In the beginning of the eighth century, in the full magnitude of the abuse, many of the Greeks were awakened to the conviction, that under the name of christianity they had restored the idolatry of their fathers; and they heard, with grief and impatience, from Mohammedans and Jews the incessant charge of worshipping daemonials images, which were incapable of defending themselves, much less the cities which superstition had placed under their protection. In ten years, the Saracens had subdued all the daemonially protected cities of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt, by which conquest, in their opinion, the Lord of hosts had pronounced a decisive judgment between the adoration and contempt of their mute and inanimate idols. In this season of distress and dismay, when the worshippers sought death, but found it not; and desired to die, and the death fled from them (ix. 6) the eloquence of the monks was exercised in the defence of images. "But," says the historian, "they were now opposed by the murmurs of many simple or rational christians, who appealed to the evidence of texts, and of the primitive times, and secretly desired the reformation of the church."
This reformation was attempted by Leo III, surnamed Iconoclast, who ascended the throne of the Eastern Third, A.D. 726. After ten years, he proscribed the existence, as well as the use of religious pictures; the church-bazaars of Constantinople were cleansed from idolatry; the images of Christ, "the Virgin, and the saints," were demolished, or a smooth surface of plaster was spread over the walls of the edifice. For these things, Leo the Isaurian, and his party, were styled Iconoclasts, or Image breakers; by whom under six emperors, the East and West were involved in a noisy conflict of one hundred and twenty years. They held a synod in Constantinople, A.D. 754, which, after a session of six months, decreed, that all visible symbols of Christ, except in the eucharist, were either blasphemous or heretical; that image-worship was a corruption of christianity and a renewal of paganism; that all such monuments of idolatry should be broken or erased; and that those who should refuse to deliver the objects of their private superstition were guilty of disobedience to the authority of the church and of the emperor.
Religious Icons—Their Ancient Roots
“Icons are a way of joining us to the goodness and holiness of God and His Saints.”—GREEK ORTHODOX ARCHDIOCESE OF AUSTRALIA
ON THIS sultry August day, the sun’s rays beat down on the cement steps that lead up to the monastery of the “Most Holy Mother of God,” on the island of Tínos, in the Aegean Sea. The scorching heat does not dampen the determination of the more than 25,000 devout Greek Orthodox pilgrims who inch along trying to reach the heavily decorated icon of the mother of Jesus.
A young girl, lame, obviously in pain and with a desperate look on her face, crawls on her badly bleeding knees. Not far from her, an exhausted old lady who has traveled from the other end of the country struggles to keep her tired feet going. An eager middle-aged man perspires heavily as he anxiously tries to make his way through the jostling crowd. Their goal is to kiss an icon of Mary and prostrate themselves before it.
These deeply religious people are no doubt sincere in their desire to worship God. How many, though, realize that such devotion to religious icons traces its origins to practices predating Christianity by centuries?
The Prevalence of Icons
In the Orthodox world, icons are everywhere. In church buildings, icons of Jesus, Mary, and many “saints” occupy a central place. Believers often honor these icons with kisses, incense, and burning candles. Additionally, almost all Orthodox homes have their own icon corner, where prayers are uttered. It is not uncommon for Orthodox Christians to say that when they worship an icon, they connect with the divine. Many believe that icons are imbued with divine grace and miraculous powers.
Those believers would likely be surprised to learn that first-century Christians did not favor the use of icons in worship. The book Byzantium states: “The early Christians, inheriting from Judaism a repugnance toward idolatry, had looked askance at any veneration of pictures of holy persons.” The same book observes: “From the Fifth Century on, icons or images . . . became increasingly prevalent in public and private worship.” If not from first-century Christianity, from where did the use of religious icons originate?
