The Sacred Heart of Jesus

Pensees · Post by **Pensees** » Tue 2 January 2007 2:55 pm

Anastasios wrote:

Well we don't venerate the sacred heart in Orthodoxy, so righteness or wrongness aside, it's just foreign to our custom.

I'm approaching this from what you might call an "academic" standpoint. My primary concern is not the "rightness" or "wrongness" of its theology, but whether an Orthodox Christian can appreciate depictions of the Sacred Heart as art. In my opinion, it's one of the greatest ideas in the history of Christian art.

Peace.

Anastasios · Post by **Anastasios** » Tue 2 January 2007 3:59 pm

Pensees wrote:
Anastasios wrote:

Well we don't venerate the sacred heart in Orthodoxy, so righteness or wrongness aside, it's just foreign to our custom.

I'm approaching this from what you might call an "academic" standpoint. My primary concern is not the "rightness" or "wrongness" of its theology, but whether an Orthodox Christian can appreciate depictions of the Sacred Heart as art. In my opinion, it's one of the greatest ideas in the history of Christian art.

Peace.

That's not the original question you posed, though.

Pensees · Post by **Pensees** » Tue 2 January 2007 4:09 pm

I'm sorry for not being more clear. My question is not whether Orthodox Christians believe in devotion to the Sacred Heart, which admittedly is a practice that I don't understand, but whether its depiction is considered within the limits of Christian iconography. Could an Orthodox Christian iconography create depictions of the Sacred Heart without being in error?

GOCTheophan · Post by **GOCTheophan** » Tue 2 January 2007 4:56 pm

Pensees wrote:
I'm sorry for not being more clear. My question is not whether Orthodox Christians believe in devotion to the Sacred Heart, which admittedly is a practice that I don't understand, but whether its depiction is considered within the limits of Christian iconography. Could an Orthodox Christian iconography create depictions of the Sacred Heart without being in error?

No, because Iconography is theology in colours and it reflects the cyprto-nestorianism of Roman Catholicism as Fr Pomanzansky made clear.

Theophan.

Pensees · Post by **Pensees** » Tue 2 January 2007 10:01 pm

With that line of reasoning, couldn't depictions of the Transfiguration be considered crypto-Nestorian for emphasizing the deity of Christ?

Anastasios · Post by **Anastasios** » Wed 3 January 2007 1:33 pm

Pensees wrote:
With that line of reasoning, couldn't depictions of the Transfiguration be considered crypto-Nestorian for emphasizing the deity of Christ?

Nestorianism overemphasizes the humanity of Christ.

Pensees · Post by **Pensees** » Thu 4 January 2007 5:13 pm

Anastasios wrote:
Pensees wrote:
With that line of reasoning, couldn't depictions of the Transfiguration be considered crypto-Nestorian for emphasizing the deity of Christ?

Nestorianism overemphasizes the humanity of Christ.

But emphasizing one nature instead of another could be misinterpreted as separating Christ into two persons, and therefore crypto-Nestorian. Icons of the Sacred Heart seem to emphasize both natures, in depecting a divinely human heart.