Download PDF | Torstein Theodor Tollefsen - St Theodore the Studite's Defence of the Icons_ Theology and Philosophy in Ninth-Century Byzantium (Oxford Early Christian Studies)-OUP Oxford (2018).
208 Pages
Preface
Some years ago a friend of mine asked: ‘Why do you want to work on Theodore the Studite? I don’t think you will find him that interesting?’ As it turned out, I found him very interesting. Several years after having read Theodore’s refutations of the iconoclasts for the first time, I eventually had the idea of investigating his arguments thoroughly. I learned a great deal. First, I was impressed by his willingness to enter seriously into the arguments of his opponents—not something that could be said of all controversionalists in the history of early Christianity. Secondly, I found that his investigation into the doctrine of the iconoclasts culminated in his own quite sophisticated and highly interesting doctrine of images in Christianity. I also found, inspired by my colleague Christophe Erismann, that Theodore is interesting as a witness to the knowledge and application of some traditional forms of logic in ninth-century Byzantium. Several people have been of some assistance at various stages of my research.
I therefore express my thanks to Christophe Erismann (who kindly invited me to give a presentation at the conference he organized on Theodore in Vienna, March 2016), Stig R. Frøyshov, Aase Hessø, Anastasia Maravela, Anders Strand, and Narve Strand. I am grateful to Panagiotis Pavlos who checked the Greek quotations and helped me with the indexes. I should also like to thank the anonymous reader of Oxford University Press, who made important comments on two drafts of this book. I am grateful to St Vladimir’s Seminary Press for allowing me to quote from their translation of Theodore’s refutations, St Theodore the Studite, On the Holy Icons, translated by Catharine P. Roth (1981), and to Walter de Gruyter for allowing me to quote some sections from their critical edition of Theodore’s letters: Theodori Studitae, Epistulae, Parts 1–2 (1991). I am also grateful to Norman Russell for being so kind in helping me to get my English in better shape. Remaining failures and shortcomings are due to me alone. Finally, I want to thank my friends in the Medieval Seminar at the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas at the University of Oslo for giving me the opportunity to present and discuss some of the ideas that are presented in this book. Torstein Theodor Tollefsen
Introduction
THE TOPIC The present book is an investigation of St Theodore the Studite’s doctrine of images. It is based mainly on his three refutations of the iconoclasts, Antirrhetici tres adversus iconomachos. These refutations have a complex character. On the one hand, they are quite polemical in their treatment of those who oppose the use of religious images, but on the other, we find that Theodore sketches out a positive doctrine of images as well. We shall go into both his polemics and his actual teachings on the subject In the title I use the term philosophy. This is because Theodore’s defence of the icons is philosophical. First, his methodology and his application of logic draw on a philosophical tradition. Second, both his analytic and his synthetic thinking—when elucidating the doctrines of his opponents and when developing his own views—are ways of philosophizing within the limits of certain religious beliefs and practices. I see no need to oppose philosophy and theology in this early Byzantine context.
This book is intended as a contribution to the developing field of Byzantine philosophy. It still seems that historians of philosophy neglect the theological thinkers.1 Whether this is due to prejudice or lack of acquaintance with the material I cannot say. I find that Richard Sorabji has set an example to be followed for how we should approach the intellectual life of Byzantium when he includes material from the ‘theologians’ in his discussions of the late antique world view.2 I put ‘theologians’ in quotation marks since some late antique and early Byzantine theologians could reasonably be held to be philosophers as well. If St Augustine is a philosopher, then St Maximus the Confessor is a philosopher, as is also St Theodore, at least to some degree. From Theodore’s polemics there emerges a philosophy or a theology of images, i.e. a doctrine that demonstrates the theological relevance of images in Christianity. The icons are memorials of events of salvation history. On a deeper level the contemplation of images together with the hearing of the word of God facilitate access to the realities of faith, and both contemplation and hearing open to theological understanding and personal experience. Icons, it is claimed, witness to eternal truth and give access to this truth. As we shall see, this was a controversial issue in Theodore’s times. In fact, it seems to the present author that Theodore’s philosophy of images is worked out as a justification of the possibility for the believer of encountering the prototype of the image based on a certain kind of relationship between image and prototype, a relationship that will be investigated below. This perhaps sounds rather trivial, but is not. Several aspects of the image–prototype complex, highlighted by Theodore in illustrations and technical vocabulary, for instance impression and seal, effect and cause, belong to the Aristotelian category of ‘the relative’ (πρός τι). My point is that it is precisely by their nature as belonging to ‘the relative’ that Theodore is able to justify the believer’s access to his or her object of veneration. Identifying images as ‘relative’ is basic to the possibility of contemplating them in their theological function as sources of insight and personal devotion. For this reason it is argued here that the concept of ‘the relative’ is basic to Theodore’s doctrine of the icon. So far as I know, no other interpreter of his doctrine has worked this out in detail. When scholars comment on his use of relation they do so mainly in passing. Theodore, who in the last part of his life was hegoumenos of the Stoudios monastery, was born in Constantinople (759) and died on the Princes’ Islands (826). He was active during the second part of the so-called iconoclast controversy and wrote his three refutations after the iconoclast council of 815. He was almost contemporary with another important defender of the icons under the so-called ‘second iconoclasm’, St Nicephorus (c.750 or 758–828), who became patriarch of Constantinople (806–15). Since the present book is on the doctrines of a thinker within such a context, it is in some way a contribution to the history of the iconoclast controversy. I say ‘in some way’ since what is treated here is not the history of the age of iconoclasm as such, but rather