Truth Unites - Is Icon Veneration a Big Deal?

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

Gavin Ortlund discusses why icon veneration as taught at the Second Council of Nicaea is an ecumenically determinative issue. Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

I've done a lot of videos about the issue of icon veneration. Sometimes I'll hear people say, wow, Gavin is really making a lot out of this issue. Why is he making such a big deal out of this? And I would respond by saying, Protestants aren't making icon veneration a determinative issue so much as we are protesting how others have made it an issue. So let me explain that in three points. Number one, why icon veneration matters. Number two, what icon veneration is. And number three, when icon veneration began. These are points I've brought up before, but I think they bear repeating based upon various things that I hear. Let's go, we'll go through each of them. Number one, why, why does icon veneration matter? Icon veneration is the subject matter of an ecumenical council.

And I see it too, and this council is held to be infallible. And therefore, it is regarded as irreformable and obligatory by both the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. So it's not just about icon veneration in and of itself, although that is, is an important issue, how we understand how prayer works and so forth. Nonetheless, it's, this issue functions as a litmus test for larger ecclesial claims. Okay, so I think that's pretty clear, hopefully, but let's develop us and explain this a little bit. In other words, again, Protestants aren't making this an issue. We're responding to Nicaea too, which makes it an issue. Today, I think we've forgotten about how big of a fight this was in church history

for nearly 200 years. This issue was the issue that was ravaging the Eastern Church, both sides, massacring each other. In my book, I talk about how this is the story of tongues cut out, noses sawed off, eyes gouged out, skulls turned to drinking bowls, castration, torture, and family members betraying one another to death. Pretty grisly stuff. And yet that is just flatly historically accurate. This was absolutely just a raging controversy. So whichever side is right and wrong, what both sides took for granted is this matters. You know, something's really at stake in this, both sides, the iconoclast side, opposing icon veneration, the iconophile side affirming it, both sides convoke these massive councils with hundreds of bishops to attempt a definitive judgment

one way or the other. In the east, you have the Council of Hyeria, and in the West you have the Council of Frankfurt, both of which are affirming iconoclasm, which, by the way, iconoclasm, as Richard Price points out, doesn't necessarily mean destroying images. It just means opposing icon veneration. But the council that went out is Nicaea 2 in 787, toward the end of the 8th century AD, and this was an iconophile council. And Nicaea 2, though it took some time to be accepted in the West and also had to withstand a further wave of iconoclasm in the east in the 9th century, eventually it came to be regarded as an ecumenical council, and therefore it's considered infallible by, again, Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. By the way, there's debates about precisely what that means. So you'll find debates about, well, which parts of the council are infallible and so forth. But here's the important point.

You can't be a Roman Catholic Christian or an Eastern Orthodox Christian and say, well, I just don't agree with Nicaea too. You might be able to try to head, you might be able to appeal to a doctrinal development. The Catholics will do that more than the Orthodox. You might be tried to be able to try to say, well, only some parts of the council are infallible versus others. And there's actually all of that is disputed and debated. But nobody can come along and just say, well, I'll accept Roman Catholicist. and not accept Nicaea, too. The fundamental theology at play, icon veneration is both irreformable and obligatory. And that is the case, whatever you make of the anathemas. People often try to

kind of argue about the anathemas as though that meant the council as a whole. I often just think, you know, just look at everything else the council says about this issue other than the anathemas, and it's still making this a wedge issue. But because, so that's one thing, but because there is confusion that continues about the anathemas, let's just try to bring some clarity to this as well. This is one way that Nicaea too makes this a determinative issue, though not the only way. The climactic decree that is yielded by this council results in a series of anathemas. I've learned that people have like ninja maneuvers to try to get around these. So in a second, we'll address some of these concerns about what is an anathema and to whom do anathemas apply.

But first, let me just read so you can get a flavor. Again, this is the climatic. conclusion in the seventh and final session of the council immediately after all the bishops signed their names and immediately before the ending. Quote, this is the faith of the apostles, this is the faith of the fathers, this is the faith of the Orthodox, this is the faith that has sustained the world, believing in one God to be praised in Trinity, we kiss the honorable images. May those who do not hold accordingly be anathema, may those who do not believe accordingly be driven far away from the church. we follow the ancient legislation of the Catholic Church. We observe the decrees of the fathers.

