The Early Church Fathers on Images

The Seventh Ecumenical Council in 787 A.D. declared that it is right and lawful for Christians to venerate the icons of the saints and condemned all of those who opposed the veneration of icons:

“Anathema to the calumniators of the Christians, that is to the image breakers. Anathema to those who apply the words of Holy Scripture which were spoken against idols, to the venerable images. Anathema to those who do not salute the holy and venerable images. Anathema to those who say that Christians have recourse to the images as to gods. Anathema to those who call the sacred images idols. Anathema to those who knowingly communicate with those who revile and dishonour the venerable images. Anathema to those who say that another than Christ our Lord hath delivered us from idols. Anathema to those who spurn the teachings of the holy Fathers and the tradition of the Catholic Church, taking as a pretext and making their own the arguments of Arius, Nestorius, Eutyches, and Dioscorus, that unless we were evidently taught by the Old and New Testaments, we should not follow the teachings of the holy Fathers and of the holy Ecumenical Synods, and the tradition of the Catholic Church. Anathema to those who dare to say that the Catholic Church hath at any time sanctioned idols. Anathema to those who say that the making of images is a diabolical invention and not a tradition of our holy Fathers.”

Because this was an ecumenical council, its decrees are considered infallible by both Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

But the decision of this council is in direct opposition to the words of God in Exodus 20:4-6:

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.”

The majority of the early church fathers would have disagreed with the decrees of the Seventh Ecumenical Council and its veneration of images. The making and veneration of images was not “a tradition of our holy Fathers.”

“The Barbarians, then, as they did not apprehend God, went astray among the elements, and began to worship things created instead of their Creator; and for this end they made images and shut them up in shrines, and lo! they worship them, guarding them the while with much care. . . . Great then is the error into which the Barbarians wandered in worshipping lifeless images which can do nothing to help them” (Aristides, Apology, Chapter 3).

“They fell aside from the truth, and went after the desire of their imagination, serving the perishable elements and lifeless images” (Aristides, Apology, Chapter 7).

“Because of the multitude, who cannot distinguish between matter and God, or see how great is the interval which lies between them, pray to idols made of matter, are we therefore, who do distinguish and separate the uncreated and the created, that which is and that which is not, that which is apprehended by the understanding and that which is perceived by the senses, and who give the fitting name to each of them, – are we to come and worship images?” (Athenagoras, A Plea for the Christians, Chapter 15).

“There are, however, persons who say: It is for the honor of God that we make the image: in order, that is, that we may worship the God who is concealed from our view. But they are unaware that God is in every country, and in every place, and is never absent, and that there is not anything done and He knoweth it not. Yet thou, despicable man! Within whom He is, and without whom He is, and above whom He is, hast nevertheless gone and bought thee wood from the carpenter’s, and it is carved and made into an image insulting to God. To this thou offerest sacrifice, and knowest not that the all-seeing eye seeth thee, and that the word of truth reproves thee, and says to thee: How can the unseen God be sculptured? Nay, it is the likeness of thyself that thou makest and worshippest. Because the wood has been sculptured, hast thou not the insight to perceive that it is still wood, or that the stone is still stone? . . . Though thou hast eyes, dose thou not see? And though thou hast intelligence, dose thou not understand? Why dose thou wallow on the ground, and offer supplication to things which are without sense?” (Melito of Sardis, Fragments of Melito of Sardis, A Discourse Which Was in the Presence of Antoninus Caesar).

“[The Carpocratian heretics] also possess images, some of them painted, and others formed from different kinds of material; while they maintain that a likeness of Christ was made by Pilate at that time when Jesus lived among them. They crown these images, and set them up along with the images of the philosophers of the world that is to say, with the images of Pythagoras, and Plato, and Aristotle, and the rest. They have also other modes of honouring these images, after the same manner of the Gentiles” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book 1, Chapter 25, Section 6).