the arguments and doctrines of a thinker who participated in the controversy. In fact, if we keep to the texts that are relevant to the topic of the present book, it is quite clear what was the central issue of the controversy: the icon of Christ and, secondarily, icons in general. The issue can be narrowed down even further: the controversy, as we find it in the relevant texts, was about the possibility of making a true image of Christ. If one studies the Definition of the iconoclast council of 754, the relevant passages from Nicaea II of 787, the arguments of Theodore’s iconoclast spokesman in his refutations, and his own counter-arguments, this becomes quite clear. As soon as this is acknowledged, Theodore’s texts make rather good sense since all the different arguments are related to one basic idea, the idea of the true image. This idea, which we shall investigate in detail, is the idea that an image relates us truly to the prototype, something denied by the iconoclasts. As will be seen from the next section of this introduction, on earlier literature, I am somewhat critical of some modern perceptions of the topic of Christian art that have been quite influential.3 In that regard it strikes me that in the treatment of the particular topic of Christian art and iconoclasm the hermeneutical presuppositions and approach matter quite a lot. Several historians seem to work from the hypothesis that Christianity as a religion originally opposed figurative art but eventually came to endorse it. For many art historians the endorsement seems to be due to certain influences from outside the church; this particular development is a special case of Hellenization. However that may be, the subject of the present book is Theodore the Studite and his teaching, but even so, there is a general hypothesis in the background of my approach: Christianity has particular features that make the development of art occur as a natural process.4 Christianity from the beginning was such that there was a potential for this kind of so-called material culture. For this reason this book has an appendix: ‘Why Should There Be Such a Thing as Christian Art at all?’ The scope of this appendix is broader than the general scope of the book. It belongs therefore at the end; but in this appendix Theodore will be put into the framework of the development of Christian art as understood by the present author. The Introduction to this book, in addition to the description of the topic in the present section, has a section on earlier literature and a further section on the conciliar background of Theodore’s treatises. This is to show that the iconoclast crisis brought up issues concerning holy images that needed philosophical clarification. Chapter 1 discusses Theodore’s education, the methodological approach he uses in the refutations, and his application of logic. As far as I know, no interpreter has treated the whole of his logic systematically before. The chapters that follow are devoted to the analysis of Theodore’s critique of iconoclast positions and the development of his own doctrine. The three refutations are not dealt with one by one; rather, central clusters of argumentation from the different treatises are brought together, concepts are identified, and the material is treated systematically under the following headings: Chapter 2: Circumscription, Chapter 3: Relation, and Chapter 4: True Image or Idol of Deceit. The chapter on circumscription goes into what, as we shall see, is a basic topic in iconoclast argumentation and in all of Theodore’s counter-arguments, viz. Christology. One might perhaps, with Cattoi, consider Theodore’s book a Christological treatise.5 Arguments from Christology are put forward in the Definition of the iconoclast council of 754 and play a major role in Theodore’s defence. He argues that Christ may be painted because of the Incarnation, and he sets out to demolish iconoclast arguments to the effect that Christ cannot be painted. It will be argued that Theodore offers an original theory of the painting of religious images when he focuses on the εἶδος (form or appearance) of the subject of painting. In some way his doctrine suggests a kind of phenomenological approach to painting, if such a modern characteristic may be applied. Chapter 3 discusses another central topic in Theodore’s defence, viz. the relation between the icon and its prototype. This brings with it a discussion of exactly how an image relates to a prototype and a discussion of arguments from synonymy and homonymy .
Chapter 4 focuses on the concepts of icon and idol. The iconoclast council of 754 had branded the icons as idols, and even if the council of so-called ‘second iconoclasm’, in 815, had toned down the accusation of idolatry, Theodore makes the question of icon, idol, and idolatry a central issue. In this context the Old Testament prohibitions are discussed together with Theodore’s doctrine of the icon as true image contra the iconoclast understanding as formulated in the council of 754 of what might count as a true image. The question of the veneration of icons will also be discussed in this chapter. In the Appendix, ‘Why Should There Be Such a Thing as Christian Art at all?’, I argue for what I believe is the rationale behind the Christian image. Theodore is included towards the end as an early ninth-century representative of a long tradition. I shall end this section on the topic of the present book with a couple of terminological considerations and a comment on the primary sources. Certain terminological conventions seem to have become established in histories of art and theology. There is, for instance, talk of the ‘cult of icons’ and ‘icon worship’. The term ‘worship’ is ambiguous. It may be used for the adoration of a divinity, but may also be used in addressing high-ranking persons.6 Perhaps the risk of confusion is not so serious in a British context, but at least outside such a context the term might easily be conceived as indicating adoration. It is problematic that many historians of Christian art seem to intimate that ‘worship’ in fact has to do with adoration of certain material objects. Such connotations are most unfortunate in scholarly literature that again and again uses the term in connection with relics, icons, and the saints. This is all the more regrettable in view of the fact that those who defended the icons in the iconoclast era paid attention to terminology and objected to the accusation that icons qua material objects are adored. The term ‘cult’ might also be problematic for similar reasons, but when used in the sense of ‘a system of religious veneration or devotion directed towards a particular person or object’ it may be convenient to employ it.7 The Greek word εἰκών simply means ‘image’ and in translating it below I shift between ‘image’ and ‘icon’.
