The Rhetorical Pisteis in John Damascene’s Defense of Icons

Abstract: While the theological arguments that John of Damascus (d. 745) employs in his three Orations in defense of sacred icons have long attracted scholarly attention, the rhetorical variations between them remain understudied. The present article remedies this lacuna by analyzing the rhetoric of all three Orations according to the three “modes” ( pisteis ) of classical Greek rhetoric: logos (how John displays the reasoning of his argument), ēthos (how he constructs and defends his credibility), and pathos (how he connects with and evokes his audience’s emotive response). Because each Oration represents a different iteration of the same iconophile polemic, the carefully crafted continuities and discontinuities between the three Orations —most visible when comparing their dispositive arrangements—show how Damascene adjusts his own rhetorical aims in deliberate response to the evolving discursive landscape within the Christian communities living under Umayyad rule. This modal analysis of the Orations concludes that the recent emphasis placed by historians on John’s pastorally and culturally intersectional role at the Church of the Anastasis in Jerusalem is warranted by the internal evidence, suggesting further that of the three Orations the third is the most oriented toward the concerns of that local Palestinian audience, and the least directed intentionally toward the Byzantine world. Moreover, when taken together with Damascene’s incendiary political theology, these large shifts also help explain the curious gaps in the Byzantine manuscript tradition of the Orations , demonstrating the real likelihood that his homiletic discourses in defense of images made a significant rhetorical impact on the iconoclastic debates taking place far away in Constantinople.