Saint John of Damascus was born and raised in Damascus (675 or 676 AD) into a wealthy Arabic family. Both his grandfather and his father served the caliph as government functionaries, even though they were Christians. Some sources suggest that John also worked for the caliph. Be that as it may, John felt a call in his heart, left behind his old life and wealth, and became a monk at the monastery of Mar Saba, near Jerusalem. He spent his days praying, fasting, and studying the scriptures.
At that time, the iconoclast heresy was spreading throughout the Byzantine Empire, while the imageless Muslim Caliphate attacked it from the east and south. “Bowing to an icon is idolatry,” they claimed, arguing that it detracted from the adoration due to God alone. This controversy reached a climax in 726 AD when Byzantine Emperor Leo III ordered the destruction of sacred images across the empire.
John, deeply perturbed by this, decided to act. Living in Muslim territory afforded him the freedom to criticize the Emperor’s policies without fear of reprisal. He took up his pen and began condemning the heresy.
John argued that while God cannot be seen, the invisible God emptied Himself, taking on a body and a face. From that moment, “I have seen the human form of God, and my soul has been saved.” It was God Himself who opened the door for humanity to make the “journey into sacred symbols,” for He was the first to show us that matter can reveal the divine.
John maintained that only God is adored, but material images can be venerated because the Son of God sanctified matter when He was born in the flesh. In words brimming with piercing insight into God’s love, John wrote: “When I bow down before the holy images, I do not venerate matter. I venerate the Fashioner of matter, who became matter for my sake … and through matter worked my salvation. ‘For the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.’”
John fought with his pen against iconoclasm for the glory of God, who became a man and took a visible form. He also venerated the Mother of God and praised the saints of the Church: “All that is yours, we venerate,” he wrote.
He died around 750 AD, not living to see the end of iconoclasm. However, the Church never forgot his work. At the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 AD, his teachings were vindicated, and the veneration of holy images was restored. Saint John Damascene is revered in both the East and the West as a Doctor of the Church.
