The Orthodox are very proud of their tradition of using church councils as a way to decide questions of theology and religious practice. The Orthodox tradition especially honors the memory of saints, that is, previous believers who have led extraordinary lives of holiness. While the Church finally concluded that religious images were acceptable, it placed restrictions on the kinds of religious art that could be created and on the subjects and manner in which the subjects could be depicted. These rules for religious painting are known as canons. In creating icons, it was important for religious painters to depict the scenes in an abstracted form, which was to remind the religious believer of the original person or event that happened in sacred history.
Icons are to be doors through which the believer communes with spiritual realities.
If the images were too realistic, there was the temptation that the viewer will see only naturalistic depiction on the boards and won't think of the heavenly reality that the image was supposed to evoke in the believer. The Old Testament Trinity by Andrei Rublev. This icon probably represents the highest level of Russian icon painting in the middle ages. It combines a simplicity of technique and design, with very deep theological content. The Trinity The Orthodox Liturgy Other emblems of Orthodoxy are the eight-pointed cross as well as the distinctive way of holding one's figures to make the sign of the cross .