What an Icon Is

The frame for the whole collection: what the Orthodox tradition means by an eikon (image) — a window to heaven and a means of communion with the holy, not an idol; and the two load-bearing distinctions on which everything else rests — the passing of honor to the prototype, and the difference between the veneration (proskynesis) given to images and the worship (latreia) owed to God alone.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

This section sets out the theology within which every later question is read. The first file, the-icon-as-window-to-heaven.md, treats the icon as a means of communion and presence — how it makes present the one it depicts without being that one, and why this is the opposite of idolatry rather than a species of it. The second file, image-and-prototype.md, takes up St. Basil’s principle that “the honor given to the image passes to the prototype” and the twin distinction, sharpened at Nicaea II, between the relative honor of veneration and the absolute worship due to God — the grammar that governs the entire Orthodox defense of the icon.

Contents

File Description
the-icon-as-window-to-heaven.md The theology of the sacred image; the icon as communion and presence, not idol; participation without identity
image-and-prototype.md The honor passing to the prototype; veneration (proskynesis) vs worship (latreia); the kinds of image and of honor

See Also