Touching God in his Image

The essay defends praying with images (icons) against those who claim this type of prayer is objectionable. The hermeneutical defence consists of three arguments. (a) First I observe that people relate to ordinary photos in ways that cannot be explained in terms of the image's sign‐value (or similitude) alone. (b) Second, I develop an account of praying with images as a form of symbolic practice. (c) Finally, in order to bolster my account, I compare icons with a particular class of symbolic objects, viz. relics. The general idea I put forward is that icons have to be understood as expressions of the reality they represent, and not simply as accurate or inaccurate visual representations of that reality. Icons are not created by human hands; instead, the hand of the painter is the instrumental cause of God's self‐expression, via the painter, on the canvas.