Among these, we find a very interesting commandment that many like to reference when they argue that we ought not use icons within our expressions of Orthodox worship. In this book, we find the very popular passage where God gives Moses his commandments for the people of Israel.
Now I can already see how some people will immediately raise an eyebrow and say “but what about the ten commandments?!” If you have ever read scripture before surely you have come across the book of Exodus. This is done through icons of Our Lord Jesus Christ who came and manifested himself visibly in human form through His incarnation, icons of the Holy Virgin Mother St Mary, icons of the angels, saints, martyrs, and other major events that are seen as significant moments in both scriptural and ecclesial history. We receive this from St Paul who speaks of Our Incarnate Lord in Colossians 1 and says “He is the image ( εἰκών ) of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.” And so, just as God creates humanity as the visible expression of His image within all of creation, so too the Church continued in this tradition of expressing the experience and revelation of God through imagery (also known as iconography). Even our Lord Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Word of God, in His humanity was also called the perfect image of the Father. And so, if we dare say, the concept of creating icons (or images) began with God the Pantocrator as the first Divine Iconographer who created humanity in His own image. It is from this root word that today we have the English word icon simply meaning an image. When this word was later translated into the Greek Septuagint translation, the word used was Eikona ε ἰ κ ό ν α.
” This word ‘image’ in the original Hebrew is the word tselem צֶלֶם. In Genesis 1:26, we read “And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. To understand its source, lets go all the way back to the account of creation. To begin, in an attempt to have a better understanding of how the Orthodox Church approaches iconography, lets first address the word icon what does it even mean?
#GRAVEN IMAGES TODAY SERIES#
To begin this short series on Icons, lets first address the skeptics: let’s ask the question “When using icons in the Church, are we worshiping graven images?” Let’s dive right in to begin our investigation.
In later videos we can speak to many other questions that surround Coptic Orthodox Iconography. Now there is much to say about Icons, and so for now, we will only attempt to cover a brief introduction of the meaning and purpose of icons. For over 15 centuries now, Orthodox Icons have played a very important role in the spirituality of Orthodox Liturgical expression. My beloved, if you have ever walked into an authentic Orthodox Church, surely you have noticed the beauty within it with all it’s domes, pillars, veils, and especially its gold-leafed iconography. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit One God, Amen.
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