Sign of the Cross: An Essay on Art and Fidelity

 The image has had a complex place within Christian theology. Despite the reduction of the debate to crudities in the 16th c., with the uncritical use of the 2nd Commandment to foster a "building-storm" against Roman idolatry, the question has dipped below the radar for most. It has become essentially a non-issue for most Protestants (with exception of devout Reformed committed to the Regulative Principle of Worship). On it's face, this quiet victory is good: the image is here to stay. But this empirical victory erases the far more difficult and challenging question: what is an image? can an image be false? can an image become an idol?

It's this point that's most important from the 17th c. The late Medieval era did not simply see a proliferation of ecclesiastical art open to iconodulia, but saw a boom in new image technologies. Tinkerers installed clockwork in crucifixes, allowing the statue to move. Similar mechanization made statues of saints move their eyes, hands, or head, creating a "pious fraud" in an experience of the miracle. These developments flowed from a long history of hagiography, where departed saints exert great power in the world through their relics and their images. While theoretically a gulf existed between palace theology and village practice, they often intersected. As one example, in 9th c. Byzantium, Theodore the Studite (a saint and pioneer of iconodulia apologetic) admired an inquirer who planned to use an image of St. Demetrios as his child's baptismal godfather. Theodore applauded this use of an image, for who better to defend and raise up the child than a heavenly defender of cities? Iconoclasts in this era did not dispute the image qua image per se, but the role the image had in piety. From the perspective of Byzantine historian Leslie Brubaker puts it:

"as soon as we leave the rarefied atmosphere of learned theological treatises, the properties of the sacred portrait so carefully distinguished by Byzantine churchmen collapse. This is true not only of 'popular' literature such as saints' lives and miracle accounts, but also of non-theological texts written by the same elevated churchmen" (Inventing Byzantine Iconoclasm, 111)

It was for this reason that the Carolingian church in the west refused to sign on to the Second Council of Nicaea (787). In historian Thomas X. Noble's Images, Icons, and the Carolingians, Noble argues that contrary to previous accounts, the Carolingian theologians (led by Theodulf of Orleans) precisely knew the problems in Nicaea II. Theodulf did not find the distinctions between "reverence" and "worship" sufficient to protect Christians from expecting the miraculous from wood and paint. In the tradition of Gregory the Great, Theodulf stood astride icondulic positions (embraced by the Byzantine era of the Roman papacy) and more iconoclastic positions. Claudius of Turin, a mainstay at the Carolingian court, received opposition for his more aggressive position. Agreeing with Theodulf that the boundary between reverence and worship was paper thing, the bishop removed images that attracted popular attention. More concerned about false worship, Claudius was not an iconoclast strictly. He sought to replace the images with more abstract ones (geometric) which would call out for intellectual worship and resist any collapse between sign and thing signified. Noble interprets Claudius as embracing an anti-materialist view of worship (hence his opposition to pilgrimages and holy relics). Whether or not this claim is true, Claudius' opposition raises the question of what the image actually is and how it relates to us.

The image is a form of language, but it is subsequent to language qua language. A picture may speak a thousand words, but mankind must first know those words. The unique vision of Christianity (which includes the faith of the OT saints and patriarchs all the way to Adam) is that the ear precedes the eye, not the other way around. The Christian knows God speaks first (ear) and then man sees, his attention directed to the sources of the Voice. The devil inverts this command structure: in man's disobedience his eyes are opened, now shuddering before the divine Voice. The Word is the Word eternally before the Word takes flesh. The ear is the organ of reception and obedience. It's not simply passive (hence the concept of being an active or good listener), it takes work. In contrast, the eye is the organ of judgement. Throughout Scripture, the eye of God can be a terrifying reality. As the broken psalmist puts it: "Remove Your gaze from me, that I may regain strength, Before I go away and am no more." (Ps. 39:13). It is judgement. However, an undeveloped eye, one which lacks the preceding grace of Wisdom crying out, will judge poorly. Thus, the image requires prior understanding. It is true that the image is a book for the unlettered, but the unlettered must first hear the word. One must hear in order to see. The written word is itself pictorial, a series of characters and signs that themselves chastely harken to the spoken word, to language. Simultaneously, the painted image is something to read, requiring a hermeneutic to properly understand its voice. The frozen word descends down from the living word, whether spoken or not (meaning it flows through the hands of the author).