“Artists not having yet applied themselves to this specious pernicious art; but when art flourished, error increased. That of stones and stocks — and, to speak briefly, of dead matter — you have made images of human form, by which you have produced a counterfeit of piety, and slandered the truth, is now as clear as can be. . . . But images, being motionless, inert, and senseless, are bound, nailed, glued — are melted, filed, sawed, polished, carved. The senseless earth is dishonoured by the makers of images, who change it by their art from its proper nature, and induce men to worship it; and the makers of gods worship not gods and demons, but in my view earth and art, which go to make up images. For, in sooth, the image is only dead matter shaped by the craftsman’s hand. But we have no sensible image of sensible matter, but an image that is perceived by the mind alone — God, who alone is truly God” (Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Heathen, Chapter 4).

“But it is with a different kind of spell that art deludes you, if it leads you not to the indulgence of amorous affections: it leads you to pay religious honor and worship to images and pictures” (Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Heathen, Chapter 4).

“But it is clear to everyone that piety, which teaches to worship and honour, is the highest and oldest cause; and the law itself exhibits justice, and teaches wisdom, by abstinence from sensible images, and by inviting to the Maker and Father of the universe” (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 2.18).

“Moses ages before enacted expressly, that neither a graven, nor molten, nor moulded, nor painted likeness should be made; so that we may not cleave to things of sense, but pass to intellectual objects: for familiarity with the sight disparages the reverence of what is divine; and to worship that which is immaterial by matter, is to dishonour it by sense” (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 5.5).

“But they, also in the instance of this commandment, having become devoid of sense, and addicting themselves to graven images, are judged unless they repent” (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 6.14).

“What is made is similar and the same to that of which it is made, as that which is made of ivory is ivory, and that which is made of gold golden. Now the images and temples constructed by mechanics are made of inert matter; so that they too are inert, and material, and profane . . . Works of art cannot then be sacred and divine” (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, 7.5).

“The homage they render is to demons, who are the real occupants of these consecrated images, whether of dead men or (as they think) of gods. On this account, therefore, because they have a common source — for their dead and their deities are one — we abstain from both idolatries. Nor do we dislike the temples less than the monuments: we have nothing to do with either altar, we adore neither image; we do not offer sacrifices to the gods, and we make no funeral oblations to the departed” (Tertullian, De Spectaculis, Chapter 13).

“But when the devil introduced into the world artificers of statues and of images, and of every kind of likenesses, that former rude business of human disaster attained from idols both a name and a development. Thenceforward every art which in any way produces an idol instantly became a fount of idolatry. For it makes no difference whether a molder cast, or a carver grave, or an embroiderer weave the idol; because neither is it a question of material, whether an idol be formed of gypsum, or of colors, or of stone, or of bronze, or of silver, or of thread. For since even without an idol idolatry is committed, when the idol is there it makes no difference of what kind it be, of what material, or what shape” (Tertullian, On Idolatry, Chapter 3).

“The images of those things are idols; the consecration of the images is idolatry. Whatever guilt idolatry incurs, must necessarily be imputed to every artificer of every idol. . . . Why recall anything more from the Scriptures? As if either the voice of the Holy Spirit were not sufficient; or else any further deliberation were needful, whether the Lord cursed and condemned by priority the artificers of those things, of which He curses and condemns the worshippers!” (Tertullian, On Idolatry, Chapter 4).

“It is enough that the same God, as by law He forbade the making of similitude, did, by the extraordinary precept in the case of the serpent, interdict similitude. If you reverence the same God, you have His law, You shall make no similitude. If you look back, too, to the precept enjoining the subsequently made similitude, do you, too, imitate Moses: make not any likeness in opposition to the law, unless to you, too, God have bidden it” (Tertullian, On Idolatry, Chapter 5).

“For how could he have known Moses and Elias, except (by being) in the Spirit? People could not have had their images, or statues, or likenesses; for that the law forbade” (Tertullian, Against Marcion, Book 4, Chapter 22).

