JOHN reminded the Emperor that there is no ban on images in Scripture – God filled his own Temple with images of plants, animals and angels.* And whereas no likeness can exist of the invisible God, in Christ that God has become a visible, tangible man – and like his saints, paintable.*
The only ban in Scripture, said John, is on worshipping other gods. A Christian who kisses an icon honours the person shown, and everything earthly that restores us to heaven: virgin’s womb, wooden cross, bread and wine. But he worships God alone.
John’s arguments convinced a Council in Nicaea in 787, summoned by Empress Irene, widow of Leo’s grandson, and icons were jubilantly restored. A brief revival of iconoclasm was extinguished in 843 by Empress Theodora, appealing to John’s clear reasoning yet again.* Ever after, the first Sunday of Lent has celebrated the restoration of the icons, reuniting the Church from the Imperial capital to little Lindisfarne. They call it, ‘the Triumph of Orthodoxy’.
They include angels (cherubim) in Exodus 25:18-22 and Exodus 26:31; almond nuts and flowers in Exodus 25:33-36; bells and pomegranates in Exodus 28:33-34; and lions, oxen, and lilies (with more cherubim and pomegranates) in 1 Kings 7; and cherubim, palm trees, human faces and lions in Ezekiel 41. Joshua bows before the Ark of the Covenant (with its images of angels) in Joshua 7:6.
See 1 John 1:1-3. Nonetheless, images of God himself remain impossible, because unlike Christ, angels and saints, God has never been seen by man (Acts 17:29). Christian tradition still does not sanction any image of the Father or the Holy Spirit, unless it shows them in one of their Biblical manifestations, such as the Hospitality of Abraham in Genesis 18:1-16 (see an icon at Wikimedia Commons), or the Baptism of Christ in Mark 1:9-11 (see an icon at Wikimedia Commons).
St John of Damascus was not a lone voice, of course: his three Homilies were accompanied by an impressive list of quotations from Church Fathers reaching back to the fourth century in support of his position, and St Theodore (759–826), of the Studios monastery in Constantinople, campaigned vigorously for icons after iconoclasm was officially reintroduced in 815.