This Side of the Pulpit » Theology » Holy Cross Day
Holy Cross Day
On this day in 335 AD the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was dedicated in Jerusalem with a piece of the True Cross that St. Helena, mother of St. Constantine the Emperor had found. The site of the Church is on the grave where Jesus had reposed for the three days, since unused.
The celebration in Orthodox and Catholic Churches focus on the veneration and “lifting up” of the relics themeselves, or of the cross in general. Among the Lutherans…well, I’m not really sure what it’s doing on our Liturgical Calendar. We don’t venerate relics. We do venerate the altar, at least to some degree. Or I do, at least. But not crosses.
So that must leave Holy Cross Day as a celebration of the saving power of the cross. Yet we do celebrate Good Friday. And we preach Christ crucified every week, at least in theory. And Lutherans are not much repeating ourselves, being efficient Germans and all.
To me it seems strange that there is a day on the Lutheran calendar for venerating the cross when we don’t venerate the cross. What am I missing?
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There was a wonderful picture up on the Latvian Lutheran’s site from Good Friday of the people lined up down the aisle of Riga cathedral, coming forward to venerate the Cross with a kiss. I kiss what I love, so I also kiss the cross (and the Gospel book and the altar). I did so this Good Friday at the beginning of the Tenebrae Vespers (we begin by kneeling before it in silence) and so did my assistant – totally unpremediated or thought through. Just a natural act. To quote St. Anselm, “I adore, I venerate, and I glory in that cross which you represent to us, and by that cross I adore our mericufl Lord and what He has in mercy done for us!”
Tonight after the Divine Service, I will offer any who desire to come forward and reverence the cross with a kiss or whatever their devotion may suggest. I plan on letting St. Anselm of Canterbury preach – the rest of the piece from which I took the snippet above.
we don’t venerate the cross
That’s news to me. Lutherans are, of course, a bit less demonstrative in the way they show their devotion than some others are; but we are not iconoclasts. We may not usually kiss the Cross, but we certainly have crosses and crucifixes in our Churches and in our homes (and hung about our necks). To use such symbols (even if only by displaying them) is a way of showing honour and devotion to Him who is symbolized — and that is the essence of “veneration,” even in the absence of outward physical acts of reverence.
To me it seems strange that there is a day on the Lutheran calendar for venerating the cross … What am I missing?
There is a seeming contradiction (or at least inconsistency) here. But what it means is not that there is something wrong with our calendar, but that there is something wrong with our practice. If we are not venerating the Cross, we should be — or at the very least we should not be denying the propriety of such veneration (that would be the heresy of iconoclasm). The feast of the Holy Cross comes to us from the Church’s tradition, and here the tradition is teaching us that veneration is a legitimate and salutary part of the liturgical and spiritual life. If we have lost that, we have been impoverished. By retaining this feast on her calendar, the Church invites us to regain that which we have lost.
How do we venerate? Only in the most gnostic of fashions–holding it sacred in our minds. To Venerate is a verb and veneration is doing something, as Pr. Weedon illustrates. Furthermore, it is not the cross Lutherans venerate, but in our gnosticism, what the cross “stands for” or “means” or, to be more reverent and Lutheran about it, Who was on the Cross and what He did.
Chris–Lutherans are iconoclasts in our own schizophrenic way. Not about showing images, or depicting scenes, but about the theology of the image (except for the altar, among some). Example: what Pr. Weedon describes is not an accepted practice within the LCMS–and even Luther (who hated relics and even wanted the consecration to be verba alone) would have had problems with it. What’s funny about the 7th Council is that we keep our pretty pictures but don’t buy into the theology of having them, as the Council describes.
P.S. One more thought: it is venerating the cross, too, when the Processional Cross passes and the people bow to it and some sign themselves with the cross as it passes, no?
Yeah, that could be veneration, good point. But the crazy LCMS-lets-just-face-the-cross practice wouldn’t be, I don’t think, though it seems pious enough.
Where do you find Luther criticizing such a free veneration, Christopher? His reaction to relics was very much flavored by the hideous experience of trafficking in them for the sake of the church’s coffers and playing on fears of purgatory and such. But I’ve not encountered anything in his writing suggesting he would oppose giving honor or veneration to the cross. I know I just read recently (can’t remember where – maybe table talk?) where he says that we neither prescribe nor proscribe kissing the Gospel book; it is to be left free. I suspect he’d have the same approach to kissing the cross, but he’d certainly be most concerned that it be an outward expression of a true inner love and not just a gesture.
