Church History in Plain Language (Plain Language Series)

by Bruce L. Shelley

“John Mansour (about 730 –60), in a monastery far away in Arab-controlled Palestine, formulated the ideas that were eventually used to justify religious icons. Mansour, better known as John of Damascus (his birthplace), was the greatest theologian of the eighth century. He is recognized today by the Orthodox churches as the last of the great teachers of the early church, the so-called Fathers. “John explained that an image was never of the same substance as its original, but merely imitated it. An icon’s only significance is as a copy and reminder of the original. His argument is based on Plato’s notion that everything we sense in this world is really an imitation of the eternal, original ‘form,’ which can be known only by the soul in the nonmaterial world. “To deny, as the iconoclasts did, that any true icon could depict Christ, was, in effect, to deny the possibility of the Incarnation. Although it was wrong to worship an icon, the presence of an icon of Christ could instruct and assist the believer in the worship of the true Christ. Icons should be honored and venerated in much the same way as the Bible, or the symbol of the Cross.”