“For neither painter nor image-maker existed in their state, the law expelling all such from it; that there might be no pretext for the construction of images — an art which attracts the attention of foolish men, and which drags down the eyes of the soul from God to earth” (Origen, Against Celsus, Book 4, Chapter 31).

“We, on the other hand, deem those to be ‘uninstructed’ who are not ashamed to address (supplications) to inanimate objects, and to call upon those for health that have no strength, and to ask the dead for life, and to entreat the helpless for assistance. And although some may say that these objects are not gods, but only imitations and symbols of real divinities, nevertheless these very individuals, in imagining that the hands of low mechanics can frame imitations of divinity, are ‘uninstructed, and servile, and ignorant;’ for we assert that the lowest among us have been set free from this ignorance and want of knowledge, while the most intelligent can understand and grasp the divine hope” (Origen, Against Celsus, Book 6, Chapter 14).

“It is not possible at the same time to know God and to address prayers to images” (Origen, Against Celsus, Book 7, Chapter 65).

“To explain this fully, and to justify the conduct of the Christians in refusing homage to any object except the Most High God, and the First-born of all creation, who is His Word and God” (Origen, Against Celsus, Book 7, Chapter 70).

“It is not therefore true that we object to building altars, statues, and temples, because we have agreed to make this the badge of a secret and forbidden society; but we do so, because we have learnt from Jesus Christ the true way of serving God, and we shrink from whatever, under a pretence of piety, leads to utter impiety those who abandon the way marked out for us by Jesus Christ” (Origen, Against Celsus, Book 8, Chapter 20).

“And [the Carpocratian heretics] make counterfeit images of Christ, alleging that these were in existence at the time (during which our Lord was on earth, and that they were fashioned) by Pilate” (Hippolytus, The Refutation of All Heresies 7.20).

“Why have they no altars, no temples, no acknowledged images? Why do they never speak openly, never congregate freely, unless for the reason that what they adore and conceal is either worthy of punishment, or something to be ashamed of?” (Minucius Felix, Octavius, Chapter 10).

“Whence it is manifest, that those were men whom we both read of as having been born, and know to have died. Who therefore doubts that the common people pray to and publicly worship the consecrated images of these men; in that the belief and mind of the ignorant is deceived by the perfection of art, is blinded by the glitter of gold, is dimmed with the shining of silver and the whiteness of ivory?” (Minuscius Felix, Octavius, Chapter 23).

“But do you think that we conceal what we worship, if we have not temples and altars? And yet what image of God shall I make, since, if you think rightly, man himself is the image of God?” (Minuscius Felix, Octavius, Chapter 32).

“Was it for this He sent souls, that, being made unmindful of the truth, and forgetful of what God was, they should make supplication to images which cannot move” (Arnobius, Against the Heathen 2.39).

“Since it has been sufficiently shown, as far as there has been opportunity, how vain it is to form images” (Arnobius, Against the Heathen 7.1).

“But, they say, we do not fear the images themselves, but those beings after whose likeness they were formed, and to whose names they are dedicated. You fear them doubtless on this account, because you think that they are in heaven; for if they are gods, the case cannot be otherwise. Why, then, do you not raise your eyes to heaven, and, invoking their names, offer sacrifices in the open air? Why do you look to walls, and wood, and stone, rather than to the place where you believe them to be? What is the meaning of temples and altars? what, in short, of the images themselves, which are memorials either of the dead or absent? For the plan of making likenesses was invented by men for this reason, that it might be possible to retain the memory of those who had either been removed by death or separated by absence” (Lactantius, The Divine Institutes, Book 2, Chapter 2).

