THE SECOND COMMANDMENT AND TRUE WORSHIP

IN THE ICONOCLASTIC CONTROVERSY

Vladimir Baranov
Perhaps the most important period in Church history, when an Old
Testament text became the focal point of a theological debate was the
Iconoclastic Controversy in 8th9th century Byzantium. his text is
the Second Commandment, the negative counterpart of the First
Commandment. For more than a hundred years people argued over
how to worship the One God of the First Commandment in a correct way, and in order to have correct worship it is necessary to know
precisely whom and how to worship. Both parties answered the question of whom to worship in traditional terms of the Ecumenical
Council of Chalcedon (451), yet the question of how to worship was
answered diferently. he ritual diference between the Iconodules and
the Iconoclasts, that is, whether one accepted the veneration of images
or not, corresponded to the diference of epistemological approaches
which answered the question how. he analysis of the theological
arguments of both parties allows us to expose the similarities and differences on the deeper level of epistemologies. his article will present
a certain aspect of the Iconoclastic debate, namely, the interpretation
of the correct approach to the divinity in the context of the Second
Commandment, as a case study, revealing a fascinating interplay of
arguments and texts from the New Testament, Patristic writers and
classical philosophy that revolved around the Old Testament verse as
around the hub of a wheel.
For setting the case in a wider context, one important question
relating to the methodological setting of the following argument needs
to be raised. What exactly was Byzantine Iconoclasm? Many modern
researchers consider it primarily a social and political movement initiated by the Emperors to solve their practical needs of comprehensive
reform of the Byzantine State and society with theological argumentation, developed at later stages (by the 750s), as the only ideological
language the Byzantines could understand.1 In this case the occasion
1
Iconoclasm was always an anomalous doctrine, without strong theological roots
or clear theological implications (W. Treadgold, A Concise History of Byzantium

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for initiating Iconoclasm in the late 720s was precisely the crude and
literal understanding of the Second Commandment by the uneducated former general Leo III (71741). his social trend of studies
in Iconoclasm is partly preconditioned by on sheer lack of authentic
sources from the Iconoclast side, and the fragmented state of those we
have. Given the lack of proper theological sources on the Iconoclastic side and discarding the trustworthiness of the Iconodulic sources as
ideologically biased as far as their representation of the Iconoclasts is
concerned, a scholar is forced to focus on non-theological aspects of
such sources as the numerous Lives of the saints or Chronographies,
inevitably deriving from them non-theological data and conclusions.
Moreover, even with those sources that we have we can see a seemingly evolutionary development of the arguments in the Controversy
from simple scriptural ones based upon a literal understanding of the
Second Commandment, through more complicated Christological
arguments reaching a very complex philosophical argumentation at
the latest stages of the Controversy. If this is the case, any attempt at
theological investigation becomes an ad hoc examination of a secondary and necessarily a patchwork theology created by a few court
theologians and serving non-theological purposes. Not a very inspiring task.
Fortunately this is not the case. We have an invaluable source safely
dated to the initial period of the Iconoclastic Controversy Apologetic Treatises against hose Who Calumniate Divine Images by John
of Damascus2 that allows us to reconsider the present view. If we
examine closely the irst two treatises written in the irst years of the
Controversy, against the foreground of the later Iconoclastic sources,
we may see that John of Damascus refutes both some forms of Christological and philosophical arguments of the Iconoclasts, attested in
the later period.3 What does this mean? If the sophisticated theological stratum in Iconoclastic argument existed from the outset of the

[New York: Palgrave, 2001], p. 118); see also: P. Karlin-Hayter, Iconoclasm, in

he Oxford History of Byzantium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 154;
M. Angold, Byzantium: he Bridge from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (London:
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2001), p. 79.
2
Ed. B. Kotter, Contra imaginum calumniatores orationes tres, in Die Schriten des
Johannes von Damaskos, vol. 3 (Patristische Texte und Studien 17; Berlin: Walter de
Gruyter, 1975) [hereater: Kotter].
3
V.A. Baranov, heology of Early Iconoclasm as Seen in the Apologies in Defense
of Images by St. John of Damascus, Khristianskij Vostok 4 (10) (2002), pp. 2355.

