Icons and John of Damascus

Go to an Eastern Orthodox church and you will see people bowing to a picture and kissing it.  This is very disconcerting to a Protestant. It was just as controversial in the 700s as it is today. It was defended by John of Damascus, one of the prime heroes of the church.  John (ca. 675–749) is known as the great compiler and summarizer of the orthodox faith and the last great Greek theologian. He was born right after the Muslims overran Syria and his father was an administrator in the Byzantine Empire who continued to work for the Umayyad Caliph. His family was Arab-Syrian Christian. John may have had an early job in the Muslim court; we don’t know. He was certainly a polymath (a whiz in many things--math, art, theology and government.)  In that era, Muslims were on a constantly victorious march and could afford to be tolerant and content just to take over rule of formerly Christian countries, using the established officials.

 At age 41, in 716, John entered a monastery outside of Jerusalem and was ordained a priest. When the Byzantine emperor Leo in 726 issued a decree forbidding images (icons), John forcefully resisted. In his Apostolic Discourses he argued for the legitimacy of the veneration of images, which earned him the condemnation of the Iconoclast Council in 754. What needs to be understood about an icon (image) is that it may seem to be just a painted picture, but it is first a written Word of God.  “Icon” is Greek for image, used in scripture repeatedly to signify that Christ was God’s image/icon, and we are too.  God’s Word is an image/icon put in the form of symbols on a page. (Strange way of expressing it. Protestants might choke if told not to bring their Bible-icon to church.) And we confess that Jesus is this image/icon/”real physical matter” that is God in the flesh, John asserted.  In 787, John’s defense was presented to the Council at Nicea and the church ruled in favor of icon use.  But the practice of praying with a picture icon is more widespread in the Orthodox Church than the Roman Catholic Church.

John wrote the first definitive defense of the Christian faith against Islam and was highly critical of the Quran. His Fount of Wisdom was a massive summary of Christian truth from previous Christian theologians.  He wrote treatise after treatise against the heresies that plagued the Eastern world.  His defense of the orthodox faith left a lasting stamp on all of Christendom.  In the Lutheran Service Book are two hymns by John of Damascus, both Paschal (Easter) hymns:  “The Day of Resurrection” and “Come, You Faithful, Raise the Strain”.

John of Damascus is both a saint in the Catholic Church and the leading hero of the Eastern Orthodox faith. But he receives little mention among historians, perhaps a result of their secular bias.