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CHAPTER SIX

ICONOGRAPHY
Shapes

 

ICONOGRAPHY
Shapes

Iconography   literally means "image writing", or painting, and comes from the Greek εικον (image) and γραφειν (to write).  Religious images are used to some extent by all major religions, including Abrahamic and as an outgrowth of that in Indian faiths.  As a symbol of faith these are the results of centuries of accumulated tradition.  Indian iconography start only after the third century AD  along with the iconographic portrayals in Rome and Antioch.

Central to the iconography and hagiography  are mudra or gestures with specific meanings.  Other features include the aureola and halo pointing to the  divine qualities and attributes are represented by some symbols which describe the character and importance of the icon drawn.  In India it is  the  ritual tools such as the dharmachakra, vajra, dadar, phurba, swastika which gives the meaning.

Colors are equally important and Christian Iconographers have developed their own color systems 

In India however under the influence of tantra  even geometric figures and backgrounds provided the esoteric meanings, accessible only to initiates.  Among the Christians the basic themes go around the Holy Family and Saints.

 

 

 

 

 

Evidently icons were integrated into the Church walls as a means of intensifying the out of the dimension experience.  However the church soon came into grips with the reality that, the more materialistic the symbols and realistic the symbols are, the danger of it being mistaken for reality was great.  When a symbol is taken as the reality we get idol worship.  Basically it broke down to whether the veneration of ikons was idolatry or not. Some people were offended by the kissing of images and the offering of incense and lighting of candles before them.  .As a result for the general mass of people, icons degenerated into idols.  Kissing and worshipping icons as a respect turned out to be idol worship. 

 

 The anthropologist Claude Levy-Bruhl claimed that people in 'primitive' cultures had difficulty in distinguishing between names and the things to which they referred, regarding such signifiers as as an intrinsic part of their signifieds.  The practice of Voodoo and Magic arise out of such a belief.  The fear of 'graven images'  and icons within the Judeo-Christian tradition  was because of this possibility.  Hence the biblical injunction  "Thou should not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in the earth beneath, or that in the water under the earth, thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them" [Exodus 20:4-5].

The reason given for such a mandate was:

Deu 4:15-19  Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner of form on the day that Jehovah spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire. Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image in the form of any figure, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flieth in the heavens,  the likeness of anything that creepeth on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth;  and lest thou lift up thine eyes unto heaven, and when thou seest the sun and the moon and the stars, even all the host of heaven, thou be drawn away and worship them, and serve them, which Jehovah thy God hath allotted unto all the peoples under the whole heaven.

 “ye saw no form; only ye heard a voice.” indicates that the essential mode of revelation was through the Word.  Hence until the coming of Jesus uttered word and written word were the basic mode of communication between man and God.  However that changed with the incarnation where “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” 

God did put on a human face. The Word became flesh—God robed Himself in the garment of humanity. Jesus Christ became “the icon of the invisible God.” (Col 115).  So now we can depict God as a human which he revealed through Jesus.  Because of this Jesus was portrayed in icons in the ensuing church period.  In order to avoid the idol formation this was essentially restricted to the two dimensional drawing so the images were not “graven images” or idols.    Evangelist Luke is said to have  painted an icon presenting the Virgin Mary holding the Child Jesus and an icon of the Archangel Michael in Alexandria,  is said to have been painted by Apostle Luke.

However graven forms began to appear soon.   As a result in the early 8th century  two groups evolved, one group called ikonoclasts (ikon breakers), and ikonodules (ikon makers). The argument over ikons had been going on in the church since then.   The ikonoclasts claimed that ikons were being worshiped, while the ikonodules argued that it was only veneration of ikons and a type of 'salute' of the original depicted in the ikon. The actual Greek word for this veneration is proskynesis, and it the same veneration that was given to the Emperor. It involved humble reverence and bowing, but it was not worship. It is the same explanation that the Catholic Church give to the veneration of idols of Saints and Holy Family.  Evidently the mistaken identity of symbols as realities are more prone in the case of three dimensional representations.

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 COPTIC  ICONS

THEIR HISTORY AND SPIRITUAL SIGNIFICANCE

By Dr. Zakaria Wahba 

With the spread of icons in the centuries after the Emperor Constantine, Christians began to use icons in ways that were never intended, becoming more concerned with the art itself rather than as a tool for prayer or Christian instruction. Icons were never meant to be worshiped or venerated as something holy in themselves. The reverence shown to an icon must be done with the understanding that it is not the icon or artwork itself we are respecting, but rather the person or event it portrays. An icon is meant to be a window into the spiritual world, used to help us contemplate spiritual matters or to put us into a prayerful frame of mind, as a reminder of events in the Bible, the life of Christ and the Saints, but never as an object of worship.