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Controversy, forcing the Iconodules to defend and respond, we may

speak of a certain aniconic trend in the Byzantine Church which was
articulated and turned into oicial religious policy by the Isaurian
Emperors, thus transforming an old tradition of aniconism4 into antiiconism or Iconoclasm. And here everything becomes much more
interesting, since we can try to examine this aniconic tradition and
in particular its approach towards the correct worship of God more
closely. Since the Second Commandment was the absolute imperative
for both parties, the diferences lay in interpretation of the Commandment, and it is the approach towards the interpretation of the Second
Commandment that will be the subject of my paper. Let us irst turn
to the Iconoclastic side.
As a preliminary step, we should juxtapose several Scriptural citations from the Iconoclastic lorilegium. Since the text of the Second
Commandment is the negative one, what was the positive approach
the Iconoclasts ofer? We can see that in another citation from the
Gospels of St. John from the same Iconoclastic lorilegium: God is
spirit and those who venerate Him, must venerate Him in spirit and
truth (John 4:24).5 Several other sources help us to understand what
kind of spiritual worship the Iconoclasts meant. I would like to start
re-creating the precise theological context for both citations with the
Apologies of John Damascene mentioned above. In several places
St. John rebukes those who deny the value of matter for salvation.6
If you say that one should unite with God in a purely intellectual manner (

), remove all
corporeal things: lights, fragrant incense, the very prayer which [comes]
from voice, all the divine mysteries which are celebrated from matter,
the bread, the wine, the anointing with oil, the imprint of the Cross.
All these are matter . . . Perhaps, you, being high and immaterial, raised
above the body, and, so to say, incorporeal, spit on all visible things

4
L. Brubaker, Aniconic Decoration in the Christian World (6th11th Century):
East and West, in Cristianit dOccidente e Cristianit dOriente, secoli 6.11, Settimane di studio del Centro italiano di studi sullalto medioevo 51.1 (Spoleto: Centro
Italiano di Studi sullAlto Medioevo; 2004), pp. 573590.
5
Mansi 13, 280E.
6
Writing on the Old Testament Tabernacle, a common Iconodulic pre-iguration
for artiicial images, St. John argues thus with his Iconoclastic interlocutor: hey
,
,
are not made, as you say, from ignominious matter (
) Apology I, 15, 1516 [Kotter, p. 88]); . . . do not say that matter is
evil, for it is not ignominious (
:
). (Apology I, 16,
3233 [Kotter, p. 90]).

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), but since I am a man and wear

a body, I desire to have intercourse with, and to see the holy things
in a corporeal manner. Condescend to the humbleness of my thought,
oh high one, so that you [may] maintain your height! (

,
,

.7

Is it possible to reconstruct the theology of St. Johns adversary towards

matter? Was it really the Manichaean view on matter as an evil principle, the view which was always associated with Iconoclastic rejection of material representations by all the Iconodulic writers, including
St. John himself?8 I think we should rather give a negative answer to
this question. In fact, John of Damascus himself seems to testify to
the doctrine presupposed by the rejection of images by his adversary.
his doctrine is a kind of Christian Platonist teaching of a purely mental approach to the intellectually contemplated divinity. What do the
Iconoclasts say themselves concerning matter and material images?
heir attitude is thus expressed in the main theological source, the
Deinition of the Council of Hiereia (754):
[. . .] they called together the entire sacerdotal congregation of the Godloving bishops in order that, ater they gathered together into a council, and ater they searched the Scriptures together about the fraudulent
painting of likenesses which draws down the mind of men from the loty
worship beitting God to down-to-earth and material worship of creatures
(

)9

he whole dossier of texts pertaining to the Iconoclastic way of correct worship of the divinity cannot be analysed in detail here.10 Now it
is enough to note that the key positions, mocked at by John of Damas-

Apology I, 36; II, 32 (Kotter, pp. 14748).