There is no critical text for Theodore’s treatises and the scholar has therefore to work from the text printed in J. P. Migne, Patrologiae Cursus Completus, Series Graeca, vol. 99. There are to my knowledge two modern translations into a Western language: St Theodore the Studite, On the Holy Icons, translated by Catharine P. Roth and published by St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press in 1981, and Theodore the Studite, Writings on Iconoclasm, translated and introduced by Thomas Cattoi in the series Ancient Christian Writers (New York, 2015). For Theodore’s letters I refer to Theodori Studitae, Epistulae, ed. Georgios Fatouros, parts 1–2, (Berlin, 1991). Finally, the reader should be aware of the fact that the background of the present author is in philosophy and not in art history. My main field of interest is late antique thought, the conflict and interaction of pagan and Christian philosophy, and the development of basic Christian doctrines of theology and cosmology. I do not claim, therefore, to employ the conceptual tools of art history with any sophistication; rather, my explicit desire is to approach the whole issue from a philosophical point of view that is historical as well as systematic.
EARLIER LITERATURE ON THE ICONOCLAST CONTROVERSY AND ON THEODORE A lot has been written on the icon. The relevant literature on Theodore himself, however, is not extensive.8 We may divide the literature on the icon into two main groups, viz. works of a historical nature and works on modern icon theology. Since my preoccupation is with doctrines that originated in early Christian history, works on modern icon theology are left out. However, even if we just concentrate on the second group, a lot has been written on early Christian and Byzantine art from the point of view of art history and the history of theology and doctrine. Much of what has been written on Christian art and the iconoclast controversy is quite problematic and there is a need for alternative approaches. Several contributions cover the same ground and if one has read one or two standard descriptions the third seldom brings much that is new. However, a recent publication offers in sum arather new picture of the controversy, viz. L. Brubaker and J. Haldon’s Byzantium in the Iconoclast Era c. 680–850: A History (2011). The authors offer a reinterpretation of the historical material that will come as a surprise for those who are only acquainted with earlier standard expositions. I should say immediately that some of the claims made in this book are likely to provoke discussion, but whether one accepts Brubaker and Haldon’s interpretations of the material or not, the book will be a point of reference for new approaches to the historical issues. However, since my focus is mainly on ideas, doctrines, and arguments there are other contributions that are more relevant than this monograph. Jaroslav Pelikan’s Imago Dei: The Byzantine Apologia for Icons (1990), Kenneth Parry’s Depicting the Word: Byzantine Iconophile Thought of the Eighth and Ninth Centuries (1996), and Charles Barber’s Figure and Likeness: On the Limits of Representation in Byzantine Iconoclasm (2002) have all been important for the general development of the reflections set out in the chapters that follow. In chapter 4 of Pelikan’s monograph, ‘The Senses Sanctified’, the author investigates a subject of particular importance for the appendix of the present book, viz. what he calls ‘the new Christian epistemology’. So far as I can see, not many scholars, if any at all, have seen the importance of the Incarnation for the development of Christian art so clearly as Pelikan. Parry’s stimulating book focuses on doctrines and arguments rather than on purely historical developments. He offers a study of Byzantine iconophile thought with special reference to John of Damascus, Theodore the Studite, and the patriarch Nicephorus. Parry divides his monograph into two parts, dealing respectively with philosophical and theological themes. The purpose of the philosophical part is to show the extent to which philosophy influenced iconophile theory. Barber claims that the debates of the iconoclast controversy ‘were narrowly focused upon the question of the truthfulness of visual representation. These theologians were seeking to define the icon, a manufactured depiction of a holy person or event, as a legitimate or illegitimate medium for Christian knowledge.’9 The icon is seen as a piece of theological ‘text’, and as a relevant point of reference for Christian epistemology. Barber criticizes the attempts made by many to dismiss the image itself from the description of the crisis.10 The descriptions of the controversy ‘look behind’ the icon, so to say, to what is considered to be the ‘deeper political, social, and theological strains within the culture’. Barber wants to bring the image itself into focus:11 ‘In so doing, I will argue that the iconoclastic dispute concerned the definition of the icon itself as an appropriate medium for theology.’ I agree with this approach. When it comes to St Theodore himself, he is mentioned in almost every work written on the iconoclast controversy without any fundamental analysis of his thought. In this regard Parry’s book is an exception. However, there are at least two relevant doctoral theses on Theodore. In 1993 Theodor Damian defended his thesis for the degree of Ph.D. at Fordham University: The Icons: Theological and Spiritual Dimensions According to St. Theodore of Studion. The second thesis was defended by Gary Wayne Alfred Thorne for the degree of Ph.D. at Durham University in 2003: The Ascending Prayer to Christ: Theodore Stoudite’s Defence of the Christ-εἰκών against Ninth Century Iconoclasm. Alice Gardner treats Theodore’s biography in her book of 1905, Theodore of Studium, His Life and Times. In 2015 Roman Cholij published his Theodore the Stoudite, The Ordering of Holiness, which contains a substantial biography. However, his treatment of certain aspects of Theodore’s education leaves something to be desired. Cholij’s book is focused on Theodore’s theology of the Christian life