Recommended edit to title “…and statues” - the Orthodox do not “sanctify” statues. The 7th Ecumenical Council makes clear what kinds of imagery are appropriate. This might also need a part 2 to go over those important nuances.
“...the devil led the enemies of the church from one extreme to the other, from worshiping the images of men and animals in paganism to destroying the images of Christ and the saints in iconoclasm.”-Jaroslav Pelikan
I honestly do not understand how the explicit use of icons in worship is considered acceptable and (by some) required! How can John of Damascus say that προσκύνεσις is appropriate for images, when the Septuagint *EXPLICITLY* denies this! Οὐ *προσκυνήσεις* αὐτοῖς (εἰδώλοις) οὐδὲ μὴ λατρεύσεις αὐτοῖς - Exodus 20:5 English: "Thou shalt not bow to them, nor serve them" The word προσκύνεσις (as a verb) is right there! I do not understand!
The Septuagint says in Exodus 20:4 "εἴδωλον" (IDOLS) Idols are images of false gods, you shall not bow down to IDOLS. Catholic and Orthodox do not have images of false gods, they have Images of the True God (Jesus) and the saints (Whom we respect, not worship, they are not gods)
@@VincenzoRutiglianoDiaz The Israelites called the golden Calf יהוה, claiming it was their God, yet we call it an idol, not an image. The bronze Serpent that Moses crafted was surely not a false god, yet Hezekiah, King of Judah, who was considered a righteous king, destroyed it because the people of Israel burnt incense to it (מקטרים). Had the people of Israel claimed they were merely venerating it, do you believe that would have stopped Hezekiah? One can claim they are not worshipping an image, but in the eyes of God, it does not matter what one says. If one gives an image that which is due to God and which is explicitly forbiden to give to others, is he not guilty of idolatry? Has he not made that image an idol?
@@Caralaza when worshiping is being done then indeed needs to be removed like the serpent But when it doesn’t it shouldn’t as far as I know I see them as icons not idols because I don’t worship them nor do I see them as something above or similar to divinity but only a picture used to spread the gospel or faith in pictures like films and cartoons etc.
@@3wL7 John Of Damascus is objectively wrong his a great guy but his not infallible.there's a problem with how he uses scripture for icondules. For example He used the serpent image Moses in old testament. The same passage God said "Look beyond the staff, the serpent and look to me" so his argument doesn't hold water. Also every believer is a Saint a true Christian isna Saint. Saint isn't entitled to canonized people
Prior to Constantine, the kingdom of God had nothing or very little to do with the kingdom of the world. Scripture and the early church believed and wrote that there was absolutely nothing in common between the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness. However, Emperor Constantine unwittingly initiated the UNION of church and state. For the first time in history, unordained Emperors (from the kingdom of darkness) were making decisions for the bishops (kingdom of light) and the BISHOPS SURPRISINGLY ALLOWED IT!!!! That is what corrupted the church and started new inventions which the Apostolic fathers NEVER SPOKE NOR TAUGHT including veneration of Mary, praying to dead saints and veneration of icons. Note that in this video, Empress Theodora from the kingdom of darkness mandated all Christians to venerate icons! And instead of martyrdom, the "christians" chose to comply similar to what the lapsi did during Cyprians time!!!! which is the very opposite of what the early church and martyrs would do. If a Christian is to walk by FAITH and NOT by SIGHT, icons encourage the opposite and therefore blatantly disobey St. Paul and the First and Second of the Ten Commandments. If the Jews who traditionally defined idolatry condemn icons, most probably they are biblically correct. Note that prior to Constantine, ALL true Christians DIED for their FAITH. After Constantine, even the Bishops KILLED for their faith, the very opposite of the Lord's Sermon on the Mount. This is what happens when humans force the union of church and state. In the same way, all the council inventions AFTER Constantine have some flavor of corruption, with the things of the world constantly polluting the things of God.
The Catholic and Orthodox churches define idolatry as worshipping images of false gods, not venerating saints. The jews say icons are idolatry, but they also reject Jesus Christ so why should I listen to jews instead of the Church? Protestantism always seems to boil down to "Romans and Greeks are bad and wrong, jews are good and righteous."
your whole understanding of christianty is false. lmao. Constantine converted to christianty very late. and again churches like Syro-Malabbar church and Ethipion church were not connected with CONSTANTINE. They all the apostolic churches. they all do veneration of saints, praying to saints and veneration of icons... lmao. the first MARIAN STATUE was carved by St.Luke the Evengelist. Not only the apostles recevied the HOLY SPIRIT. the church fathers from then upto now all spoke with the power of HOLY SPIRIT. never does the early church beleived in SOLA SCRIPTURE HERESY . apart from the church leaders none of the christains ever used any scripture. BIBLE ALONE IS A HERESY, veneration of martyrs came since the 1st century. read the history. EVERYTHING from icon veneration, veneration of saints and Mary's Queenship all came from the apostles. The apostles only wrote letters when they were physically unable to preach the churches, so 99% of the apostolic teachings were given to the churches verbally. those teachings comes from the apostolic tradition and verbal teachings of the church. bible only have 1% of the apostolic teachings. YOU BIBLE WORSHIPPER. You satanic pawn, repent. STOP THESE HERESIES, without knowing history you link everything to Constantine. very satanic features..
