By Chanter Christopher

Introduction

I don’t know if you can recall the night that you and I went out to dinner and I expressed the fact that Gerard Bruno, Fr. Zosima and I were in an ongoing theological debate about the significance of icons in relation to the Orthodox Church. At that point at time I was aware that the icon was considered a holy mystery like the many others, and that the Orthodox Church viewed icons as much more than representational art, or teaching art for the illiterate masses, which was an obvious western view of the world. But what I could not understand is that why icons had to be two-dimensional forms, and not be three-dimensional forms (i.e. Statuary). The main question, which had been nagging my brain, was that: could the statue not express the same spiritual truths of the Orthodox Church which were found in icons and if not then why? However since talking with you that night, plus doing extensive research into the question, and after having a sort of revelation tonight as I am writing to you I believe that I have finally solved the question.

The Question of Significance

Before I became Orthodox I had did a lot of research about the Orthodox faith. As I have said before the main reason I joined was because I was draw to the idea of mystery and a deep spirituality, which I felt that western theology and thought in general was so heavily lacking. As I had begun to grow in the faith I found myself learning more and more and becoming more entranced in the richness of the Orthodox Church. However, there was one thing that I could not fully understand and that was its icons. Coming from a western background I had never seen an icon in my life until I came into the Orthodox faith. At first they seemed like crude artistic images to me. Then as I learned more about then I found out why they were painted (or “written”, as is said in the east) and came to appreciate them more. But I still couldn’t really grasp all the significance or “hype” if you will, about what made then so theologically better than any other form of art.

The revelation of the Buddha

We had just finished doing inventory at the Chancellor’s mansion where I work. Upon going through the attic I discovered a lifelike size statue of Buddha that had been given to the house by a former Chancellor who was Chinese and a Buddhist. I gazed upon this three-dimensional wooded icon of Buddha complete with gold leaf around his Hellenistic inspired dress, and halo and thought: my how this statue draws so much from classical (Hellenic) art but also incorporates heavy symbolism and stylization, much like our churches icons do. I also though about how I have seen statues of Our Lord that are something like this Buddha. But then something clicked inside me and I had a kind of revelation: But wait the difference between this stylized three dimensional icon and the two dimensional icons of the Orthodox faith is that this statue is only limited to the senses of our dimension! Of course, why could I have not thought of it before! Icons are supposed to be windows to heaven. When we look at an icon of Our Lord or the Theotokos, we see them in an image surrounded by gold, which is “the radiance of heaven”. Our Lord and the Theotokos are not in our dimension (this world) but they are in heaven (another dimension) and we are looking into their dimension, from ours through this icon, which is serving its purpose as a window into heaven. Our senses are restricted to this three-dimensional world and cannot penetrate into the realm of heaven were Christ and the Saints reside. We may only get a glimpse of it by way of the two dimensional icon. We cannot see what is behind our Lord, what is above him, below him, to the right or to the left of him, only that he is looking back at us from a world that we cannot comprehend but that we will hopefully one day be able to get to (i.e. Theosis). This is the theology of the icons that the fathers preached and that I finally realized. Thus the three-dimensional statue is nice as far as decorative art goes, but is insufficient in fully expressing the spiritual truths of the Orthodox Church, because a human is capable of fully comprehending the reality of a statue of our Lord because it appears to be in our realm, our state of nature, where as the icon seeks to unite our world with heaven through its image. This why the two dimensional icon of the Orthodox Church never reached anything beyond “sculpture in the round” which were carved on ivory panels.

Closing

In closing I having finally truly began to understand icons and I hope that it draws me ever so more deeper into the holy mysteries of the Orthodox faith.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 29th, 2006 at 15:53 and is filed under Icons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.