The document summarizes several theological controversies and setbacks that Christianity faced in the 8th century, including: 1) The rise of Adoptionism, which was condemned at the Council of Frankfurt in 794 for its view that Christ had both a divine and human sonship. 2) The Iconoclast Controversy over the use of icons in worship, which emperor Leo II declared idolatrous and sought to destroy, though icon veneration was later upheld by the Second Council of Nicaea in 787. 3) A decline in preaching in the church as most clergy limited themselves to liturgical duties and read prepared homilies rather than giving their own sermons.

1. History of Christianity-1
COACH Institute of Intercultural Studies, Hyderabad

2. THE EIGHTH CENTURY

3. Christianity in the 8th century was
much affected by the rise of Islam in
the Middle East. By the late 8th
century, the Muslim empire had
conquered all of Persia and parts of
the Eastern Roman (Byzantine)
territory including Egypt, Palestine,
and Syria. Suddenly parts of the
Christian world were under Muslim
rule.

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C. Theological Controversies and Setbacks

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1. Adoptionism
a. Two Spanish bishops put forth the idea that
although Christ in his divine nature was the
eternal Son of God, in his human nature he as
an adopted son of God, just as believers are.
b. At the root of the issue was whether
sonship belonged properly to person or to
nature. The Adoptionists said that it belonged
to nature, and since Christ had two natures, it
followed that there were two “sons” in Christ
– an eternal, divine sonship and a human
adopted sonship.

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c. Spread within the Frankish empire and caused a
major controversy.
d. The orthodox argued that sonship belongs to his
person – it is as a person that Jesus is the eternal son of
God; therefore Christ cannot have an additional human
sonship unless he has a separate human personality,
which, of course, is the Nestorian heresy.
e. Opponents argued that this was the Nestorian heresy
all over again because to say that there were two sons
in Christ, a divine son and a human adopted son was to
say that there were two persons of Christ.
f. Condemned at the Council of Frankfurt in 794.

7. 2. Iconoclast Controversy

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a. Icons
1) Renderings of Christ, the Virgin
Mary, and the saints and angels in
heaven) were almost always pictures –
drawings, paintings, mosaics,
wood or stone carvings in low relief. To
this day Orthodoxy
opposes statues of Christ, Mary, saints
and angels.

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2) The icon reveals the presence of Christ – even an icon of
a saint because it was Christ in the saint who made him or
her into a saint. Therefore the bowing, ksissing, and lamp-
lighting were acts of homage to Christ himself, present with
the worshipper.
3) John of Damascus argued that the incarnation shows
that God made it possible to paint the portrait of a man.
Many in the East embraced this view, even considering that
a church was not a truly holy place unless it was adorned
with images and icons to aid worship and faith.
4) Development of art saw art entering the churches – the
idea behind the use of images was that “seeing leads to
faith.”

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5) Appeared not only in places
of worship, but homes, shops,
on clothes, and in jewelry.
6) There were some who
claimed that God created them
miraculously.
7) Became objects of admiration, but
adoration – they began to become objects
of worship.

11. b. Affected West and
East, but mainly the East
– the center of the
controversy was in
Constantinople/Byzantium.

12. c. Leo II (emperor in the East from 717-40)

13. 1) 1) Declared war on all icons.

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a) Believed that he was called by God to
cleanse the Eastern Empire of idolatry or else
have his dominion suffer under the wrath of
God.
b) Began a campaign against images in
726 – seeking to destroy them all. In
Constantinople there was a giant golden image
of Christ, the most prominent image in the city
that was pulled down by a squad of Leo’s
soldiers. A mob of enraged women seized the
officer in charge and beat him to death with
mops and kitchen tools. Leo ordered their
execution.

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2) Issued his famous edict against icons
a) Required images to be destroyed,
calling them idolatrous. His theological
argument was that depicting Christ as a
man prevented one from showing that
he was also God. A picture, a human
representation of Jesus was considered
a form of Nestorianism (that Jesus had
two natures)
b) Monasteries housed his main victims

16. d. The Roman popes backed the
iconophiles (or iconodules) because…
1) They believed that the iconophile
position was essentially theologically
accurate.
2) They believed that the iconoclast
emperors were overstepping their
bounds in subjecting the Eastern Church
to the state.
3) Pope Gregory II condemned the
iconoclasm.

17. e. This controversy also became an argument over issues
of church and state.
1) When the religious leaders and the people revolted
against Leo II’s ban on images, he used arms to
enforce it. His son, Constantine V continued the harsh
measures of his father. At a council called by
Constantine in 754, loaded with 338 iconoclast
bishops, icons were condemned.
2) Constantine’s son, Leo IV (775-80) things relaxed for
the iconophiles under the influence of Leo’s wife, Irene,
who loved icons.

18. 3) Irene ruled the empire in the name
of her young son, Constantine VI (780-
97) during which time the Second
Council of Nicaea (787) proclaimed that
it was unlawful to worship images; it
was necessary to venerate them, to give
them respect and attention. This did not
heal the rift between church and state;
nor did it prevent iconoclasm in the
ninth century.

19. 3. The loss of preaching in public worship
a. The fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century
brought grave problems to the church, not least that
there was a widespread decline in the level of
education among the clergy. This was not completely
remedied by the Carolingian Renaissance.
b. Most clergy limited themselves to carrying out
liturgical and sacramental functions (communion,
baptism, confession, burying the dead, etc.), but no
longer preached their own sermons.

20. c. Instead, they used homilies –
a homily was a sermon written
by someone else and read out to
the congregation by the priest.
d. This began in the fifth century,
but became normative in the
8th and 9th centuries.

21. 5. The Donation of Constantine: This was a
document that surfaced in the eighth century
which claimed to be a letter from Constantine the
Great to pope Sylvester I in which Constantine
said that the pope was superior to the emperor
and granted the papacy the right to govern the
city of Rome and all imperial territory in Italy and
the West. The document was a forgery (exposed
as such in 1440 by the Italian scholar Lorenzo
Valla), but for 700 years the popes used it to back
up their claims.