Read
through any collection of Gary Larson’s The Far Side cartoons, and you will
doubtless come across a cartoon image of God as an old man, usually gigantic in
proportion and surrounded by the clouds of “heaven.” This kind of cartoon image has become the
popular depiction of God within our popular culture, from the Sunday morning
funny papers to popular films such as Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy
Grail. Perhaps drawing inspiration from
Michelangelo’s famous painting of the Creation of Adam in the Sistine Chapel,
the image of God as an old man has been indelibly imprinted upon the
consciousness of Western society. An
interesting by-product of this sort of depiction of God is the inclusion of
Jesus alongside him, making two figures, Jesus and his Father.
Most
Orthodox Christians are aware of the Church’s prohibition of any depiction of
God the Father. The 1667 Synod of Moscow
canonically forbade the depiction of God the Father in icons, though this
canonical decision has not always been obeyed. Icons of an “Old Man” figure
called “Lord Sabaoth” and “Ancient of Days” are often claimed to be images of
the Father and often claimed to be something else. To further complicate matters, St. Andrei
Rublev’s icon of the Holy Trinity depicts the three Persons of the Holy Trinity
in angelic form. What then are the
theological principles that prevent us from depicting the Father in
iconography, and in what particular ways can He be depicted if at all?
Iconicity
It is
commonly said that the Father cannot be depicted in icons, because the Father
is invisible while the Son is incarnate and visible, but is this the reason? It
cannot be entirely so, for we depict invisible, spiritual beings all the time such
as the angelic hosts. Orthodox
hymnography regularly addresses the angels as “the bodiless powers,” attesting
to the fact that they are pure spirit, pure nous, or pure energy. Nevertheless, we depict them in human form.
Virtually every Orthodox temple will have images of the Archangels in this
fashion. So then, the prohibition of
depicting the Father does not stem merely from His invisible nature. Rather,
the reason is far more theologically significant than mere visibility or
invisibility.
To understand
this, we must introduce the concept of iconicity, which is the ability of a
thing to be imaged, that is to say, the possibility of a thing to have a
thought-image or idealization. For
example, I may stroll through a garden and see a beautiful flower. If I were then to sit down at an easel with a
brush and palette, I can imagine an idealization of that beautiful flower and
paint its image on the canvas. A
beautifully painted image of a flower iconizes the particular flower that I saw
in the garden, and it now gains the ability to inspire a sense of beauty in
those who look at it as the particular flower inspired me as I strolled through
the garden. The particular flower in the garden can be said to have a certain
iconicity, which is actualized by the act of painting, the creation of the
image.
The human
person also has iconicity. Throughout
history, the ideal human form has been painted and sculpted in a variety of
ways, from Greek sculpture of the Olympian gods to modern comic book heroes
with their powerful musculature. When we
see an image of Superman, we see and are inspired by an icon of the ideal man
(even though, and perhaps because he is an alien). All artistic images to one degree or another
are iconizing, in that they portray an idealization of a thought-image about a
particular thing.
The
hypostatic icon
So then,
when we speak about God or specifically about the hypostasis of the Father, in
what way does He have iconicity?
Orthodox theology of the Holy Trinity has long taught that God’s own
thought-image of Himself, His own perception of Himself, His self-consciousness
as it were, is realized in another hypostasis, the hypostasis of the Son. This is to say that the iconicity of the
Father is realized by the Son. The only
image of the Father that is possible is the very hypostasis of the Son. To put it another way, the Son is the natural
image of the Father, as Jesus himself said to Philip, “If you have seen me, you
have seen the Father” (John 14:9).
It can be
said then that it is the property of the Father to be iconized, imaged only by
His Son, and it is the property of the Son to iconize the Father. The iconicity of the Father is entirely and
completely realized by the Son, so that there is no way that another image of
the Father could exist alongside of and in addition to the Son. The Son
entirely and completely exhausts in Himself the iconicity of the Father. So
then, to see the Son is to see the only possible icon of the Father, and it is
for this reason that no artistic icon of the hypostasis of Father is possible,
for that icon is the Son of God himself.
Therefore, a painted icon of the Son, the incarnate Logos, Jesus Christ,
is a material image of the hypostatic image of the Father, an icon of an
icon. We might say then that Orthodoxy
has many images of the Father—the image of Christ Jesus Himself.
What then
can be said of that famous icon of the Holy Trinity by St. Andrei Rublev? In this icon, taking as its inspiration the
hospitality of Abraham from Genesis 18, where Abraham is visited by God in the
form of three men, God is depicted iconographically by the image of three
angels seated around a table. Are we able then to point to each individual
Angel and say that it is an image of one of the hypostases of the Holy Trinity?
Theologians are divided on this issue,
and perhaps both the affirmation and negation of this notion are correct in
different ways. If we isolate one of the
Angels and say that it is a direct image of the hypostasis of the Father, we
would be wrong. Of course, the Father is
most definitely not an angel, therefore to depict the Father as an angel is not
possible. The Son and the Spirit alike
are not angels either, so depiction of Them as angels is also incorrect. What then do we have in this enigmatic image?