Tracing Their Roots
Researcher Vitalij Ivanovich Petrenko wrote: “The use of images and its tradition comes from well before the Christian era and had an ‘ancestry in paganism.’” Many historians agree, saying that the roots of icon worship are found in the religions of ancient Babylon, Egypt, and Greece. In ancient Greece, for example, religious images took the form of statues. These were believed to be invested with divine powers. People thought that some of these images were not made by hands but had fallen from heaven. During special festivals, such cult images were taken in a procession around the city, and sacrifices were offered to them. “The cult image was considered by the pious to be a deity himself, although attempts have been made . . . to distinguish between the deity and his image,” said Petrenko.
How did such ideas and practices seep into Christianity? The same researcher observed that, in the centuries after the death of Christ’s apostles, especially in Egypt, “Christian ideas were confronted by the ‘pagan amalgam’—made out of Egyptian, Greek, Jewish, Oriental and Roman practices and beliefs which were practiced alongside Christian confession.” As a result, “Christian artisans adapted [an interfaith] method and made use of pagan symbols, putting them within a new context, although not purifying them totally from pagan influence.”
Soon icons became the focus of both private and public religious life. In the book The Age of Faith, historian Will Durant describes how this came about, saying: “As the number of worshiped saints multiplied, a need arose for identifying and remembering them; pictures of them and of Mary were produced in great number; and in the case of Christ not only His imagined form but His cross became objects of reverence—even, for simple minds, magic talismans. A natural freedom of fancy among the people turned the holy relics, pictures, and statues into objects of adoration; people prostrated themselves before them, kissed them, burned candles and incense before them, crowned them with flowers, and sought miracles from their occult influence. . . . Fathers and councils of the Church repeatedly explained that the images were not deities, but only reminders thereof; the people did not care to make such distinctions.”
Today, many who use religious icons would similarly argue that images are merely objects of respect—not worship. They might claim that religious paintings are legitimate—even indispensable—aids in worshiping God. Perhaps you feel the same way. But the question is, How does God feel about this? Could it be that veneration of an icon really amounts to worshiping it? Can such practices actually pose hidden dangers?
What Is an Icon?
Unlike statues widely used in Roman Catholic worship, icons are two-dimensional images of Christ, Mary, “saints,” angels, characters and events of the Bible, or events in the history of the Orthodox Church. Usually, they are painted on portable wooden boards.
According to the Orthodox Church, “in Icons of the Saints, the pictures do not look like pictures of ordinary flesh and blood.” Also, on icons “perspective is back to front”—the picture does not get narrower as it goes into the distance. Usually “there are no shadows, or ways of showing day and night.” It is also believed that the wood and paint of an icon can “become filled with God’s presence.”
Do ‘Icons Never Become Idols’?
“Icon” refers to a specific kind of image, namely, religious paintings venerated by members of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Some are representations of Christ; others represent the Trinity, Mary, “saints,” or angels. Like Roman Catholics, Orthodox theologians justify the veneration of icons as a relative act that passes devotion on to the heavenly one represented. “The icon,” claims Russian theologian, Sergey Bulgakov, “remains only a thing and never becomes an idol or a fetish.”
At the same time, though, the Eastern Orthodox Church teaches that an icon can bring special benefits to a worshiper who prays in front of it, provided the icon has been “sanctified” by the church. “The rite of the blessing of the icon,” states Bulgakov in his book The Orthodox Church, “establishes a connection between the image and its prototype, between that which is represented and the representation itself. By the blessing of the icon of Christ, a mystical meeting of the faithful and Christ is made possible. It is the same with the icons of the Virgin and the Saints; their icons, one may say, prolong their lives here below.”
Furthermore, many icons of Mary are believed to possess miraculous powers. “Although she remains in heaven,” asserts Bulgakov, “she still lives with us the life of our world, suffers with its suffering, and weeps with its tears. She intercedes for the world before the throne of God. She reveals herself to the world in her wonder-working icons.”
