By Walt Garlington
The first Sunday of Lent in the Orthodox Church celebrates the restoration of the icons – specially stylized paintings of Christ, the Mother of God and other saints, and the angels – after more than one hundred years of imperial persecution of those who venerated them. Though the official theology of much of Southern Protestantism is firmly against the use of religious images in Christian life, much of Southern life is nevertheless very favorable to icons.
In many a home in Dixie there will usually be displayed at least a few exceptionally old pictures of departed family members that look something like the one below.
(Photograph of Confederate Cavalry Commander JEB Stuart)
Southrons show these pictures of their ancestors as a proclamation of their love for them and to keep their memory alive both for themselves and for future generations. These also are some of the main reasons Orthodox Christians display icons.
The sentiment of Southerners towards these images of their ancestors is summarized well by George Fitzhugh in his book Sociology for the South:
The Roman dwelling was a holy and sacred place; a temple of the gods, over which Manes, and Lares, and Penates watched and hovered. Each hearthstone was an altar on which daily sacrifice was offered. The family was hedged all round with divinities, with departed ancestry purified and apotheosised, who with kindly interest guarded and guided the household. Roman elevation of sentiment and of character is easily accounted for, when we reflect that they felt themselves ever in the presence of deities.
The pictures of noble Southern ancestors have become something akin to the Roman household gods and goddesses that guarded and blessed the house and family. With Orthodox icons, however, we get the proper fulfilment of this desire to fill our homes with virtue and holiness and the divine, with guardians and intercessors. The wonderful teacher of Holy Scripture and the spiritual life in general, Father Athanasios Mitilinaios (+2006), says of the holy icons:
It is also known that whatever a holy person touches in this world, gives grace, conveys grace. In the Gospel according to St. Mark, this happened with Christ. Pay attention to what he says:
“And wherever He went, into villages, or cities, or the countryside, they laid the sick in the streets and begged Him that they might touch even the hem of His garment; and all those who touched Him were healed.” (Mark 6: 56)
As it happened with Christ, my beloved, He now gives to the Apostles and Saints. Listen:
“…they brought out the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats, that at the least the shadow of Peter passing by might fall on some of them.” (Acts 5:15)
They were all healed. They took the handkerchiefs and aprons of the Apostle Paul, threw them on the patients and they recovered.7
Why? Because the objects that came in contact with their skin were sanctified. Thus, sanctified people, when their lives were hagiographed8 [i.e., displayed on icons—W.G.], these icons are now miraculous. This is why, my beloved, icons work miracles.
He says further,
Moreover, an icon, my beloved, can also become – pay attention – a portal of mercy. How can it become a portal of mercy? When I know that if a door opens, I will find mercy there, I will find my bread there, I will find Grace there, I will find help there, I will find healing there, I knock on that door. The icon is a portal of mercy. Do not forget this. It is the phenomenon of miracle-working icons. We go in front of an icon, we pray and we seek, and the saint depicted gives us that which we ask for. We say: “Panagia, save me”, and not abstractly, of course, wherever we can we pray, but for all good intentions and purposes, we have the icon of Panagia in front of us and we say, “Most-holy Mother of God, save us.” Or we go to the icon of St. Demetrios: “Saint Demetrios, save me.” What does this mean? Will the saint give us a helping hand? Yes! The icon, the painting, we say, the window, was up to that point closed. Then it opened, and the grace of the saint went out.
Moreover, Southerners have a peculiar fascination with the past, with history:
Hurston’s genius with words captures the centrality of history to Southerners’ worldview as well as to their attempts to understand immediate problems and the ultimate prospects for their society. A lot of the past did get “left over” among all elements of southern society, and the abiding presence of the past in the regional culture reinforced and informed Southerners’ reading of history. Neither naïve nor uncritical in their admiration for aspects of previous civilizations, they searched the past for a template for what it meant to be human: nobility, honor, courage, piety, loyalty, faithfulness, generosity, and a capacity to survive both victory and defeat with grace whether in public matters or private (Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene Genovese, The Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders’ Worldview. New York: Cambridge UP, 2005, p. 7).
History is never far from a Southerner’s thoughts. The past is very much the air he breathes, which again makes icons a good match for him, as they also keep the past present for us through God’s Grace that is present in them. Fr. Athanasios explains:
An icon first brings us closer to the historical event. For example, the Baptism of Christ is a historical event, and it is well known that history, that is, the history of mankind, cannot be evaporated and disappear. History cannot become ideology. History is history, it is events, and history determines our salvation, because our salvation will happen in space and time. Let us not forget that the mystery of the divine Economy, of God becoming man, is an event, it is history.
Pay attention, I will say it a second and a third time. We cannot evaporate the events. We cannot idealize history. History is history. These are the events. So if we remove history, we basically have no icon, because the icon expresses a historical event. The icon will tell the story. It expresses the historical event.
After bringing us closer to the historical event, the icon wants to connect the believer of each era with the historical event it depicts. How is the believer connected? Is this connection a connection in the memory, like with a photo album, when we look an event from the past? Or it it, as we say, a sentimental approach? To look at an icon to remember something, to feel something. My beloved, it is no more than an approach to the original event in the past! It means that every believer of every era, of every moment in history, approaches this historic event. It is approached not sentimentally, nor in remembrance, but in reality.
When, for example, we say in our hymnology: “The Virgin on this day gives birth to Him who transcends essence”4 or “Today You are baptized in the Jordan, O Lord”5 or “Today is hung upon the Wood”6 this “today” is not literal. It is not, as we would say, the historical Present, but it is today because today I am approaching the event. The event is not far from me. The fact that I am separated by time does not matter. I am not far away. I approach the event and the event approaches me. Therefore, every moment connects me to the original event, and this is what the icon shows me, this is what the icon expresses to me.