Now the biblical justification for images qua images is present, the question now moves from the 2nd Commandment to the 8th/9th Commandment: You Shall Not Bear False Witness. What if an image lies? The pagan idols are not damnable simply because they're images of the divine world (otherwise the Cherubim and architecture of the Temple would be idolatrous) but because they lie. These sites claim privileges and powers that the "gods" (demons) claim to themselves. They rob the true Temple. Hence the golden calves that Aaron forges are not wrong because they depict other gods, but falsely depict God. Moses mediated between God and the People, not these golden calves (who were dead and dumb). But this imagistic idolatry is different than simply imagery. Most of the Temple's images were not mediatorial. In fact, the precise space where mediation took place (the Mercy-Seat) was empty. The Cherubim enthroned a space where the God of Israel would make himself present. But, again, this fact does not encapsulate all images, lest one thinks one speaks through the image to the one imaged; there are many words, even in sacred scripture and the songs of God's people, but only one covenantal name for Israel's God.

It's this problem that runs up against the later developments of iconodulic theology. Theodore the Studite (along with Patriarch Nicephoros of Constantinople) continued the iconodulic fight against semi-resurgent iconoclasm (semi-resurgent because, as Brubaker argues, the policies from the palace seem less theological than Constantine V's and more about copying a previous and successful reign). While there was no iconoclastic persecution (the sources are highly dubious), it still became an issue of ecclesiastical (and thus imperial-governmental) policy. Theodore, as mentioned above, could thrive in both the world of highly refined theologians and the vulgar laity. Theodore supported the use of an image for a godfather, but also made intelligent advances on the concept of an icon. For Theodore, the icon was a necessity from Christ's incarnation. Mankind had moved from the age of hearing to the age of seeing. Thus, just as God made Himself visible through flesh, man too could see God through the image of God's flesh. Through the use of Aristotelian categories, the icon became a "window of Heaven" a type to reflect the proto-type. Such art was not historicist, but realist: it was not God in Christ as He was in the 1st c., but a vision of God as He truly is now. The images of scripture were not simply "back then", but living words. Thus, Christ and the saints receive due reverence through their images when the images are revered. Of course, as later critics would note, philosophical pagans made the same arguments about temples and sites. But is this a problem?

Theodore's iconodulic arguments raise important questions about the "words" spoken in the image. The prosopic-portrait is quite popular in Byzantine iconography. While symbols of who this particular saint litter the iconic portrait, it is rather an abstract imaging of a particular person. It is a revelation of their face. 

Before I proceed further, I want to make a point about these images themselves. Brubaker makes a good point about the icon as a form of popular piety against the imperial restrictions. In her judgement, the iconoclastic regime of Constantine V was not anti-image per se, but against the images being reverenced. Later regimes continued a similar policy, with images sometimes covered or moved away from where they could be reverenced. In a few extreme cases, images were covered with lime or plaster (however, later iconodules recovered many of these). The emphasis from the palace (and his bishops) was the sanctioned cult. Reverance was for the eucharist, the office of the ministry, and relics; all of which required the official hierarchy. Like the research of Peter Brown about holymen in loosely regulated monasticisim, the icons could appear anywhere and offer an alternative source of authority/legitimacy outside of Roman government. There was little prescribed form for iconographs (with exceptions from semi-ecumenical council of Trullo that banned symbolic art for prosopographic-realistic art). Brubaker sees the iconodules as grassroots cult against established religion. Some icons had particular holiness through stories of the miraculous, but anyone could reproduce most icons. This notion of the sacred in the reproducible is almost Benjaminian, rejecting the sacred aura of an original for a type that could be copied over and over and over again. It reflects the common (even kitchy) defeating the sanctioned and official.

The point above, and its relevance for what follows, is that the question of norms becomes abstract. In a Benjaminian twist, the icons restrain the power of the emperor, emphasizing the role of the people in the Byzantine republic (something later ratified in Nicaea II and its reemergent victory in the Triumph of Orthodoxy (843). However, this analysis depends upon an abstract notion of power relations within a governmental system. At one level, I too grant that iconodulia is a revivical for the demos within the eastern Roman republic, balanced with the monarchic palace, the aristocratic senate and church, and the exceptional monastics. However, to leave the question here is to remove any specific Christian content from the question of icons. In an ethico-theological turn, are these images "true" words? Do they actually reflect reality as such?