If the level or value of a veneration is determined largely by the actions that can be externally observed by those who witness it, then perhaps it is good that it has fallen out of favor in our practice.
Perhaps there are nuances of meaning that I am too simple to understand, but I was not aware that veneration required an external act in order for it to be valid. Veneration often leads one to preform external acts (as their individual piety so moves them) and I am certain that it often accompanies external acts, but I was not aware that the former required the latter. Am I way off base?
Mike,
Luther has a little piece on the veneration of the Sacrament where he argues that it is first and foremost the adoration of the heart, which clings to the Lord Himself in His Words of promise, and that it is then natural for external actions to follow. Most Lutherans (at least around these parts) receive the Sacrament on their knees, venerating Him who comes to them in the Eucharist with His body and blood. Luther’s point in that treatise would be we shouldn’t worry so much about getting folks on their knees as in proclaiming what the gift of the Sacrament is; and such proclamation will drop them to their knees of itself without our urging. I think that’s a fair summary of his argument.
it is venerating the cross, too, when the Processional Cross passes and the people bow to it …?
It sure is. I was going to use this example in my first comment (since I was taught from childhood (cradle Episcopalian) to bow as the processional Cross passed). But I was not sure how widespread the custom is among Lutherans. It is not done (except by me, of course) in my low-church saltwater parish.
Another example which I think is still almost universal among Lutherans is standing for the reading of the Gospel during the liturgy. That simple action is a veneration of the written Word as an icon of the incarnate Word.
Pr Hall,
Lutherans are iconoclasts in our own schizophrenic way … What’s funny about the 7th Council is that we keep our pretty pictures but don’t buy into the theology of having them, as the Council describes
If that is true then we are heretics and need to repent and return to the confession of the Catholic faith.
Pr Weedon,
I am familiar with the text that you sited from Luther. I think that your summary fits of what I remember about the passage.
Pr. Hall,
…so what is the theology and/or practice that Lutherans should be doing (or at least encouraging) that they are not doing now?
So Lutherans venerate icons? This is the decision of the 7th Council: “For by so much more frequently as they are seen in artistic represenation, by so much more readily are men lifted up to the memory of their prototypes, and to a longing after them; and to these should be given due salutation and honorable reverence, not indeed that true worship of faith which pertains alone to the divine nature; but to these, as to the figure of the precious and life-giving Cross and to the Book of the Gospels and to the other holy objects, incense and lights may be offered according to ancient pious custom….
Those, therefore who dare to think or teach otherwise, or as wicked heretics to spurn the traditions of the Church and to invent some novelty, or else to reject some of those things which the Church hath received (e.g., the Book of the Gospels, or the image of the cross, or the pictorial icons, or the holy reliques of a martyr), or evilly and sharply to devise anything subversive of the lawful traditions of the Catholic Church or to turn to common uses the sacred vessles or the venerable monasteries, if they be Bishops or Clerics, we command that they be deposed; if religious or laics, that they be cut off from communion….We salute the venerable images. We place under anathema those who do not do this.”
Furthermore, I think in our crazy germanic-schizophrenic way, we must distinguish respect, reverence and veneration. I’m not convinced that signs of respect are veneration. That’s all. And I do not believe it is Lutheran to venerate relics. It’s foreign to our theology of grace.
Bill and Chris, I know I know you like to find all the Catholic/Orthodox commonalities you can. I really appreciate that, more than you know. And I hate to sound like certain other voices who trumpet their own legalistic ponderous ideas of Lutheran Orthodoxy, but I think you are truly grasping at straws here. Holy Cross is day is either a relic (pun intended) of an older stream of Lutheranism such as we see being reprisinated in Latvia, or it is an appendix on our calendar that all the Holy Cross Lutheran Churches cannot bear to see go the way of Lutheran reliquaries and monstrances.
Let me ask this: what is the purpose of the Lutheran Festival of the Holy Cross? To venerate said cross as an icon of Christ and His death? To venerate the relic of the True Cross (as it is in some churches) or to celebrate the foolishness of the cross as the wisdom of God?