and contains very little of relevance for his iconophile arguments. Several influential historical approaches to early Christian and Byzantine art and the iconoclast controversy seem to share some common presuppositions. Among these presuppositions is the idea that early Christianity was quite a pure and simple religion without nurturing any interest in material culture. Further, practices that involve sensible elements like dust, oil, incense, candles, relics, icons, etc. of, it is believed, a more or less popular provenance expose Christianity to pagan influences culminating in magic, animism, and superstitious beliefs in the presence of divine power in such material items. Paul J. Alexander, for instance, says: ‘at the root of image worship lay the concept that material objects can be the seat of divine power and that this power can be secured through physical contact with the sacred’.12 This seems to suggest that to possess an icon means to possess an object invested with power so that one may control certain aspects of life or the world through this power. The notion of ‘power’ has stimulated the imagination of earlier scholars to such a degree that they again and again return to it as a magic element in a more or less paganized Christian reception of art. At least three scholars have, convincingly it could be argued, identified the sources of the notion of an original Christian opposition to art in certain developments in nineteenth-century Protestant theology, viz. Sister Charles Murray, Paul Corby Finney, and Steven Bigham. In 1977 Sister Charles Murray published a paper, ‘Art and the Early Church’, in the Journal of Theological Studies.13 She argues against what she sees as a universally held ‘fact’ that the early church was hostile to art.14 According to Murray, the content of the established view is that Christianity from its origins in Judaism ‘inherited its pure and spiritual worship of God “in spirit and truth” and along with this therefore a hostility to religious artistic representation which both religions identified with pagan practice’.15 Christian authorities, it is claimed, held the second commandment as binding as did the Jews. She then tries to identify the sources for this modern prejudice in scholars like H. Koch.16 She also says that it was Ernst Kitzinger’s use of nineteenthcentury material in his ‘The Cult of Icons in the Age before Iconoclasm’ (1954) that made this approach canonical.17 Paul Corby Finney published his interesting book The Invisible God: The Earliest Christians on Art in 1994.18 Finney investigates preConstantinian archaeological material in accordance with an accurate and strict methodology. He also offers an illuminating analysis of apologetic material that usually has been appealed to by those who argue for an original Christian hostility towards images.19 How, then, does Finney identify the modern ancestry of the common view of the original Christian hostility towards images? In his chapter on the history of interpretation, he points to H. Koch as especially influential.20 Koch, Finney says, ‘was a man bound by a time and a place, and both belonged to Adolf von Harnack’:21 ‘Harnack viewed the earliest form of Christianity as in essence (wesentlich) a religion of simple Semites living lives of high moral purpose. Their paradigm: the life and death of Jesus.’ Koch’s book, Bilderfrage, according to Finney, ‘is a modern doxology, a catena of authoritative patristic testimonies carefully selected and arranged to illustrate Harnack’s Hellenization theory’.22 According to Finney, the influence goes from Koch to scholars like Ernst Kitzinger. The third contribution to be mentioned is Steven Bigham’s book Early Christian Attitudes towards Images (2004).23 Bigham draws on both Murray and Finney and tries to develop the argument further. He presents the ancestry of the hostility thesis as drawn up by his predecessors and tries to strengthen the argument against the claim that early Christianity was aniconic and iconophobic by discussing the sources that are normally adduced for the ancient Jewish and Christian hostility towards images. Influential exponents of the hostility thesis include Kitzinger, Alexander, and Barnard. In 1954 Ernst Kitzinger published an article with the title ‘The Cult of Images before the Age of Iconoclasm’.24 This article stimulated further work on the subject. Its value lies in the amount of documentation brought forward, but the analysis and partly the methodology leave a lot to be desired. In accordance with the legacy suggested above, Kitzinger postulates that a spiritualized religion does not desire material images or symbols:25 ‘Christianity’s original aversion to the visual arts was rooted in its spirituality.’ This spiritualized worship implied ‘a general rejection of material props in religious life and worship’. Images were therefore originally resisted, categorically rejected, during the first two centuries of the existence of Christianity.26 In 1955 Kitzinger published a second article, ‘On Some Icons of the Seventh Century’. He focuses among other things on what he considers an important change in the understanding and use of images in the post-Justinianic era.27 Images were justified, he says, not because of their usefulness, but because of ‘the strength of a transcendental relationship to their prototypes’.28 Kitzinger speaks of ‘a flow of substance or energy emanating from the prototype and received by the image’.29
