The Art of the Icon: A Theology of Beauty, illustrated by Evdokimov Paul

Author:Evdokimov, Paul [Evdokimov, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oakwood Publications
Published: 2011-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIVE

The Theology of Glory-Light

God “adorns himself in magnificence and clothes himself with beauty.” Man stands amazed and contemplates the glory whose light causes a hymn of praise to burst forth from the heart of every creature. The Testamentum Domini gives us the following prayer: “Let them be filled with the Holy Spirit so they can sing a doxology and give you praise and glory forever.” An icon is the same kind of doxology but in a different form. It radiates joy and sings the glory of God in its own way. True beauty does not need proof. The icon does not prove anything; it simply lets true beauty shine forth. In itself, the icon is shining proof of God’s existence, according to a “kalokagathic”[149] argument.

St. Paul gave us the expression which is the icon’s Christological foundation: “Christ is the image, eikôn, of the invisible God.”[150] He meant that the visible humanity of Christ is the icon of his invisible divinity, that it is “the visible of the invisible.”[151] The icon of Jesus is thus the image of God and of man at the same time. It is the icon of the total Christ, of the God-Man. Christ’s humanity is a vehicle of revelation, and it becomes the truth of every human person. Man is not true nor real except as he reflects the heavenly. What a marvelous grace! Every creature can be the mirror of the Uncreated, “the image of God.” The kondakion of Orthodoxy Sunday says: “Having reëstablished the soiled image to its ancient dignity, the Word of God unites it to divine Beauty. In confessing our salvation, we express it in action and in word.” We see that the mystery of salvation goes far beyond a simple reëstablishment of what Adam was before the Fall, the Adamic image. Christ made that image a reality, brought it to fullness, for having purified it, he opened it up to participation in divine Beauty.

The image of God in man, redeemed in Christ and consciously sought after in contemplative asceticism, explains why a holy monk is always called “very similar.” This title refers to the ultimate subjective and personal resemblance of the person to the objective image of God. We find its precise expression in another passage from St. Paul: “And we, with our unveiled faces (made explicit in his mystery) reflecting like mirrors the brightness of the Lord (“which is on the face of Christ”), all grow brighter and brighter as we are turned into the image (icon) that we reflect; this is the work of the Lord who is Spirit.”[152] This is why the icon of Christ in the central lunette of Hagia Sophia shows the Lord holding the gospel open onto the passage: “I am the Light of the world;” this is also why the Church sings: “Your Light shines on the faces of your saints.” Man confesses his salvation in word but also witnesses to it in action by becoming “very similar.” And of course, the most moving icon of God is man “turned into the image we reflect,” according to the text of St.

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