THE SEVENTH EDUMENICAL SYNOD
by
Protopresbyter GREORGE DION DRAGAS, Ph.D., D.D.
On Saturday, October 12, our Church celebrates the memory of the holy Fathers of the 7th Ecumenical Council, which met at Nicaea in Bithynia in A.D. 787. This synod is connected with the condemnation of iconoclasm, namely, of the heresy which denied the use of the sacred icons in the worship of the Church. This celebration invites us to consider the victory of Orthodoxy against Iconoclasm and its incalculable significance.
Undoubtedly all Orthodox realize the important place which the icons occupy in the life and general policy of the Church. From our personal experience alone, it becomes quite obvious that, without the holy icons, not only we would be much poorer, but also unable to enter and communicate in the fullness of the revealed truth or to appropriate the catholic mystery of salvation by grace. Without icons, it would not be possible for us either to do or to participate in the Liturgy fully and effectively, because our Liturgy would be one-sided and deprived of an essential dimension. This is most apparent amongst the Western Christians who followed an uniconic, if not an iconoclastic, ecclesiastical policy. The uniconic policy of Western Christians provided the opportunity for rationalism to despiritualize the historical revelation of God in Christ, to mythologize the traditional Gospel of the Incarnation of God’s Son and Word, and even to deny the unbroken ontological unity of the Church.
For us Orthodox Christians, who have and use the Holy Icons in our ecclesiastical life, the truth is not only metaphysical but also physical, not only theory but also history, not only word which is heard but also vision which is seen. Salvation is not only connected with the soul but also with the body, so that it does not separate spirit and flesh (matter), but, on the contrary, it unifies them, incarnating or ‘materializing’ the spirit and spiritualizing the flesh or matter by means of a mystical and saving communion which incurs no confusion. The grace of salvation, deification, union with God through participation in His uncreated energies, embraces, the entire human being, the inner and outer man, i.e. the mind and the reason of the inner man as well as the vision and the hearing of the outer man. Orthodoxy means fullness of truth and catholicity (completeness or integrity) of salvation. This is the Orthodoxy which the icon secured and secures. This is why the restoration of the Holy Icons was and continues to be greeted as the “victory of Orthodoxy”.
The above conclusions are naturally derived from the inspired texts of the Holy Fathers and Teachers of the Church who stood against the deceit and the obstinacy of the iconoclasts. It is to these Fathers and Teachers: Patriarch Germanos (784-8***), the monk John of Damascus (680-754), Patriarch Nicephoros, Patriarch Tarasios, the monk Theodore the Studite, Patriarch Methodios the Confessor, the 350 Fathers who assembled and formulated the Church’s dogmatic teaching concerning the Holy Icons at the 7th Ecumenical Synod of Nicaea (787)) as well as to the lives of so many iconophile Saints and Martyrs (St. Stephen the New, St. Andrew of Crete, St. Nicetas of the Monastery of Midikion, St. Andrew of the Monastery of Krisis and many others) that we, Orthodox Christians, ought to turn our attention, so that we might be personally strengthened in our attachment to the sacred tradition which the Mother Church has put in our trust and thus become abler and more effective in transmitting the sacred truth of the saving Faith to those inside and those outside the Church’s sacred enclosure.
The whole issue concerning the Holy Icons is many-sided. In the last analysis, however, it is Christological, i.e. it is connected with the Faith and teaching of the Church concerning Christ, as the latter was authentically articulated in the Holy Ecumenical Councils which preceded the 7th one at Nicaea. This is obvious not only in the “Statement” of the 7th Ecumenical council and the writings of the iconophile Fathers and authors, but even in the writings of the iconoclasts, such as the “Quests of the Emperor Constantine V (Copronymos)”, or the “Statements” of the iconoclastic Councils of Hiereia (754) and St. Sophia (815).
The iconoclasts erroneously identified “icons” with “idols” and consequently saw the icons as contradicting the biblical and patristic tradition. With regard to the icon as contradicting the biblical and patristic tradition. With regard to the icon of Christ, which was at the center of the discussions between the opposing parties, the iconoclasts argued that the depiction of Christ in human form constituted a Nestorianizing divisive denial of the Incarnation, since the person of Christ was, according to them, theanthropic and therefore uniconic. They believed that if the Godhead of Christ is uniconic (indescribable and formless) then the union of the Godhead with the manhood in Christ also uniconic.
The iconophiles, on the contrary, clearly distinguished between “icons” and “idols” and stressed that the icon of Christ does not depict the uniconic or undepictable divine nature (as the idolaters attempted to do) but His human nature which He assumed irrevocably for the salvation of mankind. To depict Christ, as well as the sacred persons and events which are connected with His saving person and work, means to confess His Incarnate Economy, i.e. that Christ is the Son of God who became true man without ceasing to be God and without incurring any confusion between Godhead and manhood, an “hypostatic” (personal) union of the two natures, as also iconic and depictable as man. The denial, then, of the depiction of Christ in human form is a denial of the Incarnation or constitutes a confusion of the two natures in a “monophysitic” way.
The icon expresses as sacred art that which the patristic dogma confesses as sacred word. An icon is not a mere imitation, because it has a mystagogical character. It leads from the antitype to the prototype, from the human aspect to the divine, from the created to the uncreated, uniting them according to the sanctifying grace of Christ. As such it bears witness and serves the mystery of the salvation of mankind in Christ, according to which a renewal and a fulfillment is accomplished in man of the grace of “being in the icon and likeness” which is given to him by the eternal, living and true Icon of God.