Not-formaly declared heretic Non-Orthodox influenced Icons

[George Australia]

Paul,
I have one final question for you.
The Ancient of Days in the Apocalypse is Christ, but who is the Ancient of Days in the Vision of Daniel (Daniel 7: 9)? Is this also Christ? If it is Christ, then Who in this vision is "the Son of Man" Who ascends to the Ancient of Days on the clouds and is given "the dominion and honour and kingdom" (Daniel 7:13-14)?
Is this not a vision of the Ascension of Christ to the Father? St. Cyril of Alexandria says it is when he writes:
“Behold, again Emmanuel is manifestly and clearly seen ascending to God the Father in heaven… The Son of Man has appeared in the flesh and reached the Ancient of Days, that is, He has ascended to the throne of His eternal Father and has been given honor and worship…” (Letter 55, in The Fathers of the Church, vol. 77, Washington: CUA Press, 1987, pp. 28, 29).
Some interpret that this is a vision the Human and Divine Natures of Christ, but in order to believe this, we must believe that:
1) the Divine Nature is visible
2) the Divine Nature was at some point seperated from the Human Nature, and then re-united.
Therefore, Who is the Ancient of Days in the vision of Daniel?
If St. Cyril of Alexandria is correct, then Daniel saw the Divine Energy of the Father, and St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite, in his prolegomena to the Seventh Ecumenical Council, sums up the Council's decrees on this subject as follows: "The present Council, in the letter which it sent to the Church of Alexandria, on the one hand blesses those who know and accept, and therefore make icons of and honour, the visions and theophanies of the Prophets, as God Himself shaped and impressed them on their minds. And on the other hand it anathematizes those who do not accept the iconographies of such visions before the incarnation of God the Word. It follows that the Beginningless Father must be represented in icons as He appeared to the Prophet Daniel, as the Ancient of Days."
So, Paul, it is you who are in error for not accepting the Icon of the Holy Trinity and dipyctions of God the Father as the Ancient of Days.

[尼古拉前执事]

THE "ANCIENT OF DAYS," YAHWEH THE LORD OF GLORY WHO APPEARED TO THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL from "Forbidden Images," by Dr. George S. Gabriel, Copyright 1989, 2001.

Code: Select all

 It is important to understand that we cannot expect the revelations or "visions" of the Uncreated that were experienced by the Prophets to read like precisely scripted and staged scenes for the theater. Therefore, we cannot also demand that they be completely comprehensible and consistent with human categories, human facts, human presumptions, human criteria, ordinary human experience, and earthly dimensions of time and space. In their experience of theoria or theoptia, the Prophets beheld the uncreated glory of God with SPIRITUAL EYES and not with the bodily eyes and cerebral mind that are bound by the above categories and dimensions. In their divinization by grace, they were taken by God into His uncreated energies of the divine foreknowledge and will. What they "saw" or experienced in the théosis that accompanies God’s visitation is divine revelation. Hence, divine revelation is empirical knowledge of the Kingdom (Vasileía in Greek) which is the power, rule, reign, and will of God. It is in this Kingdom that God visits and communes with His true friends. When the Prophets wrote about these uncreated mysteries, however, they used words and symbols according to the purpose of divine providence for their audience. Strictly speaking, therefore, the Scriptures are not the revelation itself, the experience of the Uncreated; rather, they are words about the revelation. These words expressed the revelation in various forms and symbols according to the time and ability of the children of Israel to receive the meaning of the revelation. The symbols and words cannot be subjected to spatial concepts and time and sequence as we know them.

 The Disciples who were with the Savior on Mt. Thabor "saw" His uncreated glory, “as they were able” each according to his capacity to receive this uncreated light. This is the same divine kingdom or rule which Christ says "is within you." The kingdom is also called by the Fathers both divine light and divine darkness (phõs and gnóphos), among other mutually contradictory terms, in order to indicate by these expressions the apophatic theology of Orthodoxy and the unknowability of the Uncreated by rational and intellectual comprehension. The experience in theoría is suprarational and ineffable.  Descriptions of it, for example, the Scriptures, use words, and words are already created symbols since the experience itself cannot be transmitted.

 There is no place here for legalistic and rationalistic definitions. When Jacob said he beheld a ladder with God standing above it, the Fathers tell us he saw the Virgin through whom Yahweh the Lord of Glory was to come to earth in the flesh. But Jacob's vision is not expressed in such literal terms but in symbols or images because the time was not yet come when the people and the world would be prepared and ready to receive this literal knowledge.  Types and images were used for future Prophets, Fathers, and generations to understand them in the unfolding fullness of time.

