Liturgical icons have been a part of the Church’s tradition from early on and in 787 the Second Council of Nicaea defined dogmatically that the making and veneration of icons, along with the pictorial representation of what the Gospels narrate, is a holy practice. This practice is founded upon the mystery of the Incarnation. Consequently, “all the signs in the liturgical celebrations are related to Christ: as are sacred images of the holy Mother of God and of the saints as well. They truly signify Christ, who is glorified in them.” Catechism of the Catholic Church 1161.
The Second Council of Nicaea encouraged the making and veneration of icons. As St. Basil taught, “the honour rendered to the image passes on to the original”. Furthermore, contemplating icons of Christ, Mary, the angels, and the saints, moves us to contemplate and honour them. In this interview, Aidan Hart will explain his recommended books on icons.
Aidan Hart has been a professional icon painter and carver for forty years, with works in over twenty-five countries of the world, including with the Pope and other Patriarchs. An ordained Reader of the Orthodox Church, he is a frequent speaker at conferences and churches and has been on numerous TV and radio programmes. He teaches a three-year part-time course in icon painting for The Prince’s Foundation School of Traditional Art. He has published Festal Icons (2022), Icons in the Modern World: Beauty Spirit Matter (2014), and Techniques of Icon and Wall Painting (2011), all published by Gracewing.
- Three Treatises on the Divine Images
by St. John of Damascus - On the Holy Icons
by St. Theodore the Studite - The Art of the Icon: A Theology of Beauty
by Paul Evdokimov - Icons in the Western Church: Toward a More Sacramental Encounter (also available as Kindle)
by Jeana Visel OSB - Icons in the Modern World: Beauty, Spirit, Matter
by Aidan Hart
Icon just means image, and the Second Council of Nicaea’s teaching on sacred images does not refer to a specific technique of painting and engraving. When you speak of icons, are you referring to liturgical images in general, or to a specific form and tradition of iconography?
Liturgical images in general. We tend to think of icons these days as panel icons. The Second Council of Nicaea did not limit icons to this medium. I would for example include embroidered and carved works, and manuscripts. Icon means image, and so an icon can be described as an image of Christ or the saints, in whatever medium. That is what defines an icon.
"Going into churches full of icons, particularly frescoes, you immediately realise that you are entering into the communion of the saints. You are entering a living relationship with Christ."
Some believe that we live increasingly in a world that is so centred on visual media that it leaves little space for reasoned discourse. If so, are icons more likely to draw people to the Gospel than preaching?
The Christian faith is, above all, a living relationship with the living Christ. Without images, Christianity can too easily descend into a system: a philosophy, moralism, or whatever. The beauty of liturgical art—not just the imagery, but the way churches are lit, the ceremony, the chanting, and so on—is like the fragrance of Christ, attracting us to adore and follow Him. This is why word and image must go hand in hand.
I have this picture in my mind of someone walking along a footpath. There is a high wall running along one side of the footpath, a bit like those that surround the estates of great houses in England. This person is walking along and smells an amazing fragrance.
“Where does that come from? I want to find the source of this wonderful fragrance. But I don't know how to get to it.” It is a very high wall that goes for miles and miles. So, the person needs to ask a local how to get into the garden. They look for and find someone, who then leads them to the gate. The seeker enters the garden and discovers the source of the fragrance.
To me, liturgical art has many functions, but one of them is to offer people the fragrance of Christ. The word, written or spoken, is then necessary to fill out that experience of beauty by to directing people to Christ as the source of that beauty, into an ongoing relationship. In this way, the experience of beauty doesn’t remain just a temporary aesthetic feeling.
Icons are above all else to do with faces. It is interesting that in Latin and Greek the word ‘face’ is the same as person (persona, prosopon). The face exists for relationship. Going into churches full of icons, particularly frescoes, you immediately realise that you are entering into the communion of the saints. You are entering a living relationship with Christ. Our worship on earth is this participation in heavenly worship.
"The act of kissing an icon is a means of venerating the person depicted. In my own experience, this veneration consequently helps me to venerate all people as living icons of God."
1.
Icons are a form of sacred art. Fittingly, therefore, the first book you have chosen is not by an art scholar but a Father of the Church. It is St John Damascene’s Three Treatises on the Divine Images. He wrote these tracts amid Emperor Leo III’s attempt to outlaw sacred images from 726 on. What are the salient points of St. John Damascene’s classic defence of icons.
