Why, one cannot help asking, is John of Damascus so interested in angels or in souls? He is here trying once again to justify the icon. What is the significance of these spiritual beings in his doctrine of sacred images? It is not difficult to find the answer. The "spiritual creature" — whether angel, demon, or soul — offers "empirical" proof, as it were, that the image can reach further than the tangible, material reality. In the very existence of the "spiritual being" the apparently absolute connection between the tangible and the visible, the heavily material and the visually perceptible, is denied; the human eye can perceive what dwells beyond the limits of matter. The very existence of the angel, the demon, and the soul constitutes a sanction of the spiritual image.
Crucificação no regaço do Pai. (Cristo Crucificado, Seraph, Alma de Cristo)
— Tu es sacerdos in æternum.
Ícono russo. Inícios do séc. XVII. @ Moscovo, Museu de Ícones de Recklinghausen
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