpose was to refute it, is
concerned with an attack on images couched in the Christological discourse
introduced by John. After affirming its communion with the six earlier Ecumenical
Councils and their long list of anathemas, the horos of Hiereia
proclaims: "Having looked into these matters with great diligence and
deliberation under the inspiration of the all-holy Spirit, we have found also
that the unlawful art of painters [τήν άθέμιτον τών ζωγράφων τέχνην]
constitutes a blasphemy .... " (240C). Blasphemy and the issue of idolatry
are construed not ontologically-as in "an image is an idol"-but
epistemologically, as an inappropriate act of cultivation, a mistaking of
creation for the Creator. This leads to the "error of those who make and
those who pay respect" to icons (245D), an argument that has been connected
with the Peuseis, or Inquiries of Emperor Constantine V, which
themselves survive only in very fragmentary form within the refutation
conducted by the ninth-century Patriarch Nicephorus.
The argument of the horos of Hiereia then turns,
with some acuity and theological brilliance, to the icon of Christ (252A). That
is, it confronts both the Christological basis of John of Damascus's defense of
images and (implicitly) the specific icon of the Chalke Christ, which at least later
tradition identified with the first act of image breaking. Christ, the horos
tells us, is both man and God. Thus, in "describing created flesh,"
the painter has either "circumscribed the uncircumscribable character of
the God- head [συμπεριέγραψε ...
τό άπερίγραφον τής θεότητος]” or he has "confused that
unconfused union [συνέχεε τήν ασύγχυτον ενωσιν], falling into the iniquity of confusion." These
two errors-circumscription and confusion-are described as "blasphemous"
against the Godhead, again focusing not on the icon as an ontological problem,
an idol that is the site of a presence that is not God, but on the icon's
appropriateness as a means for approaching or knowing God. Interestingly, those
who venerate icons are guilty of the same error as those who make them. An imagined
iconophile riposte (256AB) that "It is the icon of the flesh alone that we
have seen and touched .... " is dismissed as equally heretical, since it
represents a splitting of the two natures of Christ (human and divine), which
is "impious and an invention of the Nestorian misfortune." One might
object that the iconoclasts have hardly offered the best theological case that
an iconophile could make for icons but certainly, it has the effect of opening
a theological double bind for the adherents of icons. Either they think
"that the divinity is circumscribable and confused with the flesh" (a
heresy and a blasphemy) or they think "that the body of Christ was without
divinity and divided," and hence they worship only the image of the flesh
(also a heresy and a blasphemy; 260AB).
Therefore, whatever an icon may be, it is a product of
heresy. The only true image is the Eucharist (261E–264C), for it alone has been
sanctified by a prayer in the Apostolic tradition. There is no consecrating
prayer for an icon (268C and 269D). The rejection of the icon of Christ then
allows the rejection of images of the Virgin and the prophets, apostles, and
martyrs (272B, 272D), but on the relatively weak grounds that since the icon of
Christ "has been abolished, there is no need for" the others (272D).
This position would in principle call for much more argument than we are given,
especially because all these other figures are "not of two natures, divine
and human" (272B, 272D). It is possible such argument was given in the
acts of the Council of Hiereia (which do not survive) and even in a segment of
the horos not preserved. But it is also of minimal importance. For all
sides agreed that the epistemological case for the image as acceptable
representation lay in the icon of Christ: Could it be a correct means for
access to the divine, or, by being a false means, was it effectively a barrier
to such access? That Christological case, although couched in the language
developed over centuries by the church to define the ontology of the Second
Person of the Trinity, which is to say the nature of the Incarnation and of the
process of salvation that depends on the Word becoming flesh in the Christian
dispensation, is now used epistemologically to determine whether God may be
approached through images. (Jaś Elsner, “Iconoclasm as Discourse: From
Antiquity to Byzantium,” The Art Bulletin 94, no. 3 [2012]: 379)
Further Reading:
The Charge of Nestorianism Against Iconodulia by Iconoclasts in the 8th Century
Answering
Fundamentalist Protestants and Roman Catholic/Eastern Orthodox on Images/Icons
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