I chose this book as the first one because it lays out all the main arguments ratified by the Seventh Ecumenical Council.
First, there is the Incarnation. That is the fundamental thing. St John writes, “I do not draw an image of the immortal Godhead, but I paint the image of God, who became visible in the flesh. For it is impossible to make a representation of a spirit.” If we say that we cannot have icons of Christ, then we are saying that the Incarnation was not real. Icons of Christ are a profound theological statement. The point is not to have pretty pictures in our churches to give us nice feelings. They are there to strengthen our relationship with God.
The second thing is veneration. Famously, St John wrote, “I worship God alone, but I will not cease to venerate all those things though which God comes to me.” The act of kissing an icon is a means of venerating the person depicted. In my own experience, this veneration consequently helps me to venerate all people as living icons of God.
To have images of one form or the other is natural to the human person, and to honour things through them is natural. Everyone uses images of one sort or the other. St. John Damascene said that even the iconoclasts used them, that they were inconsistent since they permitted images of the cross. They allowed crosses, which are icons, and yet they would not allow images of the one who was crucified upon the cross.
So, the icon tradition affirms the Incarnation and veneration. Thirdly, St John wrote that it also affirms the goodness of matter. He said that while he worshipped God alone, he would not cease to venerate the matter —Christ’s flesh and the whole material world—by which our salvation is effected. In saying this, he was also asserting the bi-partite nature of the human person, as a union of body and spirit not just a spirit rattling around in a temporary body. Our bodies are a part of our humanity. We are created a unity of spirit and flesh. So St. John Damascene is not just making a statement about the Incarnation. In defending icons, he is making a statement about the nature of humanity: that God can enter us through all our senses, not just our hearing, but also our seeing.
Fourthly, he makes an interesting point that not only the whole of creation, but even the Holy Trinity, is underpinned by image.
He defines seven types of image. There is Christ. He is the perfect image of the Father. So the principle of image exists within the Holy Trinity even before the whole world was created. The second type of image he describes are the ideas in the mind of God. St. Paul talks about the eternal plan of God (Ephesians 1:11). God creates like an artist. We have an idea in our mind, then we fashion it into an artwork. The idea exists before the artwork. Thirdly, there is the human person who is an image by imitation of the creator. He says, for example, that we reflect the trinitarian nature of God by being a union of mind and word and spirit. Fourthly, the whole the material world is an icon of invisible things. The sun and the moon, a rock even, all declare something of God's presence. Fifthly, St John talks about types, which are material images of things to come. The Old Testament temple is a type of many things. The Ark of the Covenant for example is a type of Christ. It is wood and gold, just as Christ is human and divine. Sixth, he said that there are objects that recall past sacred events, like the jar of manna, which was there to remind the Israelites of God's provision for them in the wilderness. Finally, he says that images can be made of anything that can be seen, anything that has form, shape and colour.
Icons affirm the communion of saints. In his first book, St John says, “First of all, there is adoration, which we offer to God alone. He alone is by nature worthy to be worshipped. But then, for the sake of God, who is by nature to be worshipped, we honour his friends and companions.” Again, he insists that we worship God alone, but because of Christ, we honour his friends and companions. The iconoclasts failed to make this distinction between worship and veneration. It is interesting that Protestants who might oppose figurative icons will nevertheless honour the Bible. They treat the Bible just like an icon, as they ought to, but they will not transfer this veneration of the printed word to the veneration of those who wrote the Bible. The Bible is just an image. It is an icon of God's word.
2.
For your second book we turn to St Theodore the Studite’s On the Holy Icons. He writes during the subsequent stage of the iconoclast controversy, when Emperor Constantine V grounds iconoclasm not just on the second commandment but on Christology. The Christological objection is that, on the one hand, an icon is licit if and only if it can depict both Christ’s human and divine natures, but, on the other hand, cannot depict both natures. It confuses the two. This amounts to Monophysism. Alternatively, it depicts his human nature alone. That amounts to a Nestorian separation of the two natures. Does St. Theodore the Studite resolve these objections and help us understand the Christological foundations of icons?
That is quite right. St Theodore affirms all the things that John and Damascus had written earlier. While John of Damascus stressed the Incarnation and the goodness of matter, Theodore dwells a lot more on the union of the divine and human natures in Christ’s hypothesis, in his person. His pedagogical technique was also a bit different. He first states the heretical point of view and then refutes it. He was an incredibly learned man, but he wrote his works also for the general reader.
