Icons and Irenaeus

I'm still picking away at my reading project in the Early Church Fathers. Much of it is impressive. Parts are edifying, most is instructive, some is unfortunate. (Such as the bits about the phoenix and the unicorn.) I keep an eye open for the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox distinctives, which are essentially absent, at least in the first hundred years, which is about as far as I've gone. But that is enough to depreciate the value of the RC and EO claims that all these things go all the way back. Uh, no, actually, there's no Marian devotion, no prayer to the saints, no purgatory, no indulgences ... these things are later developments and have no claim to demonstrable apostolic tradition.

For instance, I've finally come across a reference to the religious use of icons, which I find in Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyons, writing in A.D. 180 or so, probably a hundred years after the last apostle died. As you may know, the main work of Irenaeus was to combat the plague of Gnostic heresies, and he begins with a thorough description of the varieties of Gnostic beliefs and practices.

Book 1.25.6 They style themselves Gnostics. They also possess images, some of them painted, and others formed from different kinds of material; while they maintain that a likeness of Christ was made by Pilate at that time when Jesus lived among them. They crown these images, and set them up along with the images of the philosophers of the world that is to say, with the images of Pythagoras, and Plato, and Aristotle, and the rest. They have also other modes of honouring these images, after the same manner of the Gentiles.

This is a telling description. Like all of Irenaeus' descriptions, it is conveyed with a tone of ridicule that tilts towards scorn. Can you believe it? They set up *images* and *crown them* and have other modes of *honoring them*, just like the *Gentiles.* You can feel the shock and revulsion.

Of course, if Irenaeus had know of any acceptable and legitimate practice of icon veneration in the catholic church, you would expect him to make a distinction like, "of course the Gnostic practice, repellent as it is, is nothing like our holy and true practice in the church."

So. Claims that icon veneration has early apostolic tradition behind it are very thin at best. And in fact, when an early father did encounter the religious use of images, he cited it as an example of lamentable folly.