Although the images in the headline above might not suggest it, no matter what one's political outlook, all might agree that there is an air of scepticism at large in the Western world today about religious imagery and symbols. Dr Andrew Thomas Kania explores the phenomenon and asks if this an area where the West might learn from the East?

The difference between "Faith" and "Things"…

During the time of the systematic destruction of the synagogues in Eastern Poland during the Second World War, a scroll lay tossed and torn on the cobbled streets of the Galician city of Jarosław. A Ukrainian Catholic man in his fifties, a father of five, walked out of his house in full view of others. Bending down to pick up the pieces of parchment, all covered in Hebrew script, the Ukrainian slowly collected the fragments, and returned to his house; his wife and children stunned by his reckless action. There now in the sanctity of his dwelling, he quietly lit a fire in his stove, and turned to his family, saying to them: "I do not know what is written on these pages, but I do know that this is the Word of God, and Holy Things are for the holy".

Forty five years later in a strange twist of irony, this man's grand-daughter would be sitting in a Religious Education classroom at a Catholic School, in Western Australia. A young teacher, deciding to make a point about the difference between "Faith" and "Things", interrupted his regular lesson, and from the wall took down the pictures of Christ and of the Saints, throwing them into the dust-bin — saying to the students: "We don't need to have these 'things' in order to believe in God! Isn't our Faith bigger than pictures?" After the class, the grand-daughter, a shy girl of twelve, rose from her seat and picked the pictures from out of the bin; taking them at the end of the day to be given to a 'better' home, or to be burnt by her father.

An 8th Century conflict over the veneration of images…

The iconoclasm of Leo III

In the early Eighth Century, Leo III (680-741), Emperor of Byzantium, issued an order that the image of Christ over the palace gate of Constantinople be removed. The motivations for Leo's edict ranged from the Emperor's desire to appease the Muslim armies who had won a number of key victories against the Byzantine forces, as well as his belief in a bad omen after a spectacular volcanic eruption on the island of Thera. Leo's edict, seeking to court the Muslim clerics, specifically condemned "the craft of idolatry", but interestingly stopped short of banning images made of himself. The Patriarch of Constantinpole, Gemanus I (d. 730), who was not consulted by Leo, concerned that the Emperor's edict would convince Jews and Muslims that Christians had indeed been wrong in forming images of Christ and His Saints, appealed to the wider Church. The then Pope, Gregory III (d. 741), condemned Leo's actions but the subsequent Emperor, Leo's son, Constantine V (d. 778), upheld his father's ban. Constantine attacked the monasteries, disposed of the relics of Saints in the Bosphurus, and placed an even more stringent liturgical ban on the veneration of Saints.

In such a political and religious climate, a great Saint rose to the fore, the Syrian, John of Damascus (676-749), coming to the much needed defence of the veneration of Icons and of the veneration of Saints. In a tract, now commonly referred to as, On the Divine Images, the Damascene, exhorted religious and secular leaders to reject the bans placed by the Emperors. In St. John's words:

"If, therefore, the Word of God, in providing for our every need, always presents to us what is intangible by clothing it with form, does it not accomplish this by making an image using what is common to nature and so brings within our reach that for which we long but are unable to see? A certain perception takes place in the brain, prompted by the bodily senses, which is then transmitted to the faculties of discernment, and adds to the treasury of knowledge something that was not there before. The eloquent Gregory says that the mind which is determined to ignore corporeal things will find itself weakened and frustrated. Since the creation of the world the invisible things of God are clearly seen by means of images. We see images in creation which, although they are only dim lights, still remind us of God. For instance, when we speak of the holy and eternal Trinity, we use the images of the sun, light, and burning rays; or a running fountain; or an overflowing river; or the mind, speech, and spirit within us; or a rose tree, a flower, and a sweet fragrance". (St. John of Damascus, 2000, p. 20)

Such was the power of St. John's thesis, as well as of that of Theodore the Studite (758-826), that the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, issued the following decree, which is still maintained to this day, by the Universal Church:

"Following the divinely inspired teaching of our holy Fathers and the tradition of the Catholic Church (for we know that this tradition comes from the Holy Spirit who dwells in her) we rightly define with full certainty and correctness that, like the figure of the precious and life-giving cross, venerable and holy images of our Lord and God and Savior, Jesus Christ, our inviolate Lady, the holy Mother of God, and the venerated angels, all the saints and the just, whether painted or made of mosaic or another suitable material, are to be exhibited in the holy churches of God, on sacred vessels and vestments, walls and panels, in houses and on streets". (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1994, par. 1161)

The Reformotion and religious images…

During the period known as the Reformation in the West, a sense of the Sacred was deliberately disemboweled from many areas of Christendom. James Monti, in his study of the life of St. Thomas More (1477-1535), The King's Good Servant but God's First (1997), notes among other aspects of the Reformation how:

"A nun of Geneva's Convent of Saint Claire, Jeanne de Jussie, tells of the path of wanton destruction forged by the soldiers as they passed through nearby villages on the way to the city. In Morge the troops quartered their horses in the cloister of the Franciscan monastery and desecrated the friar's chapel, starting a fire in the nave and throwing the consecrated Hosts into the flames, an action that our chronicler Jeanne likens to the tortures inflicted upon Christ by the soldiers of Caiaphas and Pilate. The Bernese completed their work by denuding the chapel, burning all its wooden statues and destroying the altar along with the stained-glass window behind it. Elsewhere in the suburbs of Geneva, the story was the same; everywhere they went, the soldiers vented their fury on all the religious images they found and even "poked out the eyes of the images with their pikes and swords, and spat on them, to deface and disfigure them". These men of Zwinglian persuasion were also quite proficient in the destruction of Catholic books. Any priests who fell into their hands were beaten and stripped of their clerical robes. Especially perverse were their acts of sacrilege against the reserved Eucharist; tabernacles were broken and the Hosts thrown down to be trampled upon. In one case a consecrated Host was fed to a goat as the soldiers mockingly commented, "Now he can die if he wants, he has received the sacrament". (p. 143)

A New Age of Iconoclasm?

