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Orthodox Theology of Images: Theodore the Studite and Nicephorus.

Theodore the Studite (759-826) was one of the major reformers of the Eastern Christian monastic movement. In 798, he found himself at the head of the Constantinopolian monastery of Studios (the name of the founder), which by then had fallen into decay. Under Theodore’s leadership the community there rapidly grew to several hundred monks and became the main monastic centre of the capital. The Studite Rule (Hypotypõsis) in its final form is the work of Theodore’s disciples, but it applied his principles of monastic life and became the pattern for large cenobitic communities in the Byzantine and Slavic worlds. Theodore himself is the author of two collections of instructions addressed to his monks (the “small” and the “large” Catecheses) in which he develops his concept of monasticism based upon obedience to the abbot, liturgical life, constant work, and personal poverty. These principles were quite different from the eremitical, “hesychast,” tradition and derived from the rules of Pachomius and Basil. The influence of Theodore upon later developments of Byzantine Christianity is also expressed in his contribution to hymnography. Many of the ascetical parts of the Triodion (proper for Great Lent) and of the Parakletike, or Oktoechos (the book of the “eight tones”), are his work or the work of his immediate disciples. His role in conflicts between Church and state will be mentioned in the next chapter.

In numerous letters to contemporaries, in his three Antirrhetics against the iconoclasts, and in several minor treatises on the subject, Theodore actively participated in the defence of images.

As we have seen, the principal argument of the Orthodox against the iconoclasts was the reality of Christ’s manhood; the debate thus gave Byzantine theologians an opportunity to reaffirm the Antiochian contribution to Chalcedonian Christology, and signalled a welcome return to the historical facts of the New Testament. From the age of Justinian, the humanity of Christ had often been expressed in terms of “human nature” assumed as one whole by the New Adam. Obviously, this platonizing view of humanity in general was insufficient to justify an image of Jesus Christ as a concrete, historical, human individual. The fear of Nestorianism prevented many Byzantine theologians from seeing a man in Christ, for “a man” implying individual human consciousness seemed for them to mean a separate human hypostasis. In Theodore’s anti-iconoclastic writings, this difficulty is overcome by a partial return to Aristotelian categories.

 

Christ was certainly not a mere man; neither it is orthodox to say that He assumed an individual among men [ton tina anthrõpõn] but the whole, the totality of the nature. It must be said however that this total nature was contemplated in an individual manner — [for how otherwise could it have been seen?] — in a way which made it visible and describable, which allowed it to eat and drink...11

 

Humanity for Theodore “exists only in Peter and Paul,” i.e., in concrete human beings, and Jesus was such a being. Otherwise, Thomas’ experience of placing his finger into Jesus’ wounds would have been impossible.12 The iconoclasts claimed that Christ in virtue of the union between divinity and humanity was indescribable; and therefore, that no image of Him was possible. But for Theodore, “an indescribable Christ would be an incorporeal Christ… Isaiah [8:3] described him as a male being, and only the forms of the body can make man and woman distinct one from another.”13



A firm stand on Christ’s individuality as on a man’s one again raised the issue of the hypostatic union; for in Chalcedonian Christology, the unique hypostasis or person of Christ is that of the Logos. Obviously then, the notion of hypostasis cannot be identified with either the divine or the human characteristics; neither can it be identical with the idea of human consciousness. The hypostasis is the ultimate source of individual, personal existence, which in Christ is both divine and human.

For Theodore, an image can be the image of an hypostasis only, for the image of a nature is inconceivable.14 On the icons of Christ, the only proper inscription is the personal God, “He who is" — the Greek equivalent of the sacred tetragrammaton YHWH (Yahweh) of the Old Testament, never such impersonal terms as “divinity” or “kingship,” which belong to the Trinity as such and thus cannot be represented.15 This principle, rigidly followed in classical Byzantine iconography, shows that the icon of Christ is for Theodore not only an image of “the man Jesus” but also of the incarnate Logos. The meaning of the Christian Gospel lies precisely in the fact that the Logos assumed all the characteristics of a man including describability, and His icon is a permanent witness of this fact.

The humanity of Christ, which makes the icons possible, is a “new humanity” having been fully restored to communion with God, deified in virtue of the communication of idioms, and bearing fully again the image of God. This fact is to be reflected in iconography as in a form of art: the artist thus receives a quasi-sacramental function. Theodore compares the Christian artist to God Himself making the man in His own image: “The fact that God made man in His image and likeness showed that iconography was a divine action.”16 At the beginning, God created man in His image. By making an icon of Christ, the iconographer also makes an “image of God,” for what the deified humanity of Jesus truly is.