It is interesting that this was written at a time when research into Neoplatonism and the concept of energeia in late antique thought was not much developed. Such a ‘flow’ from the prototype into the image may be highlighted philosophically, but Kitzinger just refers to the rather diffuse concept of ‘magic’.30 Why should Christians in late antiquity simply nurture primitive magical notions? Could it not be that they had a world view that was open to the presence of the higher in the lower through divine energeia? Even if their notions were rather vague, vague notions are not necessarily magical. Paul J. Alexander published his book The Patriarch Nicephorus of Constantinople in 1958. This is a well-known monograph that is often referred to. When it comes to the iconoclast controversy, however, it is full of problems. Like Kitzinger’s articles the book abounds in problematic terminology like ‘icon-worship’ and ‘image-worship’. In 1974 L. W. Barnard published The Graeco-Roman and Oriental Background of the Iconoclast Controversy. Barnard holds that the controversy originally was over the charge of idolatry, and that John of Damascus introduced the argument from Christology for the defence of icons.31 The most problematic parts of Barnard’s argument are found in his chapter 4, ‘The Graeco-Roman Background of the Image Cult’. He speaks freely of image worship, magic, magical power, and animism. He obviously finds the notion that power is invested in or operates through material items superstitious. Such evaluations seem, however, rather anachronistic, since the idea that God is present throughout the cosmos by his energeiai became a basic idea among theologians from the third century onwards, as it was in the Platonic schools. In a general verdict on the beliefs of the Byzantines, Barnard states that salvation came from ‘the icon, the robe, the girdle, the prayers of the Virgin’.32 The picture Barnard draws of Christians as semi-pagans after centuries of Christian tradition in liturgical practice, theological discussion, philosophical thinking, and moral teaching is rather strange. It is as if there had been no Christian consciousness at all. There are good reasons to be sceptical of such a picture. These critical comments on select literature from an influential tradition are made for a purpose: the history of Christian art and the background of the iconoclast controversy should be reinvestigated. It is high time to rid ourselves of nineteenth-century prejudices about how primitive, spiritual Christianity was corrupted through its development into the early Byzantine church.
CONCILIAR BACKGROUND Marie-France Auzépy states that the ‘written sources for the 150 years of iconoclasm reveal both the paucity of material, and how inadequate it is for understanding the profound transformation of the empire in this period’.33 She claims that ‘the history of eighth-century Byzantium tends to be highly hypothetical’.34 When it comes to the specifically religious aspect of these 150 years she says that the sources are ‘not only sparse, they are also biased’, since (with the exception of juridical and administrative documents) they were written by the iconophiles, the enemies of the iconoclasts, the victors of the controversy. The material has been interpreted in various ways and we have obviously not yet seen the end of discussions on how some texts should be conceived.35 Without entering into the controversial, historical details, since the subject of this book is ideas and doctrines, we can just say that the era of iconoclasm (730–843) has been divided into two periods, the first covering the reign of the Isaurian dynasty (c.730–87), the second the reigns of Leo V and his Amorian successors (815–43).36 The periods are separated by an iconophile interval when the empress Irene called the second council of Nicaea in 787. Whoever the instigators of iconoclasm were, rumours that an antiicon campaign was developing, associated with actions taken by the emperor Leo III (717–41), reached Jerusalem and were responded to by St John of Damascus (c.665–c.749).37 He wrote three treatises against the iconoclasts, the first some time between 726 and 730, the second after 730, and the third maybe in the early 740s.38 Leo’s son, Constantine V (741–75), called a council that met in Hiereia in Chalcedon in 754 and pronounced against the veneration of icons. The Definition of this council is preserved in the acts of the second council of Nicaea, called by Irene in 787, which defined the veneration of icons as an important element of tradition. The latter council has entered history as the Seventh Ecumenical Council. However, a second period of iconoclasm followed, in which emperor Leo V (813–20) called a second iconoclast council in Constantinople in 815. The Definition and the patristic florilegium of this council are preserved in the writings of the patriarch Nicephorus. The two main theologians among the iconophiles during the second iconoclasm were St Nicephorus of Constantinople and St Theodore the Studite. According to Thorne, Theodore probably wrote his Antirrhetici tres adversus iconomachos as a response to the iconoclast council of 815.39 Maybe it was written within a year or so of the council. However, as Thorne also argues, it seems that the three treatises in different ways respond to different stages of iconoclast argumentation. Unfortunately, the theology of the iconoclasts, and their argumentation for their own positions, do not survive as independent documents. All that is left is what is preserved in the writings of the representatives of the victorious side and in conciliar documents. The Definition from the iconoclast council of 754 is quoted section by section in the acts of the Ecumenical Council of 787. The remains of the iconoclast council of 815 are preserved in Nicephorus’ Refutatio et eversio definitionis synodalis anni 815.40 According to Alexander, the Definition of this council ‘is an exceedingly tame and disappointing document’:41 ‘The bishops of 815 concluded by condemning the worship of the spurious images, invalidated the decisions of 787, accepted those of 754, and declared the making of images to be devoid of worship and useless—while at the same time, in a spirit of compromise, expressly abstaining from calling them idols.’ This difference between the two councils, that the council of 754 branded the icons as idols while the council of 815 ambiguously abstained from calling them that, is reflected in Theodore’s treatises.42 In the second treatise he complains of the inconstancy of iconoclast claims, ‘at one time they blasphemously miscall the icon of our Lord Jesus Christ an idol of deceit; at another time they do not say so, but say instead that the depiction is good, because it is useful for education and memory, but is not for veneration’.43 A study of the Definition of the iconoclast council of 754 reveals a theological argument of some interest. It is to a large degree this theology that Theodore responds to. We must therefore turn to an analysis of this basic argument. However, before we do that we should direct our attention to another text that contains the first decision on images from a synod that might be claimed to be ecumenical, viz. the so-called council ‘in Trullo’ or the Quinisext council (691–2). The council was convoked by Justinian II in order to complete the work of the fifth and sixth ecumenical councils by issuing canonical regulations. Its canon 82 about the representation of Christ as a man instead of a lamb is definitely of relevance for the general issue of icons. The assembly considered itself ecumenical, but the iconoclast Definition of 754 carefully states its adherence to six ecumenical councils and ends its short notes on these with the council of Constantinople of 680–1.44 Why is the Quinisext council not mentioned? One should have expected it to be criticized because of its canon 82: 82. That artists are not to portray the Forerunner pointing to a lamb. In some depictions of the venerable images, the Forerunner is portrayed pointing with his finger to a lamb, and this has been accepted as a representation of grace, prefiguring for us through the law the true Lamb, Christ our God. Venerating, then, these ancient representations and foreshadowings as symbols and prefigurations of truth handed down by the Church, nevertheless, we prefer grace and truth, which we have received as fulfilment of the law. Therefore, in order that what is perfect, even in paintings, may be portrayed before the eyes of all, we decree that henceforth the figure of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world, Christ our God, should be set forth in images in human form, instead of the ancient Lamb; for in this way we apprehend the depth of the humility of the Word of God, and are led to the remembrance (μνήμην) of his life in the flesh, his passion and his saving death, and of the redemption which thereby came to the world.45 The Quinisext council promulgated a number of regulating canons and some, according to Louth, were of particular interest for the Constantinopolitan church itself: ‘One guiding principle of the canons of the quinisext council was to define the practises of the Byzantine church in conscious opposition to the developing customs of the Latin west.’46 Many of those who signed the canons were among the participants of the Sixth Ecumenical Council. It is not improbable, therefore, that the iconoclast council of 754 was afraid both of being criticized for jeopardizing the Christological settlement of 680–1 and for jeopardizing the interests of the Byzantine church. However, it may be that the Definition of 754 contains a slightly covered up allusion to the Quinisext council: Again, the aforementioned architect of evil, unable to behold her [i.e. the church’s] comeliness was not at loss for evil stratagems, for bringing, by deceit, at diverse times and in diverse ways, humanity into subjection to himself. Rather, in the guise of Christianity he secretly brought back idolatry, and persuaded, by means of his sophistic arguments (σοφίσμασι), those who paid regard to him, that they should not be set free from that which is created, but should rather worship that which is created and venerate it, and deem that which was made as God, [provided that] it was called by the name of ‘Christ’.47 What is the target here? Who was deceived and how did the devil secretly bring back idolatry ‘in the guise of Christianity’? It is not improbable that this is a covert reference to the Quinisext council. The iconoclast council might have wanted to suggest that amongst its otherwise reputable work at a certain point the Quinisext council gave in to a sophistic trap of devilish origin. It seems obvious that an outright condemnation of the council would be in the interest of neither the emperor nor the patriarchate. The importance of the 82nd canon was, of course, clearly seen by the iconophile council of 787. The canon was read out in the fourth session and, to quote Barber, ‘it is evident that there was need to validate the council and to authenticate this specific text’.48 Theodore, of course, accepted the authority of the canon and quotes it in his second refutation as stemming from the fathers of the Holy Sixth Ecumenical Council.49 However, the iconoclast opponent Theodore refers to in this connection does not comment on the quotation—which suggests some embarrassment felt by an iconoclast on this particular topic— but only sets it aside with the remark that it should not be accepted since it is ‘recent’. One should expect that this canon would play some role in an emerging controversy over images. It is not particularly surprising that such a canon is promoted. What is surprising is that about forty years later, when the making and the veneration of images were challenged and this challenge gained imperial support, a movement was initiated to remove images. I shall not speculate on how this came about. In the case of the images, people must have been quite familiar with their presence when powerful opposition arose. However, we know that throughout the history of the church, some representatives of local authority opposed images, even if the motives and reasons are not particularly easy to interpret. However that may be, opposition broke out in the 720–30s, gained imperial support, and one might wonder if canon 82 of the Quinisext council did not have something to do with that. What was the controversy about? According to Barber the actual debates ‘were narrowly focused upon the question of the truthfulness of visual representation’:50 ‘These theologians were seeking to define the icon, a manufactured depiction of a holy person or event, as a legitimate or illegitimate medium for Christian knowledge.’ He considers Byzantine iconoclasm ‘as a complex series of evolving debates set in train by a problematic piece of canonical legislation’. This legislation is the 82nd canon of the Quinisext council. It is not improbable that Barber is right. Maybe the 82nd canon, as the first regulation on figurative art issued by a council claimed to be ecumenical, initiated considerations in the years that followed and became a catalyst for different opinions on the usefulness of images. According to Barber, ‘a key point of dispute for the iconophiles and the iconoclasts was the legitimacy of the canons formulated at the Quinisext Council’.51 One might object to this explanation that it is strange then that the debates are not more focused on the canon itself and on the authority of this council. However, as we have tried to show above, the iconoclasts probably did not want to focus too much attention on the canon, since that might result in highly undesirable consequences. For the sake of the interests of the Byzantine church itself it would be important for representatives of the iconoclast party to throw a smoke screen over this canon. One could not risk jeopardizing the Quinisext council itself. What, then, are the challenges brought forward by the iconoclasts? We turn to the Definition of the iconoclast council of 754, preserved in the acts of the Seventh Ecumenical Council, in order to identify the main argument. As we shall see in Theodore’s refutations, this is central in his attacks on iconoclasm. The Definition is designed to present the council as the Seventh Ecumenical Council.52 It supplies an outline of the divine economy of creation and salvation. Man fell due to satanic deception and Christ came to rescue man from the devil’s ensnarement that had put him in a wrong and idolatrous relation to the cosmos.53 Christ rescued us from the corruptive teaching of demons, took us away from the worship of idols, and handed us over to the adoration of God ‘in spirit and truth’ (John 4:24).54 All of this is built up as an argument with a reasonable sequence that should be acceptable to all Christian readers, but it is also designed to justify the next move: Christ ascended to heaven and beautified the church with doctrines of piety that were preserved by the fathers and the six ecumenical councils.55 The present council then puts itself into this sequence since it comes to the rescue of the church in the present critical situation, as the argument goes on: the devil could not stand Christ’s generosity towards the church and reintroduced idolatry imperceptibly and convincingly by his subtleties—which, as argued above, probably is a covert reference to the 82nd canon of an otherwise authoritative council—and Christians began to adore creation and considered created things as God, calling them with the name of Christ.56 From an eloquently presented background, the Definition moves on to develop an argument, the essential point of which is the concept of circumscription.57 In the concrete sense circumscription (περιγραφή) means that something may be marked off with a line. It is also used in an abstract sense as the definition of something. Creatures suffer different kinds of circumscription, but God cannot be circumscribed. We return to this terminology in Chapter 2. The council appeals to the basics of orthodox Christology as developed in previous councils and states the faith that Christ is one hypostasis in two natures, wills, and activities. One and the same Lord is the subject of both the miracles and the sufferings.58 Having stated this the council immediately accuses the ‘unlawful art of the painters’ of blasphemy against the divine economy and of subverting the doctrine of the councils. The iconophiles ‘confirm [not only] Nestorius who divided the Son and Logos of God who for our sake became man, into a duality of sons, but nevertheless also Arius and Dioscorus and Eutyches and Severus, who taught the confusion and mixture of the two natures of the one Christ’.59 The council throws three accusations against the iconophiles, viz. that they are in effect Nestorians or, alternatively, Arians or monophysites. We shall see below how these charges are constructed. The dilemma, considered to be inescapable, is explained the following way: the artist makes an icon and calls it Christ, and ‘The name “Christ” refers to both God and man, therefore the image is of God as well as of man’0 If the painter assumes such a thing the immediate corollaries are that the painter either (i) circumscribes the uncircumscribability of the Godhead in the created flesh, or he (ii) confuses the natures of the unconfused union. The first consequence violates the Chacedonian adverb ‘without change’ (ἀτρέπτως); the second violates the adverb ‘without confusion’ (ἀσυγχύτως). (a) The first assumption could be said to change the divinity into something circumscribed that could be painted. This is probably the reason for labelling the iconophile painter an Arian, since one could charge him with transforming divinity into a created thing. The result of such a change amounts to some Arian-like entity—at least one might urge this polemically. (b) If the iconophile should deny that he presupposes such a change, and still maintains that the whole Christ may be painted, then he may be charged with mixing the two natures together and in consequence be accused of being a monophysite. In my opinion this is the most artificial and strange part of the dilemma. Its logic leaves something to be desired. (c) If the iconophile now tries to slip away from these consequences, he may claim that he only paints the image of the flesh. This, however, is liable to the additional charge of Nestorianism, since it implies that one thinks it possible to separate the divinity from the humanity of Christ.61 The argument is polemical, but is it a sophism, in the sense of just a construction made up to target the opponent—i.e. an ad hominem argument—or for some different and hidden agenda? I have the impression that it has seldom been taken with sufficient seriousness qua theological argument. There is something quite strange with the whole situation. For centuries the Christian world had been gradually filled with splendid buildings, elaborate