Icon

The word icon comes from the Greek "eikon" which mean "image". An icon can also mean somebody symbolizing a movement (i.e. conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly, civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.). Whatever and whoever is a representative icon is regarded as iconic. There are iconic representatives or exemplars of art, history, literature, medicine, science, philosophy, and religion.

The class of graphic art forms of iconic imagery of any culture or people or religion is termed by art historians and historians in general as a particular iconography, roughly divided into ethnic, pagan, Jewish, and Christian iconographies. Vexillology is the study of the iconography of flag imagery and worship from ancient times to the present. An example of U.S. political iconography includes Statuary Hall in the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., and the various memorials and monuments around the Washington Mall, including the Pacific War Memorial of the United States Marine Corps based on the famous World War II photograph taken by Joe Rosenthal on top of Iwo Jima.

In "Christian Adaptation of Pagan Iconography" Spencer Alexander McDaniel presents a multitude of examples of how Christians adapted and redefined the imagery of pagan art for the purpose of illustrating to illiterate persons the purely moral and virtuous doctrines of Christianity. There is a striking total absence of images of polytheism, of fertility goddesses and gods.

In Christianity, an icon is a holy image which is an art form of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The icon is not simply decorative. Many Orthodox churches have icons on the walls and the ceilings. In the ceiling or dome is the icon of Christ the Almighty, the Pantocrator.

The Eastern Orthodox Church does not permit icons representing God the Father. In addition, icons cannot be 3 dimensional (statues). The Eastern Orthodox Church also does not permit the Virgin Mary to be depicted in an icon without Christ (excluding the icon of the Annunciation).

It is common practice for iconographers not to sign their work in the belief that the glory goes to God, not to the artist.

The early church appears to have inherited the opposition to icons inherent in second temple, Talmudic Judaism. Hence, early Christians were accused of being "atheists" by Romans who assumed the absence of images meant the absence of belief in gods. Origen (184-254) responded to the charge of "atheism" by admitting that Christians did not use images in worship, following the Second Commandment. Canon 36 of the Council of Elvira (c. 305) states, “Pictures are not to be placed in churches, so that they do not become objects of worship and adoration.” About the year 327 the early church historian Eusebius (c. AD 263 – 339) wrote, "To depict purely the human form of Christ before its transformation, on the other hand, is to break the commandment of God and to fall into pagan error." Epiphanius (inter 310–320 – 403), bishop of Salamis, in Cyprus wrote, in Letter 51 (c. 394), to John, Bishop of Jerusalem about an incident of finding an image in a church in his jurisdiction: "I went in to pray, and found there a curtain hanging on the doors of the said church, dyed and embroidered. It bore an image either of Christ or of one of the saints; I do not rightly remember whose the image was. Seeing this, and being loath that an image of a man should be hung up in Christ's church contrary to the teaching of the Scriptures, I tore it asunder and advised the custodians of the place to use it as a winding sheet for some poor person." He goes on to tell John that such images are “contrary to our religion” and to instruct the presbyter of the church that such images are “an occasion of offense.”

The Iconoclastic controversy was a dispute over the veneration of icons within Christianity.

Sources

• Carpenter, John B. "Icons and the Eastern Orthodox Claim to Continuity with the Early Church," Journal of the International Society of Christian Apologetics, Vol. 6, No. 1, 2013.

• Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America

• Flickr Public Photos