I would say that the purpose of the feast in Lutheran Churches should be to glorify the wisdom and power of God in choosing what appears to us to be the foolish and weak cross upon which to defeat our enemy and to bring us an everlasting salvation. Thus, we gather to hear the Gospel of the Cross extolled, to sing to and adore the Crucified and Risen One, and to receive into our bodies through the Holy Eucharist that self-same Body and Blood which upon the Cross wrought an eternal victory for us.
What a great answer, Bill! I agree.
Now, I think you might agree that we Western Christians tend not to repeat things too much. One might even say that a principle of the Reformation was to remove the “excesses” and accretions of certain customs, to remove the legalistic outward accumulations of practices that had become corrupt, and to simplify. I say this based on such statements in the Confessions regard the plurality of saints days and the obligations that the Confessions excoriate.
So, as advocatus diaboli, why have this day when we have every Sunday as the same? One might imagine the Lutheran Confessors writing, “The vile, wicked papists promote days such as the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in order to burden consciences with vain outward shows of piety, which only serve to condemn them in their faithlessness all the more. But in our churches we preach the glory of the cross and the power of God in the crucifixion of our Lord on every Lord’s Day, not relegating it to the accretion of holy days created by men to fill their pockets and bellies. Again, among us we piously and faithfuly worship our Lord crucified every time the Gospel is preached in its purity.”
I could imagine the confessions saying that.
Pr Hall,
Thanks for the quote from the 7th Council. That is the Catholic faith. You may be comfortable under the Council’s anathema, but I am not.
what is the purpose of the Lutheran Festival of the Holy Cross?
It’s not a “Lutheran” festival. It’s a Christian feast. The Augustana says that we receive and retain Catholic faith and practice, rejecting only that which is contrary to the Scriptures. The veneration of the Cross is not contrary to the Scriptures; therefore we retain it.
To venerate said cross as an icon of Christ and His death? To venerate the relic of the True Cross (as it is in some churches) or to celebrate the foolishness of the cross as the wisdom of God?
YES
we must distinguish respect, reverence and veneration
OK — but how do you distinguish them? What separates respect from reverence, and reverence from veneration? And what separates all three of them from adoration? The major distinction drawn by the Fathers of the 7th Council was not between reverence and veneration, but between veneration and adoration. For them, reverence and veneration are quite close in meaning, but the difference in meaning between veneration and adoration is a chasm.
Christopher,
That was indeed the argument put forward by the Reformed in eliminating all the festivals of the Church Year. Lutherans, however, recognized that every facet of the jewel of the saving Gospel could not be rejoiced in every single Sunday; hence the Church Year and the Festivals, each of which lift up a particular aspect of the Gospel to ponder, give thanks for, and celebrate. Always the same light of Christ shines upon the assembly, but seen under a variety of different aspects. It is the same Gospel celebrated on Christmas as on Resurrection, and yet in a way that allows the particular point of the mystery being commemorated to shine forth. So with Holy Cross Day – the triumph of God’s “folly and weakness” over the demonic notions of what are “wisdom and strength.”
I agree that it is odd that the “dubious” finding of the Cross – as one Lutheran blogger put it – is an odd day to continue venerating the Cross. It isn’t that the Cross isn’t or shouldn’t be venerated, it’s that it is done on a day that is considered so “dubious” – it’s an arbitrary remnant if the discovery and lifting up of the cross is dismissed. Then, the veneration of the Cross should simply be on Good Friday, or on some other day that would seem to make sense to the Lutheran weltanschauung; or to be connected with something in Scripture rather than an extra-Scriptural event such as St. Helena’s rediscovery of the Cross and the Tomb.
Practically, I’m guessing the feast was retained because it was popular and had other para-ecclesial activities associated with it; the early Lutherans were probably not so eager to apply critical methodology to such events and their historicity as are later Lutherans.
Yet Treasury simply says:
“One of the earliest annual celebrations of the Church, Holy Cross Day traditionally commemorated the discovery of the original cross of Jesus on September 14, 230, in Jerusalem. The cross was found by Helena, mother of Roman Emperor Constantine the Great.”
