The pre-Nicaean church was consistently hostile to visual representation in worship. Tertullian (200 AD) identifies idolatry as "the principal crime of the human race" and the root of all other sins. Clement of Alexandria (190 AD) dismisses images as "gold, wood, stone, earth" shaped by artists' hands, and argues that the forms of idols are "plainly stamped with the characteristic nature of demons." This early consensus was not absolute — by the fourth century, figurative Christian art was spreading — but the systematic theological defense of icon veneration (grounded in the Incarnation) came much later, settled by the Second Council of Nicaea (787 AD), which distinguished veneration (proskynesis) from worship (latreia).
"The principal crime of the human race, the highest guilt charged upon the world, the whole procuring cause of judgment, is idolatry" — Tertullian's sweeping condemnation positions any honor given to material images as the foundational sin, leaving no space for icon veneration in the early Western church.
"Thy image, if considered as to its origin, is gold, it is wood, it is stone, it is earth, which has received shape from the artist's hand... the forms of the images are plainly stamped with the characteristic nature of demons" — the early Eastern church's equally sharp rejection of cultic images as inherently demonic.
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