“…The halo represents a confirmation of God the Father that the saint is received in the Heavenly Kingdom and it is not a decorative, but an ontological characteristic of the icon. The reference that these halos or crowns of the saints 'are not created things' can be found in the Macarian homilies 2 .…”
The aim of the paper is to elucidate the role of time and eternity in the theology of icons, by focusing on the artistic language of Orthodox iconography. The Orthodox iconography has developed a specific artistic language in order to express very complex theological and metaphysical issues such as the relationship between time and eternity. By using exclusively artistic elements such as light, colours and perspective, this symbolic language finds the appropriate way to visually articulate specific dogmatic themes that link the historical with the eschatological realm. The light is the essential element of the icon, because the light is identified with the uncreated energies of God that constitutes the future reality. While light gives this eternal perspective to the saints and events, the sketches made according to eikonismos preserve the likeness of the depicted image with the saint. Colours symbolically represent the diapason from being as a divine gift conferred to every creature at the creation to the eternal well being as a gift of God conferred to the holy people and angels at the end of time. The combination of inverse, central and axonometric perspective scales persons and objects according to geometry of value and position, rather than to a spatial geometry. The divine eternity causes the lack of spatial and temporal distance between persons and objects and their position and value depends on the relation with God.
“…The halo represents a confirmation of God the Father that the saint is received in the Heavenly Kingdom and it is not a decorative, but an ontological characteristic of the icon. The reference that these halos or crowns of the saints 'are not created things' can be found in the Macarian homilies 2 .…”
The aim of the paper is to elucidate the role of time and eternity in the theology of icons, by focusing on the artistic language of Orthodox iconography. The Orthodox iconography has developed a specific artistic language in order to express very complex theological and metaphysical issues such as the relationship between time and eternity. By using exclusively artistic elements such as light, colours and perspective, this symbolic language finds the appropriate way to visually articulate specific dogmatic themes that link the historical with the eschatological realm. The light is the essential element of the icon, because the light is identified with the uncreated energies of God that constitutes the future reality. While light gives this eternal perspective to the saints and events, the sketches made according to eikonismos preserve the likeness of the depicted image with the saint. Colours symbolically represent the diapason from being as a divine gift conferred to every creature at the creation to the eternal well being as a gift of God conferred to the holy people and angels at the end of time. The combination of inverse, central and axonometric perspective scales persons and objects according to geometry of value and position, rather than to a spatial geometry. The divine eternity causes the lack of spatial and temporal distance between persons and objects and their position and value depends on the relation with God.
“…We encounter this idea in the aforementioned example of defenders of Icon veneration. Charles Lock synthesised the arguments of these mentioned authors by paraphrasing St John of Damascus in the following way:Either accept these [icons], or get rid of those [Gospels] … (Lock, , p. 10).This idea, that signs that have an obvious degree of conventionality must have a non‐conventional ground in order to be used is not only a central assumption for Peircean semiotics, but also a crucial point for learning, teaching and education in general. Peirce makes this explicit:… a great distinguishing property of the icon is that by the direct observation of it other truths concerning its object can be discovered than those which suffice to determine its construction.…”
Section: The Role Of the Icon In Learningmentioning
The recent development of biosemiotics has revealed the achievement of knowledge and the development of science to be the results of the semiosis of all life forms, including those commonly regarded as cultural constructs. Education is thus a semiosic structure to which evolution itself has adapted, while learning is the semiotic phenomenon that determines the renewal of life itself. Historically, it was a semiotic paradigm that determined the emergence of institutions such as universities and that underpinned the development of liberal education. The present article considers the history of education in terms of sign emergence and evolution, regarding education as currently being conceived and practised as a stage in the general evolutionary action of signs. This approach differs from the prevailing modern approaches to education, which are mostly applied psychology and sociology.
“…As regards the underlying causes of the iconoclast controversy, these should not be sought exclusively in external influences but mostly in the inherent character of Byzantine theology. Iconoclasm was not a new phenomenon in Byzantine thought; it seems quite possible that Byzantine imperial Iconoclasm might have been associated with an underlying Neoplatonic negative attitude towards matter in the Byzantine world, as Charles Lock has aptly proposed . The attack on icons was therefore based on a biblically‐articulated Neoplatonism .…”
This study examines the theology of St. John of Damascus on images in the context of the Byzantine iconoclastic controversies. Following a brief outline of the historical, political and theological difficulties relevant to this phenomenon, the Christological and ontological dimensions of John's iconology are presented. John's iconological thought is Christ-centered and develops the teaching of the Church on Christ's person and two natures. He formulates an iconological realism based on the Incarnation. This study also analyzes the role of matter as charged with divine energy and grace, the function of the icon as symbol, and the development of a cognitive theory in John's treatises on images. Lastly, John's theology regarding the sixth kind of image, namely the natural icon, is contextualized within the metaphysical/cosmological chain of images he constructs. This contributes an ontological dimension to his theological discourse and grounds its fundamental importance for Christian faith, which he viewed as threatened by the conflict under discussion.
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