We anathematize those who either add or remove anything from the church. We anathematize the intrusive innovation of the accusers of Christians. We accept the sacred images. We subject those who do not believe accordingly to anathema. To those who apply to the sacred images, the sayings in divine scripture against idols, anathema. To those who do not kiss the holy and venerable images, anathema, to those who call the sacred images idols anathema, to those who say that Christians had recourse to the images as God's anathema, to those who knowingly communicate with those who insult and dishonor the sacred images anathema. After a further series of anathemas against various particular opponents, it says, they scorned the images of the Lord and his saints,

and the Lord has scorned them. If anyone defends anyone who belongs to the heresy that accuses Christians or has ended his life in it, anathema, if anyone does not kiss them as being in the name of the Lord and his saints anathema. Now, those ten particular anathemas there that I just underlined are not the only ones, but they just give you a flavor. Remember, this is the climactic decree that the entire council results in. Now, the meaning and usage of the word anathema has changed in recent times, and so this gets disputed. But our interest is what those bishops meant, and so let's allow them to define the word anathema. So we're not coming along afterwards in an anachronistic way, importing later ideas back onto what they were trying to say. The bishops of an Isaiah, too,

are very clear on this point and very explicit and emphatic about what is an anathema, and what did they think they were doing. And it's totally in accordance with what Paul is using the word anathema to do in passages like Galatians 1. After the council, the bishop sent a letter to the emperor Constantine and his mother Irene, and they link iconoclasm with the various heresies condemned in the first six ecumenical councils, and then they declare the consequence of the anathemas they've given by their own counsel. If anyone does not agree and is disputatious and offended by the veneration of the sacred images, he is anathematized by our holy and ecumenical council,

fortified by the operation of the divine spirit, and by the traditions of the church and the fathers, and an anathema is nothing other than separation from God. So they're saying, okay, the people who do not agree, with this council, they are anathema, and here's what we mean by that, separation from God. And yet you'll continually hear people coming along today and saying, well, an anathema doesn't really mean separation from God, even though the bishops say, here's what we mean by anathema, separation from God. And so I would just appeal to people, if you want to push back on this,

give us evidence from the time in question that an anathema doesn't mean what they explicitly say it means, because usually all the evidence is way later being imported back. And it's not just this one sentence over and over. You find this very plainly said prior to the council, the patriarch of Constantinople, who would preside over the council. Teresius gives a speech, and he uses the same kind, I'll put this up, the same kind of language here. Anathema is being expelled from heaven to the outer darkness, condemned on the day of the Lord. So I don't know how more clearly you could say an anathema means not just sort of a warning or removal from the church in some way in this life, but it means damnation, removal from heaven.

Furthermore, an anathema is just one of the ways that this is expressed. So, you know, for example, in another letter, the bishops warn about the unbearable wrath that the iconoclast will receive. God has scorned them, they're under divine judgment, and so forth. So even if you wanted to try to get away from the word anathema, you just have all this other language about divine judgment, divine wrath, etc. So whatever later people might say, whatever these traditions will eventually result in at that time, what these bishops think is very clear.

There's not ambiguity about this and how they set the stakes. And the other thing people will try to do is try to limit the application of these anathomas and say, well, they only applied to people who are alive in the 8th century, not to those who are alive maybe in like the 9th or 10th century or the 21st century, or they only apply to those who are actively opposing icon veneration, not to those who simply don't know about it or they abstain from the practice and so forth. And there's various other qualifications like this that people try to give. Let me give three responses to that.

Number one, that wouldn't actually disrupt the major point here. Even if the anathemas were limited in scope some way, the fact that Nicaea 2 is ecumenically decisive and determinative remains on the table because the counsel is either infallible or it isn't. Second, I agree that the anathemas are not targeting those outside the church. They're targeting people inside the church being removed. But since the reigning theology of the day is that there's no salvation outside the church, This really doesn't move the needle that much. Whether you're already out of salvation or you're being removed and cast out of salvation,

either way, you end up outside of salvation. Third, when it comes to limitations of anathema to those inside the church, such that they would apply to one kind of iconoclast Christian but not another, these limitations generally seem anachronistic. The burden of proof would need to be supplied here. The burden of proof is on the person who wants to give a limitation because the anathemas themselves are distinctly unqualified. And I find that people just assert this over and over based upon modern statements, or far later statements at least, about anathema and about how salvation works, rather than from any evidence from the time in question. these anathemas themselves and their surrounding context and the documents that they are in