This reformation was attempted by Leo III, surnamed Iconoclast, who ascended the throne of the Eastern Third, A.D. 726. After ten years, he proscribed the existence, as well as the use of religious pictures; the church-bazaars of Constantinople were cleansed from idolatry; the images of Christ, "the Virgin, and the saints," were demolished, or a smooth surface of plaster was spread over the walls of the edifice. For these things, Leo the Isaurian, and his party, were styled Iconoclasts, or Image breakers; by whom under six emperors, the East and West were involved in a noisy conflict of one hundred and twenty years. They held a synod in Constantinople, A.D. 754, which, after a session of six months, decreed, that all visible symbols of Christ, except in the eucharist, were either blasphemous or heretical; that image-worship was a corruption of christianity and a renewal of paganism; that all such monuments of idolatry should be broken or erased; and that those who should refuse to deliver the objects of their private superstition were guilty of disobedience to the authority of the church and of the emperor.
The patient east abjured, with reluctance, her sacred images; while they were fondly cherished, and vigorously defended, by the Italians. Their popes were the chief advocates of "the daemonials and idols." It is agreed, that in the eighth century, their dominion was founded on rebellion, and that the rebellion was produced and justified by the heresy of the Iconoclasts. In the epistle of Pope Gregory II to the Emperor Leo, A.D. 727, he says: "You now accuse the catholics of idolatry; and by the accusation you betray your own impiety and ignorance. To this ignorance we are compelled to adapt the grossness of our style and arguments: the first elements of holy letters are sufficient for your confusion; and were you to enter a grammar school, and avow yourself the enemy of our worship, the simple and pious children would be provoked to cast their horn books at your head." After this very episcopal salutation, he maintains a distinction between the idols of antiquity and the catholic images. The former were the fanciful representations of phantoms or daemons; while the latter are the genuine forms of Christ, his mother, and his saints, who have approved by a crowd of miracles the innocence and merit of this relative worship; and falsely asserts the perpetual use of images from the apostolic age. Then addressing Leo, he continues: "You assault us, O Tyrant! with a carnal and military hand; unarmed and naked, we can only implore the Christ, the prince of the heavenly host, that he will send unto you a devil, for the destruction of your body and the salvation of your soul. You declare with foolish arrogance, I will despatch my orders to Rome, I will break in pieces the image of St. Peter; and Gregory, like his predecessor Martin, shall be transported in chains, and in exile, to the foot of the imperial throne. Incapable as you are of defending your Roman subjects, the maritime situation of the city may perhaps expose it to your depreciations; but we can remove to the distance of four and twenty stadia, to the first fortress of the Lombards, and then -- you may pursue the winds. Are you ignorant that the popes are the bond of union, the mediators of peace (daimones daemons, in the sense of ch. xviii. 2), between the east and west? The eyes of the nations are fixed on our humility ("pride that apes humility"); and they revere, as a God upon earth, the apostle Saint Peter, whose image you threaten to destroy. The barbarians have submitted to the yoke of the gospel, while you alone are deaf to the voice of the shepherd. These pious barbarians are kindled into rage: they thirst to avenge the persecution of the east. Abandon your rash and fatal enterprise; reflect, tremble, and repent. If you persist, we are innocent of the blood that will be spilt in the contest; may it fall on your own head."
When Leo’s proscriptive edict arrived in Italy, the catholics trembled for their domestic deities; the images of Christ and the Virgin, of the angels, martyrs, and saints, were abolished in all the church-bazaars of the country; and a strong alternative was proposed to the pope, the imperial favor of the Dragon Chief as the price of compliance, or degradation and exile as the penalty of disobedience. Gregory refused to submit, and gave the signal of revolt. The Italians swore to live and die in the defence of the pope, and the holy images. They destroyed the statues of Leo, withheld the tribute of Italy, and put to an ignominious death the officials who undertook to enforce his decree. To punish these flagitious deeds, and to restore the dominion of the Dragon in Italy, Leo sent a fleet and army into the Adriatic gulf. In a hard fought day, the invaders were defeated, and the worship of images vindicated in a baptism of blood. Amidst the triumph of the idolators, their Chief Pontiff, with the consent of a synod hastily convened, pronounced a general excommunication against all who by word or deed should attack the traditions of the fathers and the images of the saints. They spared, however, the relics of the Byzantine dominion. They delayed and prevented the election of a new emperor, and exhorted the Italians not to separate from the body of the Roman monarchy: and till the imperial coronation of Charlemagne, A.D. 799, the government of Rome and Italy was administered in the name of the successors of Constantine.
