The icons are not
portraits of men and women in their "fallen"
state. They are portraits of a deified humanity, of men
and women who have cleansed the divine image in
themselves which had been obscured and troubled by the
Fall, and who participate here and now in the new heaven
and the new earth. What they represent is the stae of
being which it is, or should be, the worshipper's desire
to achieve his initiation into the Christian mystery.
The icons are not
portraits of men and women in their "fallen"
state. They are portraits of a deified humanity, of men
and women who have cleansed the divine image in
themselves which had been obscured and troubled by the
Fall, and who participate here and now in the new heaven
and the new earth. What they represent is the stae of
being which it is, or should be, the worshipper's desire
to achieve his initiation into the Christian mystery.