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John of Damascus, Holy Matter and the Mother of God
M. Sophia Compton
I. Historical
Background of the Iconoclastic Controversy
During the 7th-8th centuries, when the
West was slipping into the Dark Ages, the East was in the midst of successive
attacks on one of its most cherished traditions. After more than 700 years of artistic religious culture, which
invested Christianity with such a rich spiritual soul, there dawned a long and
painful period called iconoclasm (literally: the "smashing of
icons.") Byzantine art had reached a pinnacle under Justinian (482-565)
when, dedicated to expounding Christian doctrines, its glory was displayed in
temples, on tapestries, mosaics, and murals, recounting the life of Christ, the
dedication and sorrows of his Blessed Mother, and the career of the saint whose
relics were enshrined in the church. He
rebuilt Hagia Sophia, which had been previously destroyed, into a
resplendent cathedral that represented the culmination of the Byzantine style.
The great Church of Divine Wisdom before iconoclasm was deeply influenced by
the growing cult of the Theotokos.[1]
Icons were enshrined in churches and home alike, and images of Christ and the
Theotokos were often imprinted on jewelry and coins as well.
Iconoclasm was
initiated by the Byzantine Emperor, Leo III, but the reasons for its rapid
growth have been explained by the proximity of the world of Islam, to whom a
divine representation was abhorrent; and also to the then prevalent heresy of
monophysitism. In the monophysite theory, there is only one nature of Christ,
not two (human and divine). The argument was: since the divine cannot be
circumscribed, and since the human in Christ is only the passive instrument of
his divinity-- which is impossible to depict--
a two or three-dimensional portrayal of Christ as human cannot be
condoned. Perhaps also influenced by the cult of Manichaeism, a Persian
dualistic sect, the iconoclasts claimed that the superiority of spirit to
matter made material images inappropriate.[2]
Leo himself, in his early reign, did not seem to be adverse
to icon veneration, at least when it suited his purposes politically and
militarily. He had the popular, miracle working icon of the Virgin--known
as the Hodegetria (which means "She Who Shows the Way")--venerated
in a procession through Constantinople to give his army courage to resist the
Arab besiegers. On August 15, 718, the
feast of the Dormition, the siege was ended and Muslim ships sailed from
Byzantine waters.
However, in 725, Leo made an open statement that iconodules
(pejoratively referred to as "image-worshippers") were in open
disobedience to the 2nd
commandment, prohibiting graven images. The first icon that he chose to
destroy was a huge golden image of Christ at the gateway of the imperial palace.
The reaction was one of horror and the retaliation was immediate and intense:
the officer who headed up the demolition party was attacked by a mob of
outraged women, and killed on the spot.
It was the beginning of almost a century of bitter feuding--both
theologically and through much bloodshed--over the revered images which were
now spread throughout the Byzantine world.
Leo ordered all those who did not destroy their icons to be
arrested or punished; many icons, especially in monasteries, were mutilated or
destroyed; manuscripts were burned; defenders of icons were subject to severe
abuses and mutilations themselves. However, the emperor never bargained for the
severe civil war his persecutions caused, for images are books for the
illiterate, and were vital, both for the stories they told and the symbols they
portrayed. Mary Cunningham has
estimated that as much as 90% of the
Byzantines living in this era were peasants.[3] Many icons, as the peasants knew well, were considered to be of divine origin, e.g.,
the original icon of Mary the Theotokos was believed to have been painted by
St. Luke.
When Constantine succeeded his father, Leo, he not only
raged war against iconocules, but he insisted on doing away with the name
Theotokos; for he wanted to “remove it completely from the tongues of
Christians.” [4] He attempted
to call an Ecumenical Synod in 754 to
condemn the iconodules. Five Patriarchs of ancient Christendom refrained from
attending, although numerous clergy bowed to the wishes of their ruler and
continued to enforce the iconoclastic terror. Constantine was a strong
monophysite who abhorred the cult of the Theotokos and the saints. He removed
bishops who disagreed with him and when the synod failed to produce fruitful
results, carried forward his persecution with renewed vigor. It has been suggested that the war on icons
for Constantine V was really a war against monasticism. Constantine's measures
"were designed to cut the links between the monastic spiritual advisor and
the laity." [5] In some places,
it was forbidden to even visit an Abba
(spiritual father ), since, at that time, he was a figure who had as much power
and influence as a bishop. Many monks and abbots were forced into secular life.
[6]
Thousands of monks and nuns suffered ridicule, mutilation or death in defense
of their chosen way of life. Whole libraries were committed to flames.
These atrocities were finally brought under control by two
powerful women; both Empresses. Although Constantine's son, Leo IV, continued
to rid the empire of its icons, he once discovered their presence in the
apartment of his wife, Irene. It is believed that he averted his eyes, and
shortly afterwards died (probably of
tuberculosis.)The Empress resumed power and altered the course of Byzantine
history.
Acting as regent on behalf of her 10 year old son, Irene
convened a Council in 787 to determine the fate of the icons. Delegates from
Rome were sent, along with all of the Eastern Patriarchs, and the first session
opened in the Church of the Holy Apostles. The meeting broke up in disaster,
however, when a massive demonstration of iconoclasts--probably from the
previous Emperor's military--burst into the Church and violently dispersed the
gathering. It is believed that the army was strongly iconoclastic because it
was formed primarily from soldiers from Armenia, then a stronghold of
monophistism. The papal delegates left for Rome and for a while it appeared
that the 7th Council would not proceed.
Irene was undaunted in her efforts, nonetheless, and a few
weeks later, she and Patriarch Tarasius quietly re-organized the Council, after
sending off the mutinous troops to fight against the Saracens in North Africa.
This time the Council was organized at Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom) in Nicaea,
the place where the first Ecumenical Council had met four centuries earlier. As
a symbol of good will, and to entice back the two papal delegates, Tarasius
determined that they would be given precedence over the other Patriarchs in the
attendance lists. The papacy had never accepted the imperial position of the
iconoclasts. Gregory III had zealously decorated the churches in Rome with
icons and even instigated a feast day--the Feast of all Saints-- to honor the
saints insulted by iconoclasm.