Nothing about dubious in the Treasury at any rate…
320!
Of course, retaining the day could probably also be rationalized in the way that pagan festivals and related activities were christianized, e.g., yule log. Take the semi-pagan, papist holiday and use it as a teachable moment regarding the true meaning of the Cross.
A similar example could be Lutheran churches of a quasi-Eastern Rite using feasts of the Mother of God, e.g., Pokrov, to celebrate the real meaning of her Son.
That seems to be a slightly aggressive stance more in keeping with being German, and an important enough reason to double and triple up.
I will be using the entirety of St. Anselm’s Prayer to the Holy Cross as the homily tonight. At least as it shows up in St. Anselm, the spirit of the feast as it was celebrated in the West is not the least bit in tension with the Lutheran Confession of the holy faith. Of course, an Eastern Christian would probably not appreciate EVERYTHING the good saint had to say in it…that original sin stuff shows up, after all.
This might be of interest too – from the 7th plenary of the Lutheran/Orthodox joint commission (Helsinki, 1993) – Missouri may have had observers but was not an official participant:
As Lutherans and Orthodox we affirm that the teachings of the ecumenical councils are authoritative for our churches. The ecumenical councils maintain the integrity of the teaching of the undivided Church concerning the saving, illuminating/justifying and glorifying acts of God and reject heresies which subvert the saving work of God in Christ. Orthodox and Lutherans, however, have different histories. Lutherans have received the Nicaeno-Constantinopolitan Creed with the addition of the filioque. The Seventh Ecumenical Council, the Second Council of Nicaea in 787, which rejected iconoclasm and restored the veneration of icons in the churches, was not part of the tradition received by the Reformation. Lutherans, however, rejected the iconoclasm of the 16th century, and affirmed the distinction between adoration due to the Triune God alone and all other forms of veneration (CA 21). Through historical research this council has become better known. Nevertheless it does not have the same significance for Lutherans as it does for the Orthodox. Yet, Lutherans and Orthodox are in agreement that the Second Council of Nicaea confirms the christological teaching of the earlier councils and in setting forth the role of images (icons) in the lives of the faithful reaffirms the reality of the incarnation of the eternal Word of God, when it states: “The more frequently, Christ, Mary, the mother of God, and the saints are seen, the more are those who see them drawn to remember and long for those who serve as models, and to pay these icons the tribute of salutation and respectful veneration. Certainly this is not the full adoration in accordance with our faith, which is properly paid only to the divine nature, but it resembles that given to the figure of the honored and life-giving cross, and also to the holy books of the gospels and to other sacred objects” (Definition of the Second Council of Nicaea).
I see your point, Pastor Hall. Since the Feast Day commemorates St. Helen’s finding of the True Cross, it does appear an oddity in the Lutheran calendar. It made me think of the lines in the Luther movie about relics:
“Rome has enough nails from the holy cross to shoe every horse in Saxony.”
“But there are relics elsewhere in Christendom. Eighteen out of twelve apostles are buried in Spain.”
“And yet here in Wittenberg we have the pick on the crown. Bread from the last supper, milk from the virgins breast, a thorn that pierced Christ’s brow on Calvary and nineteen thousand other bits of sacred bone.”
Relics were such a taboo in my Lutheran experience that it was the most significant hurdle for me in my journey to Orthodoxy.
But if Lutherans want to celebrate it…even if it seems inconsistent with their position on relics, I can’t object. Maybe it can help counter some of the skepticism about relics…which wouldn’t be a bad thing.
“Abusus non tollit usum” might be helpful to remember in all of this strange mixture of sophistry and wisdom:)
The proliferation of relics in the West came from the sack of the East. There was no provenance available for these masses of relics coming back from the Crusades, as there was in the East. One can question whether Helena found or ‘invented’ the true cross, but the cross she brought forth is the one preserved in pieces in the East.
An interesting point is the theology of icons as related to relics. The icon preserves and presents an enhypostatized presence of the saint pictured. The saint is not just the nature – this is common to all of us – he is his person. The icon presents the person and is therefore referred to as ‘him’ or ‘her’, as their icon. So, too, with relics. Even if they are not ‘real’ they present the ‘icon’ of that which is portrayed and the honor given to the icon passes over to the prototype, per the theology of the Damascene and the Studite and others as enshrined in Nicea II.