@@finncollins5696 "whole understanding"? All I mentioned was history and made my comments. . All you mention is unwritten and unverified tradition. I do NOT believe in SOLA SCRIPTURA either as understood by most protestants. The church "wrote" the New Testament and the church and its tradition MUST support it and CANNOT contradict it. Furthermore, where the New Testament is silent, we refrain from developing theological inventions. Iconography is acceptable when it helps us worship the one true God. But when we start kissing icons and images, that is IDOLATRY PLAIN AND SIMPLE.
@@finncollins5696 "whole understanding"? All I mentioned was history and made my comments. . All you mention is unwritten and unverified tradition. I do NOT believe in SOLA SCRIPTURA either as understood by most protestants. The church "wrote" the New Testament and the church and its tradition MUST support it and CANNOT contradict it. Furthermore, where the New Testament is silent, we refrain from developing theological inventions. Iconography is acceptable when it helps us worship the one true God, or we simply want to emulate and model our lives by some saints. But when we start kissing icons and images, that is WORSHIP, hence IDOLATRY - PLAIN AND SIMPLE. ...and when we cannot worship without them, then that is walking by sight and NOT by faith. "What is not of faith is sin" again, plain and simple, I see no other reasonable interpretation. We live and walk by faith (what we CANNOT SEE) and NOT by sight (what we can see). Religion has truly become materialistic instead of mystical BTW, the Nicene Creed's formulation was coordinated by Constantine and successors. The bishops who used to be beggars and even homeless became totally supported by the Emperor. The early church fathers were not even clear about the Trinity. They had different versions. In the first 300 years of Christianity, a believer was always evaluated by his Christian walk and Christlikeness. After Constantine and Athanasius, a believer's faith was evaluated more by his doctrine instead of his life. What an unbiblical change!!!! The whole New Testament is clear that all believers will be judged by their works (godly or demonic) and NOT by their doctrine. Bible worshipper? A bible worshipper is someone who kisses the Bible in public. I never do that. That is BIBLIOLATRY at its worst.
Venerating our beloved blessed mother Virgin Mary is different Jesus Christ Himself gave us His holy mother to be our holy mother while hanging on the cross drawing His last breath(John 19:26-27) think of the moment's importance and as always you're the one who has a free will to accept or deny Jesus Christ's gifts(everything is given to you by our Lord and God Jesus Christ you just have to accept my beloved 🙏)
“In the 1920s, archaeologists began to uncover a significant find: a garrison city that had been built on the banks of the Euphrates, at the eastern edge of the Roman Empire (today it’s in Syria). When the Persians attacked, around AD 256, Roman soldiers strengthened their defenses by packing earth and sand into several of the buildings that stood along the inside of the city wall. But the Persians conquered that city nevertheless, then abandoned it. This beleaguered city, known as Dura-Europos, then enjoyed a little posthumous good fortune: nothing was ever built on top of its ruins. When scientists began removing the centuries of sand, they found it perfectly preserved. One of the buildings that had been preserved was a Christian house church-the earliest yet found. Its walls were decorated with paintings, and show many biblical scenes: Christ and St. Peter walking on the water, the healing of the paralytic, and the women coming to Christ’s tomb to anoint his body (Orthodox call them the “myrrh-bearing women”). Archaeologists also found scrolls bearing Eucharistic prayers in Hebrew. (They resemble the Eucharistic prayers in the Didache, an important early Christian text, written about AD 80, when the Gospels were being written). This was clearly a church building. An Orthodox church built today, or at any point in history, could look much the same, with walls covered in icons (as at St. Felicity). But something else was found in the ruins of that city. Another of the preserved buildings was a [Jewish] synagogue-and it, too, was covered with paintings of biblical scenes. Abraham and Isaac, Pharaoh’s daughter finding baby Moses, Ezekiel’s visions, narrative scenes, portraits of Bible characters-about a hundred images when the building was complete, of which fifty-eight remain. These paintings resemble the ones in the house church nearby. They look like icons. Both Christians and Jews of Dura-Europos filled their worship spaces with images drawn from the Scriptures, and did not think this was idolatry. Greco-Roman homes had long been decorated with wall paintings and mosaics, and the custom may have passed over to religious buildings without a lot of debate. But in the seventh century something happened that provoked a great deal of debate. The Muslim faith arose and swept through the region, and three of the Pentarchy cities-Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria-as well as many other Christian communities fell to the sword. Islam forbade the use of images, and some Christians wondered if God were permitting this destruction as punishment for idolatry. Backed by the command of the Roman emperor in Constantinople, the iconoclasts (it means “icon smashers”) began destroying every icon in reach. Images were burned, crushed, hacked, thrown in the sea, and covered with paint or plaster. This is why so few early icons remain; the ones with a chance to survive were in remote locations, like the Roman catacombs, the St. Catherine Monastery on Mt. Sinai, or the buried church of Dura-Europos. No doubt there had been excesses among those who loved icons, and it was right for the church to spend some time thinking through the question. What is an icon, and what is an idol? Does an image of a person relate or connect to that person in any real way? Does how we treat an image pass through it, so to speak, to the person himself? You might think, “Of course not. That’s superstition.” But remember some years ago when the singer Sinéad O’Connor tore up a photo of the pope on live television? There was immediate and widespread outrage, and not only among those who liked the pope. It struck people as appallingly rude, and seriously damaged the singer’s career. But someone could well say, “Why all the fuss? She only tore up paper and ink. It didn’t actually hurt him.” Yet we sense somehow that a photo is more than paper and ink; it connects with the person in some way. Think about how people react when a flag is burned, or how crowds rejoiced when a statue of Stalin or Saddam Hussein was pulled down. The honor or dishonor shown to an image is passed on to its prototype; that’s something we grasp instinctively. A monk called St. Stephen the New (he was “New” in the eighth century) showed the iconoclast emperor Constantine that he himself knew this. St. Stephen was challenged to trample on an icon of Christ, to prove he agreed that it was merely wood and paint, and that such an action gave no disrespect to the Lord. Instead, he placed on the ground a coin bearing the emperor’s image. He then set his foot upon it-and was immediately executed.“-Frederica Mathewes-Green, Welcome to the Orthodox Church
The paintings of biblical scenes or personages in ancient gathering places is not a proof of icon veneration; unless of course, there were admonitions written somewhere nearby for the faithful to venerate the depictions. Do such writings exist? If not, most likely they were used to teach people who were mostly illiterate or who had little to no access to the holy writings.
