"Протоиерей Иоанн Мейендорф. Byzantine Theology " - читать интересную книгу автора

Christi: das Semeioma gegen Eustratios von Nikaia (1117)," Byzantinische
Zeitschrift 47 (1954), 374-378.
4. Nicholas of Methonc, Treatise Against Soterichos, ed. A.
Demetrakopoulos, Bibliothekc Ekklesiastikc (repr. Hildesheim: Olms, 1965),
pp. 337-338.
5. Fifth Anathema Against Soterichos in Synodifon ed. Gouillard, p. 75.


The Iconoclastic Crisis.

the long iconoclastic struggle, which recurred frequently in Byzantine
theology, was intimately connected with the Christological issue, which had
divided Eastern Christianity in the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries.

Appearance of the Movement.

The emperors of the eighth and ninth centuries initiated and supported
the iconoclastic movement; and from the start, issues of both a theological
and a non-theological nature were inseparably involved in this imperial
policy.
From contemporary sources and modern historical research, three
elements within the movement seem to emerge:
a. A Problem of Religious Culture. From their pagan past,
Greek-speaking Christians had inherited a taste for religious imagery. When
the early Church condemned such art as idolatrous, the three-dimensional
form practically disappeared, only to reappear in a new, Christian
two-dimensional version. Other Eastern Christians, particularly the Syrians
and the Armenians, were much less inclined by their cultural past to the use
of images. It is significant, therefore, that the emperors who sponsored
iconoclasm were of Armenian or Isaurian origins. Moreover, the
non-Greek-speaking East was almost entirely Monophysite by the eighth
century and, as we shall see, Monophysitism tacitly or explicitly provided
the iconoclasts with the essence of their theological arguments.
b. Confrontation with Islam. After the Arab conquest of Palestine,
Syria, and Egypt, the Byzantine Empire found itself in constant
confrontation militarily and ideologically with Islam. Both Christianity and
Islam claimed to be world religions of which the Byzantine emperor and the
Arab caliph were respectively the heads. But in the accompanying
psychological warfare, Islam constantly claimed to be the latest and
therefore the highest and purest, revelation of the God of Abraham and
repeatedly levelled the accusations of polytheism and idolatry against the
Christian doctrine of the Trinity and the use of icons. It was to the charge
of idolatry that the Eastern-born emperors of the eighth century responded.
They decided to purify Christianity for better withstanding the challenge of
Islam. Thus, there was a measure of Islamic influence on the iconoclastic
movement, but the influence was a part of the cold war against Islam, not
the conscious imitation of it.
c. The Heritage of Hellenic Spiritualism. The controversy begun by
Emperors Leo III (717-741) and Constantine V (741-775) seems to have been
determined initially by the non-theological factors described above. But the