It is fundamental to St Theodore’s argument that the union of an image with Christ, or with anyone, is not by the icon participating in its subject’s nature, but in their likeness, and therefore in their person. A painted icon is not flesh and blood. It is not of the same nature as the person whom it depicts; it is paint on wood. So, the icon’s link with the prototype is not through its nature, but through its likeness to the person it depicts and by bearing their same name. We might point to an image of Christ, and say, “Oh, that is Christ.” Obviously, we don't mean that the panel is itself Christ, but we point to it and say, “Yes, that is Christ.” The general principle of this connection between image and subject is well understood in the secular world. We realise that the image is connected to the person it depicts. When there is a revolution, the first things people destroy are normally images of the previous tyrant or ruler. They express their opposition to that ruler by ripping down their images. Conversely, we honour rulers by erecting images of them. Theodore writes, for example, “We say that Christ is one thing and his image is another thing by nature, although they have an identity in the use of the same name.” So, Christ is one thing, and his image another, but there is an identity by virtue of their shared name. We can in fact equate name with personhood. The link between the image and its prototype is in the shared likeness and name of the person or hypostasis.
Elsewhere, Theodore affirms, like John of Damascus, that matter can be grace-bearing. This is important. “What place is there where divinity is not present, in beings with or without reason, with or without life. But it is present to a greater or lesser degree according to the capacity of the nature which receives it.” In other words, to some extent, even a stone declares something of God. God created it. It reveals something of him, whereas an animal declares more about God than a stone, and a saint more than an animal. “Thus, if one says that divinity is in the icon, he would not be wrong since it was also in the representation of the Cross and in the other sacred objects. But divinity is not present in them by the union of natures, for they are not deified flesh, but by a relative participation, because they share in the grace and the honour.”
It is a bit like my wedding ring. Materially, it is just a small amount of gold. It is not of great value in itself. But symbolically, it is an expression of my wife's love for me and her commitment to me. This ring bears the grace of my wife because of the link it has with her and with what she expresses through it.
Worship is like the prototype, the microcosm, of how we end up relating to the world outside of worship.
What I have found with the theology of the icon is that it is not just a comment about how we should worship God and how our liturgy should be; it is also a profound commentary on how we should see one another and the whole of creation. I would say that our ecological crisis has come from a lack of an iconic understanding. To me, a tree is a revelation of God. The tree is not God. Christians are not pantheists. But God is in the tree and has revealed himself to me through it. I do not worship the tree, but I honour it as a gift, as a revelation of God's love for me. So, I am going to honour that tree in a way that I would not if I saw it just as a lump of matter to make me rich, or for me to use and abuse.
The making of an icon also tells us something about mankind’s priestly and transformative role within creation. I work with wood, so sometimes I have to use timber from a felled tree to make something even more beautiful than the raw lump of timber. The act of cutting down a tree and turning it into timber, and then into a piece of furniture or an icon screen is a priestly act. It is part of my worship of God. It makes matter more articulate in the praise of its divine creator.
A Catholic theologian friend of mine, who is a professor and specialises in applying Catholic theology to social issues and ecology, says that if you want find a solution to some problem in the world, start with their worship. What do they worship? How do these people worship their god? Worship is like the prototype, the microcosm, of how we end up relating to the world outside of worship. If Christians do not honour matter properly within their liturgy—if they do not understand the distinction between the prototype and the image—then they are going to mess things up in the larger world.
3.
Next we move from the ninth century to the twentieth: the Orthodox theologian Paul Evdokimov’s The Art of the Icon: A Theology of Beauty. In exploring a theology of beauty, is Evdokimov evoking the central work of Orthodox spirituality, the Philokalia, namely, The Love of the Beautiful?
This is a wonderful work. I wish it would be reprinted. It is well worth the effort of getting it from a library or buying it second hand.
The great strength of this book is that the author applies the theological vision behind the icon tradition to many different aspects of life. Evdokimov does not consider the icon in isolation, or even just within the liturgy, but he looks through its lens at the whole of culture, in both its good expressions and its destructive ones.
The book has four main sections: Beauty, The Sacred, The Theology of the Icon, and The Theology of Vision. In one section, he writes about culture and its charisms: how culture can be a forerunner to our coming closer to God. He writes about sacred time. He considers modern art, its strengths and weaknesses, in the light of the icon.
