Jesus vs. Mary and the Saints

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='M.SIGGA' date='Jan 1 2005, 03:32 PM'] An intesting conversation came up this afternoon. Was there ever a teaching for Catholics to be weary of Eastern Orthodox veneration of icons prior to Vatican II? My mother told me she was taught as a child by religious that the Eastern Orthodox veneration of icons was something evil. So I asked my grandmother, her mother, and she said the same thing and went further to say she was taught the Eastern Orthodox worship pictures. Is the Eastern Orthodox teaching on icons the exact same as Byzantine Catholics? Is the same teaching on icons also assumed for statues of saints in the Latin Church? I'm assuming this teaching was error, from reading previous posts, and probably occured because of prejudice or most people didn't know anything about Byzantine Catholics. Could this idea have come from when the Eastern Orthodox were excommunicated? Thanks. [/quote]
I would merely point out that there is no difference between the Eastern Orthodox and the Eastern Catholic understanding of the doctrine of sacred images, and of course Eastern Catholics are in full communion with the Roman Pontiff, and he fully supports and defends their theological traditions and liturgical customs.

Moreover, the Popes throughout history have always fully accepted as definitive the teaching of the Seventh Ecumenical Council of Nicea II (AD 787) on the veneration of sacred icons. Now, it is also true that there have been individuals in the West, even prior to the Protestant Reformation, who dissented in various ways from the dogmatic decisions of the Second Council of Nicea (AD 787), but they have normally been held to be either in error or, depending upon the case, heretical.

As far as statues are concerned, they are not normally used in Eastern Catholic Churches, but I don't believe there would be any major problem with applying some elements of the doctrine of icons to statues.

God bless,
Todd

[cathqat]

[quote name='Apotheoun' date='Jan 1 2005, 06:18 PM']Moreover, the Popes throughout history have always fully accepted as definitive the teaching of the Seventh Ecumenical Council of Nicea II (AD 787) on the veneration of sacred icons.  Now, it is also true that there have been individuals in the West, even prior to the Protestant Reformation, who dissented in various ways from the dogmatic decisions of the Second Council of Nicea (AD 787), but they have normally been held to be either in error or, depending upon the case, heretical.[/quote]

Like Charlemagne's theologians! They wrongly condemned the Seventh Ecumenical Council.

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='JeffCR07' date='Jan 1 2005, 06:51 AM'] [. . .]

I do not see the teachings of the East and West on the matter as being contrary, let alone contradictory, as it appears that you present during your discussion with Madonna.

Or perhaps I am simply reading the tone of your posts wrong

- Your Brother In Christ, Jeff [/quote]
One further point of clarification, earlier in this thread I was not trying to say that East and West have a different understanding of the doctrine of the veneration of saints; instead, I was trying to highlight a problem I see with the common Western apologetic presentation of this doctrine. Often times this [i]de fide[/i] doctrine is presented as if it were merely a discipline, or to put it another way, it is presented as if it were an unnecessary devotional practice that can be dispensed with at any time, because it is not an integral part of the Christian faith. It is only this attitude that I was arguing against, for I see within this type of presentation a distortion of the Catholic faith with the intention of making Catholicism less offensive to Protestants. The veneration of the saints is a doctrine of the faith, and so it cannot be dispensed with, because as I have said before, by honoring the saints one honors the source of their holiness, i.e., God Himself.



God bless,
Todd

[geetarplayer]

Thanks everyone! You have all been very helpful! And please feel free to continue if there is anything that hasn't been touched upon yet in regards to this topic...

-Mark

[Guest JeffCR07]

Todd, thanks a ton, but I have a follow up question as well:


It seems to me that you are presenting the Western teachings on icons (as with Augustine) as simply being that icons act as a reminder of the Saint whose aid we are beseeching.

However, I have always understood that, even in the west, we hold that the Saint depicted is indeed mysteriously present in the depiction. Moreover, it seems to me that the West agrees wholeheartedly with you when you say that a thing can indeed be that same thing which it signifies, for this is precisely what we teach with regards to the Blessed Sacrament. The difference between the Eucharist and an Icon is simply the difference between the Real and Physical Presence in the former and the mysterious presence in the latter.