Therefore, my dearly beloved, shun, keep clear away from and avoid by flight if need be, any sort of idolatry, of loving or venerating anything more than God.
1 Cor 10:14.

What Is Idolatry?

Here is the technical definition of idolatry: Idolatry is worshiping, serving, pledging allegiance to, doing acts of obeisance to, paying homage to, forming alliances with, making covenants with, seeking power from, or in any other way exalting any supernatural being other than God. The supernatural beings refer to angels, cherubim, seraphim, Satan, principalities, powers, deities, territorial spirits, goddesses, and demonic beings on any other level. Calling miscellaneous sins "idolatry" is dangerous because it diverts attention from the real thing.

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The Emperor Konstantine the Fifth put together a council of his supporters and pushed through an edict in 730 which banned images.  During this conflict the two most prominent theologians who stood to defend the use of icons in the Church were St. John of Damascus (675-749 A.D.) and St. Theodore of Studios (759-826 A.D.) at the 7th Ecumenical Council of the Eastern Orthodox Church in 787 A.D.  The fight which became ugly until finaly it ended in 843 AD with the coming back of icons.  This assertion of icons and use of icons was based on the   Gospel witness to the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ as a restoration of all human beings to the divine image proclaimed in the Genesis account of creation.  Thus God indeed made himself present in the material realm and representation of those forms are necessary for proclamation of truth.  As a means communication icons do play a great role.  Even today we use drawings and pictures to teach our children the truth in Sunday School.  Look at any Sunday School curriculum you will be surprised at the art and craft as part of the process of teaching.  The Iconoclast had a point in that the realism can lead to idol worship even when we emphasize that we should avoid it.

"...within Christianity itself there had always existed a 'puritan' outlook, which condemned icons because it saw in all images a latent idolatry...The final victory of the Holy Images in 843 is known as 'the Triumph of Orthodoxy'..One of the distinctive features of Orthodoxy is the place which it assigns to icons. An Orthodox church today is filled with them...An Orthodox prostrates himself before these icons, he kisses them and burns candles in front of them...Because icons are only symbols, Orthodox do not worship them, but reverence or venerate them... icons form a part of Holy Tradition...The Iconoclasts, by repudiating all representations of God, failed to take to full account the Incarnation" (Ware T. The Orthodox Church. Penguin Books, London, 1997, pp. 31-33).

 

 All through history this struggle carried on.  Even when these visible symbolism of form and shape was removed, others went to the other extreme of idolization of rituals like “Confessing with your mouth”, “immersion baptism”, “baptism” “reverence to the Bible Book”.  True, there is no visible graven image, or even a picture.  But the symbolism has taken over the reality.  Quoting the biblical verses to support these will not really make any difference. These confusions of mistaking symbols for reality has always been with the church.  “The written word kills, It is the Spirit that gives life”.  We need to distinguish between symbols and realities.   Unless we are able to go beyond the three dimensional material Kingdom (Malkuth) and even beyond the mental to the higher realms of understanding icons will remain as idols. These are not materially graven images, but graven in mind and even in spirit.  These attitudes of icon and idol making has produced a large variety of Christian Communities. Each has a different idol and vouches that it is not an idol and does not really replace Jesus.  When the extreme comes we begin to realize that what started as a reasonable way of expression in symbolism  has now become a heresy and something that leads us away from the Person of Jesus.   But then this is inherent in every symbols and sacrament.  But more it is permanent and object based, there is more chance of it becoming an idol.  Any sacrament can thus become an idol, even when it is a legitimate icon imparting grace and redemption.

 During the middle ages when ritualism led to idolism, there arose the Reformation Movement (1500s) and later the Holiness Movement.  They in general removed the material aspects of symbols and replaced them with non-material aspects.  Later Holiness Movement and  even the Pentecostals, Evangelicals and the Charismatics developed their own semiotic symbols which were non-material.  While the Quaker Movement took up on themselves silence, in most cases expressions based on music, dance, speaking in tongues, laughing, total immersion water baptism and even slaying in spirit and total silence became powerful symbols of Christian movement .  By repetition and order these  became the ritual and thereby a new form of liturgy.   

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