[In the introduction that follows, written in 1979, Anderson argues that On the Divine Images, in which St. John of Damascus defended the veneration of images, retains its significance even today, especially with regard to tensions within present-day Christianity.]

The iconoclastic controversy begun in the eighth century by the Byzantine emperor Leo III (717-741) and continued by his successor Constantine V (741-775) cannot be considered in isolation from the Christological controversies of the preceding centuries.¹ Just as earlier ecumenical councils had insisted that the incarnation of Jesus Christ united the second person of the Holy Trinity with human nature, thus making salvation possible by breaking down the wall of separation between God and man, so also the seventh council (787) upheld the doctrine of the veneration of images as an inevitable result of the incarnation. To say that God the Word assumed a human body and soul (and for Him to do so was the only means by which the reign of death and sin in the universe might be destroyed) is to say that the infinite consented to become circumscribed. Therefore, the material flesh of Jesus Christ became part of His divine person, the invisible was made visible, and henceforth it is a good and praiseworthy thing to depict Him as He is: God become man; God become matter. The three treatises of St. John of Damascus all are intended to defend the use and veneration of images as an extension of this most essential of Christian teachings.

St. John of Damascus lived in political isolation from Constantinople. Writing during the reign of Leo III from his monastery of St. Sabbas in a Palestine ruled by the Moslem caliph, he was unhindered by the persecution raging within the Empire against those who defended the images. His treatises provide the Orthodox response to the iconoclastic theologians, who based their opposition to the images on the severe condemnation of idolatry in the Old Testament, as well as an understanding of images as being always one in essence with their prototypes. Such an understanding makes every image pretend to be God; therefore every image is an idol. Furthermore, and most important, the iconoclasts seemed to be little concerned with the historical Jesus whom the apostles had seen and touched both before and after His resurrection; instead, they spoke of a divinity whose assumed humanity was in fact devoid of all uniquely human characteristics. In this way the iconoclasts dangerously approached the heresy of Eutyches, who spoke of the humanity of Christ as a mere drop in the ocean of His divinity, or of Origen, who taught that Christians ought to contemplate God in the purity of their hearts and not use images from a past that is now over.² John of Damascus, Nicephorus of Constantinople, Theodore the Studite, and the rest of the defenders of the images saw in these arguments an incomplete understanding of the incarnation, for by becoming a man, God had entered history, and would remain part of history until the end of time, and fully human beyond the end of time.

The crucial argument in the treatises is St. John's continual insistence that in the incarnation a decisive and eternal change took place in the relationship between God and material creation. He says in the first oration, "In former times, God, being without form or body, could in no way be represented. But today, since God has appeared in the flesh and lived among men, I can represent what is visible in God. I do not worship matter, but I worship the creator of matter who became matter for my sake …; and who, through matter accomplished my salvation. Never will I cease to honor the matter which brought about my salvation!" He accuses those who insist that the Old Testament condemnations of idolatry include all images of quoting Scripture out of context, and then cites passage after passage showing how the same God who forbade the making of idols commanded the use of material objects and images in divine worship and whose temple was adorned with the likenesses of plants and animals which were not worshipped as idols. Each treatise concludes with an extensive selection of patristic passages and historical evidence showing how the use of images had existed in the tradition of the Church for centuries. It is also from Scripture that the treatises derive the indispensable distinction between absolute worship, or adoration … and relative worship, or veneration …, literally, bowing down before), for the Bible records a great number of incidents where the patriarchs and prophets worship, venerate, and bow before people or places or things to whom such honor is due, but never with the adoration which is given to God alone. He demonstrates that it is wrong to identify every image with its prototype, as the iconoclasts did; rather, the only case when this is so is the Son's relation to the Father as the natural image of the Father; all other images, whether material, symbolical, or allegorical, are essentially different from their prototypes. Thus, the proskinesis given by a Christian to an image of Christ is ontologically the same as the reverence he ought to give his fellow Christians, who are also images of Christ, but ontologically different from the latreia that is due God alone. In this way St. John warns the iconoclasts that their teaching in effect denies the doctrine of the communion of saints, because if proskinesis is forbidden to painted images of God incarnate it must be denied to all other images of Christ as well: the Mother of God, the apostles, and all the saints, who because they have been revealed as faithful members of Christ's body command the reverence of all believers. Thus St. John proves that the position of the iconoclasts begins with an incomplete understanding of God becoming fully man and ends with a religion so "purified" and "reformed" that it has become disincarnate, a Manichaeism in which the flesh is not worth saving and the corporate body of the Church is replaced by the individual's immaterial contemplation of a God who is no longer Jesus Christ, the Word who became flesh, who was born of the Virgin, died on the cross, rose from the tomb, and whose risen Body and Blood is the nourishment of the faithful in the Eucharistic offering. Iconoclasm, when carried to its extreme, results in Docetism, where God merely appears to use a body of flesh and then casts it away as so much dross. Such Docetic iconoclasm is much more than a problem of the past, for the "popular" or "civil" religion of our time, which most often is presented as Christianity, certainly does not revolve around the figure of God incarnate.³

A word of explanation is necessary here regarding how the English words "adoration," "worship," and "veneration" or "honor" are used in this text. As has already been noted, St. John of Damascus developed the use of the term latreia to indicate the absolute worship which only God is worthy by nature to receive, and describes the relative worship given to the Mother of God, the saints or sacred objects (books, relics, icons) by the word proskinesis. Although this distinction might appear to be very clear, there are two complications which might tend to confuse the reader or translator. First of all, anyone familiar with the Septuagint Old Testament (from which these treatises extract many passages) knows that no such distinction existed at the time when the Greek text of the Old Testament was written. Latreia was very seldom used and proskinesis was used to describe everything from the worship one gives to God to the respect one pays one's friend. Secondly, modern use of English tends to diminish the shades of meaning between words which although they share some similarity are certainly not synonyms. "Adoration," "worship," and "veneration" are regarded by many as synonyms. In order to be consistent with St. John's very exact use of the Greek terms I have in most cases translated latreia with "adoration" and proskinesis with "veneration" or "honor" or in some cases with the literal verbal rendering "to fall down before." I have not used the word "worship" in such a technical sense; rather it is a generic term of which "adoration" and "veneration" are forms.

It would be a very great mistake to treat the iconoclastic controversy as well as the treatises of St. John as anachronistic curiosities, of interest only to students of Church history. On the contrary, the treatises are written in simple and direct language meant to be easily understood. The errors which St. John fought by his writings are present in our times to an even more alarming extent than when they began. How often is "Christianity" presented solely as an individual's code of ethics, as a "pure" religion not needing the "crutches" of fallen matter; how often is the material placed in direct opposition to the spiritual? The logical result of a disincarnate "Christianity" is the modern "demythologizing" of doctrine which attacks the very core of the Gospel: the preaching of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the future resurrection and eternal life of all those who believe in Him. St. John's defense of the veneration of images safeguards the witness of the Orthodox Church, that the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith are one and the same, and that division results in turning the Lord into an idea, rather than a person. "Every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old." (Mt. 13:52) St. John's treatises, although old, are always new since they testify to the eternally new message of the Gospel, and it is to that end that this translation is dedicated.…

Notes

¹ For an historical and theological analysis of the iconoclastic controversy, the reader should refer to J. Meyendorff, Christ in Eastern Christian Thought, (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1975), pp. 173-192.

² See Meyendorff, op. cit., p. 135.

³ For an edifying fictional portrayal of iconoclasm in the American religious consciousness, see Flannery O'Connor's story "Parker's Back," The Complete Stories (Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1976).