Thus, it seems to me that while the West most certainly is influenced greatly by St. Augustine, we do not always hold the strict distinction between a sign and the thing signified that he teaches.

- Your Brother In Christ, Jeff

[cathqat]

[quote name='JeffCR07' date='Jan 3 2005, 08:10 AM'] Moreover, it seems to me that the West agrees wholeheartedly with you when you say that a thing can indeed be that same thing which it signifies, for this is precisely what we teach with regards to the Blessed Sacrament.
[/quote]

All the ancient Christian writers I have studied, including Augustine, held that symbols communicate that which they represent.

Augustine, for example, calls the Eucharist both a "symbol" of Christ and his actual body and blood. These are not contradictory statements to Augustine, as they would be to a modern Protestant, because he was a neoplatonist realist.

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='cathqat' date='Jan 3 2005, 11:53 AM'] All the ancient Christian writers I have studied, including Augustine, held that symbols communicate that which they represent.

Augustine, for example, calls the Eucharist both a "symbol" of Christ and his actual body and blood. These are not contradictory statements to Augustine, as they would be to a modern Protestant, because he was a neoplatonist realist. [/quote]
I do not see how Augustine's theory of signs and language can be reconciled with Eastern Christian thought; in fact, it can be argued that Augustine is the first person to hold a "modern" view of the nature of language and signs. I recommend reading Michel Rene Barnes' article "The Visible Christ and the Invisible Trinity: Mt. 5:8 in Augustine's Trinitarian Theology of 400," and also James K. A. Smith's article "Between Predication and Silence: Augustine on How (Not) to Speak of God."

Augustine applies his theory of signs, worked out initially in [u]De Magistro[/u] and in [u]De Doctrina Chrisiana[/u], when he writes about the theophanies in the first four books of [u]De Trinitate[/u], and refers to them as created signs that merely point to God. His teaching on the theophanies is not compatible with the Eastern Christian doctrine of the theophanies (e.g., the appearance of God at Mamre to Abraham, the appearance to Jacob, the burning bush, etc.) as true visions of God's uncreated energy; instead, for Augustine there can be no true vision of God in this life, and even at the eschaton, there will only be a mediated vision of God, mediated through Christ's human nature. Now to be fair to Augustine he did hold that a sign communicates in some sense the thing it points to, at least at the level of the mind, but it doesn't really contain the very presence of the thing signified. Thus, the Augustinian view of signs as pointing to the thing signified does not convey the Byzantine doctrine of signs, which holds that a sign contains the very reality of the thing signified, because it manifests God's uncreated energies.

God bless,
Todd

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='cathqat' date='Jan 3 2005, 11:53 AM']All the ancient Christian writers I have studied, including Augustine, held that symbols communicate that which they represent.

Augustine, for example, calls the Eucharist both a "symbol" of Christ and his actual body and blood. These are not contradictory statements to Augustine, as they would be to a modern Protestant, because he was a neoplatonist realist. [/quote]
Certainly Augustine held that the Eucharist is the body and blood of Christ, but this does not mean that his theory of signs is fully compatible with the Eastern Catholic understanding of that belief. If there is one thing that I have come to understand about Augustine, it is that he is not consistent, but then he was not a systematic theologian, none of the Fathers were, and so I cannot hold that against him. As I said in a paper that I recently wrote:

