The Second Iconoclastic Period.
What is important in the renewed debate is that a new and formidable apologist, St. Theodore the Studite, moves to the forefront, clarifying the relationship between the image and its prototype in such a way as to enhance our understanding of the symbolic and iconic with particular precision.
It was in their own synod, held in 754 under Constantine Copronymos, that the iconoclasts set the stage for the debate undertaken by St. Theodore. They accused the Orthodox of falling to two separate heresies in painting an icon of Christ. On the one hand they were accused of trying to portray both the human and the divine natures of Christ, thus running the risk of confusing these two and resulting in the heresy of Monophysitism. Only the Divine Will could so ineffably and without confusion unite the divine and human in Christ, the iconoclasts warned. If, on the other hand, the Orthodox were to agree with the view that the divine nature cannot be depicted, as the iconoclasts rightly maintained, then that would leave them only the human nature of Christ to represent. And if that were all that they depicted, they would be separating the divine and the human, which would constitute the heresy of Nestorianism.
The Orthodox response to this seeming dilemma was formulated in the exhaustive treatment of this and all iconoclastic arguments during the sessions of the Seventh cumenical Synod in 787. And their response formed an integral part of the apologetics of the second iconoclastic period. The Fathers gathered in the synod evoked the ancient Patristic distinction between person (
hypostasis) and nature (essence), a distinction first systematically put forth in the thinking of the Cappadocian Fathers. The specific focus of the Cappadocians was Trinitarian theology, and they determined that, with regard to the Holy Trinity, we must speak of three
hypostases and one essence. This is the same terminology was then employed in the Christological definitions at a later time in the early Church. In particular, at Chalcedon the Orthodox posited a union of two natures, the human and the divine, in the one divine person of Christ. Outside the members of the Holy Trinity, it is usual to speak of any individual (or object) as being distinguished by a hypostasis (person, form) and a nature (essence). On the basis of this Patristic witness, the iconodules were able to state that the error of the iconoclasts, then, was their constant tendency to conceive of the icon as being of the same
nature as its prototype. In fact, the only icon to which they could give their approval was the Eucharist, a view which the Fathers of the Seventh Synod flatly rejected. The Eucharist, they argued, is not an image, but is, rather, identical to its prototype, noting that "neither the Lord, nor the Apostles, nor the Fathers, ever used the term 'images' to speak of the unbloody sacrifice offered by the priest, but always called it the very Body and Blood." (10) As for a possible essential relationship between the icon and its prototype, St. Theodore the Studite comments that, "...no one could be so foolish as to think that reality and its shadow, ...the prototype and its representation, the cause and the consequence are by nature [according to essence] identical." (11) Yet this was precisely the argument of the iconoclasts with regard to the sacred image. Thus their failure to understand
why the veneration of the image reaches up to the prototype, if simply because they failed to understand the nature of the hypostasis of the icon, which disallows the stark distinction established by the iconoclasts between the image and its prototype according to essence alone.
St. Theodore summarized the arguments of the iconodules during the second iconoclastic period in a particularly brilliant passage which establishes the similarity or commonality of image and prototype
qua hypostasis. In this summation, we find a clear and compelling understanding of the natural relationship between image and prototype which also accounts for the natural process by which veneration of the image lifts up to its prototypewhy the veneration accrues to the prototype:
[In an icon] the prototype is in the image by similarity of hypostasis, which does not have a different principle of definition for the prototype and for the image. Therefore, we do not understand that the image lacks equality with the prototype and has an inferior glory in respect to similarity, but in respect to its different essence. The essence of the image is not of a nature to be venerated, although the one who is portrayed appears in it for veneration. Therefore, there is no introduction of a different kind of veneration, but the image has one and the same veneration with the prototype, in accordance with the identity of likeness. (12)
