icons:

The First Commandment given to Moses prohibits the making of images in order to worship them as gods. “You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above” (Exodus 20:4). Because God is spirit and has no body, the ancient Hebrews were prohibited from making images of him. However, when God became man and took on a visible human body, he became depictable. St. Paul used an image of Jesus Christ crucified in his preaching to the Galations, “before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified” (Galatians 3:1). To deny that Christ or the saints may be depicted in icons is effectively to deny the incarnation.

The Second Council of Nicea defined “the production of representational artwork, which accords with the history of the preaching of the Gospel. For it confirms that the incarnation of the Word of God was real and not imaginary, and to our benefit as well, for realities that illustrate each other undoubtedly reflect each other’s meaning”. St. Basil the Great says, “the honor rendered to an images passes to its prototype” (St. Basil the Great, De Spiritu Sancto 18), meaning it is not the images themselves we honor, but the saints and angels depicted.