". . . for Augustine, 'The Incarnation is precisely an immanent sign of transcendence – God appearing in the flesh. Thus it is the structure of both presence and absence: present in the flesh, and yet referring beyond, the Incarnation – as the [i]signum exemplum[/i] – retains the structural incompleteness of the sign which is constitutive of language, for to constitute the God-man as only man is to idolize the body, failing to constitute it as a manifestation of the divine. Divinity, while it cannot be reduced to this body, is nevertheless in-fleshed in it and thus signaling beyond itself. This is why the God-man is mediator between divinity and humanity, finitude and infinite. This is also why, for Augustine, all signs function as mediators: they are precisely that which both appear and at the same time maintain that which they refer to in their transcendence. By referring or pointing to that which is other than itself, signs make knowledge of transcendence possible.' [1] I do not see how Augustine’s understanding of signs can be reconciled to the Eastern Church’s understanding of icons and signs as participated realities that form a single hypostatic relation with their prototypes, for in the East the sign and the thing signified form a single whole, and so the sign does not simply point to a transcendent reality that is in some sense absent from it, but rather forms a single complexus; in other words, the sign and the thing signified are in a mystical sense, one and the same thing. [Moreover], East and West appear to have different conceptions of what the vision of God entails, for the West it is an act of intellection, while the East sees it as an experience of the uncreated light, in and through, God, which involves both the body and soul. [In addition], Augustine seems to be focusing far too much attention on human language and on a concept of vision that is intellectual and Platonic, and so, his system fails to grasp the Eastern perspective, which holds that the vision of God exceeds both body and soul, while including them both through the gift of God’s uncreated grace, which as a pure gift, lifts both body and soul into the uncreated light of God, simultaneously transforming both into that which is seen."

God bless,
Todd

[1] Smith, James K. A. “Between Predication and Silence: Augustine on How (Not) to Speak of God.” [u]Heythrop Journal[/u] 41:1 (January 2000): page 75.

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='JeffCR07' date='Jan 3 2005, 06:10 AM'] Todd, thanks a ton, but I have a follow up question as well:

It seems to me that you are presenting the Western teachings on icons (as with Augustine) as simply being that icons act as a reminder of the Saint whose aid we are beseeching.

However, I have always understood that, even in the west, we hold that the Saint depicted is indeed mysteriously present in the depiction. Moreover, it seems to me that the West agrees wholeheartedly with you when you say that a thing can indeed be that same thing which it signifies, for this is precisely what we teach with regards to the Blessed Sacrament. The difference between the Eucharist and an Icon is simply the difference between the Real and Physical Presence in the former and the mysterious presence in the latter.

Thus, it seems to me that while the West most certainly is influenced greatly by St. Augustine, we do not always hold the strict distinction between a sign and the thing signified that he teaches.

- Your Brother In Christ, Jeff [/quote]
Luckily, the West does not follow Augustine's views to their logical conclusion, at least as far as his theory of signs is concerned. Augustine's influence is very strong in the West, but over the centuries many of his ideas have been rejected.

As far as icons are concerned, the West does not have a conception of God's uncreated energies as distinct from His essence, and this weakens the Western understanding of icons. Icons and relics of the saints are venerated in the East because they participate in God's own energies, and so they can bestow those sanctifying, illuminating, and purifying energies upon the person who venerates them. I do not know of anything comparable to this doctrine in the West. Normally Westerners venerate an icon as somehow standing for the saint depicted in it, although the saint is actually present only in heaven, and most Westerners wouldn't see the icon as having a hypostatic relation to its prototype either. Ultimately it must be admitted that the East has a much more fully developed theology of icons than the West.

In reference to your comments about the Eucharist, it must be remembered that it is not an icon. Thus, the East does not apply iconic theology to the consecrated Eucharistic elements. It does apply iconic theology to the unconsecrated bread and wine, for they are true icons of Christ, and when the priest during the Great Entrance processes the bread and wine to the Royal Doors, he turns and faces the congregation so that they can venerate the bread and wine which are about to become Christ's very body and blood after the epiclesis. All of this was worked out during the iconoclastic controversies of the 7th to 9th centuries.

God bless,
Todd

[cathqat]

[quote name='Apotheoun' date='Jan 3 2005, 02:55 PM']I do not see how Augustine's theory of signs and language can be reconciled with Eastern Christian thought[/quote]

I did not say Augustine could be reconciled with Eastern thought. I said that as a neoplatonist realist he believed that symbols communicate what they represent.

(And I have plenty of disagreements with many of Augustine's ideas, trust me.)

