Reformed Protestants No Longer See Images as Idola

[cmotherofpirl]

[url="http://www.religionnews.com/ArticleofWeek120904.html"]http://www.religionnews.com/ArticleofWeek120904.html[/url]

[Archangel]

Interesting article.

[i]"We believe the Reformers missed something big," says Marcey, a doctoral candidate in visual rhetoric at Regent University in Virginia Beach, Va. "When we limit the gospel message to the written and spoken text, we short-circuit it. We truncate it ... The soul is moved by more things than the word."[/i]

[AaronDavid]

Well, looks like they're slowly coming full-circle doesn't it?? Nothing has given me more guff around non-Catholic Christians than my "idolatry"......to quote Monty Python..................."SPLITTERS!!!!!!!!!!!!"

[Apotheoun]

When the invisible and immaterial God became visible by entering into matter, it became possible to portray sacred realities through icons. In other words, the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ has opened up a dispensation of sacred images, making it possible to depict holy persons in iconographic form, for the icon and its heavenly prototype share a hypostatic relation, and as a consequence, the icon renders present the person depicted. Moreover, the icon contains within it the purifying, sanctifying, and illuminating uncreated divine energies, and can impart those energies to the person who venerates it, for as Photius of Constantinople explained:

". . . from the beginning the divine and infallible proclamation of the Apostolic and Patristic tradition is like a certain living wisdom which dominates matter and, in accordance with its own sacred laws, works it and fashions it and produces a representation and shape, not allowing any element of material disorder or of human curiosity to assert itself in these; but showing and manifesting all its work, it provides us, in a way appropriate to the representation of sacred things, with clear and unadulterated reflection of the prototypes in the holy icons . . . For this reason they are no longer wooden boards . . . or colors bereft of the inherent power and grace which produces form, neither can they be so conceived nor so named; but rather, they are holy and honourable and glorified and venerable. For having come to participate in the energy that comes from above, and in those holy persons, they bear the form and the name and are dedicated, they transport the minds to them and bring us blessings and divine favour from them. They are not indeed named after the material from which the icon is made or after any other property which is incongruous and applies to their opposites. On the contrary it is from those in whom they participate, . . . and whom they serve, and to whom they are dedicated, that they are very rightly known by the true devotees and receive their name." [Photius, [u]Epistulae et Amphilochia[/u]]

For more information on the theology of icons I recommend reading the book [u]Images of the Divine: The Theology of Icons at the Seventh Ecumenical Council[/u] by Ambrosias Giakalis.

God bless,
Todd