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Is Veneration of Icons Idolatry?
Summary: Questions if the worship or veneration of icons or images by the Orthodox Church idolatry and therefore in violation of the Second Commandment. Examines the Theology of Icons from its historical perspectives beginning from the early Church till the modern day. This essay helps non-Orthodox believers to have a better understanding of the theology of icons.
That "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth. Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them" (Exodus 20:4-5 and Deuteronomy 5:9) might, at first glance, be seen as an absolute command or prohibition against worship of any kind of image (A. Fortescue, Veneration of Images, 1910, Volume VII). "For iconoclasts (image-breakers), every image could only be a portrait and a portrait of God was inconceivable in view of God's ineffable and unknowable qualities." Claim that icons were a sacred art was, iconoclasts argued, simply to clothe them in superstition and even heresy since they denied any presence of the person represented, the prototype, in his iconographic image. They could not see that the icon portrayed the visible of the invisible...
This section contains 3,401 words (approx. 12 pages at 300 words per page) |
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