Time for another round of questions. Hope these don't bug you too much.
"Christ is incarnate (in some way) in an icon, just as the Son is incarnate in Christ's human body."
Can you explain how this works and how the idea developed?
As with most Orthodox things, I don't know a great deal about this. The basic idea comes from ancient attitudes towards images. To us, to say that X is the image of Y is to assert that X and Y are numerically different, though they may be similar. In an ancient context, to say that X is the image of Y is to say that X is in some way (numerically) identical to Y even though they are also numerically distinct. So if the Son is the image of the Father, that expresses their identity rather than their distinctness. Similarly, if an icon is an image of the Son, then the icon (in some way) is the Son, even though in another way it plainly isn't.
I believe that the notion that the icon is an extension, or part, of the incarnation itself developed at a fairly early stage, but as far as I know the key individual in the articulation of this view was John of Damascus in his three
Logoi Apologetikoi of 729-30. In these books, John gives a twofold defence of the use of icons. The first element of his defence is a distinction between veneration and worship, the point being that icons are not worshipped but venerated, which is not idolatrous, and God is worshipped through this veneration. This argument had previously been made by Germanus of Constantinople. The second plank of John's defence is that icon veneration is not merely permissible, but indispensable, because of the role that the icon plays in the incarnation. This is part of the way in which God uses material things to express the immaterial. John conceives of a kind of hierarchy of representation, the lowest kind being mere representation as in an ordinary picture recording something, and then moving up through prefiguring and analogy to Christ himself, an image of God who shares his nature. This means that, according to John, any material thing can potentially represent and, in a sense, actually become something higher. In this way, it becomes a kind of sacrament. Thus, to venerate an icon of Christ is to worship the Christ whom the icon represents and, in a real sense, makes present.
This basic idea was later developed and articulated rather more forcefully by Theodore the Studite, who was the major leader of the iconophiles in the later stages of the iconoclasm controversy. Theodore accepted that an icon was obviously a different thing from what it represented, but its representational form and, above all, similar name indicates some kind of identity of nature. In fact, although they are two in
ousia, they are one in
hypostasis. Just as the Son is the image of the Father, and the Father is worshipped through him, so too an icon is an image of the Son, who is worshipped through it. So Theodore goes rather further than John of Damascus, who was clear that God is worshipped whilst icons are only venerated. Theodore's theology effectively allows icons to be worshipped as extensions of the divine nature. Theodore does, however, shy away from drawing this conclusion, stressing that icons are not part of the Trinity. What is to be worshipped is not the image, but Christ in the image. By the same token, refusing to venerate the image is a refusal to worship Christ, which is why icons can never be a matter of indifference.
The idea that slavery is inherently immoral goes back to at least St. Gregory of Nyssa, so how have Christians historically interpreted Old Testament laws explaining the mechanics of slavery?
I'm not sure, but I think there would be two main responses. The first is that the Old Testament lays down laws for the just treatment of slaves, which envisages a very different kind of slavery from that actually practised in most slave-owning societies, including classical antiquity. So the biblical view is not that slavery is inherently wrong, but that slavery may be just, although it rarely ever has been. The (old) Catholic Encyclopedia reports precisely this view in
this rather surprising article - I say rather surprising since it seems at some points to endorse the view in question, although this may be an unjust interpretation of mine based on insufficiently careful reading.
The second response would of course be that the Old Testament laws about slavery are part of the dispensation that God gave to the ancient Hebrews which were intended only to apply to that period, just as he also ordered them to wage aggressive war (something which the Catholic Church thinks is never just), to have many wives, and so on. I don't know the history of this kind of view, but I think it is basically a modern one; it is at any rate unbiblical.
I understand that Swinburne espouses some form of substance dualism, which is rare for a contemporary philosopher. What are the basics of his view on the subject and what's your opinion of it?
"Rare" is putting it mildly! As I understand it, Swinburne takes pretty much the classical Cartesian line that the mind is a formally and really distinct substance from the body, which can and indeed does exist without it. He's aware, of course, that much of what the mind does requires a body, and so conceives of the disembodied mind as quite different, phenomenologically speaking, from the embodied mind. His main book on this subject is
The Evolution of the Soul, which I have not read, but as I understand it his principal argument for this position is along the lines of Descartes', to the effect that the conceivability of the mind and body as distinct indicates that they are. This doesn't seem to me a very promising line of reasoning, but as I haven't read his detailed exposition of it, it wouldn't be fair for me to judge.
Speaking of Swinburne, if I could only buy one of his books, which one should it be?
That depends on what aspect of his thought you're interested in. If it's his philosophy of mind then the above-mentioned book would be the one to go for. If it's his arguments for God's existence then
The Existence of God would be the obvious choice.
Has any Christian theologian/philosopher ever given an intelligible definition of the self? Would it be considered the same thing as a soul?
That depends on what one means by "self", and indeed by "soul". I can't think of any discussions of "the self" per se - it is not a concept much used by either theologians or philosophers, I think. Philosophers, at least, are perhaps more interested in the mind, or consciousness, or person, or indeed soul - any one of which one might identify as "the self" even if that term is not used. I think that most theologians who think that "soul" is a useful category would pretty much identify it with the self.
Of the different English translations of the bible, are there particular translations that different denominational groups strongly support over others?
I ask because I have an aunt, non-denominational Protestant New Englander, that I was thinking of getting a bible for Christmas. But without giving away the idea, I can't think how to decide between KJ or NIV.
This is another vexed issue that I don't know much about. I think that preferred biblical translations generally reflect theological stances rather than denominations themselves. For example, evangelicals typically use the NIV, no matter what denomination they are. Fundamentalists typically use the AV, again no matter what denomination they are. More middle-of-the-road and liberal people are likely to use the NRSV. But then these things aren't set in stone - I went to a service at a very evangelical church last week and they were using the ESV rather than the NIV I would have expected.
I think that the NIV is a bad translation, for reasons I've given before, so I wouldn't encourage anyone to use it. I would say that if your aunt is a Christian then presumably she already has a Bible, and what you're thinking of getting her is a presentation-type Bible rather than an everyday reading sort of one, in which case the AV might make the most sense whatever translation she normally uses. But that's just a best guess. Otherwise I think the NRSV is a good all-purpose translation that no-one is likely to object to unless they have a weird dogmatic insistence upon another one, which is probably unlikely to be the case with your aunt.