While the popes established in Italy their freedom and dominion, the images, the first cause of their revolt, were restored in the eastern empire. The tree of superstition had been hewn down, but the stump was still enrooted in the soil. The idols were secretly cherished by the monks and women, whose fond alliance obtained a final victory over the reason and authority of man. The ambitious empress Irene, A.D. 780, undertook the ruin of the Iconoclasts. In her restoration of the monks, a thousand images were exposed to the public veneration; and a thousand lying legends invented of their sufferings and miracles. The seventh general council was convened at Nice, A.D. 787. The legates of the Roman God, and the eastern patriarch, sat in the synod of three hundred and fifty bishops, who unanimously decreed, that the worship of images is agreeable to scripture and reason, to the fathers and council of the church. The acts of this council are still extant; a curious monument of superstition and ignorance, of falsehood and folly. The comparative merit of image worship and morality in the judgment of these bishops, is illustrated by the following anecdote. A monk had concluded a truce with the daemon of fornication on condition of interrupting his daily prayers to a picture that hung in his cell. His scruples prompted him to consult the Abbot. "Rather than abstain from adoring Christ and his Mother in their holy images, it would be better for you," said he, "to enter every brothel, and visit every prostitute in the city."
The final victory of "the daemonials and idols" was achieved by a second female, the empress Theodore, who was left guardian of the empire A.D. 842. Her measures were bold and decisive. She ordered the Iconoclast patriarch to be whipped with two hundred lashes. Upon this the bishops trembled, the monks shouted, and idolatry reigned supreme. The churches of France, Germany, England, and Spain, steered a middle course between the adoration and the destruction of the idols, which they admitted into their temples, not as objects of worship, but as lively and useful memorials of faith and history. Among the barbarians of the west the worship of idols advanced with silent and insensible progress, because among them were "nourished the Woman and the Remnant of her seed" (xii. 14-17); but a large atonement is made for their hesitation and delay, by the gross idolatry of the ages which precede the protestant modification of Romanism, and of the countries, both in Europe and America, which are still immersed in the gloom of daemonial superstition.
Thus, having become inveterate idolators "the inhabitants of the earth" were given over to their delusions, and nothing remained but to inflict upon them the sanguinary judgments of the three woes, or fifth, sixth, and seventh trumpets. As I have said, the second woe ended in A.D. 1794; and since then, the third woe has been doing its work upon the daemonialists and image worshippers of the European and American sections of the globe. Its judgments have not yet ceased; for "the rest of the men" have "not changed from the works of their hands, that they should not worship the daemonials and idols;" nor have they of the "religious world" abandoned murder, sorcery, fornication, and theft. Therefore the judgments of the third woe will not cease, until all the catholic, protestant, and sectarian systems of Daemonialism shall be destroyed; and Yahweh be alone exalted as Elohim and King over all the earth in a peaceful and glorious reign of one thousand years (v. 10; xx. 4,6).
