St John Damascene on Holy Images (πρὸς τοὺς διαβάλλοντας τᾶς ἁγίας εἰκόνας). Followed by Three Sermons on the Assumption (κοίμησις)John of Damascus, Saint
Religion
St John Damascene on Holy Images (πρὸς τοὺς διαβάλλοντας τᾶς ἁγίας εἰκόνας). Followed by Three Sermons on the Assumption (κοίμησις)
John of Damascus, Saint
Icons -- Cult; Idols and images -- Worship; Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint -- Assumption -- Sermons -- Early works to 1800
The fourth kind of image are the figures and types set forth by
Scripture of invisible and immaterial things in bodily form, for a
clearer apprehension of God and the angels, through our incapacity of
perceiving immaterial things unless clothed in analogical material form,
as Dionysius the Areopagite says, a man skilled in divine things. Anyone
would say that our incapacity for reaching the contemplation of
intellectual things, and our need of familiar and cognate mediums, make
it necessary that immaterial things should be clothed in form and shape.
If, then, holy Scripture adapts itself to us in seeking to elevate us
above sense, does it not make images of what it clothes in our own
medium, and bring within our reach that which we desire but are unable
to see? The spiritual²³ writer, Gregory, says that the mind striving to
banish corporeal images reduces itself to incapability. But from the
creation of the world the invisible things of God are made clear by the
visible creation. We see images in created things, which remind us
faintly of divine tokens. For instance, sun and light and brightness,
the running waters of a perennial fountain, our own mind and language
and spirit, the sweet fragrance of a flowering rose-tree, are images of
the Holy and Eternal Trinity.
The fifth kind of image is that which is typical of the future, as the
bush and the fleece, the rod and the urn, foreshadowing the Virginal
Mother of God, and the serpent healing through the Cross those bitten by
the serpent of old. Thus, again, the sea, and water and the cloud
foreshadow the grace of baptism.
The sixth kind of image is for a remembrance of past events, of a
miracle or a good deed, for the honour and glory and abiding memory of
the most virtuous, or for the shame and terror of the wicked, for the
benefit of succeeding generations who contemplate it, so that we may
shun evil and do good. This image is of two kinds, either through the
written word in books, for the word represents the thing, as when God
ordered the law to be written on tablets, and the lives of God-fearing
men to be recorded, or through a visible object, as when He commanded
the urn and rod to be placed in the ark for a lasting memory, and the
names of the tribes to be engraved on the stones of the humeral. And
also He commanded the twelve stones to be taken from the Jordan as a
sacred token. Consider the prodigy, the greatest which befel the
faithful people, the taking of the ark, and the parting of the waters.
So now we set up the images of valiant men for an example and a
remembrance to ourselves. Therefore, either reject all images, and be in
opposition to Him who ordered these things, or receive each and all with
becoming greeting and manner.
Fourth Chapter. What an Image is, what it is not; and how each Image is
to be set forth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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