don't limit them to one particular kind of iconoclasm or one particular time or context. Rather, the anathemas are targeting certain beliefs, certain behaviors, and even certain associations. So you see, to those who do not kiss the holy and venerable images anathema, there it is. That's a certain behavior. to those who call the sacred images idols anathema. That's a particular theology. To those who knowingly communicate with those who insult and dishonor these sacred images anathema. That's targeting a particular association. You see that again a bit later with the condemnation of anyone, I'll just read it, if anyone defends anyone who belongs to this heresy that accuses Christians

or has ended his life in it anathema. If anyone does not kiss them as being in the name of the Lord and his Saints, anathema. The anathemas are distinctly unqualified. So if people want to qualify them, the burden of proof is on you to show why that isn't a later revisionist take. Give us some evidence from the time in question. Document the limitation from the sources so that we know you're not just imposing later limitations onto what these bishops couldn't have recognized. Now, I find what people will try to do is take current teaching and just assume that as authoritative and say, oh, well, you don't understand. Look at this. I'm trying to say, our interest is in what Nicaea 2 teaches, because that is what we are protesting as, again,

we Protestants are allowed to protest a council if it's being put forward as infallible, and yet if it is teaching something that is erroneous. So how, but again, I'll just say, even if you take the term anathema completely off the table, the issue here is simple. icon veneration is important because of its affirmation in an allegedly infallible context. So this issue matters because it's a potential falsification event for ecclesial claims. All right, the second reason this issue matters is what icon veneration is. And this is something that I find comes up again and again. I think we want to keep chipping away at and speaking to to try to bring clarity to this.

Because if you read through the sessions of Nicaa II and the context that surrounds it, You see, icon veneration is not about a general appreciation of art. This is a claim about what apostolic worship looks like. Over and over, people will try to frame this as though if you reject Nicaea 2, you're anti-art or anti-religious art. But as I've said many times from my initial video, I keep saying it, I'll keep saying it into the future. The concern is not with aesthetic, didactic, or commemorative uses of religious images,

specifically or other forms of art more generally. The concern is with the veneration of images as defined and understood at Nicaea II. So let's be clear about that. What Nicaea 2 is referencing with what we mean by the label icon veneration is specific practices, especially bowing and kissing, and then a specific theology of those practices. Let's just document this. Richard Price references language from the seventh session of Nicae 2, the veneration of honor, and he cites the Greek terms and says these words refer to something quite concrete, kisses and a prostration or deep bow. There is also reference at Nicaeatu to lighting candles before images as an offering. In their honor, that's the images, an offering of incensation and lights is to be made,

in accordance with the pious custom of the men of old. We'll talk about who those men of old are in a second. So here you have specific behaviors. This is not like just, oh, I appreciate art in general, or we have art around in general. It's bowing, kissing, lighting candles. Okay, those three things. Then those three things are functioning in a particular theological framework that we can use the label figural representation or figural mediation to describe. The recurrent refrain, and I see it too, is what is given to the image passes through to the prototype. So you'll hear language later on, for example, in the Eastern Orthodox tradition and elsewhere of icons as windows to heaven. A window to heaven is different from just an image. A window is something you see through, right?

And so icons are distinguished from art because of their spiritual function. They're more than art. It's not just, you know, some generic form of art. It's more than art because of this spiritual role. A window is something you see through. The theology is we pray through the images. and what is given to the image passes through it to its prototype. So when I'm bowing before an image and showing reverence to it, I'm showing reverence for what it represents. This is a particular theology here. So the target is set very clearly by what icon veneration is at Nicaea II. And yet today we'll often hear these appeals.

When we object to Nicaa II, people will say, well, come on, you put your hand over your heart when you recite the Declaration of Independence, right? it's the same thing or even the avoidance of bad treatment of a physical object is cast as functionally the same thing as icon veneration people will say well look if you had a picture of Jesus or if you had a wooden cross you wouldn't throw it in the trash right see that's the same thing but again mycia too is talking about bowing kissing lighting candles on a theology of figural representation what is given to the image passes through to the prototype that's the issue so let's put a this idea that opponents of Nicaea 2 are anti-art. All you have to do to see that is read through the alternative councils, like read the theology of the Council of Frankfurt. These Western

Frankish bishops are very pro-art, but they're very anti-Nicea too. Okay, the third reason icon veneration is so important is the question of when did icon veneration begin, begin, I should say. And again, Nicaea 2 is very clear on this point. It affirms this theology. and this practice, which it is both, as apostolic tradition. Some people, again, having had these conversations a lot, I realize how people will try to respond. I'm trying to bring clarity back to Nicaa II, because people will say, Nicaa II allows for development of doctrine. No, it doesn't. No, it doesn't. It is making very specific historical claims as well as theological claims, and the historical narration that it employs to justify its theology is very clear and very explicit.

