Transcription
Yeah, I'd be curious to ask about, kind of for, for me, when I study the issue of icon veneration, um, I read through the anathema given at Nicaea II, and they're making certain historical claims. So, they're claiming, I mentioned before, they're talking about a practice, uh, kissing, uh, lighting candles, deep kneeling, and bowing. The theology for surrounding this practice is very specifically laid out as figural representation. What is given to the image passes through to the prototype. So, there's a very specific, uh, theology and then a claim of history surrounding that theology. And, uh, when I study the early church, I would say, um, you know, you mentioned like a, a gross violation of the Torah. I mean, I wouldn't be necessary to go that far with that language. It all that would be necessary for my concern would be to dispute those historical claims of Nicaea II. And I would simply say, you know, look, if something's infallible, it's not going to be wrong, but this looks wrong. Uh, I, I just am really persuaded that that, you know, I go through the, the anti-Nicene period about what Christians taught about this, and you, I just lay out the evidence, and I, I look at it all, and it's overwhelming to me. And and then, you know, the responses are saying, well, they, they weren't condemning cultic use of icons as such, they were just condemning the pagan practice. And I'm like, that's not what they're saying. They're all these early Christians for centuries. I mean, you get to Eusebius, the father of church history, as he's often called, and he's saying somebody's requesting an icon, and he's saying, you know, he's on the stricter side because there's a range of aniconism, so it's not all the same. It's, I'm not trying to act like everybody had the exact same view, but the idea of doing what Nicaea II commands, I don't think that's represented at all in the early church. So that would be the concern here is this really looks like not, um, it basically looks like the, the historical claims of Nicaea II are simply wrong. Uh, it, we don't have apostolic practice here. This looks like it's something that just overwhelmingly from the historical evidence we have comes in in the fifth, sixth century, around this time. All the early Christians are opposing it. In the fourth century, you start to get more images, but it's, but anything like a cultic use of images and religious practice in prayer and this kind of thing is extremely controversial and opposed and so forth. So I guess I'd be curious to hear kind of your thoughts on the historical claims of Nicaea II, and do you think those are tenable? How do you, how do you, and here's why it is so painful, is I know what they also meant by anathema, because they also defined that as complete separation from God, being condemned on the day of the Lord. This is another thing that I feel like I'm getting gaslit when I point out these Eastern Orthodox historical claims, and then people say, oh, no, anathema, they, it's making it sound like anathema isn't that bad. And I'm like, well, look, condemned on the day of the Lord, completely separated from God, that sounds pretty bad, you know? And so for an anathema to be attached to this specific set of theology that's, and in historical claims that very overwhelmingly to my conscience seems like late accretion, not apostolic practice, um, that really puts me in a bind. And at that point, I, I, I must respectfully and with love in my heart for Eastern Orthodoxy as a legitimate Christian church, but not the church, I must just descend from that, from that council, uh, on grounds of Christian precedent and on grounds of scripture.
Right. So, um, let me, let me start with, with, uh, what, what I meant by this being based in Trinitarian theology. So the, the first person, again, the first document we have that's made it down to us that uses the argument that what is given to the image passes to the prototype is St. Basil the Great, and he's using this to explain why Christians are monotheists.
You think that's actually from Basil? Yes, yes. He's usually explaining why, because one of the critiques of Nicene Trinitarianism that he received was, you're worshiping three gods because you're offering worship to the Father, you're offering worship to the Son, you're offering worship to the Holy Spirit.
I apologize, you're right, that that's that's Basil. You're right, you're right. In my mind, I, I got confused there for a second. In my mind, the concern I have is it's talking about the Trinity, and it's not image. There is the second member of the Trinity, but that principle comes from that, right? That so if you're worshiping the Son, the Son is the express image of the Father, so that worship ultimately is going to the Father. We're worshiping one God, the Father, right? Which is how the Nicene Creed begins. Um, and so then that understanding, right, is also present in, uh, very present in early Christian ethics, even in the page of scripture, right? In the Orthodox Church, we just had the Sunday of the Last Judgment, so we read the parable of the sheep and the goats, right? And whatever you did to the least of these, you did to me. Man is created in the image of God, right? Whatever respect or disrespect we pay to our fellow humans, we are ultimately paying that respect or disrespect to God, right? The love or lack of love we show them, right? So it's not that loving our neighbor is opposed to loving God, right? That those are the same thing because the love we show to anyone is really showing love to God. And so I see that theology, and I see it too, as being a reapplication of that to, you know, if I pick up a photo of my wife and I kiss it, right? I'm obviously not cheating on her with a piece of paper, right? I am loving her, expressing my love for her, right? Through through that means. Um, I think there is that. So, but the, the reason I wanted to re-bring up that Trinitarian element is Eusebius of Caesarea was a semi-Arian, at least a semi-Arian, if not an outright Arian. So it seems reasonable to be that he would reject that theological argument, right? That he would reject that theological argument in terms of the Trinity, maybe in terms of ethics, and in terms of iconography, right? That makes sense to me. Um, my concern with some of your presentations on this has been that most of the early Christians you present who oppose iconography don't have "Saint" in front of their name for various reasons, right? Um, also, we have to consider that if something is a practice, right? If something is a common practice, then we would expect that the people we find writing about it are going to be the people who disagree with it, right? If something is just something that everyone's doing every day, um, they're less likely to write about it unless there's someone who comes and opposes it, right? Someone who comes and says, you shouldn't be doing that. Well, now we have a discussion, right? And I think we apply this to, I would say that the doctrine of the Trinity was believed by the apostles, for example, right? And and so, you know, well, why isn't there anything, you know, laying it out, you know, very directly? Because I don't believe the Kerygma is original. Why isn't there anything just laying it straight out? Well, no one was coming and challenging it, and then when it comes and it's challenged, well, now we have to start talking about it. Now we have to articulate this in an authoritative way, right? And say, no, this is so it's in in in reaction to a challenge that that gets articulated. And I would, I would present one additional piece of evidence in terms of actual veneration in the Jerusalem Talmud. It states, uh, that, uh, people lining up to kiss images is idolatry. And I would present that pagans did not do that. That's not how pagan worship worked. They didn't form a line and go kiss the idol right in the middle of the temple. This sounds to me a lot like Christian practice. Now, we could argue about whether it was universal Christian practice, whether whether it was just something that some rabbis saw some Christians in Syria or somewhere doing, right? That's, but it's at least evidence that there were some Christians who were venerating icons in that way, uh, in the second, third century, that the rabbis said, no, no, no, no, that's idolatry, don't do that, right? And at that point, it seems that Jewish synagogues still had iconography in them. So it's probably a very direct, you know, Jewish people don't do that with the images in your synagogues. And then of course, later in reaction to Christianity, they stripped, they stripped all of those out and became extremely aniconic more than they had been previously.