The Role of Christ’s Soul-Mediator in the Iconoclastic Christology

by Basil Lourié and Vladimir Baranov
Origeniana Nona. Eds. Gy. Heidl, and R. Somos. . Leuven: Peeters, 2009
On many occasions Byzantine Iconoclasts name icons “soulless.” So far scholars have treated this epithet in the sense of the general pejorative meaning of “dead.” I would like to offer a review of the pertinent sources and a re-evaluation of the Iconoclastic doctrine exploring the hypothesis that the Iconoclasts might have used the term in a literal and technical sense of “deprived of soul.” Indeed in the Iconoclastic doctrinal sources the mediating role of Christ’s soul between the divinity of the Word and the course human flesh is emphatically stated. This Christological scheme, going back to the Christian Platonist Christology of Origen and his followers, preconditions the primary objection of the Iconoclasts to the veneration of artificial images: the Iconodules’ failure of rendering the soul of Christ on the icon results in confusion or separation of natures since the soul in the Iconoclastic Christology is that which holds the natures of flesh and of divinity together. Since the icon does not represent the soul of Christ (or, likewise, the soul of the Theotokos or a saint), which, by its essence can be the only mediating principle with the divinity, the icon remains a inanimate piece of wood, and those who venerate it, in no way differ from the pagans venerating inanimate idols. This position also sets a theological framework for the Iconoclastic application of the Second Commandment to the prohibition of images.