To claim the centrality of likeness to imaging raises the question of unlikeness. John of Damascus, the great seventh-century iconodule, describes an image as “a likeness and pattern and impression of something” that is, however, “certainly not like the archetype . . . in every respect.”18 Of course, an image cannot be like the archetype in every r

these three degradations suggest two directions in which the search fails, by tempting the seeker to eradicate the visible (illusion) or to exclude the invisible (in contrasting ways, idol and object).

be dedicated to illustrating how religious beliefs, doctrines, and stories may be analyzed through the lens of modern history but must be analyzed through the lens of Christian theological reasoning.

These strangely contradictory charges express a fundamentally similar anxiety, that imaging is simply incompatible with divinity. To make an image of God is either to attenuate the reality of Christ’s divinity or erode its bonds to his humanity.