What Orthodox Iconography Is?
The religion of Christ is the revelation, by Him, of the truth. And this truth is the knowledge of the true God and of the spiritual world. But the spiritual world is not what men used to and still do call “spiritual.” Christ calls His religion “new wine,” and “bread that cometh down from Heaven.” The Apostle Paul says, “Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. In a religion like this, one that makes the believer into a new man,” everything is “new.” So, too, the art that gradually took form out of the spirit of this religion, and which it invented to express its Mystery, is a “new” art, one not like any other, just as the religion of Christ is not like any other, in spite of what some may say who have eyes only for certain meaningless externals. The architecture of this religion, its music, its painting, its sacred poetry, insofar as they make use of material media, nourish the souls of the faithful