@@Jere616 I would recommend taking the time to read On Holy Images by St John of Damascus, and On the Holy Icons by St Theodore the Studite, having a proper understanding of how the early church understood icons, relics and veneration (yes you do see veneration even in the early church) it leads to having a proper understanding of the incarnation itself. Islam’s iconoclasm unfortunately had an influence and led to a lot of persecutions of Christians who kept the ancient practice of iconography (the iconodules.)
@@saenzperspectives A "proper understanding of the Incarnation" is to be had by iconography? How is this to be accepted by the church if the Apostles never taught such a thing nor did the ones who walked and lived with the earthly Lord Jesus for @ 3 1/2 years ever describe him to make way for the later icons that EOs claim were divinely approved? The only details we have from his earthly life were that he had a beard and a seamless robe and later, his crucifixion wounds.
@@Jere616 you’re begging the question fallaciously regarding the apostles. It’s due to you following the heresy of sola scriptura, which is an innovation, and ironically isn’t even according to the scriptures itself. “So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us.” 2 Thessalonians 2:15 But the point itself, just like when a heresy threatened the church they brought a council to clarify meaning in the council of Jerusalem as seen in Acts 15, they did the same with subsequent councils themselves when heresies threatened the ecclesial truth. Which is why them using language that wasn’t used before but showed biblical truths was important, just as the other ecumenical councils used language to clarify biblical truths rather than making innovative changes such as the heresy of Protestantism and sola scriptura. “...What we call today dogma, appeared only when heresy came to threaten the experience of the ecclesial truth. The word heresy means the choice, selection and preference of one part of the truth to the detriment of the whole truth, the catholic truth. Heresy is the opposite of catholicity. The heretics absolutized just one aspect of the experiential certainty of the Church and so inevitably relativized all the others. The procedure of this absolutization was always intellectual a theoretical preference which usually simplified and schematized the understanding of the ecclesial truth. Classical examples in history are Nestorianism and monophysitism. The first absolutized the humanity of Christ, the second His divinity. And in both cases, they relativized and finally destroyed the one entire truth of the incarnation of God, of the God-manhood of Christ. Nestorianism preached an ethical model of a perfect man, monophysitism an abstract idea of a fleshless God. The Church reacted to heresies by marking out the terms of her truth, by defining, that is, her experiential expertise. It is very characteristic that the first designation that was given to what today we call dogma was a definition, that is, a limit, a boundary of truth. Today's "dogmas" were the definitions of the Ecumenical Councils those theoretical decisions which formulated the truth of the Church, fixing a border between this truth and its corruption by heresy. b. The limits of experience Perhaps an example accessible to experience could elucidate the function of definitions or limits of truth. Let us suppose that someone appears who claims that maternal love means relentless strictness and wild daily beating of a child. All of us who have a different experience of maternal love will protest about this distortion and will oppose to it a definition of our own experience: For us maternal love is affection, tenderness, care, all combined with a judicious and constructive strictness. Up to the moment when this falsification of the truth of maternal love appeared, there had existed no need to define our experience. Maternal love was something self-evident to us all, an experiential knowledge objectively indeterminate but also commonly understood. The need for a limit or definition is connected with the threat that maternal love may begin to be considered something other than what we all believe it to be. But the definition simply signifies or marks off the limits of our experience, it cannot replace it. A man who has never in his life known maternal love (because he is an orphan or for some other reason), can know the definition but cannot know maternal love itself. In other words, knowledge of formulas and definitions of truth is not to be identified with the knowledge of truth itself. Therefore even an atheist can have learned to know well that the God of the Church is triadic, that Christ is perfect God and perfect man, but this does not mean that he knows these truths. c. Apophaticism Thus we attain the understanding of the attitude or way in which the Church faces the knowledge of her truth - a stance and way which, in accord with established usage, we call the apophaticism of knowledge. Apophaticism means our refusal to exhaust knowledge of the truth in its formulation. The formulation is necessary and required, because it defines the truth, it separates and distinguishes it from every distortion and falsification of it. Therefore for the members of the Church the limits or dogmas are the given "fixed points" of truth, which do not admit of changes or differentiated versions in formulating them. At the same time though, this formulation neither replaces nor exhausts the knowledge of the truth, which remains experiential and practical, a way of life and not a theoretical construction. The apophatic attitude leads Christian theology to use the language of poetry and images for the interpretation of dogmas much more than