The fact Byzantine iconography adopted the face is very important. The face is prosopographic, it is (as the word suggests) personal. Thus, to see the face of Christ is to see the Person. To be without a face is to be without a person. In the classical terminology of patristic theology, a person is subjecthood and concrete issuance. To be faceless is not only to lack concret characteristics, but to lack any 'I'. Thus, any revelation of the face is essentially a bid to manipulate the person towards ends. It's this question Marie-Jose Mondzain tackles in her book on the theopolitical consqeuence of the Iconoclastic controversy:

"The stakes of the image are therefore not only of concern to Christological orthodoxy; they are political and philosophical, and of the first magnitude. Who, in the end, will be master of the images? He who will be spiritually faithful to the natural image, he who will respect the natural image within the artificial image, or, finally, he who will continuously practice guile between faithfulness and unfaithfulness, in order to draw from that artifice all possible benefits? In all things it is God who sets the example, and it is he whom one imitates" (Image, Icon, Economy, 8)

Mondzain's work primarily explores the theological apologetics of patriarch Nikephoros, who operates not only as a defender of iconodulia (after it's ratified in council) but as ally to the Byzantine state. Mondzain fears that this ecclesiastical logic can serve the purpose of whomever controls the state. Without her misplaced fear of statism linked to Nazi genocide, her point remains very poignant. He who controls the face controls the person. And if one obscures the connection between the natural face and the artificial face, one may faithlessly tarnish the face. In her case, it was the creation of the artificial Jew face as faceless, one given in profile, diminutive and subpersonal (and thus subhuman). But the dehumanization process is not so crude as erasing someone's face. For Mondzain, the interplay between natural and artificial to create revulsion is found in the a-prosopographic icon in profile. Seeing only half a face, usually in flight or revulsion (of one being revealed, a holy and righteous person), reveals a shadow-dweller. Given that mankind is never literally faceless, but ocassionally obscured, in profile, hidden, dubious, straddled, this breeds a kind of distrust. Where the prosopographic icon claims visibile and clarity, the image in profile is not. It's in this moment that a person can slip beneath personality, simply a thing.

In Mondzain's case, she's equating the manipulation of the image in the Byzantine republic (a strong state) with the totalitarian use of the image. This equation is somewhat ridiculous when one appreciates what the Nazis, as a state, were. It's precisely that the Nazis were not statists that they became a monstrous killing-machine. The Nazi regime never abolished the Weimar Republic or its constitution, only suspended it. Hitler never built a new constitutional regime, but was simply a parasite upon a weak and highly liberalized government. In this way, Hitler is more like Robespierre than Napoleon. It was in this twilight, between law and lawlessness, that Hitler ruled. He was the sovereign without law, which attracted the jurist Carl Schmitt, who admired Hitler's willingness to enact his political will. But as Schmitt later reflected, he rapidly felt like Benito Cerano, a captor to the escaped slave-mob and its fuhrer. While racialized (and no doubt, Schmitt was an antisemite), the point is quite clear. The Nazis did not end the liberal regime of Weimar, but exploited it. Again, this scenario is more like than not Robbespierre's seizure of the National Assembly. Both were revolutionary, both advanced a "leftwing" agenda through an appeal to a legendary and naive appeal to antiquity, both violently destroyed their "left" (Montagnards-Herbertists//Nazis-Communists). The point here it's precisely in the confusion of a law deactivated that a certain kind of deathmachine is unleashed. No laws means little to no state control (since Hitler gained control of the state like a fetish), which attracted a level of international capital investment (Sullivan & Cromwell's involvement in Nazi finance is a story worthy of note). It's precisley this ambiguity that Giorgio Agamben explores in his Homo Sacer series. While he, I think, collapses the cosmic into the political, his point about the way out is still prescient:

"What opens a passage towards justice is not the erasure of law, but its deactivation and inactivity - that is another use of the law [...] what is found after the law is not a more proper and original use value that precedes the law, but a new use that is born only after it. And use, which has been contaminated by law, must also be freed from its own value. This liberation is the task of study, or of play" (State of Exception, 64)

This conceptualization has everything to do with images as they exist (as Mondzain says) not only theologically, but politically and philosophically. While Byzantine orthodoxy rightly defends the image, the question is how this image is to be put to use given the imperially established church. Where do norms come from if at all? How is the church not simply become a product of the republic, which becomes completely corrupt when the republic falls into feudalization/privatization as happened during the later eras of Byzantine history? It's precisely this state of collapse that breeds the a-nomic deathmachine of genocide and murder. And even so, the equivocacy of the altar with the throne often leads to a crude sense of identity between church and empire. So goes the empire, so goes the church, since the emperor is the image of Christ (as not a few Byzantine panengyrists sung). While not exactly idolatrous (are not Christians images of Christ in our particularities in the Body?), it sets the stage for it. Additionally, there's a creeping sense of paganism, where the image precedes the word, that piety could depend upon image instead of word (and its a sad fact that, despite venerating the life of John Chrysostom, his style of preaching is lacking in most Orthodox churches). The image takes a life of its own, putty in the eye of the beholder, whether standardized from above or cacophonously composed through lay piety.