Let's put it very plainly. Nicaea II insists that icon veneration is apostolic tradition. Here's how I'll document that. First, here's how Richard Price summarizes it. There was no sense in the 8th century that the faith and practice of the church had changed or significantly developed between apostolic and patristic times. And in fact, a claim that the iconophile tradition went back. to the apostles themselves becomes explicit in documents issued at the close of the council.

So, for example, in the climactic decree that we've already cited, the affirmation of icon veneration is cast as fidelity to the faith of the apostles and the ancient legislation of the church. The word legislation does not refer to a generic theology of art, but to liturgical practice. This is a claim about how worship should be conducted in the church. and the whole appeal, the whole logic of this appeal is that iconoclasm is an intrusive innovation. We condemn it because we do not add or subtract anything from the church. If you had tried to propound a theory of doctrinal development at Nicaea 2, the bishops would have run you out of the building and maybe shot arrows at you on your way out the door.

Okay, the council is making it very clear. This is one aspect of the unchanging tradition of the church. That's why earlier, the bishops of Nicaea II claim that in defending icon veneration, we follow Paul, who spoke in Christ, and the whole divine company of the apostles, and the sanctity of the fathers, holding fast to the traditions we have received. Some people will try to make a distinction between doctrinal development and the development of cultic practices. They might say, well, doctrine developing is one thing.

but devotional practices developing is another. Nicaea II has no such distinction. The theology and the practice are all of one piece for them, and both are explicitly identified as handed down from the apostles. Hence the words, we anathematize those who either add anything or remove anything from the church. Now the problem with this is the historical claims of Nicaa II are manifestly wrong.

And when we point this out, we're simply accepting what is just overwhelming from the evidence. We're just trying to follow the truth about the New Testament, about the early church. Richard Price, his book is over there, so I won't hold it up. I'll put up a picture. Okay, Richard Price is a good scholar. He is a Roman Catholic priest. He wrote the definitive translation and commentary on Niccia II, from which I've been quoting.

He opens the discussion by outlining recent scholarly discussion as to whether the rise of icon veneration should be dated to the late 7th century or slightly earlier. that's the issue that people who are in this discussion are debating. Is it late 7th century or early 7th century that icon veneration begins? Then he comments, the fathers of Nicaea too would have found this whole debate bizarre. Their concern was not to argue that the veneration of images went back to the beginning rather than the end of the 7th century, but that it had the support of the great church fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries, and went back through them to the apostles themselves. Now Price finds iconoclasm to be kind of an isolated view today,

but he's honest about the historical evidence. He says, quote, the iconoclast claim that reverend stored images did not go back to the golden age of the fathers, still less to the apostles, would be judged by impartial historians today to be simply correct. The iconophile view of the history of Christian thought and devotion was virtually a denial of history. What I am saying in my videos is nothing other than what Price says there. And yet I'll often find people acting like Gavin Orlund is making this an issue. Oh, Gavin's view or something, it's like, it's not my view. I'm just regurgitating what everybody thinks who looks into this and publishes on it with credentials. In the context of saying that, Price is discussing how it's either late 7th century or early 7th century,

and this is the only debate. And he points out, in a context of a debate that treated the fathers of the golden age as the primary authority, it was a serious weakness in the iconophile cause that no single passage from any of these fathers gave an explicit stamp of approval to such veneration. Now, the golden age he's talking about there is the period between Nicaea 1 in 3255 AD and Chalcedon in 4.51 AD. So this is the time of the Cappadocian fathers, the Gregories and Basel, John Chrysostom, Athanasius, etc. And Price is acknowledging that they could not produce a single example of support for icon veneration from that time, not one, except the forgeries. Furthermore, what Price is saying is entirely representative of just the general scholarly consensus. Price is