This time, things went smoothly, in terms of the Council
accomplishing its objective of restoring the icons. Bishops who had previously
been iconoclasts were made to publicly admit their past errors, so they would
not be labeled as heretics in the future. A body of evidence was gathered from
scriptures and the Church Fathers to proclaim the current doctrinal
formulation, which has remained unchanged to this day.
The next Emperor, Leo V, however, attempted to call a
council to repeal the actions of this woman, who had caused great turmoil in
the Church, "acting out of the feeblemindedness of her sex." [7]
After this council, three
successive Emperors (Leo V, 813-820;
Michael the Stammerer, 820-829; and Theophiles, 829-842) waged incessant
persecution against those who failed to give up their icons.
After the death of
Theophiles, his widow Theodora, believing that the Ecumenical Council of 787
was the true voice of the Church of the apostles, sought for a way to restore
the use of holy images to the faithful. A fervent believer in her own personal
icons, Theodora, like the many thousands of the faithful which she represented,
had been transported to the invisible world through the veneration of the
numinous images of Christ and his saints. The icon, she knew, took the pious
Christian soul to the "threshold of visionary experience which always has
remained the warm heart of Eastern Christendom." [8]
She convoked an ecclesiastical council (not however, considered an Ecumenical
Council) in 843, again at Hagia Sophia. The lengthy conciliar statement
pronounced there has ever since been known as the "Triumph of
Orthodoxy." Icons are reverently
borne in procession throughout the churches on the first Sunday of Lent to
honor the "7th pillar of faith" upon which the Orthodox
Church is built. This ritual celebrates the great event in 843 when Theodora
and Patriarch Methodius led a
magnificent procession from the Church at Blachernae, where she had spent the
night in prayer, to the cathedral of Holy Wisdom, where icons were once again
joyously restored. Thanks to the struggles of these two women rulers, the
archetypal images of Christ and His saints became a permanent seal for
Christendom and the imprint of an enduring faith.
During the iconoclastic controversy, numerous monks and
theologians wrote treatises defending the liturgical and devotional use of
icons, and one of the most important was St. John of Damascus.
II. John of Damascus: His Life and Work
St. John, a native of Damascus, was born around 660. His
father served in the palace of the
Caliph, an important administrative center of Syria, where John received a good
classical education. His Arabic last name ‘Mansur’ means ‘the victorious’, [9]
but victory over iconoclasm was not an event he would witness in his
lifetime. About his personal life
little is known, but the ramifications that emanate from his writings
profoundly affected the turbulent period
in which he lived; and his hymnody has become incorporated into various
liturgical offices of the Eastern Church. His influence on liturgical poetry
has also been felt in the West. Theophanes called him a ‘Gold-stream’ for the
“abundance of grace in him of the Holy Spirit” which flowed into his life and
works. [10]
He became interested in theology early in life and at some
point, probably before the iconoclastic controversy, he left the palace to join
St. Sabas monastery near Jerusalem. Here he wrote his first theological
treatise and composed his ‘divine psalms.’ In his famous Exposition of the
Orthodox Faith, he follows the earlier Fathers, especially the
Cappadocians, St. Cryil, Leontius of Byzantium and pseudo-Dionysius.[11]
He wrote numerous canons, where Orthodox dogmatic theology is made explicit,
but his theology is not original. He was a synthesizer. He seemed to be most
devoted to St. Gregory of Nazianzus.
St. John’s major works were his Apologetic Treatises
against Those who Decry the Holy Images, and the Fountain of Wisdom,
divided into three parts, 1. Philosophical Chapters, 2, Concerning
Heresy (including the first Greek Orthodox polemic against Islam), and 3, An
Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith. In addition, numerous homilies of
his have survived, including several on the Theotokos. By the middle of the 13th
century, western scholarship had produced a concordance to his Exposition and
for several centuries John was the
West’s primary source for Eastern theology.
For John, the truth
of God’s existence was immutable and obvious, comprehended from examining the
world itself. But, like the apophatic
Gregory of Nyssa, he felt that God’s essence is unknowable. His cataphatic
theology is always rooted in God’s revelation, which is revealed in the works
of creation. Influenced by both his family Melkite Syrian tradition, and his
background in Palestinian monasticism, John maintains an attachment to “synodical Orthodoxy,” [12]
and for John that emerges in not simply a defense of the traditional patristic
theology, but in the mysteries of the divine economy celebrated in a liturgical
setting. His homilies on the Theotokos, which we will briefly examine, are
richly poetic and metaphorical. In
writing about the Trinity, St John attempts to clarify the statement of Gregory
Nazianzus: “The Unity, having moved from time immemorial to duality, stopped at
the Trinity. And this is what we have—Father and Son and Holy Spirit.” [13]
The Son is the counsel, wisdom, power and will of the Father, who bears God’s
image, because he is ‘identical’ in his image ‘by nature.’ [14] This language will become important when he
writes his treatise on the icons.