the language of conventional logic and schematic concepts. The conventional logic of everyday understanding can very easily give man a false sense of a sure knowledge which, being won by the intellect, is already exhausted by it, completely possessed by it. While poetry with the symbolisms and images which it uses, always exhibits a sense from within the words and beyond the words, a concept which corresponds more to common experiences of life and less to cerebral conceptions. d. Figurative language In the texts of the theologians and Fathers of the Church concepts often contradict one another conceptually in order that the transcendence of every representation of their content may become possible, and that the possibility of empirical participation of the whole man (and not only the mind) in the truth expressed therein may show through the logical antitheses. The God of the Church is "Being beyond all being, Divinity more than divine, the nameless name, beginning beyond all beginning, mind beyond the power of thought and word unspoken and the uncontained which contains all things". The knowledge of God is. "knowledge in ignorance, participation in what cannot be shared". Theology is the "form of the formless, shaping of shapeless things, symbols of the non-symbolic, forms of things without form"; it expresses "dissimilar similarities drawing everything into its eternal embrace". Truth is identified with immediate experience, Theology with the "vision of God", this "unperfected perfection". The theologians who see God "see the inexpressible beauty of God himself invisibly. They hold without touching; without understanding, they understand His imageless image, His formless form, His shapeless shape, in a visionless vision and an uncompounded beauty, at the same time simple and varied."1) It is not accidental that the undivided Church of the first eight centuries and its historical continuity in Orthodoxy in the East based its catechesis of the faithful, that is the announcement and transmission of her truth, chiefly on the liturgy. From the liturgical cycle of the Church's services (vespers, matins, the Liturgy, the hours) theology became a poem and a song - experienced more than thought out by syllogistic inferences. Initiation into the truth of the Church is participation in her way of life, in a festive gathering of the faithful, in the visible actualization and revelation of the new humanity which has conquered death. e. Greek philosophy and Christian experience Perhaps it is superfluous to add this, but to avoid any possible wrong interpretation, we must say it: The priority of empirical participation in relation to the intellectual approach to ecclesial truth means neither a cloudy mysticism and refuge in emotional exaltations, nor to overlook and devalue logical thought. We must not forget that the first Church was born and developed within the boundaries of the Greek world, of the hellenized Roman Empire. And the mentality and psychological makeup of the Greeks was incompatible with obscure mysticism and naïf sentimentality. On the contrary, the Greek sought from the new experience of ecclesial life answers to his own problems and questions - questions which the ancient Greek and hellenistic philosophical tradition had formulated and investigated in a remarkable manner, unique in the history of man. The Greek mind demanded that it express the Church's truth with its own speech. This demand constituted a very sharp historical challenge as much for hellenism as for the Church. It was a dramatic meeting of two attitudes to life essentially opposed to one another, which gave birth to the great heresies of the first centuries. But the solutions which were provoked because of these heresies, determined the possibilities for survival of Greek philosophy within the limits of life of the Christian world. The two parties which met (Greek philosophy and Christian experience) represented an astonishing dynamic of life, which finally transformed the antithesis into creative synthesis; the Christian Church succeeded in answering with her own given experience the philosophical questions of the Greeks. And Greek philosophy demonstrated the possibilities of its own language and method in the verification of the new understanding of existence, the world and history. The result was an excellent achievement of Greek reason which, without betraying Christian truth and the apophatic knowledge of this truth, remained absolutely consistent with he demands for philosophical formulations, thus actualizing a radical break in the whole history of philosophy. The Greek Fathers of the Church in uninterrupted succession from the second to the fifteenth centuries were the pioneers of this achievement.”-Christos Yannaras, Elements of Faith
Recommended edit to title “…and statues” - the Orthodox do not “sanctify” statues. The 7th Ecumenical Council makes clear what kinds of imagery are appropriate. This might also need a part 2 to go over those important nuances.
They do, in Russia and Ukraine.
We do you statues. In some Slavic nations and in the Western Rite.
Statues are most definitely a form of Iconography, and I wish we used them more.
I dont see a big controversy between 2D and 3D models 😂😂
“...the devil led the enemies of the church from one extreme to the other, from worshiping the images of men and animals in paganism to destroying the images of Christ and the saints in iconoclasm.”-Jaroslav Pelikan
Thank you for making this presentation on icons from a mostly neutral stance. Just the facts Jack. Let each person come to their own conclusion.
Awesome! That's why Theology Academy exists. We believe in history, academia, and research!!
Just found this channel. Fantastic work. Thank you!