Apology II, 13, 13 (Kotter, p. 104), Apology II, 16, 6266 (Kotter, p. 113).
9
Mansi 13, 229E, trans. D. Sahas, Icon and Logos: Sources in Eighth-Century Iconoclasm, Toronto Medieval Texts and Translations 4 (Toronto, Bufalo, and London:
University of Toronto Press, 1986), p. 68 (hereater: Sahas). his passage bears certain
similarities with a passage in Origens, Contra Celsum IV, 31 (ed. M. Borret, Origne.
Contre Celse, vol. 2, Sources Chrtiennes 136 [Paris: dition du Cerf, 1968], pp. 260,
1520).
10
See V.A. Baranov, Origen and the Iconoclastic Controversy, in: L. Perrone
et al. (eds.), Origeniana Octava. Origen and the Alexandrian Tradition, vol. 2 (Bibliotheca Ephemeridum heologicarum Lovaniensium 164; Leuven: Peeters, 2003), pp.
10431052.
7

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cus, are all expressed in the passage from the Council of Hiereia. If we
extract the indications of the wrong theology from John of Damascuss passage, we receive the following picture:
1) the adversary exhorts one to connect with God in an intelligible
manner,
2) he somehow has a negative attitude toward matter, and
3) he is called high and immaterial.
If we compare these points with the statement from the Council of
Hiereia, we will ind even closer correspondence. he Council:
1) calls to the worship of God in intellect,
2) denigrates the representations of the divinity made by means of
matter, and
3) it considers only such immaterial and intellectual worship as high
and beitting God.
We possess other texts from the Iconoclasts, and these texts testify
to the same doctrine, thus expressed in the Horos of the Iconoclastic
Council of Hiereia:
If anyone attempts to perceive the divine character of God the Word
according to his Incarnation by means of material pigments and not to
worship wholeheartedly with the eyes of the intellect Him who, above the
brightness of the sun, has sat on the right hand of God on the throne of
glory, let him be anathema! (

)11

he same doctrine expressed in a single statement can be found in

another place of the Horos of Hiereia, among the acclamations with
which Councils were usually closed. he Iconoclasts propose a correct way of worship in an imageless, or intellectual manner, as if

11
Mansi 13, 336E. In other places of the Horos of Hiereia, a similar attitude towards
matter is expressed. Cf. It is not lawful for Christians, who have their hope in the
resurrection, to use the customs of nations that worship demons, and to treat so spitefully, by means of worthless and dead matter, the saints who will be resplendent with
such glory (Mansi 13, 277CD, trans. Sahas, 105).

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fulilling the program of true intelligible worship (

in the following way:

),

We all believe rightly! We venerate in an intellectual manner bringing

worship to the intellectual divinity (
)! his is the faith of the Apostles, this is the
faith of the Fathers, this is the faith of the Orthodox people. his is the
way all of them have venerated and worshipped God!12

Most likely exactly this character of intellectual worship was expressed by the Iconoclasts in the quote from John 4:24.13 Veneration
in an intellectual manner (
) from the Horos is explicitly connected with intellect ( ) and it is to this imageless worship in the
intellect that the Iconoclasts appeal in perfect accordance with the old
Christian Platonist tradition of Origen and Evagrius, sharply delineating God and matter and discarding (or at best considering ineicient
for salvation) sensual perception, belonging to the realm of things
mingled with matter, in favour of immaterial contemplation as a irst
and last perfect state of unfallen or recuperated minds.14
It is indeed in the writings of Evagrius of Pontos that we may ind a
clue to the Iconoclastic preference for intellectual contemplation over
visual perception. Evagrius distinguishes between representations,
which come into the mind by means of diferent faculties. According to Evagrius, vision is useless in rendering the contemplative (and,
consequently, in the theological system of Evagrius ultimately more
genuine) reality, since vision only provides human mind with the

