And if we want to understand the icon for what it really is we need to set aside our Western assumptions and romantic notions and start thinking realistically, because that is how, as we will see, the Fathers understand the icon. One of the biggest hurdles we have to overcome if we want to understand the icon is our Western understanding of what an image is and how it functions and how this differs from the Byzantine understanding. The same applies to taking texts from Church Fathers like St Maximos the Confessor, St Gregory Palamas, St Symeon the New Theologian or the Areopagite writings and trying to apply them to the theology of the icon, because quite simply they don’t write about the theology of the icon. Starting with iconography from earlier centuries or from 14th century Russia, for example, will only lead to false conclusions. Anything before and after this period must be examined in light of it. If we want to understand what the Orthodox perception of the icon is and why the Orthodox Church uses the Byzantine painting technique and not an illusory naturalistic style, we have to start by studying the theology of the Fathers and Councils that defended and defined what the icon is and the iconography that developed in the period that immediately followed these councils and which expresses this theology. I will start off by very briefly looking at the problem of our Western assumptions when trying to understand both the Patristic and Byzantine understanding of the icon as well as the Byzantine painting technique. As the subject matter is broad and complex I will be breaking it down into a series of blog posts for anyone who may be interested in the Orthodox Patristic and Byzantine understanding of the icon. So I guess that this is an opportunity to put this blog to use that I originally began when I started working on a doctorate on Liturgical Time and the Icon. I was initially asked to write an article for the OAJ about the Patristic theology of the icon, but them my response to a comment was not published and I was then informed that my views (which they don’t even know), are incompatible with their views and that the patristic theology of the icon is not applicable in modern Western society. It is only in recent years that people like Professor George Kordis have started taking a necessary critical look at their theology. On the one hand they rightly led Orthodox iconography out of “western captivity” in terms of painting technique by reviving the Byzantine/ Russian style, but at the same time led it into “western captivity” with regards to theology by introducing Neoplatonic and Romantic philosophical ideas that are not only foreign to the Patristic theology of the icon, but even contradictory to it. In a recent interview on Orthodox Arts Journal I mentioned the problem that exists in the modern theology of the icon that was introduced at the beginning of the 20th century by Pavel Florensky and found it’s greatest expression in the works of Leonid Ouspensky and influenced theological thought in Greece via Fotis Kontoglou.
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