not eccentric in this view, and it's based upon overwhelming unanimity of the source material. So we just have dozens of testimonies from the early church that this is based on, from the apostolic fathers, up into the Nicene era, and beyond, the early Christians are, are in lockstep agreement that cultic use of images, so any theology of figural representation, using a physical object as a point of mediation to the spiritual realm, using them as a window to heaven, bowing down to them, anything like that is a pagan practice, not a Christian one. In fact, it's one of the hallmark distinctives between Christian worship and pagan practice. And insofar as the idea of bowing down before images ever comes up anywhere in all redemptive history,

among the people of God, it is always condemned. From the Second Commandment of the Ten Commandments up through. And so when people try to say, well, those commandments, Second Commandment is just about idolatry, not about the proper use of images. Or people will say, yeah, these early church fathers, they're just condemning the pagan use of images, not the Christian use of images.

The problem with that is there is no such distinction anywhere in all of redemptive history up until like the 6th or 7th century. Nobody's saying, well, that kind of bowing down to image, is the problem. It's just bowing down to images, and this is how all the language works. You know, you'll find statements like, there is no religion wherever there is an image. That's a direct quote from lactantius. I actually don't think the evidence could be more conclusive. I was thinking about this on a bike ride the other day, and I was thinking, how could the evidence be stronger? What would you need? And I thought, well, the only thing

I can think of is the thing we already have, and that's Eusebius, the father of church history, saying, who has ever heard of such a thing when someone writes him a letter requesting an icon? So I'm like, I literally don't know how you could make the evidence stronger. And I would just say this practice simply isn't part of our religion. From the dawn of time into the late patristic era, the people of God never bowed down to non-living objects in an ongoing liturgical practice like this. And so those of us who object to Nicaea 2 are simply, what we're trying to do is basically obey God because we have no authority to change Christianity. The Council of Nicaea too is just

wrong and its claims. And something like the theology of the, I would say the Council of Frankfurt, even more than Hyaria, is much better. And it doesn't mean the church died. It just means the church is fallible. Let me address an objection that I sometimes hear too, and that is sometimes people will say, you allow nuance for your own views, but not for other views. And so would something like biblical inerrancy survive if I gave the same level of scrutiny to something like that that I'm subjecting Nicaa 2 and Icon veneration too. But I think it would survive. Objections to biblical inerrancy often have to do with little details. Icon veneration is the whole point of Nicaa 2. Little details can often be harmonized, especially in narrative. But if Nicaa 2 is wrong and it's

fundamental thrust, then you're just kind of stuck. A lot of the objections to biblical inerrancy have to do with these narrative passages, but narrative, ancient narrative often functioned more loosely than modern historiography. So a lot of times the response to there is just that the text is not intending to give as exact chronology and so forth. But Nicaea too is not a narrative. It's an explicit theological decree. It's just didactic teaching. So if it's wrong, it's just sort of wrong, you know, and I don't think, so I don't think the objections to biblical inerrancy are insurmountable, but Nicaea too, we're in a different category here. This isn't a matter of nuance. You know, just step back and see the big picture. It's like, you have this massive U-turn where for 500 years

Christians are not bowing down before images and praying through them. Then you have this incredibly bloody political contest, and now they are. That's not that nuanced. And so, you know, what all that results in is a simple question of just why not recognize that Nicaea 2 is just not infallible. Or even if you don't grant that, at least we can recognize Protestants are not wrong to make this an issue. We're responding to a counsel, an allegedly infallible counsel that makes this an issue. However you take the anathemas, you know, leave some room for reasonable disagreement about some of the details, nonetheless, it's not us who make this an issue. We're simply trying to be faithful to God. And basically, we just want to follow Christianity as God revealed it.

Christianity is a revealed religion. We have no authority to make change in what God has said. Counsels are fallible. It's not the speech of God. The scripture is the speech of God. Nicaea II is not the speech of God. It can err. It's no more infallible than Frankfurt was infallible or hyerea. So hopefully that explains why now if so, so this video, the purpose of this video is to kind of reiterate over and against some of the pushback I sometimes hear why this is an issue, why this matters. And the basic point is it's the subject matter of an ecumenical council. And it's the specifics of what that council claimed. If you want a fuller case against the historicity of icon veneration, you can go back to my original video and check

that out. All right, thanks for watching everybody. Let me know what you think in the comments, and we'll see you next time.