The Victory of Orthodoxy

The defeat of the iconoclasts is the 'Victory of Orthodoxy.' The Council of Trent in the west was a negative document in that it did not clearly set out the role of the image-only what was not considered permissible (see A. Blunt for further details). In this way, the Renaissance was consolidated. Are we, perhaps, not in the realms of the fundamental distinction: that between sound and image; or is this a disjunction within the tradition of the visual?

'Christ is describable according to his Person, remaining indescribable in his divinity.'Divinity is equally present in the image of a cross, not by virtue of identity of nature, for these objects are not the flesh of God, but by virtue of their relative participation in divinity, for they participate in the grace and the honour.'
--St. Theodore the Studite


'The honour rendered to the image passes to its prototype , for the person who venerates an icon venerates the person represented on it.'
----Basil the Great

The decisions of the 7th Ecumenical Council were signed by representatives of the entire Church including the Roman. But there was a mistranslation of "veneration" for adoration where the Council specified and emphasized that the correct attitude toward the image should be one of honour and veneration, not that of true adoration which befits God alone.

This leads to Charlemagne's Libri Carolini (see Peter Brown) that deprives the sacred image of its dogmatic basis (in the West), handing it over to the imagination of the artist.

'Through the denial of the image , Christianity became an abstract theory..it is not surprising that iconoclasm was linked to a general secularization of the Church , a de-sacralization of all aspects of its life.'

'God the Father is not incarnate and is consequently invisible and non-representable'
---From Ouspensky's Theology of Icons.

An act of humility would lead us to acknowledge that we can know something, but what is this something in comparison to higher orders of knowing, seeing?

To know and to understand is a command, is sanctioned by something that is beyond our own volition: philosophy is bound by the Law (Leo Strauss)

'The Good is not absolutely incommunicable to everything. By itself it generously reveals a form , transcendentally, granting enlightenment proportionate to each being, and thereby drawing sacred minds upwards to its permitted contemplation, to participation and to the state of becoming like it'

[again, to Muslim minds, minds that are rooted in a perspective that emphasises utter transcendence, there can be no question of likeness..but then what are the Names, and what is the Law? No, the Pope was wrong on this one]

This implies a veneration of of what is beyond thought and Being and an acceptance of being guided by the light of Revelation.

Scripture tells of the Cause, Principle, Being, Life of all things and this implies two approaches: symbolic and philosophical. We can only 'know' being. We dot know God from His own nature -which remains ineffable-but from the order of beings that bear images of the divine exemplar...
..ascend both by removing all things from Him and affirming them superlatively, and through the causality of things..a ladder. Necessity is the veil of God.

The most perfect knowledge is that which binds us to God

Is the passage from the sensible to the intellectual itself an example of the move from the finite to the infinite? Creation is both a veil that reveals and hides. All points to continuity and discontinuity, similarity and distinction.

'God is known in all things and apart from all things; and God is known through knowledge and through unknowing; on the one hand He is reached by intuition, reason, understanding, appearance, name and yet on the other hand, he cannot be conceived, spoken, or named.'

Genesis: What is thy Name?

There is only a rebuke. Beyond assertion or denial, transcending them. The Divine silence which dwells in that darkness which is a superabundance of light

Divine distinction: the divine unity that overflows into a multiplicity: light of lights.

To praise God through creation: Good, Beauty, Love, Wisdom, Power, Peace..'These perfections which we discover partially in human experience..subsist in God in a distinct manner..He is there super-plenitude, Goodness unbounded'

'The affirmative mirrors the creative profusion of God, unfolding His generosity in a continuous cascade of perfections..on the other hand, the negative path recharts the ascent of finite beings , from limitation to transcendence and silence ['Verily toward God, for God is they limit'].

The negative path shows us the radical incommensurability of our capacities with the goal. 'The highest achievement of reason is to acknowledge its own inadequacy'.

He who knows the finite, knows the Infinite.

Not in a positive way, it must be added, but in a negative way of distinction, the Divine Darkness beyond the Intellect.

--citations, F. O'Rourke