is to the learned. In the Old Testament there are signs to quicken the memory and promote devotion
(the ark, the rod of Aaron, the brazen serpent). Why should the sufferings and miracles of Christ
not be portrayed for the same purposes? And if Christ and the Virgin have their images, why should
not the saints have theirs? Since the Old Testament Temple contained cherubim and other images,
churches may be adorned with images of the saints. If one must not worship an image, then one
must not worship Christ, for he is the image of the Father. If the shadows and handkerchiefs of
apostles had healing properties, why can one not honor the representations of the saints? It is true
there is nothing about such worship in the Holy Scriptures, but Church ordinances depend for
authority on tradition no less than on Scripture. The passages against images refer to idols. "The
heathens dedicate their images to demons, whom they call gods; we dedicate ours to the incarnate
God and his friends, through whom we exorcise demons." He ends his letter with a number of
patristic quotations of greater or less relevancy, to each of which he appends a comment. The second
letter, which is substantially a repetition of the first, is characterized by, a violent attack upon the
Emperor, because of his deposition and banishment of Germanus, the patriarch of Constantinople.
It closes with the same patristic quotations, and a few new ones. The third letter is almost necessarily
a repetition of the preceding, since it goes over the same ground. It likewise looks upon the
iconoclasts as the servants of the devil. But it bears marks of more care in preparation, and its proofs
are more systematically arranged and its quotations more numerous.^887
For his writings in favor of images he was enthusiastically lauded by the second Nicene
Council (787).^888
But the fame of John of Damascus as one of the greatest theologians of history rests chiefly
on his work entitled the Fount of Knowledge.^889 It is made up of three separate and complete books,
which yet were designed to go together and constitute in outline a cyclopaedia of Christian theology
and of all other kinds of knowledge.^890 It is dedicated to Cosmas, bishop of Maiuma, his
foster-brother and fellow-student under the old monk. Its date is after 743, the year of Cosmas’s
consecration. In it the author avows that he has introduced nothing which had not been previously
said, and herein is its value: it epitomizes Greek theology.
The first part of the trilogy, "Heads of Philosophy,"^891 commonly called, by the Latin title,
Dialectica, is a series of short chapters upon the Categories of Aristotle and the Universals of
Porphyry, applied to Christian doctrines. The Dialectica is found in two forms, one with sixty-eight,
and the other with only fifteen chapters. The explanation is probably the well-known fact that the
author carefully revised his works before his death.^892 The longer form is therefore probably the
later. Its principal value is the light it throws upon the Church terminology of the period, and its
proof that Christians preceded the Arabs in their study of Aristotle, by one hundred years. The
second part of the trilogy, the "Compendium of Heresies,"^893 is a description of one hundred and
(^887) Langen, p. 141.
(^888) Page 461.
(^889) Πηγὴγνώσεως, in Migne, l.c. col. 521-1228.
(^890) This is his own statement, l.c. col. 533.
(^891) Κεφάλαιαφιλοσοφικά, l.c. col. 521-676. Lupton, pp. 67, 68; Langen, pp. 46-52. There is a special essay by Renoux,
entitled, De Dialectica Sancti Joannis Damasceni (1863).
(^892) Langen, p. 46.
893
Περὶαἰρέσεωνἐνσυντομία l.c.col. 677-780.