On this ‘Sunday of Orthodoxy,’ which celebrates nothing more and nothing less than the restoration of icon-veneration in Constantinople in 843, after a period of iconoclasm, we might be asking this question. The thing I’d like to explain here is that iconoclasm was deeply anti-Christian, not because it was a rejection of God, but because it was a rejection of humanity, in a vital sense. Iconoclasm denied the capacity of the human being to ‘see’ and receive the revelation of God, and to pass on or to tradition this revelation, this vision, by the human creativity that it takes to create holy images (icons).
Iconoclasm encapsulates the not-Christian, anti-human tendency that underlies the rejection of other ‘icons’ of Tradition, done by human hands, like Holy Scripture, written down by human hands; liturgical hymns and church-calendar(s), systematized by human beings; theological treatises, church-councils, organized by humans, etc. Iconoclasm is essentially a rejection of the Church, which is a divinely-inspired enterprise that is entrusted not to angels, but to fallible human beings throughout and within history. While the Church is an (unchangeable) mystery, it is revealed and lived within (changeable) history, which is a messy business that involves human mistakes, excesses, distortions, divisions, and occasional need of reforms. But it’s always human creativity, in synergy with God, that is challenged to discern in every generation, how to pass on the ‘seen’ and received Tradition in its own historical context.
Our own vision can become distorted or crooked, time and again, which is why we are challenged with living ‘Ortho-doxy,’ (from ‘ortho,’ meaning ‘upright’ or ‘straightened out’, and ‘doxa,’ meaning both ‘opinion/perspective’ and ‘glorification’), which is our continuous, lifelong straightening-out process. Through all our feasts and fasts and other traditions, we’re always being reminded and empowered to straighten out and clarify our perspective or the ‘eye’ of our body, so as to ‘see’ more clearly, both Him, Jesus Christ in our midst, and all that He has passed on to us, through His eyewitnesses the Apostles and those who came after them. In our time, when in popular culture many believe that ‘humanity’ is at an all-time low, we believe in a counter-cultural way that our ‘humanity’ continues to be called to the dignifying challenge of straightening out and ‘seeing’ the Light of Christ. And we believe, as God believes, that we are capable of seeing it, and of passing it on. Glory be to Him, for all of this. Happy Sunday of Orthodoxy, dear friends!