page_title: Holy Trinity Icon
section_title: New Testament Trinity
hierarchical_section_title: Holy Trinity Icon / New Testament Trinity
caption_attribution_description: The Holy Trinity an Orthodox wall painted icon at the ceiling of the entrance (πρόστωον) Vatopedion Monastery at Agion Oros (Mount Athos), Greece.
context_page_description: The Holy Trinity is an important subject of iconographic representation in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and has a rather different treatment from depictions in the Western Churches. There are two different types of Holy Trinity icons: the Old Testament Trinity and the New Testament Trinity.
context_section_description: The "New Testament Trinity" depicts the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit distinctly, and although far more familiar from Western models, is actually of Greek origin.  Christ may be shown either as an adult, (in this case he is sitting to the right of his Father) or as an infant sitting on his Father's knees, which is the norm in early Greek depictions.  This type is also called the Paternity icon, and is found from the 11th century onwards, although it did not become widespread in Orthodox art until after the Fall of Constantinople, under Western influence, when an adult Christ is the norm.  The Father is painted as the Ancient of Days, a white-bearded man with a very special type of nimbus (it contains two rombic figures: one is red, another is blue, or is a triangle). The Holy Spirit is shown as a white dove with a halo of the same type as Father has. The dove may be placed between the Father and the Son (if they sit near each other at the same level), or the dove may be shown in a beam of light from the mouth of the Father, as if the Holy Spirit was just sent by Him.
  It is interesting that in Russian Orthodoxy, depictions of God the Father are prohibited. However, when the movement of antitrinitrarians became strong in medieval Novgorod, a new type of iconography appeared: Spas Vethiy Denmi - The Savior Old with Days or Christ as the Ancient of Days. In this type of icon, Jesus Christ is depicted as an old white-haired man. The basis of this iconography is consubstantiality - the doctrine that Jesus and the Father are one. This very image of God the Father is used in New Testament Trinity icons; until the Great Synod of Moscow in 1667 it was a matter of theological debate whether the Ancient of Days from the Book of Daniel was Christ or God the Father.  In the Western churches the Ancient of Days remains the basis and justification for depictions of God the Father, as made clear by, for example, a pronouncement by Pope Benedict XIV in 1745.
  The Second Council of Nicea in 787 confirmed that the depiction of Christ was allowed because he became man; the situation regarding the Father was less clear. The usual Orthodox representation of the Trinity was through the "Old Testament Trinity" of the three angels visiting Abraham - said in the text to be "the Lord" (Genesis:18.1-15). However post-Byzantine representations similar to those in the West are not uncommon in the Greek world. The subject long remained sensitive, and the Russian Orthodox Church at the Great Synod of Moscow in 1667 finally forbade depictions of the Father in human form, although other Orthodox churches sometimes do not follow this ruling. The canon is quoted in full here because it explains the Russian Orthodox theology on the subject:
  Chapter 2, §44: It is most absurd and improper to depict in icons the Lord Sabaoth (that is to say, God the Father) with a grey beard and the Only-Begotten Son in His bosom with a dove between them, because no-one has seen the Father according to His Divinity, and the Father has no flesh, nor was the Son born in the flesh from the Father before the ages. And though David the prophet says, "From the womb before the morning star have I begotten Thee" (Ps.109:3), that birth was not fleshly, but unspeakable and incomprehensible. For Christ Himself says in the holy Gospel, "No man hath seen the Father, save the Son" (cf. John 6:46). And Isaiah the prophet says in his fortieth chapter: "To whom have ye likened the Lord? and with what likeness have ye made a similitude of Him? Has not the artificier of wood made an image, or the goldsmiths, having melted gold, gilt it over, and made it a similitude?"(40:18-19). In like manner the Apostle Paul says in the Acts (17:29), "Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold or silver or stone, graven by art of man's imagination." And John Damascene says: "But furthermore, who can make a similitude of the invisible, incorporeal, uncircumscribed and undepictable God? It is, then, uttermost insanity and impiety to give a form to 
caption: Greek Orthodox fresco of the "New Testament Trinity"
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