And while dogmatically, as said above, most of Southern Christianity has not been inclined to use icons in church life, Southern Christians do in fact endorse the theology behind icons in various ways. They see, for instance, the created world as an icon of God:
Far from seeing conflict between revealed religion and nature, they insisted upon the mutual dependence of the two. The order and beauty so manifest in nature pointed, for them, to a supernatural wisdom and directed the observer to a divine cause, thereby confirming and reinforcing the teachings of Scripture. . . . To reject the study of God’s handiwork was to close one avenue through which man might approach the Almighty. To fear the consequences of rational inquiry into nature was to separate the Creator from his creation (James Farmer, Jr, The Metaphysical Confederacy, 2nd edn., Macon, Ga., Mercer UP, 1999, pgs. 88-9).
(Icon of Christ creating the world)
They recognize that man is an image/icon of God, and that Christ is the image/icon of the Father (this is noted throughout, e.g., Rev. Robert L. Dabney’s Systematic Theology).
(Icon of the creation of man)
It has been said that the Orthodox Faith completes Southern culture, transfigures it. We have seen this in the foregoing, and with regard to icons it is true in one other sense, the most important sense. They perfect Dixie’s understanding about Christ – He Who has been so central to Southern life for centuries; Who has been the focus of her favorite hymns (‘Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!’; ‘Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, sweetest name I know’; etc.), Whose Name has often been on a Southron’s tongue (‘Lord have mercy!’; ‘O Good Lord!’, etc.); Who even now ‘haunts’ the South in this age of spiritual decay – that He really is God in the flesh. From Fr. Athanasios once more:
The theology of the icon is an enormous and most important issue, so important that our Church honors the Fathers of the Seventh Ecumenical Council on the first Sunday of Lent, calling it “Sunday of Orthodoxy”. Although the issue of icons is one of many issues that constitute Orthodoxy, the Fathers considered it to be the most important.
Some are surprised to hear this and say, “Can one issue out of all the issues possibly be called the most important? Why icons?” Where, then, is the importance of the whole issue? It is, of course, the most important because of one aspect of theology, to which we owe our debt of knowledge to the icon.
The icon, my beloved, makes clear that God the Word really became a true man. How does the icon express this? In that we are able to depict Jesus Christ, and also the way in which we can represent the person of Jesus Christ, because here is the whole battle, here is the whole war, here is the whole struggle – if we are able to depict God.
Yes. It is possible for us to depict God. How so? Because He became human. The theology of the icon refers to and is based on the Gospel, and is of central importance to the entire Faith: “The Word became flesh.” (John 1:14) If, then, “the Word became flesh”, that is, as long as the Son of God became human, then it is possible to depict Him.
This is why one of the hymns from today’s Orthros service says:
“We now restore the icon of Your flesh, O Lord, and give it relative reverence, and by it show forth the great mystery of Your Dispensation; for You, O Lover of mankind, truly appeared in the nature of flesh unto us, not in seeming appearance as say the sons of Manis, who oppose You. Through Your icon we are led up to a longing and love for You.”
So you see that the icon constitutes a central place, because the accepting or not accepting the icon is to ultimately accept or not accept the truth of the taking flesh of the Son of God. This is why the issue of icons is central.
The acceptance or rejection of these teachings has tremendous consequences for mankind:
The issue is important, because if the Son of God really did not become man, then man cannot become god. That is, the theosis [deification] of man is impossible. That is, the salvation of man is impossible. If, however, God became man, if He partook of our nature, then this closeness of His to us offers us salvation.
Because of this approach to us, that is, His taking our nature and divinizing it and ascending with it into heaven and glorifying it, this nature of ours was also made able to be glorified in the person of the Word of God and we are all able to be saved. Therefore He is our forerunner in the heavens.
If, however, He did not become man, then God was God and remained God, and nothing more, and there remains a division of essences. In other words, there would be no union of essences. The union of essences was accomplished in the person of Jesus Christ. How? Because He truly became human.
Without the icon, human life becomes deformed, deflected from its true end:
I will also note that we think of Christianity as nothing more than a set of ethical rules which will improve our lives. Moreover, we ignore the resurrection of the dead, because we forget about the “body”, and that “our soul will go to Paradise”, even God’s Kingdom, because the Kingdom of God is where our being is complete. In other words, it is not souls only in the Resurrected life, but the soul with the body. Jesus Christ ascended to heaven with His human nature. We ignore this. And you understand, that by ignoring our theosis, the theosis of our entire being, we are no longer ordering our lives properly.
So, why not eat, drink and be merry? “The body is worth nothing compared to the soul,” we say. “Why not fornicate, then, if the body plays no part at all?” Because the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, it is a temple of the Holy Triune God. The body is to be considered. The body will rise high up, and this is always expressed, I repeat, with the icon, because the icon expresses the theanthropic3 nature of Christ, that God really become human, and, consequently, I also will become a god by the grace of God.
Dixie has often been described as a garden. By rejecting icons, she denies her nature and becomes a barren desert. In the words of the bishops of the Romanian Orthodox Church, ‘The Synodal message states that “icons are windows to eternity through which our soul rises and spiritually grows,” and a temple or home without icons “resembles a desert, a desolate place without God.”’
Paradise, in a very real sense, is beckoning to the South from the ‘windows’ (icons) of the Orthodox Church.
(Icon of Adam and Eve in the Garden)
Walt Garlington is a chemical engineer turned writer and editor of the website Confiteri: A Southern Perspective. This longtime Southern Baptist, then Anglican, was united to the Orthodox Church in 2012 and makes his home in Louisiana where he attends a GOA parish.