 Moses was taken into the uncreated fire or light, into the uncreated energies of God’s foreknowledge and eternal will, and he "saw" the Virgin and Child when he was at the bush on Sinai. He described a flaming but unconsumed bush, expressing by this image, for the fuller understanding of future generations, the Virgin containing the  Uncontainable God in her womb. In the eternal will and foreknowledge of God, He “saw” the Incarnation and described it for us as a burning bush that contained the miraculous Uncreated Fire but remained unharmed by it. Daniel and Isaiah and Moses and all the Prophets "saw" this economy of the Incarnation.  Hence, Moses, for example, was able to scorn all the riches and glory proper to a son of Pharaoh in preference for even the reproaches of Christ, as St. Paul tells us. Isaiah saw God in the flesh carried invisibly on a throne.  The word throne is in Isaiah's writing, but in his vision in the uncreated energies of God was the Virgin carrying the Lord of Glory in her womb, as several hymns of the Church tells us.  The Prophets saw the Lord prefiguring His Incarnation centuries before the historic reality of the Incarnation took place.  Since it was in the mind of God, in the foreknowledge and will of God, in the uncreated energies of God, that they beheld Christ, He was not coming into and out of enfleshment upon each such theophany, now taking flesh and bone and now shedding them.  The theophanies were not stagings and restagings of the Savior’s enfleshing.

 Daniel's vision of the Ancient of Days receiving the likeness of a son of man (7:13-14) is not a vision of the Ascension of the Son of God as some believe but of the Incarnation--of the Aged or Ancient One receiving the nature of humanity. The two human forms in Daniel’s vision were bodily types or images expressing what was yet to come. For the Prophets, what was yet to come in Israel’s history was the Nativity of the Incarnate Lord of Glory, Whose glory the Prophets beheld, as John the Theologian says: “These things said Isaiah when he saw His glory and spoke of Him.” Even the few Fathers, such as St. Cyril of Alexandria and St. Ammonius, who seem to interpret the Ancient of Days as God the Father, understand the whole vision to be of the Incarnate economy and fullness of power, glory, and honor from the Father that belongs to the enfleshed Son of God. "In the likeness of the son of man, Daniel foresees the Incarnation of the Only-Begotten One." (St. Ammonius, PG 85, 1380A) In fact, it is not even conclusive that St Cyril actually identifies the Ancient of days with the Father. (See St. Cyril of Alexandria, PG 70, 1461B.) St. Athanasius gives a more precise meaning to "coming like [a] son of man" (Dan. 7:13) and says, "For it is His humanity that Daniel names son of man." (Epistle to Antiochus)

 Daniel encountered one Person and represented Him by two forms, young and old, as St. Maximus says. The Prophet's dream or “night vision” in 7:13-14 becomes one of the most enigmatic and shadowy of all the Prophetic narratives when it is taken as a vision seen with bodily eyes or as a dream formed in the cells of the brain. It cannot be understood literally, identifying as one Person the form which was “like a son of man” and the Ancient of Days as yet another Person. “We know, then, that no man can see the nature of God, or of angels, or of the soul, or of the demons. Divine providence, however, confers types and forms and images upon all these so that, through NOËTIC, IMMATERIAL VISION, they may be seen in bodily forms like our own nature.”  (John of Damascus, 3rd Hom. on Div. Images, ch. 25) The Prophets saw these figures “in the glory of God.” (Ez. 2:1; Num. 12:8) “After this INVISIBLE MANNER did they see the Son of God as a man . . . saying that He Who was not come as yet was present.” (Irenaeus, Refutation, bk. 4, ch. 20)  In this manner, Daniel, too, saw the “ancient” Son of God receiving to Himself the “likeness of man,” that is to say, receiving human nature and becoming the Son of Man while remaining one and the same Person. Daniel called Him ancient because He is older than, and preexists, the “days” or ages.  The Prophets and the Fathers often use the word ancient to mean eternal. The two words are interchangeable, and not only ancient and eternal but also young and eternal, clearly confounding literalistic and rationalistic categories.

