Icon - Theology

Theology

Christianity teaches that the immaterial God took flesh in the human form of Jesus Christ, making it therefore possible to create depictions of the human form of the Son of God. It is on this basis that the Old Testament proscriptions against making images (see Deuteronomy 4) were overturned for the early Christians by their belief in the Incarnation. Also, the concept of archetype was redefined by the Early Church Fathers in order to better understand that when a person shows veneration toward an image, the intention is rather to honor the person depicted, not the substance of the icon. As St. Basil the Great says, "The honor shown the image passes over to the archetype." He also illustrates the concept by saying, "If I point to a statue of Caesar and ask you 'Who is that?', your answer would properly be, 'It is Caesar.' When you say such you do not mean that the stone itself is Caesar, but rather, the name and honor you ascribe to the statue passes over to the original, the archetype, Caesar himself." So it is with an Icon.

In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, only flat panel or, mostly in small works such as ivories, bas relief images are used. Early Christianity, emerging from a Graeco-Roman culture where the most usual form of cult image was the three-dimensional statue, for long avoided these in Christian art, associating them with idolatry. Late Antique styles developed in which figures were stylized in a manner that emphasized their holiness rather than their humanity, and this tradition has been very largely maintained within Eastern Orthodoxy. The Western Church, on the other hand started in the 9th century to use religious figurative monumental sculpture, which became increasingly important in Western Christian art. Symbolism allowed the icon to present highly complex material in a very simple way, making it possible to educate even the illiterate in theology. The interiors of Orthodox churches may be largely covered in icons.