liturgical practices, symbols, and images, then one of these elements is challenged, not superficially, but with sophisticated, theological criticism. The argument does not just fall back on Old Testament prohibitions, but is Christological and ontological. The challenge concerns the ontological possibilities of Christian images and sheds a light of suspicion on the legitimacy of images as a source of theological insight and on the veneration offered to these alleged media of divine truth. Even if the consistency of the argument as such is suspect the iconoclast objection should be treated seriously: how is it possible to make a true image of Christ? As already said, the iconoclast Definition is preserved in the acts of the council of Nicaea from 787. The iconoclast Definition was read out and responded to in the sixth session of the council. Bishop Gregory of Neocaesarea read from the Definition and a deacon read in the interval from an already composed refutation.62 The deacon’s responses contain interesting material, but do not seem to get to the core of the iconoclast arguments. The iconoclast accusations of Arianism, monophysitism, and Nestorianism are treated as sophisms and not as polemical challenges backed by serious concerns and arguments. Interwoven with rhetorical invectives, the refutation touches upon the problems, but one has to consult Theodore’s treatises in order to find a deeper engagement with iconoclast argumentation. The council of 787 claims that images are not an innovation, but belong to the ancient tradition of the church.63 It is claimed that the tradition of images goes back to the days of the apostles. Of course, the modern historian cannot endorse such a claim, but even so I argue in the Appendix that the conditions for the making of figurative art are already present in primitive Christianity. The council further considers that the Quinisext council is a continuation of the Sixth Ecumenical Council and that its canon 82 has ecumenical authority.64 The council teaches that Word and Image are both media for evangelical truth; a story in writing declares the same as what is seen in the icon, and it is not so much what is seen as what is signified (ἐνσημαινόμενα) that matters.65 When it comes to the dilemma put by the iconoclast council, the charge of Nestorianism is addressed first.66 The document read out by the deacon states the conventional view that Nestorius teaches two sons, the one is the Logos of the Father, the other is born from Mary. Of course, the iconophiles deny the accusation of such teaching as an insult. The icon painter makes an icon of the Logos in so far as He became flesh:67 ‘For God the Word circumscribed Himself when He came to us in the flesh.’ Further it is stated that no one, of course, has thought that he can reproduce the divinity with colours. The iconophile formulas stick to the terminology of the unity of Christ, but state that the icon resembles the prototype not essentially, but with regard to name and to ‘the position of the members which can be characterized’. It is further said that a painting of a human being does not have a soul in it, but it would be ridiculous to say that the painter for that reason has split the soul from the body. Nor is the nature or substance of the body present in the icon. These iconophile arguments are not wrong in any sense, but they are not sufficiently developed to ward off the charge. One could just ask: but if Christ is one, and if the painter is able to paint only one aspect (i.e. the human) of the whole unity (of divinity and humanity) that is Christ, does not his image falsify the conception of Christ? It seems to me legitimate to ask whether the icon can be a proper ‘theological object’, a medium of theological insight. However, the iconophile council does not address such questions at all. And to say that the Logos circumscribed Himself when He became man is to open the critical question of whether, how, or to what degree His divinity suffered circumscription. There is lacking a proper ontological clarification of several issues here, and equally a lack of argumentation for the icon as a proper medium of theological insight.68 Later on Bishop Gregory read the part of the iconoclast Definition commented on above, viz. that the denotation of the name of Christ is God and man.69 The answer states once more that what is depicted is ‘that nature of His according to which He has been seen, not that according to which He is invisible; the latter is uncircumscribable’. Christ, it is claimed, is depicted according to His human nature. It seems that both iconoclasts and iconophiles at this stage of the controversy lack a clear notion of what the subject of painting would be, nature or hypostasis. As we shall see later, this is one of the things Theodore addresses. However, the iconophile council has already stated that what is painted is ‘the position of the members which can be characterized’, but this is too thin to be a proper clarification of anything even if it suggests what should be further investigated: the ontology of the humanized state of the hypostasis of the Logos. When the sequence of the argument comes to the charge of circumscription, the deacon’s iconophile answer explicitly denies that there is circumscription of the Godhead: even if wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger, the divinity is not circumscribed together with the human nature.70 There are many more details in the answer given to the iconoclast Definition by the ecumenical council, but we shall leave it at that. As we can see, even if the iconophile council tends to consider it a piece of rhetoric and eristic, the iconoclast Definition raises important issues that are only partly conceived and addressed in 787. The main issue is how a manufactured piece of art may be a true image of God. Against this background we turn to St Theodore the Studite in order to see whether he takes up the challenges properly. Before we go into his defence of the icon, however, we shall investigate his method and logic.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق