A recent online discussion renewed the perennial and controversial modern topic of God the Father in Orthodox Christian iconography, as a bearded ancient.
My former Scripture instructor in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia’s online Pastoral School, Fr. John Whiteford, has this excellent overview of the issue. It links to a further in-depth discussion of the background by the writer Vladimir Moss, which is not affected by the schismatic advocacy of some of his other writing.
I’d recommend reading both pieces, which illustrate complexity and nuances in the discussion, about which a book-length treatment here sums up the criticisms of Orthodox “Ancient of Days” iconography in much online discussion today.
Basically, the controversy has centered around whether portrayal of God the Father as the “Lord of Hosts” or “Ancient of Days” in much Orthodox iconography found in Eastern lands (particularly Russia but also in Greece in centuries following the Fall of Constantinople) is non-canonical or even heretical. Some view the Ancient of Days figure as being properly of Christ, as explained further here. The issue involves whether the “nature” of God the Father is portrayed, when un-portrayable, or whether the figure of the Father as a Divine Person in the Trinity can be symbolized as seen by the Prophet Daniel in the Old Testament. The name “Ancient of Days” and with it “Lord of Hosts” is also identified with the Holy Trinity as a whole in Church Tradition.
An added aspect, I would add, is that the relationship being portrayed in such iconography, between the figure of our Lord God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, with our Lord the Holy Spirit, is, as in St. Andrei Rublev’s famous icon of the Holy Trinity “The Hospitality of Abraham,” not essentializing in nature, but within the bounds of Orthodox apophatic theology. However, the depiction of God the Father by nature was specifically prohibited by two local but pan-Orthodox councils of the Church in the 17th and 18th centuries. St. John Damascene said at the Seventh Ecumenical Council, “We do not depict God the Father because we cannot see Him. If we could see Him, we would depict Him.”
As Reader John Malov explains in writing for the blog of St. Elisabeth Convent in Belarus, sometimes
“the icons of God the Father were based on the vision of the prophet Daniel, ‘As I watched, thrones were set in place, and an Ancient of Days took his throne, his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery flames, and its wheels were burning fire … As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.'(Dan. 7: 9,13,14).
“Many interpreters of this vision identify the Son of Man with the Ancient of Days: ‘Interpreting “coming to the Ancient of Days” spatially would be ignorant, because the Godhead is not present in space, but fills everything. These words really mean that the Son has attained the glory of the Father’ (St. Cyril of Alexandria). This interpretation was firmly established in the teaching of the Church and expressed in her hymnography, ‘Mentally perceiving Thy secrets, O Lover of mankind, in purity of mind Daniel beheld Thee on the cloud, like the coming Son of Man, O Judge and King of all nations’ (Canon to the Prophet Daniel and the three youths). Since God appears here in a vision of a single person and due to the heterogeneity of interpretations, the Church decided not to rely entirely on this prophetic vision, thereby not considering it a sufficient basis for the depiction of God the Father.“
From the sense of the relationship of the Son and the Father, and also how even in the theophanies of the Old Testament (usually interpreted in Church Tradition as theophanies of Christ), the Trinity might be considered to be present as a whole (as when St John Chrysostom in his exegesis of the Gospel of John mentions God the Father appearing to Moses when often those theophanies are described in Tradition as of Christ), however, also emerged the iconography depicting the Ancient of Days. The Orthodox scholar Eric Jobe has offered a review of the issues, in which he concludes that “The One Essence of God cannot be depicted in a direct manner, but the idea of it may be referenced symbolically through these eidos [idea-depicted-as-symbol] icons. Nevertheless, these icons remain on the cusp of canonical permissibility, and they should be treated with caution.” What Dr. Jobe calls eidos icons could also be considered including figures of theophanies in the Old Testament, such as the vision to Daniel of the Ancient of Days, often interpreted as a type of Christ our God, but also sometimes as of God the Gather.
Holy Trinity Monastery’s temple in Jordanville NY has a beautiful icon of the Trinity with God the Father, and also another type of the same featured above the altar, which is visible in the photo below at the top behind the Cross. The ceiling iconography is especially breathtaking as part of a sequence related to the Trinity.
The sequence begins below with Jesus Christ in Divine Council with the Theotokos on His right and St. John the Forerunner (last of the Old Testament Prophets) on His left and other saints around with the Holy Spirit prominently above as a dove. Then above that the viewer sees a version of Rublev’s Hospitality of Abraham, in which the theophany figure of Christ bows to an angel as representing the Father as it is often interpreted. Then, on the high ceiling area, Jesus Christ as a child sits on the lap of God the Father, with the Holy Spirit as a dove in the middle. In a cultural age like ours in a “global West” bereft of strong symbols of Fatherhood, lifting one’s eyes in this sequence especially can catch a faithful viewer off-guard, in recognition of the mystery of the Trinity.
A number of icons with the depiction of the Ancient of Days have been wonder-working over the centuries, including the Kursk Root icon. Their beauty and miracle-working inform Orthodox Christian tradition. Truly, God’s ways are mysterious, and one can love and venerate such icons while being aware of the ultimate mystery of the Holy Trinity, communicated by canonical warnings as being beyond human ken.
(The photo above was taken this past week on the Feast of St. Vladimir, on my unworthy first-year anniversary of ordination as a Deacon, with my mentor and friend Fr. Felipe Balingit, with whom I had the blessing to serve; you can see the beautiful image of God the Father right behind the Cross, with — not mainly visible due to the Cross– the figure of the child Jesus Christ in His lap and the Holy Spirit symbolized by a dove.)