The Eidos
icon
St.
Andrei Rublev’s image of the Holy Trinity is an example of the particular use
of symbol to express a particular thought-idea.
We may speak of the Holy Trinity.
We may name the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. In the very act of speaking about these
things we engage in a certain act of iconization. If we engage in the apophatic mode of
theology, we would say that the essence (ousia) of God is not the Father, the
Son, or the Holy Spirit. These are names
given to the hypostases of God, but not the essence of God, which is
transcendent, unknowable, and unnamable.
Therefore, to speak of the Holy Trinity is to engage in cataphatic
theology. “Apophatic” is derived from
the Greek term meaning “away from speech,” and conversely “cataphatic” is
derived from the term meaning ‘toward speech.”
When
engaging in cataphatic theology, we may use certain manners of speech,
specifically that of naming, or we may use various types of visual depiction to
reference the thought-idea of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. For example, in naming one hypostasis of the
Holy Trinity “Father” we are depicting this hypostasis as having certain
qualities of parentage, of fatherhood, and this is an icon of sorts. In doing so, however, we are describing the
hypostasis of the Father in His eternal generation of His own hypostatic image,
the Son. By naming Him “The Father,” we are saying that He has a hypostatic
image, that is, by the very name of the Father, we are immediately presented
with the hypostatic image of the Son.
We have
distinguished, then, two types of icons: the hypostatic icon, which is the Son,
and another icon which references or points to this hypostatic icon. The
angelic depiction of the Father in Rublev’s Holy Trinity icon is of this second
type. It is not an icon of the hypostasis
of the Father. It is an icon of the
thought-idea of Father by use of the angel as a symbol. All symbols contain a
visible form, for which we can use the Greek word eidos. So we can speak about
eidos icons, which symbolically depict ideas. The use of the angel as an eidos
symbol carries the notion of “announcing” or “sending a message.” In both Greek and Hebrew, the term angel
simply means “messenger.” So then, in
the angelic image of the Holy Trinity, a message is sent or announced to us,
which is the idea of the Holy Trinity itself, the revelation of the Holy
Trinity as an idea present to our rational minds.
The Holy
Spirit has an eidos icon, which is the image of a dove, seen in the icon of
Theophany. St. Luke writes in his Gospel that the Spirit descended in the
“form,” eidos, of a dove. The Holy
Spirit is not a dove, of course, therefore the image of the Spirit as a dove is
not a hypostatic icon but rather a symbolic eidos icon. In this symbol, we are
reminded of the dove that Noah sent out to find the dry land after the
flood. The Spirit in the form of a dove
symbolizes to us the idea that the incarnate Christ, like the dry land, is the
New Creation (cf. St. Paul’s phrase “Firstborn of all creation”), the New Adam,
which rises up out of the waters of baptism as the land rose up out of the
flood waters as a new creation.
The
Ancient of days
The
depiction of the Father as an old man, then, is not proper if it is understood
as a hypostatic icon, that is, an image of the hypostasis of the Father, for the
hypostasis of the Father is only depicted by His Son. The idea of the Father is
depicted via the symbol of the angel.
Can the idea of the Father be depicted as an old man? Some might argue so, though the propensity
for this form to be understood as a hypostatic icon is perhaps too great, and
in order to avoid this confusion, such depictions are regulated as
non-canonical and prohibited by the 1667 Synod of Moscow (as they are
understood to be images of the Father).
The Bible
itself, however, uses the image of an old man, as an eidos image in the vision
of Daniel, which he sees in a vision. “The Ancient of Days was seated; His
garment was white as snow, and the hair of His head was like pure wool” (Dan.
7:9). In this context, however, we are not given the impression that this image
refers to the hypostasis of the Father, but to God in His unified simplicity,
i.e. in His oneness (The Synod of Moscow describes this vision as being of the
Son). The idea symbolized here is the eternality of God, specifically that He
exists before and after the earthly imperial powers which had subjected the
Jewish people.
It is
possible, then, to understand these “Old Man” icons as being icons of the
“Ancient of Days,” and this is one way that they have been explicitly titled in
painted icons. The other title that the
“Old Man” icons take is “Lord Sabaoth” or “Lord of Hosts,” which references the
vision of Isaiah in chapter 6 of his prophecy.
Again, this image depicts the idea of God in His unified simplicity, not
in His hypostatic plurality. The One
Essence of God cannot be depicted in a direct manner, but the idea of it may be
referenced symbolically through these eidos icons. Nevertheless, these icons remain on the cusp
of canonical permissibility, and they should be treated with caution.
By Eric Jobe
Source: https://blogs.ancientfaith.com/orthodoxyandheterodoxy/2014/09/08/show-us-the-father-how-the-father-may-or-may-not-be-depicted-in-orthodox-iconography/
CONVERSATION