“In the first place, because those images which are worshipped are representations of men who are dead; and that is a wrong and inconsistent thing, that the image of a man should be worshipped by the image of God, for that which worships is lower and weaker than that which is worshipped: then that it is an inexpiable crime to desert the living in order that you may serve memorials of the dead, who can neither give life nor light to any one, for they are themselves without it: and that there is no other God but one, to whose judgment and power every soul is subject. In the second place, that the sacred images themselves, to which most senseless men do service, are destitute of all perception, since they are earth. But who cannot understand that it is unlawful for an upright animal to bend itself that it may adore the earth? which is placed beneath our feet for this purpose, that it may be trodden. upon, and not adored by us, who have been raised from it, and have received an elevated position beyond the other living creatures, that we may not turn ourselves again downward, nor cast this heavenly countenance to the earth, but may direct our eyes to that quarter to which the condition of their nature has directed, and that we may adore and worship nothing except the single deity of our only Creator and Father. . . . But if it appears that these religious rites are vain in so many ways as I have shown, it is manifest that those who either make prayers to the dead, or venerate the earth, or make over their souls to unclean spirits, do not act as becomes men, and that they will suffer punishment for their impiety and guilt, who, rebelling against God, the Father of the human race, have undertaken inexpiable rites, and violated every sacred law” (Lactantius, The Divine Institutes, Book 2, Chapter 18).

“Wherefore it is undoubted that there is no religion wherever there is an image. For if religion consists of divine things, and there is nothing divine except in heavenly things; it follows that images are without religion, because there can be nothing heavenly in that which is made from the earth” (Lactantius, The Divine Institutes, Book 2, Chapter 19).

“But they are called superstitious, not who wish their children to survive them, for we all wish this; but either those who reverence the surviving memory of the dead, or those who, surviving their parents, reverenced their images at their houses as household gods. For those who assumed to themselves new rites, that they might honour the dead as gods, whom they supposed to be taken from men and received into heaven, they called superstitious. But those who worshipped the public and ancient gods they named religious. . . .But since we find that the ancient gods also were consecrated in the same manner after their death, therefore they are superstitious who worship many and false gods. We, on the other hand, are religious, who make our supplications to the one true God” (Lactantius, The Divine Institutes, Book 4, Chapter 28).

“And those artificers who, to the destruction of men, make images in human form, not perceiving and knowing their own Maker” (Methodius, Banquet of the Ten Virgins 2.7).

“It is ordained that pictures are not to be in churches, so that that which is worshipped and adored shall not be painted on walls” (The Council of Elvira in 305 A.D., Canon 36).

“You also wrote me concerning some supposed image of Christ, which image you wished me to send you. Now what kind of thing is this that you call the image of Christ? I do not know what impelled you to request that an image of Our Saviour should be delineated. What sort of image of Christ are you seeking? . . .  For they, too, make such idols when they wish to mould the likeness of what they consider to be a god or, as they might say, one of the heroes or anything else of the kind, yet are unable even to approach a resemblance, and so delineate and represent some strange human shapes. Surely, even you will agree that such practices are not lawful for us. But if you mean to ask of me the image, not of His form transformed into that of God, but that of the mortal flesh before its transformation, can it be that you have forgotten that passage in which God lays down the law that no likeness should be made either of what is in heaven or what is in the earth beneath? Have you ever heard anything of the kind either yourself in church or from another person? Are not such things banished and excluded from churches all over the world, and is it not common knowledge that such practices are not permitted to us alone? . . . Once — I do not know how — a woman brought me in her hands a picture of two men in the guise of philosophers and let fall the statement that they were Paul and the Saviour — I have no means of saying where she had had this from or learned such a thing. With the view that neither she nor others might be given offence, I took it away from her and kept it in my house, as I thought it improper that such things ever be exhibited to others, lest we appear, like idol worshippers, to carry our God around in an image. I note that Paul instructs all of us not to cling any more to things of the flesh; for, he says, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we Him no more. It is said that Simon the sorcerer is worshipped by godless heretics painted in lifeless material. I have also seen myself the man who bears the name of madness [painted] on an image and escorted by Manichees. To us, however, such things are forbidden. For in confessing the Lord God, Our Saviour, we make ready to see Him as God, and we ourselves cleanse our hearts that we may see Him after we have been cleansed” (Eusebius of Caesarea, Letter to Constantia, as cited by Cyril Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312–1453, p. 16–18 [PG 20, 1545 f.]).

