Eastern Christian Iconoclasm

The theme/text that I found enriching and challenging is Iconoclasm. Before this class, I had only heard a little-bit about icons, and I was ignorant and ambivalent about the controversy. I discovered through this class that icons are central to Eastern Christian theology and identity. For Eastern Christians, icons are used in religious contexts and also venerated by touching, kissing, bowing in front of them, and lighting candles—these Christians are iconophiles (icon lovers). Icons were venerated in the early church, and there were no councils that either promoted or rejected this practice, but there was resistance to it. Some people thought it could be idolatrous. In the fourth century AD, the Council of Elvira in Spain criticized the devotion of icons as too excessive. The bishop Basil of Caesarea supported the practice of devotion to icons because it gave honour to its prototype (i.e. Christ, Mary, or the Saints). This controversy continued to brew, and after 680 AD people began prostrating in front of icons, treated …show more content…
John of Damascus was a Christian who lived outside the Empire who venerated icons and he saw no problem with it. He argued against its suppression because, according to him, there are different types of veneration. He cites Basil of Caesarea that images are licit because Christ came in the flesh, and now we have an image of the invisible God. Whereas, before Christ came, there was no image of God, and therefore it was illicit to make one of him. During this time in the Western Church, Pope Gregory the Great was seen as a supporter of the use of images because, to him, they were like books for illiterate; they had a pedagogical purpose. The Pope did not address the veneration of images because there was a laissez-faire approach to making and venerating icons in the