Icons: Divine Windows and Ecumenical Bridges

precis: The most shocking aspect of the Eastern Orthodox Church for many Western Protestant outsiders is their use of icons. Nothing is more diametrically opposed to a growing stream of minimalist Protestant worship aesthetics than the seeming "maximalist" aesthetic of the Eastern Orthodox Church space. To these Protestants, the Eastern Orthodox aesthetic focus may seem alien at best and anti-biblical at worst, but icons and iconographic thinking are integral aspects of the Eastern Orthodox way of being Christian. For those who wish to continue fostering ecumenical conversations in an increasingly divided and hostile world, especially in terms of building bridges between Protestantism and Eastern Orthodoxy, one must understand the theology behind Eastern iconography. There is no doctrine more important than that of icons to understand the Eastern Orthodox because icons lie at the foundation of their theological and spiritual self-conception.