Why was the early Church cautious about the depiction of Christ?

The early Church had reservations about portraying Christ. Instead, it used to depict Christ through symbols and events in both the Old and New Testaments, until later when His icons gradually started to spread. The reasons behind these reservations were the following:

• a. The majority of the early Fathers were uncomfortable with some types of art due to fear of returning to paganism.

• b. Some Fathers were hesitant in proclaiming the beauty of Christ in an icon, lest the Lord’s divinity should wrongly be associated with physical beauty in the minds of the simple.

• c. The Church Fathers often focus on the beauty of Christ’s salvific work as St. Augustine says: “God is beautiful, the Word with God (the Father). Beautiful in the Virgin’s womb, where He lost not His Divinity and assumed humanity … beautiful in heaven, beautiful on earth, beautiful in His miracles, beautiful in His scourging, beautiful calling men to life, beautiful in not caring for death, beautiful in laying down His life, beautiful in taking it again, beautiful on the cross, beautiful in the tomb and beautiful in heaven.”¹²²⁴

• d. Some Fathers felt some sort of uneasiness in painting the Lord, believing that the humility He manifested in His incarnation is sufficient.

• e. Some Fathers were fearful that painting Christ on an icon would turn the worshippers from thinking of His divinity.

• f. The sense of the permanent presence of Christ and His adherence to the soul in whom He lives, as if they were repeating the words of the Apostle Paul: “Therefore, from now on, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him thus no longer” (2 Cor. 5:16).

1224 John Patterson Lundy, Monumental Christianity (New York: J. W. Bouton, 1876): p. 233.

• g. The thoughts of the early Christians were entirely absorbed in the eternal life, awaiting the last advent of the Lord.

• h. The Christians focused on the risen Christ, who rose from the dead and ascended to the heavens.¹²²⁵

• i. As a result of the successive waves of persecution and demolition of church belongings which the early Church had suffered, the Church lost interest in painting icons on the walls.