![]() John of Damascus calls those who hold such a view "enemies of Mary".10 Thus when Evangelicals convert to Orthodoxy and see such icons as the "Holy Family", it should be no surprise that such an image confuses them and may justify a retention of their previous heretical views. Joseph and the Virgin Mary engaged in physical intercourse after the birth of Christ, and by this means bore other children. Like the notorious heretics as the Ebionites, Helvidius, and Jovinian, Evangelicals hold to the most-irreverent view that St. Part of this has to do with the fact that Evangelicals consider marital domesticity the highest ideal of the Christian life, in sharp contradiction with Scripture and the Fathers who teach that the loftiest state of the Christian life is virginity, because it helps a Christian better focus on attaining their union with God. Evangelicals claim to believe in the Virgin Birth, yet in large part reject the ever-virginity of the Virgin Mary, which means that they only accept this dogma of the Virgin Birth partially. Joseph and his role as the husband of the Virgin Mary, warns us that by misunderstanding this particular biblical verse, “the snake of unbelief, released from perverse hiding places, lifts its head and vomits forth mischief from serpentine hearts.”9 One group of people this depiction of the "Holy Family" may particularly confuse are converts from Evangelicalism. Ambrose of Milan, again safeguarding the traditional Christian teaching about St. But while the one was His father in purpose only, and the other His mother in the flesh also, they were both of them, for all that, only the parents of His humility, not of His sublimity of His weakness, not of His divinity.”8 Thus, if the three are to be depicted in iconography together, they should be depicted fulfilling their divine purpose, rather than as a family according to the flesh. Augustine of Hippo further notes, “Joseph.might be called the father of Christ, on account of his being in a certain sense the husband of the mother of Christ.,”6 but he qualifies this admission by insisting that, in their spousal relationship, “there was no bodily connection.”7 Elsewhere he elaborates on this point: “And because of this conjugal fidelity they are both deservedly called ‘parents’ of Christ (not only she as His mother, but he as His father, as being her husband), both having been such in mind and purpose, though not in the flesh. ![]() His humble acceptance and virtuous fulfillment of this role are precisely the points of focus in his veneration by the Orthodox Church.5 Joseph to be the head of some sort of “Holy Family” rather, he is seen as the Providentially-ordained guardian of the Theotokos and her Divine Child. He is not part of the central group of the Child and His Mother he is not the father and is emphatically separated from this group.”4 Likewise, in Icons with similar themes, such as the Meeting of the Lord or the Flight into Egypt, Orthodox iconology does not understand St. For example, in the Icon of the Nativity of Christ, as Professor Constantine Cavarnos comments, “he is not shown at the central part of the composition, like the Theotokos and the Child, but away, at a corner, in order to emphasize the Scriptural account and the teaching of the Church that Christ was born of a Virgin.”3 Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky, in their pivotal work on iconographic theory, make a similar observation: “Another detail emphasizes that in the Nativity of Christ ‘the order of nature is vanquished’-this is Joseph. Joseph (without, of course, denigrating his person), just as the Church Fathers are also laconic when talking about him. ![]() In fact, to protect the faithful from an improper understanding of his fatherly role and his relationship to the Theotokos, traditional Orthodox Iconography downplays the figure of St.
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