Many thanks for your support
Interesting and well done
Thank you! Cheers!
It’s an absolute power and corruption among tug-of-war
The first to introduce icons in the church was the Eastern Greek
No the firat Icon was made by St John the evangelist
@@shaymi2518 whereand of what? You're saying a Jew made an icon?
@@MSHOOD123 tthe holy apostle of Jesus Christ ome of the first Christians made the first icon
@@shaymi2518 when did he make and what. Did he make?
@@shaymi2518it wasn’t John it was luke
I honestly do not understand how the explicit use of icons in worship is considered acceptable and (by some) required!
How can John of Damascus say that προσκύνεσις is appropriate for images, when the Septuagint *EXPLICITLY* denies this!
Οὐ *προσκυνήσεις* αὐτοῖς (εἰδώλοις) οὐδὲ μὴ λατρεύσεις αὐτοῖς
- Exodus 20:5
English: "Thou shalt not bow to them, nor serve them"
The word προσκύνεσις (as a verb) is right there!
I do not understand!
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The Septuagint says in Exodus 20:4 "εἴδωλον" (IDOLS) Idols are images of false gods, you shall not bow down to IDOLS. Catholic and Orthodox do not have images of false gods, they have Images of the True God (Jesus) and the saints (Whom we respect, not worship, they are not gods)
@@VincenzoRutiglianoDiaz The Israelites called the golden Calf יהוה, claiming it was their God, yet we call it an idol, not an image.
The bronze Serpent that Moses crafted was surely not a false god, yet Hezekiah, King of Judah, who was considered a righteous king, destroyed it because the people of Israel burnt incense to it (מקטרים). Had the people of Israel claimed they were merely venerating it, do you believe that would have stopped Hezekiah?
One can claim they are not worshipping an image, but in the eyes of God, it does not matter what one says. If one gives an image that which is due to God and which is explicitly forbiden to give to others, is he not guilty of idolatry? Has he not made that image an idol?
@@Caralaza amen I agree
@@Caralaza when worshiping is being done then indeed needs to be removed like the serpent
But when it doesn’t it shouldn’t as far as I know I see them as icons not idols because I don’t worship them nor do I see them as something above or similar to divinity but only a picture used to spread the gospel or faith in pictures like films and cartoons etc.
John of Damascus is wrong here
Please elaborate
Saint John of Damascus is right! Funny how some people think they know better than great saints and theologians such as Saint John of Damascus.
You dad was wrong in giving birth to you.
@@3wL7 John Of Damascus is objectively wrong his a great guy but his not infallible.there's a problem with how he uses scripture for icondules.
For example He used the serpent image Moses in old testament. The same passage God said "Look beyond the staff, the serpent and look to me" so his argument doesn't hold water.
Also every believer is a Saint a true Christian isna Saint. Saint isn't entitled to canonized people
Colossians 1:15a
(Jesus) is the image of the invisible God.
Aaand that's why I left Orthodoxy, along with Saint worshiping heresy.
Apostasy stretches back centuries, even among many other doctrinal issues such as the Trinity/Unity and dress.
Prior to Constantine, the kingdom of God had nothing or very little to do with the kingdom of the world. Scripture and the early church believed and wrote that there was absolutely nothing in common between the kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness. However, Emperor Constantine unwittingly initiated the UNION of church and state. For the first time in history, unordained Emperors (from the kingdom of darkness) were making decisions for the bishops (kingdom of light) and the BISHOPS SURPRISINGLY ALLOWED IT!!!! That is what corrupted the church and started new inventions which the Apostolic fathers NEVER SPOKE NOR TAUGHT including veneration of Mary, praying to dead saints and veneration of icons.
Note that in this video, Empress Theodora from the kingdom of darkness mandated all Christians to venerate icons! And instead of martyrdom, the "christians" chose to comply similar to what the lapsi did during Cyprians time!!!! which is the very opposite of what the early church and martyrs would do. If a Christian is to walk by FAITH and NOT by SIGHT, icons encourage the opposite and therefore blatantly disobey St. Paul and the First and Second of the Ten Commandments. If the Jews who traditionally defined idolatry condemn icons, most probably they are biblically correct.
Note that prior to Constantine, ALL true Christians DIED for their FAITH. After Constantine, even the Bishops KILLED for their faith, the very opposite of the Lord's Sermon on the Mount. This is what happens when humans force the union of church and state. In the same way, all the council inventions AFTER Constantine have some flavor of corruption, with the things of the world constantly polluting the things of God.
The Catholic and Orthodox churches define idolatry as worshipping images of false gods, not venerating saints. The jews say icons are idolatry, but they also reject Jesus Christ so why should I listen to jews instead of the Church?
Protestantism always seems to boil down to "Romans and Greeks are bad and wrong, jews are good and righteous."
your whole understanding of christianty is false. lmao. Constantine converted to christianty very late. and again churches like Syro-Malabbar church and Ethipion church were not connected with CONSTANTINE.
They all the apostolic churches.
they all do veneration of saints, praying to saints and veneration of icons...
lmao. the first MARIAN STATUE was carved by St.Luke the Evengelist.
