Since God has taken on human flesh, revelation takes the forms of both word and image. Thus, icons play an essential role in the church, standing alongside Scripture as how God reveals himself to us: “the icon is placed on a level with the Holy Scripture and with the Cross, as one of the forms of revelation and knowledge of God, in which Divine and human will and action become blended.”9 This is why, in Orthodox thinking, the denial of icons is a denial of the truth of the Incarnation.
