John of Damascus

Dates

around 675 - around 749 — Both dates approximate. He lived and died outside the Byzantine empire, under the Umayyad caliphate.

Region

Damascus, then the monastery of Mar Saba near Jerusalem

Language of composition

Greek, Arabic

Commemoration

4 December (Orthodox Church in America and other Orthodox jurisdictions) — Julian-calendar jurisdictions observe the date thirteen days later on the civil calendar.

Life

John came from a Christian family that had served in the administration of Damascus before and after the Muslim conquest, and he appears to have held office himself before becoming a monk at Mar Saba near Jerusalem.

That he lived outside the Byzantine empire mattered. He wrote against imperial iconoclasm without being subject to the emperor who was enforcing it — one of the rare cases in this period where the reach of the state and the reach of the argument did not coincide. The iconoclast council of 754 anathematised him by name.

Works

Generally accepted as authentic

• The Fount of Knowledge, including the Exposition of the Orthodox Faith — Not archived here.
• Three Apologies against those who attack the divine images — Not archived here.
• Hymnography — Including material used in the Paschal services. Attributions vary in reliability.

Disputed, spurious or lost

• Barlaam and Ioasaph — A Christianised version of a legend of the Buddha, long transmitted under his name and generally no longer attributed to him.

Theological and spiritual contribution

John's argument for images rests on the incarnation. In the old covenant God had not been seen and could not be depicted; now the invisible God has been seen in the flesh, and what has been seen may be depicted. To refuse the image is to be uneasy about the reality of the flesh.

He made the distinction the Seventh Council would use, between the relative honour given to an image, which passes to the one depicted, and the worship due to God alone. That distinction is what makes it possible to say what Orthodox Christians are and are not doing before an icon.

The Exposition of the Orthodox Faith gathers the doctrine of the preceding Fathers into a single ordered summary. It became the standard handbook in the East and was translated into Latin in the twelfth century, where it influenced Western scholastic theology.