Not only the apostles recevied the HOLY SPIRIT. the church fathers from then upto now all spoke with the power of HOLY SPIRIT.
never does the early church beleived in SOLA SCRIPTURE HERESY . apart from the church leaders none of the christains ever used any scripture.
BIBLE ALONE IS A HERESY,
veneration of martyrs came since the 1st century. read the history.
EVERYTHING from icon veneration, veneration of saints and Mary's Queenship all came from the apostles. The apostles only wrote letters when they were physically unable to preach the churches,
so 99% of the apostolic teachings were given to the churches verbally. those teachings comes from the apostolic tradition and verbal teachings of the church.
bible only have 1% of the apostolic teachings.
YOU BIBLE WORSHIPPER.
You satanic pawn, repent. STOP THESE HERESIES,
without knowing history you link everything to Constantine. very satanic features..
@@finncollins5696 "whole understanding"? All I mentioned was history and made my comments. . All you mention is unwritten and unverified tradition. I do NOT believe in SOLA SCRIPTURA either as understood by most protestants. The church "wrote" the New Testament and the church and its tradition MUST support it and CANNOT contradict it. Furthermore, where the New Testament is silent, we refrain from developing theological inventions.
Iconography is acceptable when it helps us worship the one true God. But when we start kissing icons and images, that is IDOLATRY PLAIN AND SIMPLE.
@@finncollins5696 "whole understanding"? All I mentioned was history and made my comments. . All you mention is unwritten and unverified tradition. I do NOT believe in SOLA SCRIPTURA either as understood by most protestants. The church "wrote" the New Testament and the church and its tradition MUST support it and CANNOT contradict it. Furthermore, where the New Testament is silent, we refrain from developing theological inventions.
Iconography is acceptable when it helps us worship the one true God, or we simply want to emulate and model our lives by some saints. But when we start kissing icons and images, that is WORSHIP, hence IDOLATRY - PLAIN AND SIMPLE.
...and when we cannot worship without them, then that is walking by sight and NOT by faith. "What is not of faith is sin" again, plain and simple, I see no other reasonable interpretation. We live and walk by faith (what we CANNOT SEE) and NOT by sight (what we can see). Religion has truly become materialistic instead of mystical
BTW, the Nicene Creed's formulation was coordinated by Constantine and successors. The bishops who used to be beggars and even homeless became totally supported by the Emperor. The early church fathers were not even clear about the Trinity. They had different versions. In the first 300 years of Christianity, a believer was always evaluated by his Christian walk and Christlikeness. After Constantine and Athanasius, a believer's faith was evaluated more by his doctrine instead of his life. What an unbiblical change!!!!
The whole New Testament is clear that all believers will be judged by their works (godly or demonic) and NOT by their doctrine.
Bible worshipper? A bible worshipper is someone who kisses the Bible in public. I never do that. That is BIBLIOLATRY at its worst.
Venerating our beloved blessed mother Virgin Mary is different Jesus Christ Himself gave us His holy mother to be our holy mother while hanging on the cross drawing His last breath(John 19:26-27) think of the moment's importance and as always you're the one who has a free will to accept or deny Jesus Christ's gifts(everything is given to you by our Lord and God Jesus Christ you just have to accept my beloved 🙏)
“In the 1920s, archaeologists began to uncover a significant find: a garrison city that had been built on the banks of the Euphrates, at the eastern edge of the Roman Empire (today it’s in Syria). When the Persians attacked, around AD 256, Roman soldiers strengthened their defenses by packing earth and sand into several of the buildings that stood along the inside of the city wall. But the Persians conquered that city nevertheless, then abandoned it. This beleaguered city, known as Dura-Europos, then enjoyed a little posthumous good fortune: nothing was ever built on top of its ruins. When scientists began removing the centuries of sand, they found it perfectly preserved.
One of the buildings that had been preserved was a Christian house church-the earliest yet found. Its walls were decorated with paintings, and show many biblical scenes: Christ and St. Peter walking on the water, the healing of the paralytic, and the women coming to Christ’s tomb to anoint his body (Orthodox call them the “myrrh-bearing women”). Archaeologists also found scrolls bearing Eucharistic prayers in Hebrew. (They resemble the Eucharistic prayers in the Didache, an important early Christian text, written about AD 80, when the Gospels were being written).
This was clearly a church building. An Orthodox church built today, or at any point in history, could look much the same, with walls covered in icons (as at St. Felicity).
But something else was found in the ruins of that city. Another of the preserved buildings was a [Jewish] synagogue-and it, too, was covered with paintings of biblical scenes. Abraham and Isaac, Pharaoh’s daughter finding baby Moses, Ezekiel’s visions, narrative scenes, portraits of Bible characters-about a hundred images when the building was complete, of which fifty-eight remain. These paintings resemble the ones in the house church nearby. They look like icons.
Both Christians and Jews of Dura-Europos filled their worship spaces with images drawn from the Scriptures, and did not think this was idolatry. Greco-Roman homes had long been decorated with wall paintings and mosaics, and the custom may have passed over to religious buildings without a lot of debate.