“For many, not only in ancient times but in our own also, having lost their beloved ones, brothers and kinsfolk and wives; and many women who had lost their husbands, all of whom nature proved to be mortal men, made representations of them and devised sacrifices, and consecrated them; while later ages, moved by the figure and the brilliancy of the artist, worshipped them as gods, thus failing into inconsistency with nature. For whereas their parents had mourned for them, not regarding them as gods (for had they known them to be gods they would not have lamented them as if they had perished; for this was why they represented them in an image, namely, because they not only did not think them gods, but did not believe them to exist at all, and in order that the sight of their form in the image might console them for their being no more), yet the foolish people pray to them as gods and invest them with the honor of the true God” (Athanasius, Against the Heathen, Chapter 10, Section 3).

“But of these and such like inventions of idolatrous madness, Scripture taught us beforehand long ago, when it said, ‘The devising of idols was the beginning of fornication, and the invention of them, the corruption of life.’ For neither were they from the beginning, neither shall they be for ever. For the vainglory of men they entered into the world, and therefore shall they come shortly to an end. For a father afflicted with untimely mourning when he hath made an image of his child soon taken away, now honored him as a God which was then a dead man, and delivered to those that were under him ceremonies and sacrifices. Thus in process of time an ungodly custom grown strong was kept as a law. And graven images were worshipped by the commands of kings. Whom men could not honor in presence because they dwelt afar off, they took the counterfeit of his visage from afar, and made an express image of the king whom they honored, to the end that by this their forwardness they might flatter him that was absent as if he were present” (Athanasius, Against the Heathen, Chapter 11, Section 1).

“For ye carve the figures for the sake of the apprehension of God, as ye say, but invest the actual images with the honor and title of God, thus placing yourselves in a profane position. . . . So also yourselves, had ye your reasoning power in full strength, would not reduce to matter so great a revelation of the Godhead: but neither would ye have given to the image greater honor than to the man that carved it. For if there be any truth in the plea that, as letters, they indicate the manifestation of God, and are therefore, as indications of God, worthy to be deified, yet far more would it be right to deify the artist who carved and engraved them, as being far more powerful and divine than they, inasmuch as they were cut and fashioned according to his will” (Athanasius, Against the Heathen, Chapter 21, Sections 1 and 3).

“Asking what place it was, and learning it to be a church, 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. They, however, murmured, and said that if I made up my mind to tear it, it was only fair that I should give them another curtain in its place. As soon as I heard this, I promised that I would give one, and said that I would send it at once. Since then there has been some little delay, due to the fact that I have been seeking a curtain of the best quality to give them instead of the former one, and thought it right to send to Cyprus for one. I have now sent the best I could find, and I beg that you will order the Presbyter of the place to take the curtain which I have sent from the hands of the Reader, and that you will afterwards give directions that curtains of the other sort – opposed as they are to our religion – shall not be hung up in any church of Christ” (Epiphanius, Letters of Jerome 51, Section 9, From Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis, In Cyprus, to John, Bishop of Jerusalem).

“How can the practice not seem idolatrous and the undertaking the devil’s? But the devil has always slipped into the human mind in the guise of someone righteous and, to deify mortal human nature in human eyes, made human images with a great variety of arts. And yet the men who are worshiped have died, and their images, which have never lived, are introduced for worship—and since they’ve never lived they can’t be called dead either!” (Epiphanius, Panarion, Books 2 and 3, Chapter 79 Against Collyridians, Section 4.4-4.5, Brill Edition, p. 640).

“Peleg was the father of Reu, and Reu was the father of Serug, which means ‘provocation’; and, as I have been taught, idolatry and Hellenism began among men with him. It was not with carved images yet, or with reliefs in stone, wood or silver-plated substances, or ones made of gold or any other material, that the human reason invented evil for itself and, with its freedom, reason and intellect, invented transgression instead of goodness, but only with paintings and portraits” (Epiphanius, Panarion, Book 1, Chapter 3 Hellenism, Section 3.4, Brill Edition, p. 18).