If the word precedes the image (even the spoken word preceding the written word), then the word itself becomes the norming norm for all of our subsequent images. While strange for outsiders, it's precisely this reason that Orthodoxy has "canonical" icons for the church. The point is not that these icons are equivalent with scripture, but that their revelation is normative for what the church prays and teaches. It's in the same way favorite authors become norms among Christians. However, this standard only begs the question: what about Canon? Are these norms simply a product of the church's will (however that's discerned)? Such is the position of Papal Catholicism. But traditional Orthodoxy affirms scripture's primary canon status (which is not as far, even though different, from medieval dissenters and the early Reformation). The words of scripture are the norming norm. Applied, it means the prosopographic emphasis should not be allowed to run amok. It is the images of scripture that norm the Christian's understanding. Whether Adam's creation, Abraham among the angelic visitors, Moses receiving the commandments, Elijah being taken into heaven, Jonah being swallowed by the fish, or Daniel among the lions, all of these faithfully draw the viewer back to the original word (whether through understanding or through perplexion). Additionally, the Christian's understanding of Scripture is thoroughly Christological. Ephraim the Syrian compares the words of scripture to the clothes Christ wears; Luther compares the words to the swaddling cloths of our dear Lord. The point is that the various narrative strands and developments within scripture find union and meaning in the Cross. The entirety of Israel's history is recapitulated in Christ's life and passion. As Irenaeus says, rightly arranged according to Christ, scripture is the mosaic of a beautiful king. Without Christ, it is either "so many myths and fables", or becomes, in the hands of heretics, the ugly image of a fox.

Christ's revelation in the words of scripture manifest the norming norms of all our speech. Christ's victory accomplishes what Agamben envisions: a new use of the law which leads to true justice, not through more law, but through the law's deactivation. The law becomes a means to truly live free and righteously in the task of study and play. The Torah becomes not a book of statutes, but a revelation of Christ's cross and the life we must live if we too wish to be free and just. Rather than a ponderous tome of juridical restraint, the scripture becomes a boundless mansion to explore and fully realize the freedom won for mankind through the blood of the eternal and spotless lamb. However, lest one get too far ahead, the conquering lamb is none other than the slain lamb, who retains his scars into eternity. And not only that, the Word of God, the Logos creating and governing every cosmic order, is the lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. Man's cosmic supremacy matures in the Christ who overcomes man's origins from the dust. Adam's sin leads him back to the realm of death: ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Christ assumes this reality, conquering it once and for all. Thus, the faithful image (whether word or paint) must reveal this eternally scarred reality. It's the cosmic dimension of the cross, which Romanian Orthodox priest, Dumitru Staniloae:

"The cross with its two lines, one vertical, the other horizontal produces a wound in the total reality of creation; and through the wound God, who is at once beyond creation yet pierces into its midst, is made visible" (in Miller, The Gift of the World, 78)

Lest I be misunderstood, God is not wounded eternally in need of dialectical completion (per a Hegelian theology). Rather, God assumes the world's wounds, even from the very beginning. Thus, in terms of the image, God even assumes the dubious face of the image in profile. The Word never ceases to be true, but in taking the place of the sinner on the cross, the man cursed under the law, Christ was "made sin for us" (as St. Paul says 2 Cor 5:21). Hence, the "Evangelical" (Lutheran) artists of the Reformation truly understood this point. In Christ, God died, God assumed a profile, God allowed his face to be obscured, that the eternal Prince of Glory was humiliated and destroyed. It was in this act that God reconciled man to himself, purifying the sins of the elect and the entire world. In assuming mankind's plight, our collective facelessness, God reveals the world's vileness and sinfulness, a world where men debase and rob eachother of their face. And yet, in that moment of abjection and godforsakenness, the Lord mounts a throne to issue judgements, Deus regnavit a ligno. Salvation is thus baptism, having a potency through God's command, entering this realm of death. To lose our face in God's wrath against a world of demonic sin is to find it truly, beautified and divinized in God's resurrection power. The image which is faithfull shows this Christological truth. The image which is faithless denies it.

Christian art, whether literature or painting, must first hear the word of the Baptizer: ecce agnus dei, qui tollis peccata mundi. It is the word of Pilate: ecce homo. Behold! The divine word to shake the universe. Behold! Everything is made new. Behold! The conquering lamb unseals the scrolls of time and space. It's from this vantage, receptive and obedient to the word of God, where we may truly see, lifting up to God with our own bodies a living sacrifice through the fruit of our labors. The images make known the eternal Son of God who sprinkled his blood on the heavenly altar for mercy. From these signs, let man be led to grasp the word, not high above or far below, but near, ringing in the ear and dwelling in the heart.