Talking about images and icons in the early church

I had been planning to continue my series on the Lord's Supper but this weekend I was invited by an Eastern Orthodox Youtube channel to outline my own understanding of the use of imagery in the early church. It'd been awhile since I'd thought much about the subject but I brushed off my notes and …

Images in the Church. Part Three: Conclusion

Introduction In my first entry on the topic of image usage in the church, I looked at how the earliest generations of the Church engaged with imagery. In this, I saw what seemed an exclusively polemical treatment of images against the Paganism of the day. Moreso, a critique of the medium itself in devotional contexts. …

Images in the Church. Part Two: Use of images between Julian the Apostate and the Iconoclasm

Introduction In my last post I walked through a series of statements by early church fathers on the topics of imagery. Specifically regarding their polemics against Pagan idolatry but more broadly on the shortcomings of the medium itself in the words of the Fathers themselves. In this next piece, however, I am looking to examine …

Images in the Church. Part One: On the making of images

What follows is an attempt to chart the waters on what I feel is a healthy attitude to imagery in the Church. Different traditions have varying positions on the use of images, they also have different ideas on what they think others believe on this too. Any cursory glance online on this topic will highlight …

Authority and Idolatry

Recently I've been challenged to think about the role images play in the Christian church. I notice a lot of Orthodox and Catholic polemicists against Protestants in particular discuss the importance of the seven ecumenical church councils. By this they really are placing emphasis on the last, the second council of Nicea which validates the …

In our faith let us ‘show, don’t tell’

I am all too aware of my shortcomings as a writer here but once upon a time I took a cursory course in creative writing. I did little to nothing with it afterwards but one thing I came away from was with the idea of 'show, don't tell'. In writing this is the view that …

Gregory of Nyssa, Fourth Homily on Ecclesiastes 336,6

I got me slaves and slave-girls. For what price, tell me? What did you find in existence worth as much as this human nature? What price did you put on rationality? How many obols did you reckon the equivalent of the likeness of God? How many staters did you get for selling the being shaped by God? God …