In depicting the Saviour, we do not depict either His Divine or His human nature, but His Person in which both these natures are incomprehensibly combined. We depict His Person, since the icon can only be a personal, hypostatical image, while nature, "essence has no independent existence, but is seen in persons". The icon is connected with the original, not on the strength of an identity between its own nature and His nature, but because it depicts His Person and bears His name, which connects the icon with the Person it represents and gives the possibility of communion with Him and the possibility of knowing Him. Owing to this connection "homage paid to the image is transmitted to the original" say the holy Fathers and the Ecumenical Council, quoting the words of Basil the Great. Inasmuch as the icon is an image, it cannot be consubstantial with the original; otherwise it would cease to be an image and would become the original, would be of one nature with it. The icon differs from the original precisely by the fact that it has another, different nature, for "the representation is one thing, and that which it represents is another." In other words, although the two objects are essentially different, there exists between them a known connection, a certain participation of the one in the other. For the Orthodox outlook, the possibility of being at the same time identical and different is quite evident--hypostatically different, yet in nature identical (the Holy Trinity), and hypostatically identical, yet in nature different (the holy icons). This is what St. Theodore the Studite has in view when he says, "As there (in the Trinity) Christ differs from the Father in hypostasy, so here He differs from His own image in nature." And at the same time "the image of Christ is Christ, and the image of a saint is that saint. The power is not split asunder, the glory is not divided, but the glory becomes the attribute of him who is depicted."
Thus God the Word, the Second Hypostasis of the Holy Trinity, describable neither by word nor by image, assumes the nature of man, is born of the Virgin Mother of God, while remaining perfect God, becomes perfect Man; becomes visible, tangible and therefore describable. In this wise, the very fact of the existence of the icon is based on the Divine Incarnation. And the immutability of the Divine Incarnation is affirmed and demonstrated by the icon. So in the eyes of the Church the denial of the icon of Christ appears as a denial of the truth and immutability of the fact of His becoming man and therefore of the whole Divine dispensation. Defending the icon in the period of iconoclasm, the Church was not defending merely its educational role, and, still less, its aesthetic value; it was fighting for the very foundations of the Christian faith, the visible testimony of God become man, as the basis of our salvation. "I have seen the human image of God, and my soul is saved." Says St. John of Damascus. Such an understanding of the icon explains the steadfastness and intransigence with which its defenders faced torture and death in the period of iconoclasm. - The Meaning of Icons by Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky
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