 

By position, temperament, and style, Nicephorus, Patriarch of Constantinople (806-815), was the opposite of Theodore. He belonged to the series of Byzantine patriarchs between Tarasius and Photius who were elevated to the supreme ecclesiastical position after a successful civil career. As patriarch, he followed a policy of oikonomia and suspended the canonical penalties previously imposed upon the priest Joseph who had performed the “adulterous” marriage of Constantine VI. This action brought him into violent conflict with Theodore and the monastic zealots. Later deposed by Leo V (in 815) for his defence of icons, he died in 828 after having composed a Refutation of the iconoclastic council of 815, three Antirrhetics, one Long Apology, and an interesting treatise Against Eusebius and Epiphanius, the main patristic references of the iconoclasts.

Nicephorus’ thought is altogether directed against the Origenist notion found in Eusebius’ letter to Constantia that deification of humanity implies dematerialization and absorption into a purely intellectual mode of existence. The patriarch constantly insists on the New Testament evidence that Jesus experienced weariness, hunger, and thirst like any other man.17 In dealing with the issue of Jesus’ ignorance, Nicephorus also tries to reconcile the relevant scriptural passages with the doctrine of the hypostatic union in a way, which was for different reasons not common in Eastern theology. In Evagrian Origenism, ignorance was considered as coextensive with ― if not identical to ― sinfulness. The original state of the created intellects before the Fall was that of divine gnosis. Jesus was precisely the non-fallen intellect and therefore eminently and necessarily preserved the “knowledge of God” and of course any other form of inferior gnosis. The authors of the age of Justinian, followed by both Maximus and John of Damascus, denied any ignorance in Christ by virtue of the hypostatic union; but probably also under the influence of a latent Evagrianism, they interpreted the Gospel passages speaking of ignorance on the part of Jesus as examples of his oikonomia ― pastoral desire ― to be seen as a mere man and not as expressions of His real ignorance. Nicephorus stands in opposition to that tradition on this point although he admits that the hypostatic union could suppress all human ignorance in Jesus; but by virtue of the communication of idioms, the divine knowledge being communicated to the human nature. He maintains that divine economy in fact required that Christ assume all aspects of human existence, including ignorance: “He willingly acted, desired, was ignorant and suffered as a man.”18 In becoming incarnate, the Logos assumed not an abstract, ideal humanity, but the concrete humanity, which existed in history after the Fall, in order to save it. “He did not possess a flesh other than our own, that, which fell as a consequence of sins; He did not transform it [in assuming it]... He was made of the same nature as we but without sin; and through that nature, He condemned sin and death.”19

This fullness of humanity implied, of course, describability; for if Christ was indescribable, His Mother with whom He shared the same human nature would have been considered as indescribable as well. “Too much honour given to the Mother,” Nicephorus writes, “amounts to dishonour her, for one would have to attribute to her incorruptibility, immortality, and impassibility if what by nature belongs to the Logos must also by grace be attributed to her who gave Him birth.”20

The same logic applies to the Eucharist, which, as we have seen, the iconoclasts considered only as the admissible image or symbol of Christ. For Nicephorus and the other Orthodox defenders of images, this concept was unacceptable because they understood the Eucharist as the very reality of the Body and Blood of Christ and precisely not as an “image,” for an image is made to be seen while the Eucharist remains fundamentally food to be eaten. By being, it assumed into Christ the Eucharistic elements did not lose their connection with this world just as the Virgin Mary did not cease to be part of humanity by becoming the Mother of God. “We confess,” writes Nicephorus, “that by the priest’s invocation by the coming of the Most Holy Spirit the Body and Blood of Christ are mystically and invisibly made present...;” and they are saving food for us “not because the Body ceases to be a body, but because it remains so and is preserved as body.”21

Nicephorus’ insistence upon the authenticity of Christ’s humanity at times leads him away from classical Cyrillian Christology. He evades Theopaschism by refusing to admit either that “the Logos suffered the passion or that the flesh produced miracles... One must attribute to each nature what is proper to it,”22 and minimizes the value of the communication of idioms, which, according to him, manipulates “words.”23 Obviously, Theodore the Studite was more immune to the risk of Nestorian-izing than Nicephorus was. In any case, the necessity of reaffirming the humanity of Christ and thus of defending His describability led Byzantine theologians to a revival of elements of the Antiochian tradition and thus to a proof of their faithfulness to Chalcedon.

 


Date: 2016-01-14; view: 591


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