12
Mansi 13, 353A. Daniel Sahas in his translation of the Sixth Session of the Council adopts the parallelism with John 4:24 and thus renders the acclamation: When
we worship God who is spirit, we all ofer our veneration in spirit. (Sahas, p. 166).
he allusion to the Scriptural citation appears already in Patriarch Germanus Epistle
to John of Synnada (PG 98, 160C) on the eve of the Controversy, which points to
its possible circulation in the Iconodulic-Iconoclastic polemics at the earliest stages
of the Controversy. he translation of Stephen Gero is similar: We all worship in a
spiritual manner, serving a spiritual Godhead. (S. Gero, Byzantine Iconoclasm during
the Reign of Constantine V with Particular Attention to the Oriental Sources, CSCO.
Sub. 52 [Louvain, 1977], p. 92).
13
he iconoclasts included the verse into the Scriptural lorilegium of the Council
of Hiereia (Mansi 13, 280E) and in the beginning of the Horos of St. Sophia (815)
(Ed. J.M. Featherstone, Nicephori Patriarchae Constantinoploitani Refutatio et eversio
deinitionis synodalis anni 815 [Corpus Christianorum, Series Graeca 33 Turnhout,
and Leuven: Brepols and Peeters, 1997], pp. 7, 45 [p. 13]).
14
his attitude of the Iconoclasts towards material images and immaterial contemplation is also attested to in the polemical writings of heodore the Studite (PG
99, 336B).

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representations (
) of forms, only suitable for sensible reality.
Hearing, however, may be preferred over vision: it may render contemplative reality along with the sensible one, since by hearing intellect can receive formless representations:
here are four ways through which the intellect receives representations:
the irst way is through the eyes, the second through hearing, the third
through memory, the fourth through the temperament. By the eyes,
[the intellect] receives only those representations which provide a form;
by hearing both those which provide a form and those which do not,
for both sensible reality and contemplatable reality are signiied by the
word. he memory and the temperament follow hearing, for both can
provide and not provide the intellect with forms, thus imitating the hearing (

,
:

,
:

,
:

)15

his notion seems to be based, in turn, on Origens epistemology,

in which vision relates to the corporeal and necessarily provisional
state and cannot convey true knowledge, which pertains to the timeless and incorporeal divinity.16 To reinforce the cluster of the Second
Commandment and John 4:24, the Iconoclasts added the quote from
Romans 10:17 (Faith is from hearing, and hearing is through the
word of God)17 to their Scriptural lorilegium.18
To counter accusations of idolatry, the Iconodules developed several other arguments. he irst of these is the delineation of worship
(
), as referring to God alone,19 and relative
15
J. Muyldermans, Evagriana, Le Muson 44 (1931), p. 52, number 9 (Cent.
Suppl. 18 (Fragment 435). Cf. eds. P. Ghin, C. Guillaumont, and A. Guillaumont,
vagre le Pontique. Sur les penses (Sources Chrtiennes 438; Paris: ditions du Cerf,
1998), 41, pp. 290296.
16
See, for example, De Principiis I, 1, 8 (eds. H Grgemanns, and H. Karpp, Origenes
vier Bcher von den Prinzipien (Texte zur Forschung 24; Darmstadt: Wissenschatliche
Buchgesellschat, 1976), 118, 16120, 11); Origens fragment number 13 on John 1, 18
(ed. E. Preuschen, Origenes Werke, vol. 4, GCS [Leipzig, 1903], pp. 494495).
17
Patriarch Germanus alludes to the same quote in his Epistle to homas of
Claudiopolis (PG 98, 173C = H.-G. hmmel, Die Frhgeschichte der ostkirchlichen
Bilderlehre. Texte und Untersuchungen zur Zeit vor dem Bilderstreit [Texte und Untersuchungen 139; Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1992]: 382, 154f ).
18
Mansi 13, 285C.
19
Apology I, 4, 37f. [Kotter, p. 76].