The Holy Spirit is the Divine Breath who proceeds from the
Father, The Father ‘projects’ the Spirit and begets the Son. Their inner life
is characterized by perichoresis, which, for John, is a joyous cleaving
to one another, where they share an inherent spiritual
fellowship, or coinherence. One
of the main features of the Holy Spirit is its revelatory character. The Spirit
is “the force of the Father and he reveals the hidden Godhead.” [15] Although the Spirit is “revealed to us and
given to us” through the Son, John stresses that “we do not say that the Spirit
is also of the Son”, [16]
demonstrating that he was aware of the ‘filioque’, which was by that time
already in popular use in the West. [17]
Principally, he uses words like ‘middle” when speaking of the Holy Spirit’s
mediating function: the Spirit is the “middle between the not-born and the
born.” [18]
In the order of revelation, the Holy Spirit is the “completing force”, the all
powerful “Fulfilling One” who completes what is created by the Logos.[19]
In his confession On the Trinity John explains that
Orthodox Christians “believe in the Father and Son and Holy Ghost; one Godhead
in three hypostases, one will, one operation, alike in three Persons…Light is
the Father, Light is the Son, Light is the Holy Ghost; Wisdom is the Wisdom of
the Father, Wisdom is the Son, Wisdom is the Holy Ghost…Be persuaded moreover,
that the incarnate dispensation of the Son of God was begotten ineffably
without seed of the blessed Virgin… And to Him by good works give worship
and adoration, and venerate and revere the most holy Mother of God and
ever Virgin Mary as the true Mother of God.” (italics mine) [20]
The longest section of On the Orthodox Faith, is
devoted to Christology. During this period the christological heresies which dominated
the debates were monophysitism, monothelitism and Nestorianism. Andrew Louth
observes that by John’s era, “the philosophical terminology in which the
mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God was expressed had developed a
forbidding complexity.” [21]
Christ, (after Chalcedon) was not an intermediary between God and man—he was
God who took on human flesh. As a God-being, he had two natures; however, this
caused new questions to emerge. Were the two natures joined before or after the
union with his flesh at the moment of his conception? And did each nature have
a will? If he had two wills, how connected were his wills to his actions? In
emphasizing too much the actions, natures and wills of Christ, are we not back
to the Nestorian theory of a duality in the hypostasis? It was troubling to think that some actions
of Christ were performed with his divine will and some with his human will. But
it seemed clear from Luke 22:42 and John 6:38, that Christ subordinated his
human will to “the One who sent” him. Indeed, Maximus the Confessor was such a
staunch defender of the two wills theory that he gave his life for it, dying in
exile after being tortured for his beliefs. Less than 20 years after his death,
the Council at Constantinople in 681 met and anathematized the patriarchs
(including Pope Honorius) who had earlier defended monothelitism. [22]
John sought not to
put forward any new position; however, beyond synthesizing the Orthodox faith
as he understood it, he was confronting the heresies of his era. [23]
Louth makes an important point when he says that the synods convened “to
preserve the integrity of…prayer and worship by ruling out misunderstanding.” [24] In other words, these evolving
contemplations on the nature of Christ were being integrated into the rituals
of the Church through its theological poetry, especially in the Divine Offices,
(which were sometimes all night vigils) that were sung prior to any Liturgy.
Synods simply sought to clarify the liturgical doctrines. For in John’s era,
the classical definition of the Trinity had been formulated, but Christians
were still left with how to understand the mystery of Christ. Through numerous
laborious works, John sets forth the understanding of enhypostaton, that is,
how the human nature is hypostatized in union with the person of the Logos. [25]
Beyond the subtleties of the language debate, however, there lurked the deeper
problem which Louth succinctly identifies:
The problem of how to reconcile in
one being undiminished divinity and the evident humanity of Christ of the Gospels became acute. Earlier
attempts to make sense of the ascription of both divinity and humanity to
Christ by understanding Christ to be some sort of intermediate being were no
longer viable. [26]
What is interesting (but rarely stressed in authors writing
on the Damascene) is the role played by Mary in the evolving doctrine of
Christ’s nature. Brian Daley has observed that it was in the midst of this
intense debate about the person of Christ, starting with the First Council of
Constantinople in 381, that both doctrine and devotion to the Mother of God
seems to have been most fully developed. “The early Church’s veneration of
Mary, the sense of her unique immersion into the Mysteries of salvation…is
really part of this growth in understanding Christ himself.” [27]
John wrote six
polemical essays on Christology—three against the monophysites, one against the
monothelites and two against the Nestorians.
Nestorians were the great protestors of giving the attribution of
Theotokos to the Virgin Mother. John is at pains to explain to Nestorians,
three centuries after the Council of Ephesus, that the Virgin did not bear a
simple man who became God; but God incarnate.
Therefore the name Theotokos contains the history of the economy of our
salvation. John affirms the Eastern Fathers before him: God became man to renew
or ‘deify’ humans. This argument for John is pivotal. Mary is called Theotokos
not only because she gave birth to God in human form, but our own humanity was
deified in the union. The deification of humanity by the Logos occurs
simultaneously with the moment of her conception: with Mary’s Fiat:
For the very Word of God was conceived by the Virgin and made
flesh…and simultaneously with its coming into being, the flesh was straightway
made divine by Him. Thus three things took place at the same time: the assuming
of the flesh, its coming into being, and its being made divine by the Word.
Hence the holy Virgin is understood to be the Mother of God, and is so called
not only because of the nature of the Word, but also because of the deification
of the humanity simultaneously with which the conception and the coming into
being of the flesh were wonderously brought about—the conception of the Word. [28]
In stressing Mary’s role, he goes on to say:
“In this the Mother of God, in a manner surpassing the course of nature, made
it possible for the Fashioner to be fashioned and for the God and Creator of
the universe to become man and deify the human nature which he had assumed.” [29]
For John, Mary was “predestined in the eternal foreshadowing
counsel of God and she was prefigured by various figures and foretold by the
Holy Ghost through the words of the prophets. Then, at the pre-destined time,
she sprang from the root of David…” [30]
He goes on to use the type prefigured in Isaiah to describe her: “There shall
come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse; and a flower shall rise up out of
his root.” [31] (Isa.
11:1). John demonstrates his knowledge
of the Protevangelium of James when he describes the conception of Mary
by Anne and Joachim and her time spent in the temple where “nourished by the Spirit and like a fruitful
olive tree [she] became the abode of every virtue.” (italics mine) [32]
John praises Mary as “Lady of all created things” [33]
for she is the “wondrous temple…of the most high God.” [34]
John strives to bring together these themes—Mary, temple, Holy Spirit,
deification—in numerous works, for they
are intimately associated in his theology.
