For much of the eighth century, the Eastern Church was torn by the iconoclast controversy — a dispute over whether images of Christ and the saints could rightly be made and honored, or whether doing so violated the commandment against idolatry. Emperors had ordered icons destroyed; monasteries had resisted.
Veneration and Worship
The council drew a distinction it held to be decisive: between veneration (in Greek, proskynesis) — the honor shown to an image — and worship (latria), which is due to God alone. The honor shown to an image, the council said, passes to the one it represents; the image itself is not worshipped. The defense rested on the Incarnation: because the invisible God had truly become visible in Christ, he could be depicted.
Reception
The Eastern Orthodox Church receives Second Nicaea as the seventh ecumenical council and keeps the 'Triumph of Orthodoxy' in its memory. The Roman Catholic Church also receives it. Many Protestant traditions, holding a different reading of the commandment and of the role of images, do not — a difference described, descriptively and without polemic, on the relevant tradition pages. Here the council is recorded for the distinction it drew and the reasoning it gave.