But in the seventh century something happened that provoked a great deal of debate. The Muslim faith arose and swept through the region, and three of the Pentarchy cities-Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria-as well as many other Christian communities fell to the sword. Islam forbade the use of images, and some Christians wondered if God were permitting this destruction as punishment for idolatry.
Backed by the command of the Roman emperor in Constantinople, the iconoclasts (it means “icon smashers”) began destroying every icon in reach. Images were burned, crushed, hacked, thrown in the sea, and covered with paint or plaster. This is why so few early icons remain; the ones with a chance to survive were in remote locations, like the Roman catacombs, the St. Catherine Monastery on Mt. Sinai, or the buried church of Dura-Europos.
No doubt there had been excesses among those who loved icons, and it was right for the church to spend some time thinking through the question. What is an icon, and what is an idol? Does an image of a person relate or connect to that person in any real way? Does how we treat an image pass through it, so to speak, to the person himself?
You might think, “Of course not. That’s superstition.” But remember some years ago when the singer Sinéad O’Connor tore up a photo of the pope on live television? There was immediate and widespread outrage, and not only among those who liked the pope. It struck people as appallingly rude, and seriously damaged the singer’s career. But someone could well say, “Why all the fuss? She only tore up paper and ink. It didn’t actually hurt him.”
Yet we sense somehow that a photo is more than paper and ink; it connects with the person in some way. Think about how people react when a flag is burned, or how crowds rejoiced when a statue of Stalin or Saddam Hussein was pulled down. The honor or dishonor shown to an image is passed on to its prototype; that’s something we grasp instinctively.
A monk called St. Stephen the New (he was “New” in the eighth century) showed the iconoclast emperor Constantine that he himself knew this. St. Stephen was challenged to trample on an icon of Christ, to prove he agreed that it was merely wood and paint, and that such an action gave no disrespect to the Lord. Instead, he placed on the ground a coin bearing the emperor’s image. He then set his foot upon it-and was immediately executed.“-Frederica Mathewes-Green, Welcome to the Orthodox Church
Thanks for taking the time to write such a wonderful explanation!
The paintings of biblical scenes or personages in ancient gathering places is not a proof of icon veneration; unless of course, there were admonitions written somewhere nearby for the faithful to venerate the depictions. Do such writings exist? If not, most likely they were used to teach people who were mostly illiterate or who had little to no access to the holy writings.
@@Jere616 I would recommend taking the time to read On Holy Images by St John of Damascus, and On the Holy Icons by St Theodore the Studite, having a proper understanding of how the early church understood icons, relics and veneration (yes you do see veneration even in the early church) it leads to having a proper understanding of the incarnation itself. Islam’s iconoclasm unfortunately had an influence and led to a lot of persecutions of Christians who kept the ancient practice of iconography (the iconodules.)
@@saenzperspectives A "proper understanding of the Incarnation" is to be had by iconography? How is this to be accepted by the church if the Apostles never taught such a thing nor did the ones who walked and lived with the earthly Lord Jesus for @ 3 1/2 years ever describe him to make way for the later icons that EOs claim were divinely approved? The only details we have from his earthly life were that he had a beard and a seamless robe and later, his crucifixion wounds.
@@Jere616 you’re begging the question fallaciously regarding the apostles. It’s due to you following the heresy of sola scriptura, which is an innovation, and ironically isn’t even according to the scriptures itself.
“So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught, whether by word of mouth or by letter from us.”
2 Thessalonians 2:15
But the point itself, just like when a heresy threatened the church they brought a council to clarify meaning in the council of Jerusalem as seen in Acts 15, they did the same with subsequent councils themselves when heresies threatened the ecclesial truth. Which is why them using language that wasn’t used before but showed biblical truths was important, just as the other ecumenical councils used language to clarify biblical truths rather than making innovative changes such as the heresy of Protestantism and sola scriptura.
“...What we call today dogma, appeared only when heresy came to threaten the experience of the ecclesial truth. The word heresy means the choice, selection and preference of one part of the truth to the detriment of the whole truth, the catholic truth. Heresy is the opposite of catholicity. The heretics absolutized just one aspect of the experiential certainty of the Church and so inevitably relativized all the others. The procedure of this absolutization was always intellectual a theoretical preference which usually simplified and schematized the understanding of the ecclesial truth. Classical examples in history are Nestorianism and monophysitism. The first absolutized the humanity of Christ, the second His divinity. And in both cases, they relativized and finally destroyed the one entire truth of the incarnation of God, of the God-manhood of Christ. Nestorianism preached an ethical model of a perfect man, monophysitism an abstract idea of a fleshless God.
The Church reacted to heresies by marking out the terms of her truth, by defining, that is, her experiential expertise. It is very characteristic that the first designation that was given to what today we call dogma was a definition, that is, a limit, a boundary of truth. Today's "dogmas" were the definitions of the Ecumenical Councils those theoretical decisions which formulated the truth of the Church, fixing a border between this truth and its corruption by heresy.
b. The limits of experience
Perhaps an example accessible to experience could elucidate the function of definitions or limits of truth. Let us suppose that someone appears who claims that maternal love means relentless strictness and wild daily beating of a child. All of us who have a different experience of maternal love will protest about this distortion and will oppose to it a definition of our own experience: For us maternal love is affection, tenderness, care, all combined with a judicious and constructive strictness.