 The adjective “ancient,” which means “eternal,” then, applies equally to the divinity and to the white-haired humanity of the Ancient of Days: to the divinity because of its eternal nature, and to the elderly humanity because of the ontological mystery of the Incarnation “hidden from before the ages” but operating in ALL the theophanies of God.  St. Maximus the Confessor expresses the consensus and doctrine of the Church that Christ appeared to the Prophets both as white haired and aged and as a young man.  St. Maximus gives us to understand that because of the ontological and eternal mystery of the Incarnation, the indivisible, composite hypostasis of the Incarnate Lord is called both “young” and “ancient” without dividing or mixing His natures. This is in complete agreement with the patristic dictum that icons are images of persons or hypostases according to their nature and not of their nature. The icon of the Theotokos, for example, is not an icon of her human nature, which is the nature common to all of us, but of Mary, the unique and irreplicable human person. We make icons neither of the human nor of the divine nature but of persons according to the creaturely nature possessed as their own.      

  What has been said here about the prophetic/patristic, empirical theology and theoría holds for all revelation because, in its essence, revelation is not the disclosure of data but of God in the uncreated glory of the Person of the Logos and Son of God, Who alone declares the Father to men and without Whom no man comes unto Father. The kingdom in which the Prophets saw these visions was not of this CREATED world and its created dimensions of time and space. The functions and needs of time-bound creation are outside of this experience. To better understand the Person of the Ancient of Days, readers can open both the book of Daniel to ch. 7-12 and the book of  Revelation to ch. 1 and examine side by side Daniel's description of the Ancient of Days and St. John's apocalyptic description of Christ as the white-haired Alpha and Omega. They will see that the two authors of these Old and New Testament books of Revelation are speaking of the same Person, using the same language, words, and symbols. 

 Preceding the passages of Daniel 7:14-14, one can read 7:9-11 which describes the Ancient of Days in images and symbol and says He presides at the Judgment: "The thrones were set and the Ancient of Days took His seat . . . His raiment was white as snow, and the hair of His head as pure wool [fleece] . . . His throne was a flame of fire . . . A river of fire rushed before Him..." St John says, "The Father has given all judgment to the Son."  (Jn 5:22) The Son of God and the Ancient of Days are the same Person. And in Rev., John saw someone "like a son of man . . . And His head and His hair were white as wool [fleece], as white as snow." (1:10,14) And He said, "I am the first and the last, He that liveth and was dead, and behold I am alive forever more, and I have the keys of death and Hades." (1:17-19)  Further examination shows that both Prophets, Daniel and John, describe His garment and belt and His voice as the "sound of many waters" in precisely the same words. And Daniel says the Ancient of Days slew the wild beast. Paul says Christ "will slay the lawless one with the breath of His mouth." (2Thes. 2:8)  Whether you say the breath of His mouth or the river of fire, you say the same thing.

[George Australia]

Dr. George S. Gabriel,

Are you saying that "Dr." George S. Gabriel is right and St. Cyril of Alexandria and St. Nikodemos of the Holy Mountain are wrong?

[尼古拉前执事]

From the Short Exposition of Orthodox Doctrine (Which many churches, including the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, use as a catechism):

Concerning God the Father

I believe in God the Father, Who is without beginning, indescribable, incomprehensible, Who is beyond every created essence, Whose essence is known only to Himself, to His Son and the Holy Spirit; as it says in the Holy Scriptures, upon Him even the Seraphim dare not gaze.

I believe and confess that God the Father never became the likeness of any material form nor was He ever incarnate. In the theophanies (appearances of God) of the Old Testament, as our Holy Fathers bear witness, it was not God the Father Who appeared, but rather it was always our Saviour, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity (i.e., the Word or Logos, the Angel of the Lord, the Lord God of Sabaoth, the Angel of Great Counsel, the Ancient of Days) Who revealed Himself to the prophets and seers of the Old Testament. Likewise, in the New Testament, God the Father never appeared but bore witness to His Son on several occasions solely by a voice that was heard from Heaven. It is for this reason that our Saviour said, "No man hath seen God at any time; the Only-begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him," (John 1:18) and "Not that any man hath seen the Father, save He Who is of God, He hath seen the Father" (John 6:46). In addition, Acts Four, Five and Six of the Seventh Ecumenical Council state that the Holy Trinity cannot be portrayed iconographically since He is without from and invisible. Therefore, God the Father is not depicted in the holy icons.