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veneration (
),20 as referring to the heotokos,
saints and holy objects, including icons and relics. Another argument
is more interesting to us, since it shows that the Iconodules accepted
the serious challenge of the Iconoclasts, who rebuked them for their
worship of icons, which draws down the mind of men from the loty
worship beitting God to base and material worship of creatures.21 In
reply to the Iconoclastic doctrine of intelligible worship, the Iconodules worked out such a system, in which both the human mind and
material images have place, that is, the system of intelligible worship which included the icon as its integral part. Although the Scriptural quote from Romans 10:17, which is present in the lorilegium
of Hiereia as applied to the refutation of icons, is not found in the
Apologies of John of Damascus in its original form, there is a clear allusion to it in the irst Apology. As if refuting the Iconoclastic use of the
Scriptural quote which undermines the value of sight (as a principle
of sense perception upon which the icon is built) from the lorilegium
of Hiereia, John of Damascus defends the value of sight in the following manner:
And everywhere we set in a sensible manner the image of Him, I mean,
of the Incarnate God the Word, and we sanctify the irst of the senses
(for the irst of the senses is sight) in the same way as hearing is sanctiied by words: for the icon is a reminder. And what the book is for
those who are initiated into letters, that is the icon for the illiterate, and
what is word for hearing, that is the icon for sight: we become uniied
with it in an intelligible manner (

)22

John of Damascus states in this text that the veneration of icons is

not idolatry but the same kind of intelligible worship. But how is
it possible to unify with the icon in an intelligible manner? John of

20
heodore the Studite, Epistula 57, 8185; Epistula 428, 222; Epistula 476, 20 (ed.
G. Fatouros, heodori Studitae Epistulae, vol. [Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae
31; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1992]).
21
Mansi 13, 229E.
22
Apology I, 17, 18 (Kotter, p. 93). Cf. Apology III, 12 (Kotter, p. 123); Mansi 13,
249DE.

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Damascus did not leave this seemingly contradictory statement without explanation. In another passage of the irst Apology, he conirms
the role of mind in penetration beyond material image. Enumerating diferent types of images, John speaks about visible images, which
recall such invisible substances as God or angels: Also images are
corporeal expressions of invisible things which have no form in order
to have [at least] a dim comprehension.23 And then John of Damascus
explains this using the thought of Dionysius about corporeal veils,
with which the language of Scripture envelops things invisible and
supra-sensible.
For the justiication of images, the Iconodules borrowed only one,
rather limited, aspect of Dionysius teaching. Dionysius ambivalence
towards the visual representations pre-conditioned the fact that John
of Damascus is forced to somewhat distort the original thought of
Dionysius, who speaks about dissimilar images granted to the imageless substances. Ater referring to Dionysius,24 John of Damascus thus
builds his a fortiori argument in defence of images: . . . if the divine
word . . . envelops with some images both simple things, and things
which do not have any image, why cannot we depict that which possessed image by its nature (

)?25 Perhaps, sensing the ambiguity of the reference to

Dionysius, John of Damascus continues the explanation of the technology of how the process of visual perception of an image puts on
the faculties of human intellect:
hrough the sense, a certain representation is composed in the front
ventricle of the brain and thus, it is sent to the discerning [faculty]
and is treasured in the memory (

)26

Apology I, 11, 13 (Kotter, p. 84).

