Revisiting the Patristic Theology of the Icon. Part 1: Setting Aside our Western Assumptions.

Rather than a problematic polarity of us (iconophiles) versus them (iconoclasts), I want to discern iconoclasms of fidelity and resist iconoclasms of temptation by reflecting on the ambivalences of Christ the Image.

The view of images as sharing a substantive relationship with both the faithful and the prototype is not the dominant one in the Modern West.

The third articulates the intertwining of iconoclasm and iconophilia represented by Christ the Image that is determinative for the Christian imaging tradition and echoed at some level in all images.

By seeing the ways that iconoclasm is internal to both Christianity and the Modern West, we can cease from using the label as an easy way to distance others. We have to reckon with our own iconoclastic impulses and sort through what we want to affirm about others’ iconoclasm. For while Modern Westerners might laud the iconoclasm of Robert Mappletho