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The Church Fathers · c. 726–730
Three Treatises on the Divine Images
John of Damascus · c. 675–749
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What it is
A defence of icons written from safety under Muslim rule against a Christian emperor destroying them, arguing that since God took flesh, matter may be depicted and honoured.
Why it lasted
The decisive argument of the iconoclast crisis, and the reason Orthodox theology treats images as a consequence of the incarnation rather than a concession to weakness.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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