As we in the West now enter the new millennium we may rightly suppose that we are living in a potentially New Age of Iconoclasm. In such an Age as we find ourselves today, many cannot fathom why a man would risk life and limb to pick up unintelligible pieces of paper from off a war torn street, some would even label this person 'a religious maniac' or a 'fundamentalist'; fewer still, it would seem, would even blink at an icon being removed from off the wall of a Catholic School or Catholic Hospital to satisfy 'political correctness', even though the Sacred tradition of Icons is preserved by the very Church these institutions take their mandate from to exist. In such an Age, rosary beads are worn as jewelry by 'celebrities' whose lifestyle indicates an absolute ambivalence to the very meaning of the silent prayers that are held around their necks; while other celebrities who quote discipleship of various forms of ancient mysticism, all the while consider it not spiritually reprehensible to integrate the mockery of Christ's crucifixion into their concerts. On a general level, a lack of appreciation for the Sacred is perhaps no better exemplified then in the deliberate "dressing-down" for Church, be it at weddings, the celebration of the Sacraments, or for Sunday Liturgy; and a general lack of reverence in the Church.

Some quarters would argue that such occurrences are an evolution of the Spirit — speculating that in the via negativa, symbols are in some way, 'trainer wheels' for spiritual beginners; that after you reject symbols, the real business of spirituality begins, that God is beyond 'material things'.

Yet as we have seen from the Scriptures and the writings of the Saints, nothing could be further from the Truth. In the Old Testament 'things' are revealed to be holy, when God interacts directly with them: Moses has a snake that becomes his staff, Aaron a staff that becomes a snake; a bush burns to indicate a revelation from God; and man himself is said to have been formed by God from dust. In the New Testament, Christ heals by mixing spittle with soil; and a woman is healed by touching but the linen hem of Christ's garment. To say as the Protestant Reformers, that inanimate things cannot be made Holy and are not integral to Faith is to reject much of Scripture.

Byzantine Theology affirms the integration of the spiritual with the material by incorporating into the Liturgical calendar, such days as the Assumption of the Virgin Mary with its blessing of the flowers that the faithful then later take to their homes; and the Feast of the Transfiguration with the blessing of the fruit — direct examples of God taking something so mundane and giving it a 'transfigured' quality; indicating that nothing in this 'material world' is profane, but some things are given by God a higher sacredness — and this sacredness is to be revered for God deigning it to be so.

Does the reverence of the Eastern churches for icons and religious imagery have anything to teach the increasingly sceptical West?

The teacher who takes it upon himself to cast religious paintings in the bin, has in fact revealed one specific element of his spiritual journey — a total lack of belief. If a lover's digital image still holds its revered place in the pockets of millions of human beings today, as did painted images of sweet-hearts in bygone years, perhaps it is not the symbolic meaning found in religious 'things', such as icons that has lost meaning, but rather the person's understanding of exactly what the symbol means that is wanting. No man would consciously destroy a Picasso given to him, for he knows its worth, and no religious symbol could ever be considered dead or worthless, if the person who viewed the symbol was adamant that that symbol reflected in some way a living God, of who's very existence they had not the slightest doubt. This is what keeps the image of a loved one alive, even many years after the person has died; a firm belief that the object of their affection does exist, or did once walk this earth. Symbols have not lost their meaning it would seem — those who gaze at the symbols, have lost their Faith; and all connection between the material and spiritual is lost for the individual, when faith ceases to exist. (cf. Matthew 5: 13)

The man who picked up the tattered pieces of Hebrew Scripture, did so, on the basis that 'things' do have a value given to them by the presence of God in the world; that some 'things' are worth living for, as well as dying for. In a Latin Church that still recoils from the devastating effects of the Protestant Reformation, and that still may feel threatened by the cat-calls of the Reformers, it is little wonder that so many in the Catholic Church today downplay the value of 'holy things'; apologizing for quaint religious excesses of the past — crucifixes and icons. Failing to realize the importance of such "things" to Catholic Tradition, many Catholics are all too easily swayed into negating the Sacred in order to appear modern.

It is perhaps, from the Apostolic East that a return to an awareness of the Sacredness of 'Things' can be restored. As such, the great Eastern scholar of the 20th Century, John Meyendorff, in his work, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, explains the enduring purpose of symbols in Christianity:

"An icon or a cross does not exist simply to direct our imagination during our prayers. It is a material centre in which there reposes an energy, a divine force, which unites itself to human art. Likewise, the sign of the cross, holy water, the words of Scripture read in the course of the divine office, the ecclesiastical chant, the ornaments of the church, incense and lighted candles are all symbols in the realistic sense of the word: Ritual symbolism is more than a representation addressed to the senses in order to remind us of spiritual realities … [it is] an initiation into a mystery, the revelation of a reality which is always present in the Church". (Meyendorff, 1998, p. 189)

Image Credits:
Clicking on the images in the body of the article will take you to the original source. The background images used in the headline were sourced from the Reserve Bank of Australia and World Youth Day websites.

©2008 Dr Andrew Thomas Kania

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