Apology I, 11, 510 (Kotter, pp. 8485) corresponds to De coelesti hierarchia, II,
2, 1115 (eds. G. Heil, and A. Ritter, Corpus Dionysiacum II. De coelesti hierarchia, De
ecclesiastica hiererchia, De mystica theologia, Epistulae [Patristische Texte und Studien
36; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991], p. 11].
25
Apology I, 11, 1114 (Kotter, p. 85).
26
Apology 1, 11, 1619 (Kotter, p. 85); cf. Expositio idei, II 17, 19 [ed. Kotter,
Die Schriten des Johannes von Damaskos, vol 2 (Patristische Texte und Studien 12
Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 1973), p. 83]. he parallel between John of Damascus and
Nemesius was irst noted by F.S. Vladimirskij. See the second part of the monograph
by Vladimirskij (Anthropology and cosmology of Nemesius, the bishop of Emessa in
23

24

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he way of perception is through vision which translates the image

to the power of the irrational soul called phantastikon and then, this
image of the object is transported to the Aristotelian sensus communis,
which, in its turn, translates it to the memory where it is stored and
from where it can be retrieved in the process of remembering or thinking. In this, John of Damascus follows the anthropology of Nemesius
of Emessa:
So, then, the faculty of imagination hands on to the faculty of intellect things that the senses have perceived, while the faculty of intellect receives them, passes judgement on them, and hands them on
to the faculty of memory. he organ of this faculty is the hinder part
of the brain (

)27

Such representation can be called up from the treasury of the mind

upon the irst request, since the faculty of imagination functions in a
double manner it transfers the representation from the senses to the
memory and calls the representation from the memory on the order
of the mind.28
It seems that the Iconodulic argumentation on the indispensability
of senses and mental images was developed essentially on the basis of
Aristotles doctrine of memory and cognition. We may ask why Aristotles philosophical heritage was more handy to the Iconodules than

their relation to ancient philosophy and Patristic literature (Zhitomir, 1912) in Nemesij
Emesskij. O prirode cheloveka [Nemesius of Emessa. On the nature of man] (Moscow:
Kanon+, 1998), pp. 36970.
27
Nemesius of Emessa, XIII (ed. M. Morani, Nemesii Emeseni De natura hominis
[Leipzig: Teubner Verlagsgesellschat, 1987], pp. 69, 1620, the translation was taken
from ed. W. Teler, Cyril of Jerusalem and Nemesius of Emessa [he Library of Christian Classics, vol. 4; London: SCM Press, 1955], p. 341). his parallel is not indicated
in the critical edition of the Apologies by B. Kotter; J. Dayton in the article, dedicated
to the analysis of the cognition in St. John of Damascus on the basis of the same passage of the Apology, does not mention the Nemesian background of the passage (cf.
J. Dayton, John of Damascus on Human Cognition: An Element in His Apologetic
for Icons, Church History 65 [1996], p. 181, and n. 56, p. 183).
28
f. Nemesius of Emessa: . . . as organs, the faculty of imagination has, irst, the
front lobes of the brain and the psychic spirit contained in them, then the nerves
impregnated with psychic spirit that proceeds from them and the whole construction of sense-organs (ed. M. Morani, Nemesii Emeseni De Natura hominis [Leipzig:
Teubner Verlagsgesellschat, 1987], p. 55, 1456, 4, the translation is taken from ed.
W. Teler, Cyril of Jerusalem and Nemesius of Emessa, he Library of Christian Classics, vol. 4; London: SCM Press, 1955], p. 321).

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Platos quasi-theological system. his happened because Aristotles