“Marcellina at Rome was a follower of his. He secretly made images of Jesus, Paul, Homer and Pythagoras, burned incense to them and worshiped them” (Epiphanius, Panarion, Book 1, Chapter 20 On the Incarnation, Section 27.4, Brill Edition, p. 60).

“And in this matter, my beloved children, keep it in mind not to set up icons in churches, or in the cemeteries of the saints, but always have God in your hearts through remembrance. Do not even have icons in private houses. For it is not permissible for the Christian to let his eyes wander or indulge in reveries” (Epiphanius, Testament. As cited by the Synod of Hieria in 754 AD [Mansi 13, 292DE]).

“That antipathy appeared also in another fourth-century writer who figured prominently in the debates of the eighth and ninth centuries, Epiphanius of Salamis. He maintained that, ‘the devil . . . has now again drawn away . . . the faithful into ancient idolatry.’ He opposed the introduction of images into Christian places of worship, for he was sure that ‘when images are erected, the customs of the pagans do the rest.’ Anticipating an argument that was to be used in support of the images much later, Epiphanius declared in his last will and testament: ‘If anyone should dare, using the incarnation as an excuse, to look at the divine image of God the Logos painted with earthly colors, let him be anathema.’ So strong and explicit was the rejection of images by Epiphanius, ‘that famous standard-bearer’ of orthodoxy, that the iconoclasts were able to make good use of these writings to support their case from patristic tradition” (Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition, Volume 2, p. 102).

“Actually, Moses and all the prophets were long dead in the body, but in their writings they had them. After all, if a person sets up a lifeless image of son or dear one and thinks that person, though dead, is present, and through the lifeless image he imagines him, much more do we enjoy the communion of the saints through the divine Scriptures, having in them images not of their bodies but of their souls, the words spoken by them being of their very souls” (John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Psalms, Homily on Psalm 146).

“What need is there for you not only to pay such honour, not to say adoration, to the thing, whatever it may be, which you carry about in a little vessel and worship? . . . Why do you kiss and adore a bit of powder wrapped up in a cloth? . . . Under the cloak of religion we see what is all but a heathen ceremony introduced into the churches: while the sun is still shining, heaps of tapers are lighted, and everywhere a paltry bit of powder, wrapped up in a costly cloth, is kissed and worshipped. Great honour do men of this sort pay to the blessed martyrs, who, they think, are to be made glorious by trumpery tapers, when the Lamb who is in the midst of the throne, with all the brightness of His majesty, gives them light?” (Vigilantius, as cited by Jerome in Against Vigilantius, Chapter 4).

“But, it will be said, we also have very many instruments and vessels made of materials or metal of this description for the purpose of celebrating the Sacraments, which being consecrated by these ministrations are called holy, in honour of Him who is thus worshipped for our salvation: and what indeed are these very instruments or vessels, but the work of men’s hands? But have they mouth, and yet speak not? have they eyes, and see not? do we pray unto them, because through them we pray to God? This is the chief cause of this insane profanity, that the figure resembling the living person, which induces men to worship it, hath more influence in the minds of these miserable persons, than the evident fact that it is not living, so that it ought to be despised by the living” (Augustine, Exposition of the Book of Psalms, Psalm 115, Section 7).

“Furthermore we notify to you that it has come to our ears that your Fraternity, seeing certain adorers of images, broke and threw down these same images in Churches. And we commend you indeed for your zeal against anything made with hands being an object of adoration; but we signify to you that you ought not to have broken these images. For pictorial representation is made use of in Churches for this reason; that such as are ignorant of letters may at least read by looking at the walls what they cannot read in books. Your Fraternity therefore should have both preserved the images and prohibited the people from adoration of them, to the end that both those who are ignorant of letters might have wherewith to gather a knowledge of the history, and that the people might by no means sin by adoration of a pictorial representation” (Pope Gregory the Great, Epistle 105 to Serenus, Bishop of Massilia).

