Metropolitan Kallistos Ware has captured the essential character of this [iconoclast vs. iconodules] dispute:
‘The struggle was not merely a conflict between two conceptions of Christian art. Deeper issues were involved: the character of Christ’s human nature, the Christian attitude towards matter, the true meaning of Christian redemption…the iconoclastic controversy is closely linked to the earlier disputes about Christ’s person. It was not merely a controversy about religious art, but about the Incarnation, about human salvation, about the salvation of the entire material cosmos.’
Although the above is true, it should be clarified that the rhetoric in the beginning of the dispute did not have an overtly Christological character and did not touch on these matters. Sebastian Brock and others have gone so far as to argue that the entire controversy did not bear any relation to Christology; rather the political element was paramount. In contrast, Joan Hussey adopts a more balanced view and argues persuasively that: ‘the Christological argument for and against icons was not really developed until the eighth century and then not in the opening stages of the conflict’.9 Given the Christological focus of his defence of icons, John’s role can therefore be seen as particularly important, connecting the dispute with the previous Christological controversies and with a long tradition of the semiotic of image/prototype far beyond the language of the Councils, especially if we take into account his possible lack of access to the
proceedings of the fifth and sixth Ecumenical Councils when he was writing his treatises. He thus played an indispensable role in the stabilization of the Orthodox faith for the following centuries. He saw iconological theology and practice as bound tightly with Orthodox Christology. The importance of his theology of images does not lie primarily in its originality; rather, as the recipient and active conduit of the preceding philosophical and theological tradition, he systematically re-exposed and drew attention to new dimensions of the philosophical and theological heritage he had been bequeathed; it is in this sense that he should be credited with originality and innovation. John’s work must therefore be viewed in the context of the theological appeal to ‘tradition’ evident in contemporary and earlier patristic writings, for example in the works of St. Maximos the Confessor. This is encapsulated in the phrase ‘I will say nothing of my own’ (‘ρω˜ μòν οδε´ν’) which is both an expression of monastic humility and a manifestation of a strong belief in the intellectual and spiritual legacy of the previous Christian centuries that continued to develop.
Happy feast day of St John Damascene. The last church father, defender of icons and highly influential on the scholastics pic.twitter.com/XVvRzg9bik
— Henri of Flanders (@MiltAnselm) December 4, 2025