Analogia

This is the first of a three-volume series dedicated to Orthodox Iconography. In the life of the Church, Iconography, as theology through colours, has been, in the life of the Church, more than anything else, the expression of ineffable things, that is, things that cannot be expressed through words and concepts. For Orthodox theology, the experience of vision that surpasses reason and conceptualisation has always been the way par excellence of approaching divine things, not in the sense that we understand them, since they lie beyond understanding, but in the sense that we participate in them. The vision of God, beyond any philosophical/intellectual contemplation, formed the core of a great part of the Greek Patristic ascetical literature. Of course, this vision is also ineffable and non-depictable, but, however, Iconography is still what lies closer to this experience, and it directly refers to the latter. Iconography, in that sense, does not mean so much that one thinks though icons, but mainly that one prays through icons. Contents: 1. An Iconographer Saint; Searching for the true Likeness, NUN GABRIELA, 2. Transfiguration and the Marriage of Form and Light, AIDAN HART, 3. Icons and Photographs: An Ontological and Aesthetic Compariso, CORNELIA A. TSAKIRIDOU, 4. Monasticism and Artistic Tradition, HIEROMONK LUKAS OF XENOPHONTOS