Richard Schneider

Orthodox Christianity is a visual culture. This is neither a simple, nor obvious statement, although at first blush it might seem to be both. Everyone is well aware that Orthodox Christians surround themselves with images; we not only fill our churches with icons, but also put them in every place of significance for life -- in houses, on the covers of books, even in our cars. Certainly, then, Orthodox people are habitually "visual." But is there anything special -- or deeply significant -- about this commonplace of Orthodox life? It has become a cliche nowadays to say that modern life is "visual," that we all, not only Orthodox Christians, live in a "visual culture" -- listen, for instance, to any school teacher bemoaning children's lack of ability to read, and blaming it on too much attention to the visual media.

But even in our over-saturated visual age, the Orthodox attitude toward the visual objects of our faith -- I choose this phrase very carefully -- is evidently special. Non-Orthodox visitors to our churches are often deeply struck when they observe the reverential awe -- coupled with the intimacy of a kiss -- with which Orthodox faithful stand before their icons. These visitors can clearly grasp from Orthodox liturgical behavior that in front of an icon, one stands in the presence of God's mystery itself, "set forth in Christ" (Ephesians 1:9).

Once again: Orthodox Christianity is a visual culture. This is so true that we have turned this insight into a dogma, pronounced by the Seventh Ecumenical Council and celebrated liturgically at the beginning of Great Lent -- without devotion to the icons there is no Orthodoxy.

And yet, when our wondering visitor turns to us like the Ethiopian eunuch, asking why we do these reverential acts toward icons, and seeking to understand (Acts 8:27-38), most Orthodox faithful find themselves at a complete loss for a proper explanation (and alas, this remark even includes many clergy). We all know the usual collection of half-grasped phrases -- "eternal beauty made manifest," "representation of the mystical light," and so on -- but for the most part, these formulas seem to offer nothing in the way of understanding that moves much beyond either Romantic feel-good aestheticism or unclear mystical claims that do not correspond to most people's everyday experience of prayer in Orthodox surroundings. If (as has been twice repeated above) we acknowledge fully the presence of God in the concrete visual design of our worship, this inability to identify in clear words the concrete truth and meaning of that visual experience seems like a strange failing on the part of Orthodoxy, something akin to a pothole in an otherwise well-paved road.

This metaphor of the well-paved road is apt, a reference to the historically significant, and glorious, worldwide revival of Orthodox theological scholarship and education in the 20^th century, after several centuries of intellectual slumber. It is no idle boast to say that the many generations of luminous teachers at St Vladimir's Seminary played a major role in this revival, inheriting the burgeoning Orthodox intellectual culture of Europe and furthering it in field after field of Orthodox study -- in Scripture, patristics, philosophical theology, church history, pastoral care and -- a very special subject at St Vladimir's, and one particularly germane to this essay -- especially in Liturgical Theology. Quality Orthodox education has become very strong, very adept at explanation and clarification of insight when dealing with our verbal texts. Why, then, the peculiar failure -- the dark and nearly empty pothole -- of a lack of comparable scholarship in the area of iconology, which is the theological study of Christian visual culture? The shelf of books about icons and iconography is enormously long and cluttered; the corner of that shelf which contains serious books about Divinity-in-the-visual that are of the quality of Fr Schmemann's works on liturgical theology is miniscule.

Part of the reason for this neglect has been the customary (but certainly hard-to-understand) absence of any study of Orthodox visual culture in almost all Orthodox curricula of higher learning, practically everywhere. "Learning about icons" has been left to the workshops of practicing iconographers, rather than being seen as an integral and essential aspect of a well-rounded curriculum, and the consequence has been the detachment of theological remarks about meaning in iconography from their natural and essential dialogue with the rest of formal Orthodox theology (especially with scriptural, patristic, and liturgical studies, all of which are absolutely vital for a properly grounded, non-subjective iconological theology). St Vladimir's has made a major step forward in Orthodox education through the inclusion of a full curriculum of courses in Iconology as an integral part of the curriculum. It is to be hoped that the beneficial outcome of this step will not only be in the production of formal scholarship, but also in practical pastoral work such as better preaching, better illumination of Orthodox churches when planning an iconographic programme, and better outreach to the broader Christian community (since icons are now seen everywhere, even in protestant churches, but without any Orthodox preaching to make their proper use understood).

Teaching of Orthodox iconological theology is more than just a "nice development," indeed, even more than "highly important" for an orthodoxy that is a visual culture. Early in this essay I said precisely that icons were "the objects of our faith." But as every Christian knows, the object of our faith is Christ. It is the spiritual genius of Orthodox Christianity, with its central emphasis on an Incarnational Christology, that recognizes that to focus on Christ as our "still point," our all-in-all, is to focus on his appearance, his Image: Christ the "image" (icon, form) of God is known to us in His image (icon, form) as human being (Philippians 2:6-7), and thereby shows us that our salvation is the restoration of our very existence, as the image (icon) of God (Genesis 1:26). When we stand in prayer before an icon, we stand in the very face of Truth itself, and all the rest of our Orthodox education and Orthodox theological knowledge comes into Focus.