I85PREP
⌘ K
Orthodox Religion study materials
Orthodox Religion study resources

Orthodox Religion: Iconography, Symbolism, and Church Art: Theology of the Image and Its Forms

Orthodox Religion · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

All guide sections

Iconography, Symbolism, and Church Art: Theology of the Image and Its Forms

This domain tests the theology of the icon, the vocabulary of veneration, and the historical development of styles and church decoration.

Theology of the image

  • Nicaea II (787) grounds the icon in the Incarnation: the Word became depictable in the flesh. John of Damascus: "I do not worship matter; I worship the God of matter."
  • The distinction is between latreia, worship offered to God alone, and proskynesis, veneration offered to the image and passing to the prototype. The honour is relative, not absolute.
  • An icon requires an inscription of the name; without it the image is not identifiable as the person. Icons show the transfigured person, not a naturalistic portrait; the iconographer fasts and prays, and the icon is "theology in colour".

Forms and history

  • Catacomb art and Dura-Europos (c. 235); the encaustic Sinai Pantocrator (6th century); iconoclasm 726–843, ended by the Triumph of Orthodoxy on the first Sunday of Lent.
  • Types: Christ Pantocrator, the Mandylion, the Theotokos Hodegetria, Eleousa (Vladimir), Orans/Platytera, the Deesis, and the Great Feast icons.
  • Styles: Comnenian, Palaiologan (Panselinos), Russian (Theophanes the Greek, Rublev's Trinity, Dionysius), Novgorod, Stroganov, and the Westernising "Fryazh" style of the seventeenth century, later rejected by the revival.
  • The iconostasis develops from the early templon; the high Russian iconostasis with full tiers emerges in the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries.

Worked example

"Does bowing before an icon commit idolatry?" Reasoning: idolatry attributes divinity to the material object or to a creature; the icon's honour is relative and passes to the prototype, who is God incarnate. The council anathematises both iconoclasts and those who worship the material. The answer turns on the veneration/worship distinction and the incarnational ground.

Traps

  • Saying icons are "worshipped" rather than venerated.
  • Collapsing proskynesis and latreia.
  • Dating the high iconostasis to the early Church.
  • Ignoring the inscription, or treating the icon as a portrait rather than a theological statement.
  • Confusing the first Sunday of Lent (Triumph of Orthodoxy) with another feast.