Eve Tibbs’ Seeing the Gospel provides ‘an interpretative guide to seeing the gospel in Orthodox icons’ (p. 5). It offers readers – regardless of their prior exposure to Orthodox iconography – a guide to reading icons to enrich their encounter with the Gospel narratives. In Part 1, Tibbs presents a brief introduction to iconography for the uninitiated, with a chapter on the character and function of icons and a chapter on the Iconoclast Controversy. In Part 2 (85% of the book), she offers a careful analysis of a range of icons, woven into theological commentary on the events they portray. This commentary also includes explanation of the formal features of icons – inverse perspective, the absence of shadow, dual representation, and so on – and their theological significance. Tibbs includes a glossary of technical and theological terms, reflecting a desire to write accessibly for the general reader.
One of the book’s great strengths is its splendid array of large colour images of icons. The illustrations are plentiful but never superfluous, being continually referred to. Each icon discussed is shown in a wide range of examples from across cultures and time periods, showing the striking continuities in the iconographic tradition. While the examples of each icon are diverse, the icons included are selected according to her theme. She focuses on those that depict Gospel narratives: the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Transfiguration, and so on. The reader should therefore not expect to find in these pages a representative sample of icons in general – there are no extra-biblical saints, and many of the most significant icons (including The Trinity and Theotokos) are not included.
Tibbs offers an ‘exegetical approach’ to icons, considering how ‘the icon itself serves as exegetical tool that can enhance and illumine the textual message of the Bible’ (p. 5). This methodology offers one useful lens for approaching the icon. However, it risks leaving a reader new to icons with the impression that they serve mainly as a ‘visual biblical language’ (p. 2) rather than as a focus for veneration. While in Part 1 Tibbs acknowledges the primacy of the liturgical function of icons (p. 16), this function receives little attention elsewhere, since ‘this book does not in any way focus on the practice of praying with icons’ (p. xiv).
Tibbs’ book – influenced in part by her experience using icons during teaching at Fuller Theological Seminary – is consciously geared towards a Western, especially evangelical Protestant, audience. Her choice of an ‘exegetical approach’ reflects this. While in Part 1 she outlines the standard defences of the use of icons – the distinction between eikōn and eidōlon, (pp. 20–22) and the distinction between veneration and worship (p. 28) – her focus on the icon’s role in interpreting the Bible in Part 2 avoids dwelling on those devotional uses of icons by Orthodox Christians that are less amenable to Protestant sensibilities. Her approach is reflective of the emphasis on the ‘pedagogical’ use of icons that Aidan Hart considers characteristic of the West (Hart, p. 37).
While the book primarily focuses on biblical exposition, there are moments of reflection on distinctive Orthodox teachings scattered throughout, such as the absence of a concept of a Holy Family in the East as compared to the West (p. 85). Then, at the start of Chapter 11, Tibbs makes an extended argument contrasting Western and Eastern soteriology, characterising the position of the West as one in which ‘the innocent Jesus [takes] on the punishment for all humanity’ (p. 166), and that of the Orthodox as one in which Christ ascended the cross ‘to defeat humankind’s enemies [and] heal its inherited fatal illness’ (p. 167). Missing in this narrative, however, is not only a clear delineation between Catholic and Protestant soteriology, but also the significant retrieval of Christus Victor models of the atonement in the West since Gustaf Aulén in 1930. Perhaps, instead of Western soteriology in general, Tibbs has in view the particular evangelical soteriology of her students at Fuller, demonstrating a different way in which engagement with evangelical theological priorities has shaped the book’s argument.
Seeing the Gospel provides Western audiences with an informed commentary – from an Orthodox author – on some key Orthodox theological emphases and shows how ‘Orthodox icons communicate from a rich biblical foundation in a unique visual language’ (p. 2). It is helpful for those interested in an ‘interpretive’ approach to supplement a more devotional one, or for readers looking to iconography to enrich a basically Protestant spirituality. However, it is of limited utility for those looking for a more general introduction to Orthodox iconography, owing to its over-focus on the communicative capacity of icons rather than their role in prayer and worship.