Up to the moment when this falsification of the truth of maternal love appeared, there had existed no need to define our experience. Maternal love was something self-evident to us all, an experiential knowledge objectively indeterminate but also commonly understood. The need for a limit or definition is connected with the threat that maternal love may begin to be considered something other than what we all believe it to be.
But the definition simply signifies or marks off the limits of our experience, it cannot replace it. A man who has never in his life known maternal love (because he is an orphan or for some other reason), can know the definition but cannot know maternal love itself. In other words, knowledge of formulas and definitions of truth is not to be identified with the knowledge of truth itself. Therefore even an atheist can have learned to know well that the God of the Church is triadic, that Christ is perfect God and perfect man, but this does not mean that he knows these truths.
c. Apophaticism
Thus we attain the understanding of the attitude or way in which the Church faces the knowledge of her truth - a stance and way which, in accord with established usage, we call the apophaticism of knowledge. Apophaticism means our refusal to exhaust knowledge of the truth in its formulation. The formulation is necessary and required, because it defines the truth, it separates and distinguishes it from every distortion and falsification of it. Therefore for the members of the Church the limits or dogmas are the given "fixed points" of truth, which do not admit of changes or differentiated versions in formulating them. At the same time though, this formulation neither replaces nor exhausts the knowledge of the truth, which remains experiential and practical, a way of life and not a theoretical construction. The apophatic attitude leads Christian theology to use the language of poetry and images for the interpretation of dogmas much more than the language of conventional logic and schematic concepts. The conventional logic of everyday understanding can very easily give man a false sense of a sure knowledge which, being won by the intellect, is already exhausted by it, completely possessed by it. While poetry with the symbolisms and images which it uses, always exhibits a sense from within the words and beyond the words, a concept which corresponds more to common experiences of life and less to cerebral conceptions.
d. Figurative language
In the texts of the theologians and Fathers of the Church concepts often contradict one another conceptually in order that the transcendence of every representation of their content may become possible, and that the possibility of empirical participation of the whole man (and not only the mind) in the truth expressed therein may show through the logical antitheses. The God of the Church is "Being beyond all being, Divinity more than divine, the nameless name, beginning beyond all beginning, mind beyond the power of thought and word unspoken and the uncontained which contains all things". The knowledge of God is. "knowledge in ignorance, participation in what cannot be shared". Theology is the "form of the formless, shaping of shapeless things, symbols of the non-symbolic, forms of things without form"; it expresses "dissimilar similarities drawing everything into its eternal embrace". Truth is identified with immediate experience, Theology with the "vision of God", this "unperfected perfection". The theologians who see God "see the inexpressible beauty of God himself invisibly. They hold without touching; without understanding, they understand His imageless image, His formless form, His shapeless shape, in a visionless vision and an uncompounded beauty, at the same time simple and varied."1)
It is not accidental that the undivided Church of the first eight centuries and its historical continuity in Orthodoxy in the East based its catechesis of the faithful, that is the announcement and transmission of her truth, chiefly on the liturgy. From the liturgical cycle of the Church's services (vespers, matins, the Liturgy, the hours) theology became a poem and a song - experienced more than thought out by syllogistic inferences. Initiation into the truth of the Church is participation in her way of life, in a festive gathering of the faithful, in the visible actualization and revelation of the new humanity which has conquered death.
e. Greek philosophy and Christian experience
Perhaps it is superfluous to add this, but to avoid any possible wrong interpretation, we must say it: The priority of empirical participation in relation to the intellectual approach to ecclesial truth means neither a cloudy mysticism and refuge in emotional exaltations, nor to overlook and devalue logical thought. We must not forget that the first Church was born and developed within the boundaries of the Greek world, of the hellenized Roman Empire. And the mentality and psychological makeup of the Greeks was incompatible with obscure mysticism and naïf sentimentality. On the contrary, the Greek sought from the new experience of ecclesial life answers to his own problems and questions - questions which the ancient Greek and hellenistic philosophical tradition had formulated and investigated in a remarkable manner, unique in the history of man.
The Greek mind demanded that it express the Church's truth with its own speech. This demand constituted a very sharp historical challenge as much for hellenism as for the Church. It was a dramatic meeting of two attitudes to life essentially opposed to one another, which gave birth to the great heresies of the first centuries. But the solutions which were provoked because of these heresies, determined the possibilities for survival of Greek philosophy within the limits of life of the Christian world. The two parties which met (Greek philosophy and Christian experience) represented an astonishing dynamic of life, which finally transformed the antithesis into creative synthesis; the Christian Church succeeded in answering with her own given experience the philosophical questions of the Greeks. And Greek philosophy demonstrated the possibilities of its own language and method in the verification of the new understanding of existence, the world and history. The result was an excellent achievement of Greek reason which, without betraying Christian truth and the apophatic knowledge of this truth, remained absolutely consistent with he demands for philosophical formulations, thus actualizing a radical break in the whole history of philosophy. The Greek Fathers of the Church in uninterrupted succession from the second to the fifteenth centuries were the pioneers of this achievement.”-Christos Yannaras, Elements of Faith