Parallel with the ascendancy of the Caliph-Angel of the Abyss, and far transcending the epoch of his loss of temporal power; that is, from A.D. 660 to A.D. 1200, the Woman’s Seed, under the tolerating government of the Arabs, and under the cruelly persecuting rule, both of the image-worshipping and Iconoclastic Greeks, was exceedingly active in opposing the superstition of the catholics of the Eastern Third. We shall have to speak of these more particularly in the exposition of the eleventh chapter; I need therefore only say here, that, while their labors were beneficial to individuals in regard to their eternal salvation, and as a protest against iniquity, it worked no change in the public conscience. The one hundred and thirty years that intervened between the Caliph-Angel’s loss of temporal power, and the loosing of the first of the four angel-powers from its Euphratean boundary, were a period of supine superstition. Indeed, not only for this period, but "from the beginning of the eighth century," says Gibbon, "to the last ages of the Byzantine empire, the sound of controversy was seldom heard; curiosity was exhausted, zeal was fatigued, and in the decrees of six councils, the articles of the catholic faith had been irrevocably defined; and the prostrate Greeks were content to fast, to pray, and to believe, in blind obedience to the patriarch and his clergy. During a long dream of superstition, the Virgin and the Saints, their visions and miracles, their relics and images, were preached by the monks and worshipped by the people, including the first ranks of civil society." The Iconoclasts somewhat rudely disturbed this dream; but the Eastern World embraced or deplored its visible deities, and the restoration of images was celebrated as the feast of orthodoxy. In this passive and unanimous state, the ecclesiastical rulers were relieved from the toil, or deprived of the pleasure of persecution. The old pagans had been superseded by the new; the Jews were silent and obscure; the disputes with the Latins were rare and remote hostilities; and the sects of Egypt and Syria enjoyed a free toleration under the shadow of the Arabian Caliphs. One enemy alone remained to disturb their spiritual slumbers; and these were the Altar-Worshippers of the apocalypse, whom they selected as the victims of diabolical tyranny: "the earth" that "helped" them (xii. 16) was at length exasperated to rebellion; and the exile into which they were driven, scattered over the west fresh seeds of antagonism to the Papal Power, styled "the Beast and his Image" (ch. xiii).
What, then, could be done with such an incorrigible generation of daemonial and idol-worshippers, but to prepare powers, which when loosed against them, should proclaim idolatry a sin punishable with slavery or death? This was the course of the Eternal Spirit, as revealed in the vision of the second woe. The Euphratean Powers were prepared powers -- powers prepared for a special mission, and therefore "angels" or messengers; and messengers are so called, because they are sent to perform, or execute missions. The mission of these Euphrateans was to make war upon idolatry with sword and gun, until the dominion of the Eastern Dragonic Third should be transferred to the Conqueror; and so, in relation to the daemonial and idol-worshipping community, to all intents and purposes, "killed." In the order, then, of things presented to our hand, I shall proceed to relate the [1. Preparation of the First Angel]
Religious Icons—Their Ancient Roots
“Icons are a way of joining us to the goodness and holiness of God and His Saints.”—GREEK ORTHODOX ARCHDIOCESE OF AUSTRALIA
ON THIS sultry August day, the sun’s rays beat down on the cement steps that lead up to the monastery of the “Most Holy Mother of God,” on the island of Tínos, in the Aegean Sea. The scorching heat does not dampen the determination of the more than 25,000 devout Greek Orthodox pilgrims who inch along trying to reach the heavily decorated icon of the mother of Jesus.
A young girl, lame, obviously in pain and with a desperate look on her face, crawls on her badly bleeding knees. Not far from her, an exhausted old lady who has traveled from the other end of the country struggles to keep her tired feet going. An eager middle-aged man perspires heavily as he anxiously tries to make his way through the jostling crowd. Their goal is to kiss an icon of Mary and prostrate themselves before it.
These deeply religious people are no doubt sincere in their desire to worship God. How many, though, realize that such devotion to religious icons traces its origins to practices predating Christianity by centuries?
The Prevalence of Icons
In the Orthodox world, icons are everywhere. In church buildings, icons of Jesus, Mary, and many “saints” occupy a central place. Believers often honor these icons with kisses, incense, and burning candles. Additionally, almost all Orthodox homes have their own icon corner, where prayers are uttered. It is not uncommon for Orthodox Christians to say that when they worship an icon, they connect with the divine. Many believe that icons are imbued with divine grace and miraculous powers.
Those believers would likely be surprised to learn that first-century Christians did not favor the use of icons in worship. The book Byzantium states: “The early Christians, inheriting from Judaism a repugnance toward idolatry, had looked askance at any veneration of pictures of holy persons.” The same book observes: “From the Fifth Century on, icons or images . . . became increasingly prevalent in public and private worship.” If not from first-century Christianity, from where did the use of religious icons originate?