I really encourage people to read this book because the author presents a holistic worldview. If there is one word that would summarise this view— and he is simply expressing the theology of the Orthodox Church— it is Transfiguration.
In the Transfiguration, not only did Christ's face shine but also his garments. It is interesting that the word cosmos, which is the Greek word for the whole created world, also means adornment. We get cosmetics and other similar words from that root. The fact that Christ’s garments shone shows us that even the inanimate material world can participate in God's glory.
It is pertinent that this garment was made by a human person. It was the product of a type of priestly transformation. Someone cuts flax, spins it, weaves the garment. Then, Christ wears it and it is transfigured. Similarly, for Evdokimov, culture—true culture, healthy culture—is an act of worship. The word culture means mean both worship (cult) and to cultivate, nurture and improve. So, a healthy culture is one in which everything is directed toward Christ. Basically, culture in its fullest sense is to weave a garment for the Body of Christ and thereby to effect the transfiguration of the world.
Evdokimov goes into detail about the nature of beauty. He loves the works of Dostoyevsky and, like many people, quotes the words that Dostoyevsky puts into the mouth of one of his protagonists: “Beauty will save the world.” But Evdokimov continues, “But what beauty?” He explores the nature of beauty and links genuine beauty to truth. As he says, “But here is the paradox; even though truth is always beautiful, beauty is not always true.” Christ says, “I am the truth.” Evdokimov goes on to say, “Since truth and beauty are intimately united and are but two aspects of the one reality. The Lord’s saying also signifies ‘I am beauty’”. The author refers to the fact that one of the Greek words for beauty, kalos, means both good and beautiful. In that one word, there is no place for a false beauty. False beauty is a mask. It is not true beauty.
Evdokimov is a learned man, and he loves to affirm truth wherever it is found. In one or two pages, he refers to Kant, the Scholastics, Benedetto Croce, and to Kierkegaard. He quotes Dostoyevsky and many others. He has this lovely quote from Heraclitus: “War is the father of all things, but harmony, accord, and beauty are the mother of all things.” Beauty is therefore all about relationship. Evdokimov talks a lot about how true beauty brings us into relationship with Christ and with people. He contrasts this relational approach to a lot of modern art— although he is careful not to, carte blanche, reject all modern art. He points out that egotistical modern art that emphasises novelty has nothing to do with relationship. This continual quest for difference is the artist showing off. Work is judged by the extent to which it is not like anything else, by its breaking relationship with the past. Modern art critics appear to praise novelty above all else. But absolute novelty is not actually possible, only variations on what is. These critics also make the mistake of equating difference with originality. Evdokimov says that authentic originality and true beauty affirms relationship. For him, authentic originality brings us into relationship, ultimately, with the origin of all beauty, which is God himself. Thus, true originality directs us to the inexhaustible divine origins of all things and, and therein lies its freshness and newness.
4.
Icons are also part of the Catholic tradition. This is reflected in your fourth pick, Sister Jeana Visel’s Icons in the Western Church: Toward a More Sacramental Encounter. How can this book help Catholics retrieve icons in worship, prayer, and catechesis?
I included this book because your website is for Roman Catholic readers in particular. Jeana Visel seeks to bridge the Orthodox and Catholic approach to icons. She is Catholic herself and a sister of the Benedictine order.
It is quite a complex though not a very big book. It is 149 pages, but quite dense.
In chapter three the author considers how, rightly or wrongly, after Vatican II a lot of Catholics thought that simplicity meant to empty the churches, strip church walls and go back to white. Later, she explains, there seems to have been a gradual realisation that what we need is not so much minimalism, negation, and white walls, but nobility and what is fitting for worship. Visel says that, in many ways, Catholics need to learn from the Orthodox, who, apart from iconoclasm over a thousand years ago, have not suffered from that preference for white-walled minimalism.
She outlines that, from the 8th century on—the Council of Frankfurt in 794 and the Council of Paris in 824—the Catholic Church said, “You can have images, but they are just to help the illiterate.” Even Gregory the Great limited the use of images is to being books for the illiterate. Visel says that we need to go deeper than regarding images simply as teaching tools. Most people can read nowadays, so why have images at all if that is the only reason for them? She therefore tries to indicate a more sacerdotal approach to imagery (I would not say sacramental, because icons are not sacraments).
