- Aug 13, 2014
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Father Michael Azkoul has an excellent chapter on why icons are superior to statues in the church , chapter 4 of his "New Atheists" book. He reiterates this in his book the "Pseudo-Orthodoxy of Bentley Hart" as an important point on page 10, 17, about the statue symbolizing the "created grace" and duality of Roman Catholicism whereas in Orthodoxy, the icon being a 2-D object has in mind the proper Chalcedonian christology. "It is flat to indicate the perimeters of reason and the senses" (page 124 of New Atheism); This jibes very well with Lutheranism. I often wonder why there is a giant statue of Christ near the pulpit rather than the icons; once you study the Orthodox iconology it becomes clear. The statue aims to be the prototype unlike the icon which is only a conduit. If this is indeed a vestigial remnant of Nestorianism as he says, then it needs to be fixed in Lutheranism. I can't explain it as well as he does though in his books. Although I agree with Luther that mental images will inevitably lead from reading the gospels/ thinking of Christ, and his arguments against the inherent gnosticism in Reformed theology, which leads to their denial of the Real Presence, I disagree that this is the only issue at play. The EO make a good point that a statue leaves nothing to the imagination, thus what you're looking at is not something that merely spurs the imagination as in reading the Bible, but is the complete thing in itself, this is the same problem ; Icons leave more to the imagination and have Christ looking differently in each one.
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