Revisiting the Patristic Theology of the Icon. Part 2: The Modern Theology of the Icon: Is it Orthodox?

nor the intentions of the maker.10 In this, he is representative of many contemporary picture theorists who want to exorcise what they see as Platonist or Kantian understandings of the image as pointing beyond itself to some distant meaning.11

impotent to reveal his divinity. Obviously, if one followed the logic of orthodox Christology, one had to believe that the human substance of Christ was also truly divine. Moreover, iconodule theology stressed that, in any icon, it is the ‘hypostasis’ – that is, the person – of the subject that is being revealed, and it is that person to whom the v

As the Byzantine iconomachs worried about the inability of the image to hold together the divinity and the humanity of Christ, so contemporary conversations around the image exude anxiety about the image holding together immanent encounter and transcendent meaning.

The popular use of iconoclast is important not just because it helps identify the ambivalences of iconoclasm. The description of an iconoclast as a breaker of cultural images—a blasphemer—is additionally important because it resonates with Scriptural descriptions of Christ as a skandalon or stumbling block (1 Corinthians 1:23).