OCU Cleric Criticizes Traditional Iconographic Depictions of Christ

Fresco of Christ Pantocrator. Photo: Open sources

LUTSK — An Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) cleric at the center of previous church seizures in Bukovyna is drawing new controversy after delivering a lecture at the Volyn Theological Academy in which he sharply criticized traditional iconography and conventional understandings of Christ.

As reported by UOJ-Ukraine, Roman Hryshchuk told students he sought to dismantle their inherited image of Jesus, “which the Moscow Patriarchate and Orthodoxy in its version have imposed over the past centuries.”

Hryshchuk claimed icons depict Christ in a distorted manner, “as a person with a disproportionately small head, a thin body and long fingers, small lips, a large area where the brain and eyes are supposed to be.”

“We imagine Christ this way. In our understanding, He is a person with such an appearance and with a spine necessarily bent forward, with the head jutting outward. And from a distance we already know that this is a typical ‘nerd’,” he said.

Arguing that “Christ was nothing like this,” Hryshchuk described the Savior instead as physically strong, resilient, and forceful in speech. He asserted that Christ’s rebukes of the scribes and Pharisees “we would today call verbal abuse or even profanity,” insisting that humility was shown only before God the Father.

Hryshchuk further suggested that Christ did not shy away from force or violence, pointing to the biblical account of the cleansing of the Temple and His use of a whip.

Because of this interpretation, he urged listeners to abandon the image of a priest as a meek, conflict-averse pastor. “The Savior was a strong, powerful, impressive figure. His wisdom is the ability to engage in dialogues and to emerge victorious from them. That is, it is not the avoidance of conflict, but emerging victorious from conflict,” he stated.

Previously, UOJ reported that Hryshchuk's son was involved in the seizure of a cathedral in Chernivtsi.

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