In Book Four of the Orthodox Faith, he defends the honor, not
only of Mary, but of the saints, quoting 2 Cor. 6:16. (“You are the temple of
the living God”) and explains how the saints, who perfected their temples
should be honored, for “these in life openly took their stand with God.” [35]
Then John refers to a phenomenon common to the Eastern Churches for centuries
in which oil gushes forth from relics or tombs of holy saints. These dead
bodies, John is quick to point out, have truly been deified already: “Because
life itself and the Author of life was reckoned amongst the dead, we do not
call these dead…For how can a dead body work miracles?” [36]
Cunningham notes that the cult of the relics, the miracle of oil flowing from
tombs, and many miracle stories connected to icons flourished before the
iconoclastic controversy. [37] John, it seems, would necessarily have felt
the need to address this issue. Therefore John explains, we honor them by
naming churches after them, by celebrating their anniversaries, by singing to
them and with them, songs and spiritual canticles. [38]
And finally:
Let us set up monuments to them,
and visible images, and let us ourselves by the imitation of their virtues
become their living monuments and images [and] let us honor the Mother of God
as really and truly God’s Mother. [39]
John
bases many of his later writings on the justification of the veneration of
icons on this single premise which permeates so much of his work. George
Florovsky crystallized this theme which was so important to John: In Christ,
manhood is deified—not through transformation, change, or mixing, but through
“complete union and permeation with the flame of the Godhead…Flesh, which by
itself is mortal, becomes Divine and life-giving through the activity of the
Godhead.” [40]
The
sanctified creation and the deified flesh were so apparent to John that the
iconoclasm raging in the world around him seemed to be plunging it into a world
of docetism, insensitive to the mystery of God made human. Florovsky calls the
iconoclastic movement the “pathos of the gap between the spiritual and the
sensual…Ultimately, it is a lack of feeling for the sacred realism of history.”
[41] John insisted that icons are connected with
God’s revelation, both in the Old Testament and in the New, in that they are a
means of presenting revelation and communicating divine grace.
When
John systematically outlines the relationship between the iconic image and its
prototype, he offers instances in the Old Testament, e.g, the construction of
the Temple, which demonstrates that the earthly tabernacle was designed to be
an image or icon of its heavenly prototype. In John’s First Homily on the
Dormition, Mary is the fulfillment of the Ark of the Covenant, and
its movement into Temple of Solomon. [42]
As with the older Fathers, all images of tabernacle and temple prefigure the
body of the Mother of God. In his Treatises
on the Divine Images, however, John conservatively makes his apologetic. He
carefully expresses his own disdain toward idolatry, and explains the initial
prohibitions against images, based on worshipping something other than God. He
reminds the reader however, that honor given to the temple was not idolatry
because the presence of God (Shekinah) dwelt there, and even cherubim
were carved at the command of God. (Ex. 25: 40) John is here attempting to
demonstrate that exceptions to the second commandment were made even in the Old
Testament texts.
John then proceeds to explain the major
difference between the two Testaments, for although it is forbidden to attempt
to make an image of the invisible God—which is impossible to depict—now that
the Incarnation has become visible: “How therefore shall we not depict in
images what Christ our God endured for our salvation and his miracles…?” [43]Although
depiction of the God of the Old Testament is impossible, in the Son the ability
to produce an image (eikon) is effected. This is the reason for the
prohibition of images of God the Father in Orthodoxy, although this is not the
case in the West. In John’s elegant theology there is a unity or relationship
between the icon and its prototype, therefore, honor paid to the images passes
over into the archetype. Byzantine icons are now, as they were then, designed
to be prayed in front of. Therefore Byzantine religious imagery is completely
frontal and still, unless it is depicting a vivid biblical action. The beholder of an icon of Christ, the
Theotokos, or one of the saints, enters into a relationship with the icon in
order to honor the original subject. An
icon in which the portrait had closed eyes or had only a profile would not be
efficacious for veneration because the subject of the icon would not be
effectually present. The most beautiful
icons are those which have eyes that connect with the prayerful viewer. The
eyes are the “dove behind the veil” (Song 4:1)
and the point of entry into the icon. Thus, the icon acts as a ‘window
to eternity.’
Although he sought only to clarify the christological
doctrines as understood in the earlier councils, John has made a great
contribution in defining a critical aspect of Orthodox liturgical life. Since
the icon and its prototype have a relational sense (in likeness but not in
essence) icons, like the sacraments, are ways God uses material elements to
convey grace to the members of the Body of Christ: God incarnated in matter and
worked out our salvation in matter. And it is because of the blessedness
bestowed upon matter by the grace of the Incarnation that the Church is, in
fact, protected from the extremes of the docetic heresy, which denied the full
manhood of Christ and thus the reality of the Incarnation, as well as
monophysitism, wherein the human nature is submerged in the divine nature.
John carefully distinguishes between relative worship (or dulia)
or veneration, and absolute worship (or latria). Absolute worship
belongs only to God. Venerators kiss icons out of reverence for the subject,
not the wood, “just an one who receives the… command of the emperor…and kisses
the seal, does not honor the wax…but assigns the reverence and veneration to
the emperor…” [44] Honoring
Mary and the saints is permitted because the saints are glorified with Christ
(Rom 8:17); John also quotes Ps. 82:1 to indicate this likeness that the saints
now share with Christ. (“…he judges in the midst of the gods.”) [45]
Patriarch Germanos,
who was writing around the same time, stressed that the faithful “knew
perfectly well that…whoever venerates the icon [really] venerated the
hypostasis of the one depicted.” [46]
Germanos was so concerned about his flock and the “fearful persecution…against
those who venerate the holy icons” [47]
that he wrote to Pope Gregory for support (since Rome was not under the
jurisdiction of the rule of the emperor Leo); and even sent him some of his
most precious icons for safe keeping.
Based on John’s clear defense of the holy icons, at the
Ecumenical Council convened by Irene, (although John had by that time already
died) the distinction was clearly drawn between "reverence"
appropriate to holy images and actual worship ("latreia") due to God alone. Icons were recognized to be
channels of divine grace:
…and to these should be given due
salutation and honorable reverence [proskynesis],
not indeed that true worship of faith (latreia)
which pertains alone to the divine nature; but to these, as to the figures of
the life-giving Cross and to the Book of the Gospels…incense and lights may be
offered according to ancient pious custom. For the honor which is paid to the
images passes on to that which the image represents…[48]
It was at the 7th ecumenical Council that
Germanos, John of Damascus and George of Cyprus, who had also written in
defense of the icons, were declared saints. In the Council organized by
Theodora it was re-affirmed that:
As the
Prophets prophesized, as the Apostles taught, as the Church has received, as
the teachers have dogmatized, as the Universe has agreed, as Grace has shown
forth, as truth has revealed, as error was repudiated, as wisdom has
pronounced, as Christ awarded:
Let us declare, let us assert, let us preach in like manner Christ
our true God, and honor his Saints in words, in writing, in thoughts, in deeds,
in Churches, in Holy Icons, worshipping Him as God and Lord and honoring them
as His true servants. [49]
Thus the theology of
the early Church was made clear: the ‘unseen God' became known through His Son,
dispensing the power to represent the invisible world in icons, as windows to eternity. This is why the
last ecumenical Council in the Eastern Church was a climax of all previous
councils, which still had not clarified the distinction between the wills and
the natures of Christ. An iconoclast, in the final analysis, denies God's
incarnation in the human body, which alone effects our salvation. Humanity
participates in the divine nature only because Christ participated in ours.
“The image of God in [man] is not merely a resemblance or a property. It is a
higher reality, a spiritual reality, an energy of God-likeness and
God-likening,” [50] This saving grace verifies that all of the
creation is sacred. If the material world is understood as mere matter, on the other
hand, it is lacking in sacramental consciousness, which limits the
self-revelation of God. The world then becomes empty of God, desacralized, and
subject to all manner of exploitation. There was a clarification which emerged
from the 7th Ecumenical Council that irrevocably acknowledged the
integrity of embodied human nature. Skirting all Platonizing tendencies which
insist that humanity’s participation in materiality was a weight, (and the body
a ‘prison’), John acknowledged a new appreciation of the material realm and its
value in Christian life and worship.
The icon acted predominately as a channel of communication,
or intermediary between the divine and created worlds. This is why they
are associated with so many miracles. Icons, like the saints they represent,
are transfigured by the presence of the Holy Spirit, and the icons of the
Virgin Mary were most important because the Mother of God cannot fail to have a
unique role in this communion that unites the faithful around the throne of
Christ.
III. Holy Abode, Holy Wisdom, and the Holiness of Mary
Sergius Bulgakov
once said that “Throughout the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit reveals [himself]
only by his energies, whereas his hypostasis, like his ousia, remains
hidden.” [51] We have
seen that, following Gregory Nazianzen and the Cappadocians, John had an
apophatic side to his philosophy. The Trinity belonged to the realm where the
limitations of human language could not penetrate. But following
pseudo-Dionysius, John believed that we have analogies of the invisible (“shapes that bear some analogy to us”) [52],
given to us by the Divine foreknowledge of the Word. “For through the senses a
certain imaginative image is constituted in the front part of the brain”, which
allows us to “see images in created things intimating to us dimly reflections
of the divine.” [53] An icon,
like the words of Scripture, meets the needs of human beings, whose thought
processes are so intimately tied to our materiality.
In the same way, I believe that the apophatic nature of the
Holy Spirit is made concrete and cataphatic in the Virgin Mary. This appears to
be an organic development in the evolution of the Church, which quite early
appropriated many of the titles and functions of the feminine Holy Spirit to
Mary. Spirit emerges first in the Old
Testament texts in endless metaphorical prefigurations of the Shekinah
and in the Wisdom texts as the divine Mediator and Enlightener. Congar has
noted that the real function of Wisdom in the Old Testament texts is to guide
humans in accordance with God’s will. This is why she chose to reside with
Israel, “where she formed God’s friends and prophets.” [54]
Wherever Shekinah/Sophia appears, she leads to participation in God, or she
occupies an intermediate position between humans and God. This
Shekinah-Spirit—in which tradition has recognized a “certain maternal
function”—[55] has
characteristic features as a Guide, Bridge, Sanctifier and Teacher, a role
clearly absorbed by Mary early in Church tradition. [56]
Alexander Schmemann, writing about the age of the Ecumenical
Councils, sees Mary’s emerging presence most profoundly in the Liturgy,
observing that: “what gives significance to the flourishing of these [Marian]
feasts…is the growing strength of the Mariological theme in the context of the
churches”, that is, in the liturgies and theological poetry. [57]
As early as Gregory Thaumaturgus (213-270) in his Second Homily on the
Annunciation, Mary is compared to the throne upon the cherubim, in Psalm
80:1. The last of the patristic
Fathers in the Orthodox tradition, St Gregory Palamas, saw the Mother of God as
the “source and root of the race of liberty…[who] dwells on the frontier
between created and uncreated natures.” (italics mine) [58]
In one of his Dormition homilies[59]
John used the metaphor of Jacob’s Ladder to describe her mediating function:
Just as [Jacob] saw that ladder
joining heaven and earth by its two ends, so that angels could go up and down
on it…so you too, are an intermediary; you have joined distant extremes
together, and have become the ladder for God’s descent to us—the God who has
taken up our weak material and woven it into a unity with himself, making the
human person a mind that sees God. [60]
St. Germanos saw
Mary’s participation as essential in protecting the life of the Church itself:
“For by reason of the Logos of God taking on flesh, and that from the
all-immaculate blood of the most holy Theotokos, sacrifice to the demons was
abolished and idolatry was set to nought.”[61]
In one of John of Damascus’ hymns for Pentecost, he proclaims that the Spirit
is the “fountain of wisdom, life and holiness.” [62]
Yet it is primarily in Mary that this wisdom and holiness is made humanly
manifest. Andrew of Crete compares her to the beautiful Wisdom woman in
Proverbs.
One of the functions
of the personification of Wisdom is her attractiveness; the description of
Sophia in Proverbs is designed to attract the soul to Divine Beauty. She is
“more precious than corals…a tree of life to those who grasp her.” In her hand
are “riches and honor.” (Prov. 3: 14-18) She beckons to the soul, for she “will
place on your head a graceful diadem.” (Prov. 4:9) Her “fruit is better than
gold.” (Prov. 8:19) She attractively set her table, “dressed her meat, mixed
her wine” (Prov. 9:2) and now she calls to the simple: “Come, eat of my food
and drink of the wine I have mixed!” (Prov. 9:5)
Andrew of Crete, writing in the 6th century, said
Mary “imitated Wisdom in her own being and has offered herself completely as a
mystical, heavenly banquet-table, prepared for those who are spiritually
initiated in divine realities.” [63]
In her subtle role as teacher and Mother of the Church and protector of
doctrine, she initiates each of her children into those Mysteries made manifest
by the Word and sanctified by the Spirit. John rejoices that ‘the Father
predestined her and the prophets spoke of her through the Holy Spirit.”[64]
In the year 634, St. Sophronious wrote about her, “Mary, the holy and
illustrious one…full of divine Wisdom, free of all stain of body and soul and
intellect…becomes the co-operatrix of the Incarnation of the Creator.”[65]
There is a charming homily given by St George of Nikomedia,
a deacon at Hagia Sophia in the 9th century, when the battle
of iconoclasm had subsided, which demonstrates the power of mythopoetic theologizing.
In it Mary’s role as intercessor was clearly explained within the context of
her motherhood through the imagery of the dwelling, or abode,
which was the most typical iconic type which Mary absorbed from the Old
Testament types. George puts these words into the mouth of Christ, addressing
his Mother, in a symbolic
re-interpretation of John 19:26.
You will give them your bodily presence
in place of mine. Be for them all that
mothers naturally are for their children, or rather all that I should be by my
presence…They will pay considerable respect to you because you are the Mother
of the Lord and because I came to them through you, they acquire in you the
placable intercessor toward me…[To John, he then says] …It is not only for you
but also for the other disciples that I have made her mother and guide, and it
is my will that she should be honored in the fullest sense with the dignity of
mother. Though I have forbidden you to call anyone on earth father, I wish
nonetheless that you call her Mother and honor her as such, she who was for me
an abode more than heavenly…[66]
St. George then
explains to the faithful that “She is to be called Mother by all, because she
was the abode, the skenoma for Christ”[67]
This word (skenoma), is the Greek word which, like the Hebrew Shekinah,
means tent, tabernacle, or dwelling, that is, where the glory of the Lord
resided.
The great church historian, Jaroslav Pelikan has
demonstrated that, not only iconographically, but theologically, Mary’s exalted
place was well developed early in Eastern Christianity, and “from its sources
in the Greek church… Eastern Mariology went on to exert a decisive influence on
Western interpretation of Mary throughout the patristic and early medieval
periods, with church fathers like Ambrose of Milan functioning as transmitters
of Greek Mariology to the Latin church.”[68] In my opinion this is important for our
discussion because the complaint is often lodged, primarily from Christian
writers in the Western (especially post-Reformation) tradition, that Mariology
was a late development in the Church’s history. Mary, in fact, remains a
serious obstacle between ecumenical relations with the Orthodox Church and most
all other churches. The post-Vatican II
Catholic Church has entered into serious debates about the correctness of
addressing Mary as Advocate and Mediatrix, seeing these titles as belonging
more appropriately to the Holy Spirit.[69]
However, Mary’s mediation can be traced as far back as Cryil of Alexander, in
defending her title Mother of God, where he hails her as a “venerable treasure
of the whole world” because “it is through you that the Holy Trinity is
glorified and adored…through you that all creation, once imprisoned in
idolatry, has reached the knowledge of the truth, that…churches have been
founded in the whole world, that peoples are led to conversion.”[70]
In 6th century hymns, she is addressed as
“Mediatress” by the famed Romanos the Singer, and likewise by Andrew of Crete in the 8th
century. [71] St. Andrew calls her “Mediatress of law and
grace” and says that she is mediation between the sublimity of God and the
human body.[72] St. Germanos calls her “truly a good Mediatress of all sinners…”[73]
for “no one is filled with the knowledge of God save through you…” [74]
In the 7th century, St. Modestus of Jerusalem addresses her as the
Theotokos, “through whom we have been mystically recreated and made the temple
of the Holy Spirit.”[75] Yet these homilies are not considered to be
doctrinal deviations, examples of Marian excess or devotional exaggerations.
They are carefully placed by the early Fathers within the context of the
christology and pneumatology which was simultaneously occupying their deep
concerns. Furthermore—unlike
pneumatology as it developed in the West—devotion to the Holy Spirit has always
remained a vital part of liturgical life in the East; and does not seem to have
been affected by the assumption by Mary of these pneumatological titles.
Rather, they seem to express the Orthodox understanding of Mary’s intimate role
with the Holy Spirit.
The criticism leveled at the Catholic and Orthodox churches
for their ‘excessive’ devotion to Mary often stems from the late dogmatic
titles given to Mary in the Roman Church, i.e., her immaculate conception and
assumption. However Mary’s major feastdays
were fixed at an early date, celebrated in the Byzantine churches before the
last Ecumenical Council. The feast of
the Dormition (Assumption) of Mary, for example, was fixed by all of Byzantium
by the year 600, decreed by Emperor Maurice to be celebrated on the 15th
of August.[76] At that
time there was a basilica in Gethsemane that claimed to enshrine the tomb of
the Virgin. By the 7th
century, the Nativity, Annunciation, and the Purification of Mary were
established feasts, together with the older general feast honoring her as the
Mother of God. These feasts were the
oldest liturgical celebrations in both the East and the West, although after
the Middle Ages, there was a proliferation of minor Marian celebrations in the
West.[77] In the Middle Ages, the questions that
emerged about Mary had to do with her situation in regard to her immaculate
conception (which never developed as a doctrinal issue in the East, due to the
different understanding of original sin); her assumption, her queenship and her
mediation.[78] But the
East never experienced a developmental doctrine about Mary, as least after the
7th Ecumenical Council. It
was not necessary to make dogmatic what was already a lived experience in
church life and Liturgy.
Jacob of Serug, in the year 489, has, in a homily delivered
at a synod, already called her “Queen…of all the celestial assemblies.”[79]
John of Damascus calls her “Queen Mother, the benefactress of all nature.”[80]
In the aftermath of the Nestorian controversy, public veneration of Mary flourished,
taking on artistic and architectural importance, especially during the reign of
Empress Pulcheria, who assumed the regency in the year 414, and built at least
three great cathedrals to her, thus establishing her cult in Constantinople.[81] These were the famous temple of Blachernae,
which housed her robe, the temple at Chalkoprateia, where her girdle was
venerated, and the church at Hodegon, where the classic icon of Hodegetria
emerged. [82] These and
numerous other local feasts were an established part of early Byzantine
tradition. In his translation of early
patristic homilies, Brian Daley explains the importance of 4th and 5th
century homiletics in the early development of her doctrine:
As Greek preachers in the cities of the Byzantine Empire
began more and more to make Mary the subject of their reflections…their style
came to show a celebratory, poetic character…[They] tended to invite their
hearers not just to think about her, but to participate in celebrating the
glories of her person and her role in the story of salvation…[83]
Pelikan has correctly seen, in the nuanced argument against
adornment of icons, not only a crisis over the divine-human nature of Christ,
but of the Theotokos as well. Iconoclasts “attacked not only the worship of
icons generally but the orthodox devotion to Mary specifically.” [84]
It has been noted that icons played a vital role in arousing the moral and
spiritual zeal of the people; the icon "was a hole in the dyke separating
the invisible world from the divine." [85]
Together with the rich homilies and theological litanies that were developed in
Byzantine liturgies during the period of the first six Ecumenical Councils, the
cult of the icons would have been so well entrenched that it would have been
near impossible to erase their use among the faithful. As Mary was the sacred dwelling
where God took his abode on earth—thus acting as the intermediary for
our own deification— her dwelling place in heaven as Queen served only to
reinforce her role as bridge, ladder, or intercessor, gulfing the transcendent
Godhead and the humanity which Christ had made his own. Since the Holy Spirit cannot incarnate, Mary
is the human incarnation through which matter is divinized, because her womb
was the abode of God. Alexander Schmemann has called her the “first icon, the
first gift, the first manifestation of the Holy Spirit.” [86]
Unlike the theologians and the
ecclesiastical hierarchy, simple peasants probably had little interest in the
Christological debates, which in some cases were becoming so abstruse that they
seemed disconnected from their daily lives. They knew however, that they did
not want to be separated from their icons. What is incomparable devotion
need not be made into theologically correct doctrine in order for the faithful
to become aware of the presence of the Spirit in their lives. And the faithful
loved their images of Mary; Constantine, nor anyone else, could keep the
intercession of the holy Theotokos from them. Simple peasants though they may
have been, they intuitively understood that the divine Motherhood of Mary,
together with her motherhood of grace in regard to us, are the seal of the
Spirit upon the Church.
Notes
[1] See Maria Vassilakis’ Mother
of God: Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art, Milano, Italy:
Skira Editore, 2002.esp. part 2, pp. 107-124. Also see her: Images of the
Mother of God: Perceptions of the Theotokos in Byzantium. Burlington. VT:
Ashgate Pub. 2005.
[2] Geanakoplos, D.J . Byzantium: Church, Society, and Civilization Seen through Contemporary Eyes (Part C: The Ecumenical Councils and Dogma).
Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1984; Ostrogorsky, George. History
of the Byzantine State. Trans. by Joan Hussey. 2 nd edition,
Oxford: Basil Blackwell, l968.
[3] Cunningham, Mary. Faith
in the Byzantine World. Oxford, England: Lion Publishers. 2002, p. 8.
[4] Pelikan, Jaroslav The
Spirit of Eastern Christendom 600-1700. (The Christian Tradition, 2)
Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1974, p. 111.
[5] Brown, Peter. Soci ety and the Holy in Late Antiquity. Berkeley: University of Calif. Press.
1982, p. 300.
[6] Cunningham, chapters 5, 8.
[7] quoted in
Topping, Eva. Saints and Sisterhood: The
Lives of Forty-Eight Holy Women. Minn, Minn: Light and Life Pub. Co, 1990.
p. 280.
[8] Brown, Society, p. 212.
[9] Florovsky, George The
Byzantine Fathers from the Sixth to the Eighth Century (Vol. 9, Collected
Works)Belmont MA.:Buchervertriebsanstalt, 1987, p 254.
[12] Louth, Andrew. St John
Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology. NY: Oxford
University Press, 2002, p. 12.
[17] John occasionally uses the
terminology “proceeds from the Father through the Son” but both Florovsky (ibid
pp, 263-266) and Congar emphasize that
it was not to be interpreted from the Father and the Son. Congar
has observed that “ per Filium of John Damascus is not filioque,”
in I Believe in the Holy Spirit. Vol 3, p 39.
[20] On the Trinity, in
Chase, Frederic H, trans. St John of Damascus, Writings in Fathers of
the Church 37, NY: Catholic University Press, 1958, pp. 161-63.
[21] Louth,, John, p.
144.
[22] Schmemann, Alexander. Historical
Road of Eastern Orthodoxy. St. Vladimir’s seminary Press. 1977, pp.
177-179.
[23] Monothelitism is the
doctrine that there is, in Christ, but one will, the divine will. Monophysitism
is the doctrine that Christ has only one nature, the divine nature, not two—the
divine and human natures. Chalcedon had affirmed that Christ had two natures.
This may sound simple, but it was actually quite complicated: controversy raged
about the subtleties of these doctrines for more than three centuries. The
nature and definition of person, hypostasis, activity, even the nature of human
willing needed to be clarified. The final result of the hypostases problem can
be summed up in a rather easy to remember formula however: the Trinity is one
nature in three hypostases; Christ has two natures in only one hypostasis. When
the question of Christ’s will entered the debate, the answer was derived from
the faith of Chalcedon: since the will is part of the nature, there are two
wills and two operations. See: Laporte, Jean, “Christology in Early
Christianity, in Frank Flinn, ed: Christology:
the Center and the Periphery. NY: Paragon House.1989, pp 19-27; and Pelikan
Jaroslav, The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition. The Christian Tradition 1,
Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press1971, chapters 4 and 5 and his, Spirit of
Eastern Christendom, 600-1700 The Christian Tradition 2. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press. 1974, chaps. 1 and 2.
[24] Louth, John, p. 156.
[25] see Louth, above, for a
lucid explanation of enhypostasia, especially pp. 101-107 and 159-161.
Bulgakov’s
interpretation of John’s use of enhypostatization (and before him, Leontius) is
that it tends to resurrect Apollinarius’s Christology, See his Lamb of God, Grand
Rapids Mich: Eerdman’s. 2008, pp. 71-73.
[27] Daley, Brian, trans and
intro. On the Dormition of Mary: Early Patristic Homilies. Crestwood NY:
St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1998, pp. 11-12.
[28] Orthodox Faith, Book 3,
in Writings, Trans Chase, 1958, pp. 294-295.
[30] Orthodox Faith, Book 4,
in ibid, p. 362.
[37] Cunningham, Faith,
p. 103-04.
[38] Writings, Chase p.
369.
[40] Florovsky, Vol. 9, pp. 271-
272.
[42] see Daley, pp. 192-93.
[43] Three Treatises on the
Divine Images, St John of Damascus. Trans. and intro. by Andrew Louth,
Crestwood, NY: SVSP, 2003, p. 32 Treatise One, 18.
[44] Treatise 3, 86,
ibid, p. 132.
[45] Treatise 1, 19 ibid,
p. 33. John also quotes 1 John 3:2 in this context: “we shall we like him.”
[46] in, Great Synaxaristes
of the Orthodox Church: May. Buena Vista Colo: Holy Apostles Convent, 2006
p. 640.
[48] in, Geanakoplos p 157.
[50] Bulgakov, Sergius. The
Bride of the Lamb. Trans by Boris Jakim. Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdmans Pub.
Co. 2002, p. 202. This, for Bulgakov is
man’s “sophianicity.” Just as “God has Sophia as the divine world and fully
realizes Himself in her…” (p. 135), so humans have Sophia “as likeness that is
always being attained.” (p. 135) This
is our “creaturely-sophianic hypostasis.” (p. 202).
[51] Bulgakov, Sergius, The
Comforter, Trans by Boris Jakim. Grand Rapids, Mich: Eerdman’s. 2004, p. 245.
[52] Treatise 3:21 in
Louth, p. 98.
[53] Treatise 1:11,
Louth, p. 26.
[54] Congar, I Believe, Vol 1,
p. 10.
[55] ibid, Vol. 3, p 161.
[57] in, Schmemann,
Alexander. Historical Road of
Eastern Orthodoxy. Crestwood NY: SVSP 1977, p 192.
[58] in Great Synax. Oct,
p. 22. Original in PG 151: 169 Homlilies of St. Gregory Palamas Athens
1861.
[59] For a long
time is was commonplace for most scholars to hypothesize that the early
Dormition traditions were a reaction to Chalcedon, i.e., that these narratives
originated in the monophysite areas of Eastern Christendom. Chadwick for example theorizes that it was
an attempt by “popular piety to clutch at someone, with a vital part in the drama
of redemption…In such a situation it would be a reassurance if there could be
someone in solidarity with the rest of mankind who had risen again in the
body.”
Chadwick, Henry, 'Eucharist and Christology
in the Nestorian Controversy', Journal of Theological Studies, ns 2
(1951), pp. 163-64. Stephen Shoemaker,
who has done the most extensive scholarship to date on the Assumption/Dormition
traditions observes that “it is unclear whether Chadwick understood the
opponents of Chalcedon to be the initial producers of the Dormition narratives
or… their first known consumers.” He
believes that the acceptance of the accusation by the anti-Chalcedon East “that
the council had returned to the teaching of Nestorius and its 'disrespect' for
the Virgin Mary,” does not hold up to scrutiny. See Shoemaker, Stephen. Ancient
Traditions of the Virgin Mary's Dormition and Assumption. Oxford University Press, 2002, pp. 258, 260.
[60] Homily 1:8 in Daley,
trans, p. 193.
[61] in Great Synax, May,
p. 639.
[62] in, Meyendorff, John. Byzantine
Theology: Historical Trends and
Doctrinal Themes. NY: Fordham University Press. 1979, p. 172.
[63] in Daley, Homilies,
p 111.
[65] quoted in, Marian
Studies Vol. 4, 1954, p. 85.
[66] quoted in Vassilaki , “The
Maternal Side of the Virgin” in Mother
of God: Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine Art, Maria Vassilaki,
ed. Milano, Italy: Skira Editorre, 2000, p. 42.
[68] Pelikan, Jaroslav. Mary
through the Centuries. p. 104.
[69] For example, the post
Vatican II’s attempt to ‘humanize’ Mary for the sake of ecumenical dialogue
with Protestants, is typically expressed in Elizabeth Johnson’s comment that
“Mary is called intercessor, mediatrix, helper, advocate, defender, consoler,
and counselor, functions that biblical belong to the Spirit.” Johnson would
like to see these functions re-absorbed by a Female God, rather than
‘displaced’ onto Mary. She Who Is:
The Mystery of God in Feminist Discourse. NY: Crossroad, 1993, p.129.
[70] In O’Carroll, Michael. Theotokos:
A Theological Encyclopedia of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Collegeville, Minn.:
Liturgical Press. 1982, p. 239.
[76] Daley, Homilies,
p. 9.
[77] Tavard, George. The Thousand Faces of the Virgin Mary.
Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press, 1996, pp. 62, 89.
[78] in Blancy, Alain, et al, Mary
in the Plan of God and in the Communion of Saints. NY.: Paulist Press.1999,
p. 27.
[81] for a full discussion of
this topic, see Vasiliki Limberis, Divine Heiress: The Virgin Mary and the
Creation of Christian Constantinople. London: Routledge, 1994.
[82] Daley, p. 37; see also
Maria Vassilakis’ Mother of God: Representations of the Virgin in Byzantine
Art, Milano, Italy: Skira Editore, 2002. esp. Part 3, pp. 41-59.
[84] Pelikan, Mary Through,
p. 100.
[85] Brown , Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity. Berkeley: University of Calif. Press.
1982, p. 260-61.
[86] Schmemann, Alexander. The Virgin Mary. Celebration of Faith
Sermons, Vol. 3. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press. 1995, p. 77.
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