Icons: Objects for Veneration or Mere Decoration?

Recently I have come across an anti-Orthodox polemic which rejects our veneration of icons on the grounds that venerating an image painted on a board of Christ, His Mother, or His saints is contrary to the practice of the apostles and of the earliest Church.  The objection is stated with some sophistication, and is not the usual fundamentalist reference to the Mosaic Law’s proscription of carved statues used in worship (e.g. Exodus 20:4f).  This more sophisticated objection acknowledges that there were indeed images of Christ, His Mother, and His saints used in the early Church such as can be found in the funerary art of the catacombs and on the walls of churches (such as that of Dura Europos).  But, it points out, there is no evidence that these images functioned as anything more than mere decoration.  That is, the people did not come up to the wall to kiss the wall art or venerate the images. 

This wall decoration, they aver, is quite different from the later practice of painting an image on a board for the specific purpose of veneration.  And it is this later practice that they object to, asserting that the apostles never venerated images painted on boards, nor did the Church of the earliest centuries.  What are we to say about this?  Two things.

First of all, we should examine more closely the unstated presupposition that the apostles bequeathed to the Church not only their faith and theological doctrine, but also set the detailed and timeless pattern for how worship should proceed in the churches ever after—in other words, their unstated assertion that the apostles left us a detailed pattern and programme of worship so that we should today worship exactly as they did way back then.

This view is not often openly stated, even though it is often (as in the objection to icons) assumed—mostly because absolutely no one worships today in exactly the same way as the apostles did, and making the assertion boldly and plainly would reveal it as the nonsense it is.

For one thing, today we have the New Testament with its edited collection of Gospels, Epistles, history, and apocalypse—a collection which took shape slowly over the course of many post-apostolic decades.  Today we have no living apostles travelling about to whom appeal can be made in moments of uncertainty and crisis.  Today we take up a weekly collection of money at our church services.  Today we (almost always) meet in buildings specifically constructed for Christian worship.  Today we have bound into one volume (or “codex”, to give its earlier name) the entire sacred library of Old and New Testament books, formerly available only through a number of different scrolls—a single volume called “the Bible” (note the singular) easily available to all.  Today we have Bible schools or seminaries to train our leaders and clergy.  Today we have Sunday School for our children.  Today we have Creeds and denominational statements of faith.   Today…well, you get the idea. 

All Christians today, including those who object to venerating icons, worship in a way very different than the way the Church of the first century did—and that is inevitable and correct.  We are no longer living in the first century, and are heir to a number of historical developments.  It was because the Church could not remain happily frozen in the first century but had to navigate a complicated journey through history that Christ promised that His Spirit would be with them to guide them.  If the historical journey the Church was called to make did not contain choices of things that were unprecedented, such guidance would not have been necessary.  But the journey through history does involve choice and change, and so the guidance of the Spirit is indeed necessary.

In other words, the equation of “what the apostles did in the first century” with “what we must do ever afterward” is false.  Fidelity to the apostles involves maintaining the faith and truths they taught and the basic parameters of sacramental worship.  It does not involve pretending that no historical development is allowed.

The second thing involves the nature of veneration.  The objectors of which I speak are not so blockheaded as to regard any kind of veneration as idolatrous worship.  They admit that veneration or honour (Greek doulia) is different in kind from adoration (Greek latreia), and that Orthodox give adoration/ latreia to God alone, and not to the saints or the objects that they venerate.  But they still point out that such honour and veneration is wrong because it is unprecedented in Church history. 

Painting an image on a board, they say, brings the saint or person depicted into focus in a way that begins to impinge on the honour due to God.  It widens our devotional focus in a way that, if not actually idolatrous, certainly skates too closely to it to be allowed.  Images on walls are one thing; coming face to face with an image or a saint is something different entirely.

Here it might be helpful to look at what the Seventh Ecumenical Council actually said about such veneration.  Part of the text explained that the veneration of icons was exactly analogous to the veneration previously offered (without iconoclastic objection) to “the image of the precious and life-giving Cross, the holy Gospel, and other sacred objects which we honour with incense and candles according to the pious custom of our forefathers”.

Admittedly the apostles did not use crosses or Gospel books.  In the first century the apostles did not make a cross of metal or wood as a sign of their Christian faith, and they did not have all the Gospel books written down in a single volume.  In the case of the Gospels, they couldn’t have done so even if they wished, because the four Gospels had not yet all been written.  But after they were written (towards the end of the first century), the sub-apostolic Church did not instantly collect them and bind them into a single sacred volume.  That came later, as did fashioning a cross as a devotional object.

The question is:  why did they later do this?  Presumably the modern iconoclasts would have no objection to kissing a Gospel book or a Cross.  If they did object, I would ask them why.  If a Jew may kiss the Torah scroll after reading it, why should not a Christian kiss the Gospel book?  But again:  the question of origin must be addressed.  Why did the Church eventually come to fashion a Cross as a devotional object and bind the four Gospels into a jewel-encrusted Book to be censed, attended with candles, and kissed?  The answer:  because of love.

That is, the Church’s love for her Lord led her to fashion a Cross and bind a Gospel so that the faithful could more concretely show their love to Him by kissing His Cross and kissing His Word.  It was this same impulse that also led the Church to paint on a board His picture and the pictures of His Mother and His saints.  All these things—the Cross, the Gospel, the icon-board—allowed the faithful to put their love into action.  Devotion demands to be expressed (which is why the Jew kisses his Torah scroll), and it is through these things that our internal devotion becomes external and real.  We are physical beings as well as spiritual beings, and the internal love of the heart always seeks to overflow into physical demonstration.

The later practice of painting images on boards so that they can be venerated, though not done in the first century, was inevitable result of the Church wanting to fully honour the Lord and His saints.  The practice is rooted in the apostolic devotion to Christ, His Mother, and His earthly family.  It is through later iconography that this seed later was brought to full flower.  That is why we Orthodox kiss icons—and why you should too.