To write The Slavery of Death I did a deep dive into Eastern Orthodox theology. I did so to explore the Christus Victor themes in Orthodox soteriology, how they place death at the center of the human predicament. That is something I've already discussed in this series, how salvation concerns ontology (human finitude) as much as morality (love, social justice, and our need for grace). During my time studying Orthodox soteriology I also explored Orthodox iconography. Because of this, icons have become an important part of my devotional life.
For this series, here's the point I want to make about Orthodox icons. Icons are not merely "art." Icons are not simply "pictures." Rather, as the Orthodox put it, icons are "windows into heaven." That is to say, the icons ontologically participate in the realities they visually display. When you look at, say, an icon of a saint, that saint is really looking back at you through the icon. Just like you and I can look at each other through a glass window. Icons are mystical and sacramental in this way, ontological portals into heavenly realities. When you stand in an Orthodox church all the icons surrounding you display the "great cloud of witnesses" described in Hebrews 11. Heaven is directly "looking upon" the liturgy, connected and participating.
Let's now map all this onto our moral, existential, and ontological framework.
As a Protestant, my default approach to icons is primarily symbolic and aesthetic. The icon is "art." Holy and wholesome art, but primarily art. The icon, for me, isn't ontological. It isn't mystical or spooky, a real portal into the Otherworld. The icon isn't a "hole in the universe" through which another World can enter. The icon isn't the wardrobe that takes me into Narnia. My experience with the icon is largely symbolic and existential. The icon represents realities that are not immediately present. Heaven is vaguely "somewhere else" rather than looking directly at me.
It's this disconnection from the ontological layer that separates Christian art from Orthodox iconography. Christian art is moral and aesthetic, but not ontological. That Orthodox icons participate in and connect with ontological realities is what sits behind the Orthodox practices of icon veneration. Miss the ontological aspect of Orthodox iconography and you'll never understand veneration.
Personally, I find the Orthodox vision of icons as "windows into heaven" quite lovely. But as a Protestant I don't venerate icons. (Well, sometimes I do kiss icons and statues.) I stand, mostly, at an ontological remove. I find myself mainly on the aesthetic side of the experience and haven't wholly bridged over to the ontological. And a lot of that concerns practices. It's one thing to theologically appreciate an ontological insight. But it's quite another to experience ontological mysteries through practices of veneration. Incense, icon lamps, candles, bowing, kissing, and crossing yourself--these are practices that carry you across the art-to-ontology divide. And in many ways, icon veneration is just an example of what has to happen in all areas of our disenchanted lives if we are to bring the Impingement of the Real back into view.
Practices of hallowing and rituals of sacralizing, these are ontological interventions, ways to stitch ourselves back into the Real.
There is a vision here of how to punch a hole in the universe.
