The Seventh Ecumenical Council settled the question: icons can be made and venerated. Not worshiped. Venerated. There’s a difference, and the bishops who gathered at Nicaea in 787 made that difference crystal clear.
The council met because the Church had been tearing itself apart for decades over images. Starting around 726, Byzantine emperors began ordering icons destroyed. They called it idolatry. Soldiers whitewashed church walls, smashed mosaics, burned painted panels. Monks who defended icons were imprisoned or killed. The controversy wasn’t just theological, it was violent, political, and it split communities.
By 787, Empress Irene and her son Constantine VI called the council to settle things once and for all. Patriarch Tarasios of Constantinople presided. The bishops gathered at Nicaea (the same city where the First Ecumenical Council met in 325) and issued their decision.
What They Actually Said
The council drew a line between two Greek words: latreia and proskynesis. Worship versus veneration.
Latreia belongs to God alone. Period. You don’t worship an icon any more than you worship your grandmother’s photograph. But proskynesis, honor, respect, reverence, that’s different. You can kiss an icon. You can bow before it. You can light a candle in front of it. When you do, the honor passes through the image to the person depicted. You’re not venerating paint and wood. You’re venerating Christ, or His mother, or St. Michael the Archangel.
The council ordered icons displayed everywhere. In churches, on walls, on sacred vessels, on vestments. In homes. Even by the roadside. Images of Christ, the Theotokos, angels, saints. They should be kissed, honored, carried in procession. And anyone who destroys icons or teaches against them? Excommunicated.
This wasn’t arbitrary. The bishops rooted everything in the Incarnation.
Why the Incarnation Matters
Here’s the theological heart of it: God became flesh. The Word took on a human body, walked around Galilee, ate fish, got tired, had a face you could see and hands you could touch. If Christ is truly human as well as truly divine, then He can be depicted. To say you can’t paint Christ is to deny He really became man.
The iconoclasts worried about idolatry, and that’s understandable. The Old Testament forbids graven images. But the Incarnation changes things. Before Christ, no one had seen God. After Christ, the invisible became visible. St. John writes, “That which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled…we declare to you.” If the apostles could see and touch Christ, we can depict Him.
Icons don’t deny Christ’s divinity. They affirm His humanity. And because matter itself was taken up by God in the Incarnation, material things can bear grace. The wood of the Cross. The water of baptism. Bread and wine. Paint and panel.
What This Means for Us
Walk into any Orthodox church and you’ll see the council’s decision lived out. The iconostasis stands before the altar, covered with images of Christ, the Theotokos, angels, saints. Icons line the walls. People kiss them when they enter. We light candles. We bow. On feast days we carry icons in procession.
This isn’t decoration. It’s theology you can see. Icons teach us. They remind us we’re surrounded by that great cloud of witnesses. They’re windows into heaven, showing us the transfigured faces of those who’ve gone before us in the faith.
For folks coming from Protestant backgrounds here in Southeast Texas, this can feel strange at first. I get it. You weren’t raised kissing images or lighting candles in front of painted panels. It might seem Catholic, or foreign, or even a little uncomfortable. But the Seventh Ecumenical Council wasn’t making up something new. It was defending what the Church had practiced from the beginning and explaining why that practice makes sense.
The council met in 787, but iconoclasm flared up again a generation later. It wasn’t until 843 that icons were permanently restored. We celebrate that restoration every year on the first Sunday of Lent, the Sunday of Orthodoxy. We process with icons, we sing the Synodikon, we affirm what those bishops at Nicaea taught.
If you’re still trying to wrap your head around icons, that’s fine. It takes time. But here’s what you need to know: when you venerate an icon, you’re not worshiping wood and paint. You’re honoring the person depicted. You’re affirming that God became man, that matter matters, that heaven and earth are closer than we think. The Seventh Ecumenical Council didn’t just permit icons. It explained why they belong at the center of Christian life.
