Does a painting divide Christ's two natures?
The image refers to the one divine person through his visible humanity, without claiming to paint his divine nature.
Key points
- A picture can depict only Christ's humanity. If that humanity is pictured without divinity, the picture divides the one Christ; if it pictures divinity, it confines God.
- A depiction need not reproduce every aspect of its subject to identify the subject. A portrait refers to a person without painting that person's soul.
- Orthodox Christology confesses one person in two natures. The icon identifies the Son who became human; it does not invent a second human person.
- The icon neither contains the divine essence nor separates a human Jesus from the eternal Word.
- This explains coherence, not yet the obligation to venerate. Also, affirming the Incarnation while rejecting icons is not automatically an explicit confession of Nestorianism.