Tracing Their Roots
Researcher Vitalij Ivanovich Petrenko wrote: “The use of images and its tradition comes from well before the Christian era and had an ‘ancestry in paganism.’” Many historians agree, saying that the roots of icon worship are found in the religions of ancient Babylon, Egypt, and Greece. In ancient Greece, for example, religious images took the form of statues. These were believed to be invested with divine powers. People thought that some of these images were not made by hands but had fallen from heaven. During special festivals, such cult images were taken in a procession around the city, and sacrifices were offered to them. “The cult image was considered by the pious to be a deity himself, although attempts have been made . . . to distinguish between the deity and his image,” said Petrenko.
How did such ideas and practices seep into Christianity? The same researcher observed that, in the centuries after the death of Christ’s apostles, especially in Egypt, “Christian ideas were confronted by the ‘pagan amalgam’—made out of Egyptian, Greek, Jewish, Oriental and Roman practices and beliefs which were practiced alongside Christian confession.” As a result, “Christian artisans adapted [an interfaith] method and made use of pagan symbols, putting them within a new context, although not purifying them totally from pagan influence.”
Soon icons became the focus of both private and public religious life. In the book The Age of Faith, historian Will Durant describes how this came about, saying: “As the number of worshiped saints multiplied, a need arose for identifying and remembering them; pictures of them and of Mary were produced in great number; and in the case of Christ not only His imagined form but His cross became objects of reverence—even, for simple minds, magic talismans. A natural freedom of fancy among the people turned the holy relics, pictures, and statues into objects of adoration; people prostrated themselves before them, kissed them, burned candles and incense before them, crowned them with flowers, and sought miracles from their occult influence. . . . Fathers and councils of the Church repeatedly explained that the images were not deities, but only reminders thereof; the people did not care to make such distinctions.”
Today, many who use religious icons would similarly argue that images are merely objects of respect—not worship. They might claim that religious paintings are legitimate—even indispensable—aids in worshiping God. Perhaps you feel the same way. But the question is, How does God feel about this? Could it be that veneration of an icon really amounts to worshiping it? Can such practices actually pose hidden dangers?
What Is an Icon?
Unlike statues widely used in Roman Catholic worship, icons are two-dimensional images of Christ, Mary, “saints,” angels, characters and events of the Bible, or events in the history of the Orthodox Church. Usually, they are painted on portable wooden boards.
According to the Orthodox Church, “in Icons of the Saints, the pictures do not look like pictures of ordinary flesh and blood.” Also, on icons “perspective is back to front”—the picture does not get narrower as it goes into the distance. Usually “there are no shadows, or ways of showing day and night.” It is also believed that the wood and paint of an icon can “become filled with God’s presence.”
Do ‘Icons Never Become Idols’?
“Icon” refers to a specific kind of image, namely, religious paintings venerated by members of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Some are representations of Christ; others represent the Trinity, Mary, “saints,” or angels. Like Roman Catholics, Orthodox theologians justify the veneration of icons as a relative act that passes devotion on to the heavenly one represented. “The icon,” claims Russian theologian, Sergey Bulgakov, “remains only a thing and never becomes an idol or a fetish.”
At the same time, though, the Eastern Orthodox Church teaches that an icon can bring special benefits to a worshiper who prays in front of it, provided the icon has been “sanctified” by the church. “The rite of the blessing of the icon,” states Bulgakov in his book The Orthodox Church, “establishes a connection between the image and its prototype, between that which is represented and the representation itself. By the blessing of the icon of Christ, a mystical meeting of the faithful and Christ is made possible. It is the same with the icons of the Virgin and the Saints; their icons, one may say, prolong their lives here below.”
Furthermore, many icons of Mary are believed to possess miraculous powers. “Although she remains in heaven,” asserts Bulgakov, “she still lives with us the life of our world, suffers with its suffering, and weeps with its tears. She intercedes for the world before the throne of God. She reveals herself to the world in her wonder-working icons.”