Regarding the theology of icons, I tend to agree with the Eastern view, though I am unconvinced that the same applies to just any sign/symbol/artistic representation.

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='cathqat' date='Jan 3 2005, 01:31 PM'] I did not say Augustine could be reconciled with Eastern thought. I said that as a neoplatonist realist he believed that symbols communicate what they represent.

(And I have plenty of disagreements with many of Augustine's ideas, trust me.)
[/quote]
Again, although I agree that he held that signs in some sense communicate something to the person receiving the sign, for Augustine the sign does not contain the thing it signifies, it only points to a reality that is absent from it, a reality that is known through the intellect.

God bless,
Todd

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='cathqat' date='Jan 3 2005, 01:31 PM'] Regarding the theology of icons, I tend to agree with the Eastern view, though I am unconvinced that the same applies to just any sign/symbol/artistic representation. [/quote]
Of course it does not apply to just any sign or work of art; rather, it applies only to those things that have been divinely instituted, or that the Church has beseeched God to infuse with His uncreated energies. An icon is [b]not[/b] a piece of art, it is a manifestation of the divine, an effusion of the divine into the world, and the man who writes an icon must pray and fast and beg God to infuse the icon with His uncreated energies. Moreover, Church's are not decorated with icons in order to look aesthetically pleasing to an art connoisseur; instead, icons are intended solely for a sacred purpose, they are intended for the veneration of the people in private and liturgical worship. Icons, to be blunt, are not art, and from the moment that they are looked upon as works of art, it would be true to say that their real purpose has been distorted. Icons are sacred realities, just as the Church building is heaven on earth.

God bless,
Todd

[Apotheoun]

In one of my previous posts in this thread I gave a quotation from James K. A. Smith's article "Between Predication and Silence: Augustine on How (Not) to Speak of God," and what I thought I would do is give that portion of the quotation that is most problematic from an Eastern perspective:

[quote name='Between Predication and Silence' date=' page 75']This is also why, for Augustine, all signs function as mediators: they are precisely that which both appear and at the same time maintain that which they refer to in their transcendence. By referring or pointing to that which is other than itself, signs make knowledge of transcendence possible.[/quote]

In Byzantine theology signs, icons, holy relics, etc., give immediate contact with God's uncreated energies, i.e., with God Himself. God remains transcendent in His essence, but He is immanently present, and directly so, through His uncreated energies. In other words, in Byzantine theology a sign is not a mediate presentation of a divine reality; rather, it is an immediate presentation of a God's uncreated energy.

[cathqat]

[quote name='Apotheoun' date='Jan 3 2005, 03:51 PM']An icon is [b]not[/b] a piece of art[/quote]

It [i]is[/i] art. It is not [i]just[/i] art, however; not [i]mere[/i] art.

A stained glass window, like the one in my avatar, however, is [i]not[/i] an icon, and my point was that the same would [i]not[/i] be true of such a window, or a Michelangelo sculpture, etc. On this I believe we agree.

[quote]the man who writes an icon must pray and fast and beg God to infuse the icon with His uncreated energies.[/quote]

Of course. That is part of the process.

[quote]Moreover, Church's are not decorated with icons in order to look aesthetically pleasing to an art connoisseur[/quote]

I think statements like this sets up a false dichotomy. Icons [i]are[/i] aesthetically pleasing. But they are also much, [i]much[/i] more.

[quote]Icons, to be blunt, are not art[/quote]

Again, false dichotomy. They are art, products of human skill as well as humble prayer and the blessing of God. And they are aesthetically pleasing. But they are much, [i]much[/i] more than that.

[Apotheoun]

[quote name='cathqat' date='Jan 3 2005, 02:11 PM'] It [i]is[/i] art. It is not [i]just[/i] art, however; not [i]mere[/i] art.
[/quote]
I disagee, an icon is not art, it is intended for a sacred purpose; it is not meant to be in a museum. It is meant for veneration.

On this issue we will have to agree to disagee. I will not accept a Western understanding of icons as works of art.

God bless,
Todd