No. Icons aren’t idols, and we don’t worship them. We venerate them, which is different.
Here’s what that means. When an Orthodox Christian kisses an icon of Christ or lights a candle before an icon of the Theotokos, the honor goes to the person depicted. Not to the wood. Not to the paint. The icon is a window, and we’re looking through it to the reality beyond.
Think about it this way. You probably have photos of your family on your phone or desk. When you look at a picture of your grandmother, you’re thinking about her, not about the paper or pixels. If someone saw you kiss that photograph, they wouldn’t accuse you of worshiping paper. Same principle. The honor passes through the image to the person.
What the Church Decided
The Seventh Ecumenical Council settled this in 787. Bishops from across the Christian world gathered and declared that venerating icons isn’t idolatry. They explained that the honor shown to an icon is directed to the prototype, the person represented, not to the material itself. This wasn’t a new idea they made up. They were defending what the Church had practiced and believed from the beginning.
The council fathers understood Exodus 20. “You shall not make for yourself a carved image.” But they also understood that God himself commanded Moses to put images of cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant. And that God told Moses to make a bronze serpent and lift it up for healing. The commandment forbids worshiping created things as if they were God. It doesn’t forbid using matter to point us toward God.
The Incarnation Changes Everything
Here’s the thing that makes icons possible: God became flesh. The Second Person of the Trinity took a human body, walked around Palestine, ate fish, got tired. St. Paul calls Christ “the image of the invisible God.” Jesus is the perfect icon of the Father.
When God became man, he sanctified matter. Flesh and blood and wood and paint can now bear grace. That’s not some abstract idea. It’s what we believe happened at the Incarnation. And if God can take flesh, we can depict that flesh. St. John of Damascus put it bluntly: those who refuse to venerate an icon of Christ also refuse to worship God’s Son, who is the living image of the invisible God.
Before the Incarnation, nobody had seen God. You couldn’t depict him. But now? We’ve seen him. “That which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled,” St. John writes. Christ had a face. We can paint it.
Worship vs. Veneration
Orthodox theology makes careful distinctions. There’s latria, which is worship, adoration given to God alone. Then there’s dulia, which is honor or veneration given to saints and their images. We worship God. We venerate saints. Different words, different realities.
When you see someone bow before an icon or kiss it, they’re not offering worship. They’re showing respect and asking prayers, the same way you might bow your head when someone prays or show respect at a memorial. The physical gesture expresses an interior disposition, and that disposition is directed toward the saint, not the board.
I know this can look strange if you grew up Baptist here in Southeast Texas. Most of the churches around Beaumont don’t have images beyond maybe a cross or a dove in the stained glass. So walking into an Orthodox church and seeing icons covering the walls, people kissing them, candles burning in front of them, it can feel like too much. Like we’ve crossed a line.
But we haven’t. We’ve just taken the Incarnation seriously.
Idols Are Different
An idol is something you worship as if it were God. The golden calf. The statues of Zeus. Anything created that you treat as ultimate reality. That’s what the Bible condemns. The prophets mocked idol-makers who carved a piece of wood, burned half for warmth, and bowed to the other half as if it were divine.
Icons don’t work that way. Nobody thinks the painted board is God. The icon is a tool, a means. It helps us pray. It reminds us we’re surrounded by the communion of saints. It makes visible the truth that heaven and earth are joined in Christ.
St. Stephen’s Antiochian parish up in Dallas puts it well: “We do not picture the invisible, and we do not worship the icon.” We picture Christ, who made himself visible. We honor the image because we honor him.
If you’re still not sure, come to a service at St. Michael’s. Watch how people interact with the icons. You’ll see reverence, not idolatry. You’ll see people asking St. Michael or St. Mary to pray for them, not replacing God with paint. And maybe you’ll start to see what we see: windows into heaven, opened by the Incarnation, showing us the faces of those who’ve gone before us and now stand in the presence of God.