Ironically, iconoclasm forced the Eastern Church to theologise more deeply about icons than did the Western Church. The Western Church did not suffer iconoclasm and so it did not have to explore the theology of the image so profoundly. Also, unfortunately, Charlemagne was sent a very poor Latin translation of the acts of the Second Council of Nicaea that defended icons. In particular, the translation failed to distinguish between worship and veneration. Charlemagne subsequently rejected the Council because he thought the Eastern Christians were saying icons should be worshipped. Although the Catholic Church later affirmed the council as Ecumenical and valid, Charlemagne’s misunderstanding helped to inhibit the Western Church from developing a deeper understanding of imagery. Jeana Visel tries to redress this in her book and introduce a deeper theological understanding of images.
Part of modernism consists in saying that tradition is a bad thing, that it limits our freedom and creativity. It considers tradition to be stultifying, whereas I show that, if it is a healthy one, tradition opens doors.
5.
Finally, there is your own book, Beauty Spirit Matter. What is its central thesis?
I had given many talks and written many articles related to the icon tradition, and numerous people began to ask if I could publish some of them.
It is similar to Paul Evdokimov’s book in that it is a collection of essays: nine altogether.
Having outlined the theology of the icon in the first chapter, I then use the theology of the image to look at issues that are important for our time. For example, I look at tradition in chapter two. Part of modernism consists in saying that tradition is a bad thing, that it limits our freedom and creativity. It considers tradition to be stultifying, whereas I show that, if it is a healthy one, tradition opens doors. It increases the height of the ceiling, as it were. Through dogma, sacred tradition opens doors and shows how vast God is. God cannot be contained within the limited brain.
In chapter three, I look at the renewal of sacred art: its timeless principles and contemporary challenges. A lot of my students are Catholic and Anglican, as well as Orthodox. I have spoken and written a lot about the timeless principles of liturgical art, so that we can better make liturgical art that is timeless but also authentic within our particular cultures. I always try to adapt the style of my own work to the church and culture which will become its home. To do this, one needs to know what is timeless as well as the character of the place and time for which the liturgical art is being made.
In chapter four, I talk about the icon as a paradigm for Christian ecology. I write about the theology of the material world that is implicit in Christ’s Transfiguration: the fact that his inanimate garments were able to shine with divine glory. I look at ecology from the Orthodox iconographic point of view.
Chapter Five looks at the human person as an icon: what it means to be a unity of body and spirit. In the early Church, most heresies had to do with Christ, whereas the heresy of secularism is a false understanding of what it is to be a human person. Basically, this is a materialist understanding. Secularism asserts that we are just a complex of molecules. We have a brain, muscles, and bones, and denies the existence of the nous, the eye of the heart, the spirit. So, I write about the human person from the patristic point of view.
Chapter Six considers beauty and the Gospel. I have always had a very strong missionary element to me, and have long been interested in how beauty can achieve things that words cannot. So, in this chapter I discuss the nature of beauty and how it can sidestep a lot of the caricatures people have of Christianity and of God. Often, when people say, “I don't believe in God,” I ask them, “What sort of God don't you believe in.” When they describe this God that they do not believe in, I say in reply, “I don't believe in that God either.” The God they are reacting against does not exist. So, I talk about beauty as a means of by-passing these misconceptions and going directly to people's hearts.
Then I talk about beauty and the grotesque. One of my colleagues, Martin Earl, has often talked to me—influenced by G.K. Chesterton’s thought—about how beauty can include the grotesque. Sometimes, for example, icons of Saint John the Baptist do not make him look particularly attractive. He did not live an attractive life; he lived the scorching desert, living off locusts and honey. He would have been weather-beaten. So, icons often depict him with skinny, hairy arms and shaggy hair. Not the most beautiful person, but there is a nobility in his face. Sometimes—and God's confirms shows this—we can use the grotesque or the unattractive to show us what true beauty is. A disfigured person who shows compassion is more beautiful than the most beautiful actress in the world who lives in a selfish way.
It is interesting that the founders of early modernism— Constantin Brâncuși, the founder of abstract sculpting, and Kandinsky, the founder of abstract painting—both came from Orthodox countries. Both were strongly influenced by the theology of the icon. Abstraction has come to denote a departure from reality, but in their time, it meant the opposite. It meant to reveal the essence, core, or logos of things.
The final chapter is a short story about someone who, though not an apostle, is a disciple of Christ. He accidentally witnesses the Transfiguration, and this chapter is his description of the experience.