teaching on human perception was largely constructed as a response
to Platos epistemology, in which dialectical thinking as dealing with
ideal forms, rises above images, as ultimately connected with sensible
material reality.29 In Aristotle, as Richard Sorabji clearly expounded
in the introductory essay to his translation of Aristotles treatise on
memory, all processes of human reasoning require images,30 for in
Aristotles system only very few things exist in an ideal form separately from the sensible world, and therefore, the objects of thought
need to have a sensible vehicle which is their sensible form (for example, the colours of an object); this form is being transferred into the
bodily organs in the process of perception the object. Similarly, already
the primary state of the act of remembering in Aristotle (afection)
involves an image or imprint of the perceived object, projected into a
bodily organ.31 he initial afection produces a mental image which is
stored in the memory; moreover, Aristotle requires such an image to
be a representation or likeness of the model perceived (
, 450b27;
451a2, a1112).
According to Aristotle, a mental image must be a likeness, since it
must be the image of something. Aristotle also states that such an image,
like an ordinary picture or copy of something is both like and dislike
the original model,32 and the kind of derivation of a mental image
from its model is the causal one. It is precisely that double nature
of a mental image that allows us to recognise persons on their portraits which essentially involves the comparison between the mental
image of a person stored in our memory with a mental image received
through the sense organs from contemplating the persons portrait.
Republic 511c; 532a.
R. Sorabji, Aristotle on Memory (London: Duckworth, 1972), pp. 6f. Cf. De
memoria et reminiscentia 449b31; De Anima 431a16; 431b2; 432a8;a13.
31
R. Sorabji, Aristotle on Memory (London: Duckworth, 1972), p. 2. Cf. . . . one
must think of the afection, which is produced by means of perception in the soul
and in that part of the body which contains the soul, as being like a sort of picture
), the having of which we say is memory (Aristotle, De memoria et remi(
niscentia, 450a28, trans. Sorabji, 50).
32
he relevant passage in Aristotle is: For the igure drawn on a panel is both a
igure and a copy (
), and while being one and the same, it is both,
even though the being of the two is not the same. And one can contemplate it both as
)
a igure and as a copy. In the same way one must also conceive the image (
in us to be something in its own right and to be of another thing. In so far, then, as it

is something in its own right, it is an object of a contemplation or an image (

). But in so far as it is of another thing, it is a sort of copy and a

reminder (

) (450b20f, trans. Sorabji, 51)
29

30

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We meet the direct use of this Aristotelian concept in the third

Apology of John of Damascus, where he is discussing what the image
is, what is depictable and what is not, and, inally, how the depiction
works. In answering the second question, John of Damascus employs
the concept of mental image as a background of every mental activity. Such activity happens on the basis of mental representations (if
we speak about the sense of sight) or any other sensations (for other
senses) which form the human experience: we can think of only something we had seen, touched or tasted before:
To put it simply, we can make images of all those conigurations which
we see and we perceive them in thought in a way they were seen. For
if we think of the conigurations that are coming from words, they are
[also] from what we have seen, and the process of thinking happens
on the basis of those. So it happens with every sense through words
we come to the thinking on the basis of what we had smelt, what we
had tasted or had touched (

)33

,
,

If the Iconoclasts Platonic epistemological approach is consistent with

both Platonic epistemology and its Christian version in Origen and his
followers, the Iconodules seem to have a certain inconsistency, applying an Aristotelian image-based approach, designed for this world, and
its material and sensually perceived objects, for the purpose of knowing and seeing Christ and his saints. However, this inconsistency is
only apparent since in his theory of thinking Aristotle endows images
with commemorative function, and so does John of Damascus, placing icons, along with all visual religious imagery, in the category of
things reminding of the past,34 thus precisely fulilling the purpose
for which Aristotle intends his visual imagery which represents the
things remembered.35

33
34
35

Apology III, 24, 2028 (Kotter, p. 131).

Apology I, 13 (Kotter, p. 86); Apology III, 23 (Kotter, pp. 129130).
R. Sorabji, Aristotle on Memory (London: Duckworth, 1972), pp. 78.