These features of Tibbs’ book are illustrated by a comparison with another book on icons published in 2025, Aidan Hart’s Face to Face: The Theology of the Icon, which offers a ‘concise introduction to the Orthodox Church’s theology of the icon’ (blurb). Hart foregrounds the devotional and liturgical use of icons, considering them ‘best understood as the visual element of a multi-sensual act of people’s worship of God and of God’s self-revelation to people’ (p. 7). In a short and concentrated book, Hart offers a general introduction to the use and theology of icons, narrating: the theological arguments given in response to iconoclasm; the role of icons in helping the believer to ‘see and meet God’ (p. 44); the place of icons in liturgy and personal devotion; the theological basis for the formal characteristics of icons; and the development of attitudes towards Christian imagery in the West.
Hart’s book is more thoroughly theological, assuming – as compared to Tibbs’ – a more advanced level of theological literacy, and drawing extensively on both the Greek Fathers and Orthodox scholarship. Hart draws out the nuances of various apologetics for the icon, exploring the difference between depicting the hypostasis of Christ and claiming to depict the divine ousia, the distinction between latreia (worship) and proskynesis (veneration), and exploring how the Incarnation – in opening up a new relation between divinity and materiality – provides the theological basis for encountering God in the matter of an icon. Yet Hart’s purpose is not only apologetic; he also points to the fruitful resources provided by the theology of the icon. He shows how the icon challenges ‘a rationalistic and anthropocentric world view’ (p. 4), and (in the book’s final pages) directs the reader to other authors who have used the theology of the icon to respond to ‘contemporary issues such as ecology, science and religion, the role of art, and the nature of the human person’ (p. 92).
Face to Face also includes an informative guide to the formal and stylistic features of icons, and the theological significance of these. Throughout the book – and in this part especially – it feels a shame that there are no images to illustrate the features described. In this respect, Face to Face stands in contrast to Seeing the Gospel, and also to Hart’s own lavishly illustrated Festal Icons (2022). While a lack of illustration will present little challenge to those already familiar with the formal features of icons, for those newer to icons it may present more difficulty.
Like Seeing the Gospel, Face to Face is also interested in engaging with Western perspectives and theologies. However, while Tibbs’ focus is often on the differing doctrinal emphases in East and West (for example, in soteriology) – and the way these are reflected in icons – Hart focuses specifically on the differing theological attitudes to religious imagery itself. He narrates how the medieval West, with its lower literacy rate than the Byzantine East, contributed to a Western tendency to treat religious imagery as a primarily ‘book for the illiterate’ (pp. 37–38, 72), which eclipsed a richer theology of the icon as a bearer of grace. He describes how the reduction of icons to a mere reminder of events ‘delegated the style of imagery from theology to the artist’s imagination’ (p. 74), paving the way for the development of new, more naturalistic styles in Western art, beginning with Giotto (p. 77). He castigates Calvin for his ‘complete dismissal of any differentiation in meaning between veneration and worship’ (p. 79) of icons, and the ensuing iconoclasm throughout Reformation Europe. He describes how the scientific rationalism of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries widened the rift between Eastern and Western attitudes to the image, with Western art being overrun by a ‘materialistic and mechanistic’ attitude that had little space for the sacred (pp. 81-82). Finally, in Chapter 8, Hart discusses the revived interest in the icon in Western Europe, especially in its influence in early twentieth-century art (pp. 86–88). He also notes the increase in icons being commissioned in contemporary Catholic and Anglican churches, although he asks, pointedly, ‘whether they are being used to their full potential: although their pedagogical value is widely acknowledged, are they being venerated and actively used in liturgical ritual?’ (p. 91).
In setting out – concisely and confidently – a compelling narrative about the history and development of Western religious art, Hart highlights both the continuities between East and West and the differing trajectories of both traditions, tracing these differences to their underlying theological roots. What the Western reader finds in Face to Face, then, is not just (as in Seeing the Gospel) an account of how icons can provide a useful supplement to our engagement with doctrine and Scripture, but – more fundamentally – the foundations of a ‘theology of the icon’ which offers a different way of viewing imagery and materiality, inviting us to see consider how icons ‘reflect and embody a vision of the world transfigured’ (p. 8).