“When, however, they are blamed for undertaking to depict the divine nature of Christ, which should not be depicted, they take refuge in the excuse: We represent only the flesh of Christ which we have seen and handled. But that is a Nestorian error. For it should be considered that that flesh was also the flesh of God the Word, without any separation, perfectly assumed by the divine nature and made wholly divine. How could it now be separated and represented apart? So is it with the human soul of Christ which mediates between the Godhead of the Son and the dullness of the flesh. As the human flesh is at the same time flesh of God the Word, so is the human soul also soul of God the Word, and both at the same time, the soul being deified as well as the body, and the Godhead remained undivided even in the separation of the soul from the body in his voluntary passion. For where the soul of Christ is, there is also his Godhead; and where the body of Christ is, there too is his Godhead. If then in his passion the divinity remained inseparable from these, how do the fools venture to separate the flesh from the Godhead, and represent it by itself as the image of a mere man? They fall into the abyss of impiety, since they separate the flesh from the Godhead, and represent it by itself as the image of a mere man? They fall into the abyss of impiety, since they separate the flesh from the Godhead, ascribe to it a subsistence of its own, a personality of its own, which they depict, and thus introduce a fourth person into the Trinity. Moreover, they represent as not being made divine, that which has been made divine by being assumed into the Godhead. Whoever, then, makes an image of Christ either depicts the Godhead which cannot be depicted, and mingles in with the manhood (like the Monophysites), or he represents the body of Christ as not made divine and separate and as a person apart, like the Nestorians. The only admissible figure of the humanity of Christ, however, is bread and wine in the holy Supper. This and no other form, this and no other type, has he chosen to represent his incarnation” (Synod of Hieria in Constantinople in 754 AD).

“No literary statement from the period prior to the year 300 would make one suspect the existence of any Christian images other than the most laconic and hieroglyphic of symbols” (Ernst Kitzinger, “The Cult of Images in the Age before Iconoclasm,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 7 (1954), p. 86).

“No Church Father prior to the fourth century approved of Christian religious art” (Paul Alexander, The Patriarch Nicephorus of Constantinople: Ecclesiastical Policy and Image Worship in the Byzantine Empire, p. 215).

“Certainly, the tales of monks resisting en masse as the prime champions of icons are pure mythmaking. At no point were the iconoclasts against monks or against saints or relics; these were all iconophile smears alongside the ideas that they were influenced by Jews, Muslims, or heretics such as the Monophysites. Rather they were essentially mainstream Orthodox Christians. What they were reacting against was the recent, from ca. 680, transformation of images of Christ and the saints into icons through which the holy person depicted could be manifested, thus making unconsecrated and uncontrollable icons into something akin to relics. Any mentions of icon veneration before this point are either interpolations or referring to the acheiropoieta images, which were relics. This transformation of images into icons was driven by a general anxiety that arose chiefly due to the losses to the Arabs. At the same time these defeats made both Church and State focus even more on a need to purify society in order to regain divine favour, though these efforts had precedents that went back to at least the early 7th century. A generation later, in the 720s, these two forces came together in the first attempts to crush the newly widespread practice of icon veneration. Therefore, Islam and the Arab conquests played a critical role, but a distinctly indirect one. The contemporary wave of iconoclasm in Palestine was a separate phenomenon, and anyway the edict of Yazid II was probably an iconophile fabrication” (Mike Humphreys, “Contexts, Controversies, and Developing Perspectives,” in A Companion to Byzantine Iconoclasm, p. 14).

“The iconoclast cause has few adherents nowadays, outside the heirs of John Calvin. But the iconoclast claim that reverence towards images did not go back to the golden age of the fathers, still less to the apostles, would be judged by impartial historians today to be simply correct. The iconophile view of the history of Christian thought and devotion was virtually a denial of history, in favour of a myth of a religion that had been perfect from the first and needed no addition or subtraction” (Richard Price, The Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea (787), p. 43).