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the second commandment and true worship

553

It is also necessary to mention that in their positive interpretation

of imaginative representation (
),36 both John of Damascus
and heodore the Studite, who continued the line of rehabilitation
of the faculty of imagination and its contents mental images during the second Iconoclasm,37 shit the accent in the preceding tradition of theological anthropology, where phantasia or phantasma have
a certain negative connotation oten denoting a mental image which is
brought in by the demons to distract the praying ascetic from imageless contemplation.
Such connotation apparently starts with the Bible. One can see
that if we read a verse from Prophet Habakkuk, where the prophet
rebukes a Pagan in his reliance upon an idol false representation
(
).38 Dionysius the Areopagite as well states that the
divinity is not perceived by any sense, or imagination (
),
or judgement, or name, or touching, or comprehension.39 Describing
the removal of the imperfect members from the Liturgy, Dionysius
uses the word
in a negative sense: ater the removal of the
irst group of the imperfect, those who, though they stepped back
from the opposing life, still have not cleansed from its imaginations
(
) with habit, and divine and pure love (

36
I translate
as imagination if it means faculty of human mind, representation if it means a mental image, or imaginative representation (like here) to
emphasise the immaterial mental character of such image.
37
Similarly by rehabilitating the imagination, heodore the Studite argues against
the Iconoclasts, accepting at the same time, their minor premise the concept of the
validity of naturally inherent images. In one of his letters he writes that both image
) and imagination (
) are kinds of images (

),
(
out of which the lesser one is imagination. St. heodore asks the rhetorical question:
if we are forced to deny the image, it would certainly be the lesser one the natural
faculty of imagination. What would then happen to four other Aristotelian faculties
), opinion (
), thought (
) and, inally,
of the soul: perception (
Iconoclasts celebrated intellect ( )? (see Epistle 380, ed. Fatouros, vol. 2, pp. 517,
169175, cf. P. Alexander, Patriarch Nicephorus of Constantinople: Ecclesiastical Policy
and Image Worship in the Byzantine Empire [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958], p. 194);
see also A. Louth, St. John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine heology
[Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002], pp. 217f ).
38

,
;
,
,

) (Hab. 2:18).
39
De divinis nominibus I, 5 (ed. B. Suchla, Corpus Dionysiacum, I. De divinis
nominibus [Patristische Texte und Studien 33; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1990],
p. 116, 34); cf. De divinis nominibus I, 5 (Ibid., p. 117, 9).

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554

vladimir baranov

).40
Summing up the results of our investigation, the Iconoclasts required
imageless intellectual contemplation as the only way of correct worship
of God, following a Platonic epistemological trend baptized by Origen and systematically developed by Evagrius of Pontos. In response
the Iconodules stated that the necessity of sensible material images
corresponds to the necessity, irst, of the Incarnation,41 and, second, to
our life in a material world and in a material body, and proposed that
the icon or generally speaking, the image can serve as an indispensable mediator between the believer and God. In general agreement
that the divinity should be approached in an intellectual manner, the
Iconodulic theologian John of Damascus was forced to develop a doctrine which would integrate the icon into the system of intellectual
worship. He builds up such a theory on the basis of the Christian
anthropology of Nemesius of Emessa and the epistemology of Aristotle, adapting its premise of the mediating image as a precondition of
every mental activity to the commemorative function of an icon. hus
in a curious way John of Damascus justiies icon veneration implying
that the Iconodulic approach to the divinity by means of icons is also
an intellectual approach since it is the mind of man that is the inal
point of destination where a mental image arrives from a sensually
perceived material iconic representation. he Iconoclasts had a right
to claim traditionalism of their theology; yet the Iconodules theology proved to be much more realistic, anthropologically oriented, and,
in modern terms, creative. his is why it won not only the political
struggle in ninth century Byzantium, but became the living tradition
of the Eastern Church in the following centuries.

40
De ecclesiastica heirarchia III, , 7 (eds. G. Heil, and A. Ritter, Corpus Dionysiacum II. De coelesti hierarchia, De ecclesiastica hierechia, De mystica theologia,
Epistulae (Patristische Texte und Studien 36; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1991), p. 87,
1719).
41
PLEASE SUPPLY FN. TEXT.

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