Icons are to be venerated for the holy themes they describe. They are always depictions from the visible world. Even the angels of icons are only what they wanted the human eye to see, or true manifestation of their energising on the Earth. What exactly an angel or a spiritual being is, no living man can describe.
The veneration of the holy icons can be easily abused by either misinformation or excess of zeal. The latter could be also a consequence of the former, when the iconography uses physical types of things of the spiritual world based on the attributes they make or choose to make known about them to man in the material world. This is the case with God the Father, Who is indeed a creator, a guardian, a teacher, and a provider, Who can be addressed as a father, but Who is not to be imagined as such, and for that reason not to be graphically represented as an old man with a grey beard, or like anything else of the same archetype. God is infinite spirit, through all things, and above all things, the only one who is, in three subsistences, each containing the other, each self-conscious, but all with one will and one operation. Even if we could somehow render God to conform to the above definition, we still wouldn’t have the whole image of God, Who is beyond human understanding. A cropped image is not the image, and confined as it is, but taken as a whole, or left to imagination, it becomes the image of an idol, a fruit of the imagination, if it is venerated.
An angel is a created spirit, and although with no form, it has a location in space from where it can stir the ether. Jesus Christ, the incarnated Logos, interacted even with men of the Old Testament in a very material way (see Abraham and Jacob), as a human, for God is the creator and master of time, to Whom there is neither past, nor future. The Holy Spirit was seen descending as a dove and as tongues of fire. All these holy encounters and phenomena are perfectly fit to be in icons, as they could be perceived by the human senses. Yet nobody has ever seen God the Father, the Logos, the Holy Spirit, Them together, or the Godhead in its awesome one movement. More than that, the Holy Scripture states that no man can see God and live. Then why are there Holy Trinity icons?
Trouble comes when errors are not corrected, like with painting icons on things imagined or unimaginable. In time, some themes and procedures become tradition and, unfortunately, even “Holy Tradition”, when synods mechanically endorse what became the culture of the pious through neglect or the vicissitudes of history.
There are two main Holy Trinity icons: 1. Two old men (one sometimes with a triangle as a halo) and a dove, and 2. The Rublev icon. Mr. Vladimir Moss, a known author not only in the True Orthodox world, tried to justify the first one in the Orthodox paraphernalia (read here his article), yet, as expected, he couldn’t do anything more than making the icon somehow acceptable by admitting that it’s not a true Holy Trinity icon, but the Holy Trinity in either a symbolic way, or in a symbolic way with manifestations of the spiritual beings energizing naturally on Earth, or in a form allowed by God, as I also showed above.
The icon that could be really troublesome is the Rublev one, which is a heightening in meaning of “The Hospitality of Abraham” or “The Meeting at The Oak of Mamre” icon by not only suggesting, but even by stating the presence of the Holy Trinity in the form of three angels with Abraham at the Oak of Mamre.
What happened at the Oak of Mamre is extensively treated by the Holy Fathers, and it is very likely that even if some Holy Trinity icons had been venerated in the popular culture, it wasn’t until 1551 that the scene, in Andrei Rublev’s touch, became the canonical way of painting the Holy Trinity. The “Book of Hundred Chapters”, containing rules for iconography, and endorsed by the Stoglav Synod, especially esteemed by the Old Believers, came at time when the Russian Church was confronted with many deviations from the canon.
If the Stoglav Synod built its decision on tradition, it was undoubtedly human tradition, as The Holy Tradition doesn’t allow depictions of God the Father, and important Church Fathers make very clear that it was the Lord Jesus Christ and two accompanying angels who sat at the table with Abraham. Here are a few quotations from their writings:
“The Scripture speaks of angels, that in Abraham’s tent, both angels and their Master showed themselves. And the angels, like servants, were sent to destroy those cities, but He stayed, to tell the righteous one, like a friend to a friend, what he was to do.” (St. John Chrysostom, Homily XLII on Genesis)
“Lest you fall into the error of supposing that this acknowledgment of the One was a payment of honor to all the three whom Abraham saw in company, mark the words of Lot when he saw the two who had departed; And when Lot saw them, he rose up to meet them, and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground; and he said, Behold, my lords, turn in to your servant’s house. Here the plural lords shews that this was nothing more than a vision of angels; in the other case the faithful patriarch pays the honour due to One only.” (St. Hilary of Poitiers, De Trinitate, Book IV-28)
“It will suffice for me to point out that He Who was the Angel of God, when He spoke with Hagar, was God and Lord when He spoke of the same matter with Abraham; that the Man Who spoke with Abraham was also God and Lord, while the two angels, who were seen with the Lord and whom He sent to Lot, are described by the prophet as angels, and nothing more.” (St. Hilary of Poitiers, De Trinitate, Book IV-31)
“Moses, then, the blessed and faithful servant of God, declares that He who appeared to Abraham under the oak in Mamre is God, sent with the two angels in His company to judge Sodom by Another who remains ever in the supercelestial places, invisible to all men, holding personal intercourse with none, whom we believe to be Maker and Father of all things.” (St. Justin the Martyr, Dialog with Trypho, Chapter LVI)
The idea of a Holy Trinity theophany at the Oak of Mamre is contradicted even in the Service for the Sunday of the Forefathers, where, in Ode no. 6, it reads that Abraham got the Holy Trinity mystery in a type or, as in a Romanian version of 1873, with imagination. Yet, instead of getting fixed, the issue got exacerbated from 1551 to 1991, when we are told that there is more than one canonical way of painting the Holy Trinity:
“There exist four icons of the Holy Trinity. They are indicated in the rite of the blessing of these icons in our Book of Needs (Trebnik). These are: the Old Testament appearance to Abraham (in the form of three Angles), the Descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles, Theophany and Transfiguration. All other depictions must be discarded as distorting the teaching of the Church.” (Orthodox America [ROCOR], Liturgical Renewal, No. 4 Nov. – Dec. 1991)
As we can see, those four icons are icons of the Holy Trinity, but they should be thought of as icons of symbols and/or manifestations of the Holy Trinity if we are to accept Mr. Moss’ well intended explanation. And there is no other way if we want to stay away from heresy, but that also brings us to the brink of a very slippery slope. In the way the “Ancient of Days” was brought from the Holy Prophet Daniel’s vision to make up together with the portrait of Jesus Christ and the dove a Holy Trinity icon, nobody can give assurance that in the same way or by fragmentation of the said icon, sometime up to year 2455, there will not be people venerating icons of a dove or portraits of an old man with or without a triangular halo, suggestively marked “The Holy Spirit of God The Father and of Jesus Christ” and “God The Father, Creator of Heaven and Earth”, obviously, very canonically as symbols of what they are. Those who have seen in churches God the Father overseeing from above the iconostasis or the radiant dove alone on walls know that I am far from fabulating.
Of course, the Holy Spirit has been taking care of what He made, and it is not a life or death (if there are no unintended consequences) issue, but that is not an excuse to resume contemplation. Mr. Vladimir Moss showed that he cares, and I’m sure there are many others who feel in the same way. They will be proved wrong or right in the Holy Spirit to the glory of Him Who is reason, goodness and justice, but let us pray it happens sooner than later, so that all who question are re-assured in truth and peace.
godisreason 