I believe that He is the cause of all things as well as the end purpose of all things. From Him all visible and invisible creatures have their beginning and there was a time when they did not exist. He created the universe out of absolutely nothing. The earth too had a beginning and man was created by God's love. The creation of man and of the universe was not out of necessity. Creation is the work of the free and unconditional will of the Creator. If He had so wished, He need not have created us; the absence of creation would not have been a privation for Him. The creature's love is not one which gives Him satisfaction. God has no need to be satisfied. He needs nothing. God's love cannot be compared to human love, even as His other attributes such as paternity, justice, goodness cannot be compared to their human counterparts. God's love is a love which constitutes a mystery unfathomable to man's reason or intellect. God has no "emotions" which might create passion, suffering, need or necessity in Him. Nevertheless, although the nature of divine love remains incomprehensible and inexplicable to human reason, this love is real and genuine and I confess, in agreement with Scripture, that God is love.

Concerning the Holy Trinity

I believe, confess and worship the Holy Trinity. I worship the One, Holy, Indivisible, Consubstantial, Life-Creating and Most Holy Trinity. In the Trinity I worship three persons -- three hypostases -- that of the Father, that of the Son and that of the Holy Spirit. I do not confuse the persons of the Most Holy Trinity. I do not believe that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are, as it were, three masks of a single person. None of the persons is alienated from the others, but each has the fulness of the Three together.

[George Australia]

From the Short Exposition of Orthodox Doctrine (Which many churches, including the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, use as a catechism):

Forgive my importunity, but again I must ask, was St Nikodemos the Hagiorite wrong when he said:

"The present Council, in the letter which it sent to the Church of Alexandria, on the one hand blesses those who know and accept, and therefore make icons of and honour, the visions and theophanies of the Prophets, as God Himself shaped and impressed them on their minds. And on the other hand it anathematizes those who do not accept the iconographies of such visions before the incarnation of God the Word. It follows that the Beginningless Father must be represented in icons as He appeared to the Prophet Daniel, as the Ancient of Days."

?

[Anastasios]

All this theology is getting us nowhere. The fact is that all Orthodox Churches have images that depict God the Father as an Old man sitting next to a young man and with a dove. It's EVERYWHERE: Greek, Russian, Old Calendar, New Calendar. It may not be hypercorrect but it is in the universal praxis of the Orthodox Church and has been handed down from previous generations. Paul, what do you propose we do with all these icons? Burn them?

Anastasios

[George Australia]

All this theology is getting us nowhere.

Anastasios,
I appreciate what you are saying, but what is at stake here is more than simply a sentimental attachment to a custom. Paul Azkoul is challenging even the theology of St. Gregory Palamas.
Paul says that the Uncreated Light of the Transfiguration was circumscribed, perceptable as though it were material, and for this reason, It is dipyctable in Icons. However, St. Gregory Palamas writes, "the Light of the Transfiguration of the Lord has no beginning and no end; it remains uncircumscribed (in time and space) and imperceptible to the senses, although it was contemplated... But the disciples of the Lord passed here from the flesh into the spirit by a transmutation of their senses." And again he writes: "The Divine Light is not material, there was nothing perceptible about the Light which illuminated the apostles on Mount Tabor."

Also, the full quote of the relevant Decree of the Seventh Ecumenical Council includes the words: "Eternal be the memory of those who know and accept and believe the visions of the prophets as the Divinity Himself shaped and impressed them, whatever the chorus of the prophets saw and narrated, and who hold to the written and unwritten tradition of the Apostles which was passed on to the Fathers, and on account of this make icons of the Holy things and honour them."
and
"Anathema to those who do not accept the visions of the prophets and who reject the iconographies which have been seen by them (O wonder!) even before the Incarnation of the Word, but either speak empty words about having seen the unattainable and unseen Essence, or on the one hand pay heed to those who have seen these appearances of icons, types and forms of the truth, while on the other hand they cannot bear to have icons made of the Word become man and His sufferings on our behalf."
The whole debate about Icons of the Trinity therefore depends on whether or not the Holy Trinity has been contemplated in visions of the Divine Energy.

Thirdly, here is a list of the Fathers who agree (and with whom George S Gabriel and Paul Azkoul disagree) that the "Ancient of Days" seen by the Prophet Daniel was a vision of God the Father:
Hieromartyr Hippolytus of Rome
St. Athanasius the Great
St. John Chrysostom
St. Gregory Palamas
St. Cyril of Alexandria
St. Symeon of Thessalonica
St. Nicodemus the Hagiorite
Are all these Fathers of the Church wrong and only Gabriel & Azkoul correct?

But I still think your question is a good one, Anastasios: what would Paul Azkoul and those who agree with him suggest that we do with the Icons of the Trinity? Would they spit on one?