Archimandrite Jack Khalil

The Holy Scripture has always been the main source of the Christian doctrine and teaching. It is the essential canon resorted to by the Church Fathers to appraise the correctness of Faith. The patristic approach to the Bible was anything but superficial; they were drawing on it rather with deep, extensive, and objective study to understand the sense of its verses.

St John of Damascus (c. 676, died between 780–784 AD) was a prominent scholar, faithful to the Holy Tradition. He followed the method of the earlier Church Fathers in dealing with Scriptures, mixing his sermons and homilies with the biblical fragrance to such an extent that it became difficult for researchers to tell the biblical material apart from his contributions. The language and style of the Bible became genuinely intermingled with those of the saint.

The aim of this study is not merely to summarize the teaching St John on icons, nor to give the biblical citations used by him, but rather to try to examine some aspects of the exegetical approach he applied to the biblical data, which enabled him to develop the theological defense of honoring divine icons.

Moreover, this study will try to illuminate different issues of great interest. First of all, this study, as its title shows, deals with the most discussed problem in Christianity at the dawn of Islam, which is honoring the divine icons. Another issue is the question of whether Christians at this time regarded not only the context and the content of the Holy Bible as sacred, as it contains the Divine Revelation given to human beings, but also the letter of the Bible, showing awe and respect to its literal wording.