I have never heard stated so baldly that Lutherans never received the Seventh EC.
Christopher– If you’re referring to Weedon’s comment above, I have never heard such a bald denial of the 7th Council either. If you’re referring to my comments, well, I think the council speaks, and we don’t.
As Weedon’s quote pointed out, there is something to the fact that the Roman Catholic Church never dealt too much with that council either, and so we don’t find them venerating icons like the Orthodox Church does.
Christopher,
Sometimes we hear that the East never really had to deal with the Pelagian controversy in the same manner as it played out in the West, and that’s certainly true. I think in a same way, the West never had to deal with any widespread iconoclasm as the East did – at least not till the Reformed at the time of the Reformation. Additionally, in the West, the accent was always on the use of art to proclaim the faith, as St. Gregory the Great wrote when challenging the destruction of an image:
For the dispersed children of the Church must be called together, and it must he shewn then by testimonies of sacred Scripture that it is not lawful for anything made with hands to be adored, since it is written, Thou shalt adore the Lord thy God, and him only shalt serve (Luke iv. 8). And then, with regard to the pictorial representations which bad been made for the edification of an unlearned people in order that, though ignorant of letters, they might by turning their eyes to the story itself learn what had been done, it must be added that, because thou hadst seen these come to be adored, thou hadst been so moved as to order them to be broken. And it must be said to them, If for this instruction for which images were anciently made you wish to have them in the church, I permit them by all means both to be made and to be had. And explain to them that it was not the sight itself of the story which the picture was hanging to attest that displeased thee, but the adoration which had been improperly paid to the pictures. And with such words appease thou their minds; recall them to agreement with thee And if any one should wish to make images, by no means prohibit him, but by all means forbid the adoration of images. But let thy Fraternity carefully admonish them that from the sight of the event portrayed they should catch the ardour of compunction, and bow themselves down in adoration of the One Almighty Holy Trinity. St. Gregory the Great, Book XI, Epistle 1 – NPNF.
This blog’s master writes: “Let me ask this: what is the purpose of the Lutheran Festival of the Holy Cross? To venerate said cross as an icon of Christ and His death? To venerate the relic of the True Cross (as it is in some churches) or to celebrate the foolishness of the cross as the wisdom of God?”
And here you see the wisdom of what the Reformation does. We retain what we may of the historic practices, eliminating the error wherever possible. There is nothing wrong with having an annual day, around half a year from Good Friday, to make sure that the foolishness of the cross is celebrated.
Is it necessary? By no means. Indeed, this should be celebrated every Sunday – however, I think this day can be maintained without much scandal as a day of focus upon the Cross – and more over, I do not think even to the most die hard stick in the mud Lutherans would find bowing before a Cross to be scandalous — unlike some of the things that might appear on “Let’s take Jesus for a walk instead of just communing day” — um, I mean the feast of Corpus Christi. >=o)
As for the 7th EC – well, first note: “but to these, as to the figure of the precious and life-giving Cross and to the Book of the Gospels and to the other holy objects, incense and lights may be offered according to ancient pious custom”. May. May is an important word. The veneration of icons is to be included among the acceptable practices, not the definition of what must be done.
This is why it is an Ecumenical council – for there were places (i.e. the west) where icons were not treated in the same way without destroying the Ecumenical nature. Maybe if the stinking Eastern Emperors had been less concerned with all their tomfoolery and had done their duty and protected the West from the barbarian hordes we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
Leader of Christendom on earth – bah! Leave half the Christian world to fall in the dark ages, great job there “leader”.
Bitter much about the Emperors? Geez. The Dark Ages were, apart from some Arianism for a short period of time, Christian. It’s not as if the western Empire was left to pagans – or Muslims.
The stress on ‘may’ is interesting. I’d never seen that argument before, so I looked up the passage [Labbe and Cossart, Concilia. Tom. VII., col. 552]:
“We, therefore, following the royal pathway and the divinely inspired authority of our Holy Fathers and the traditions of the Catholic Church (for, as we all know, the Holy Spirit indwells her), define with all certitude and accuracy that just as the figure of the precious and life-giving Cross, so also the venerable and holy images, as well in painting and mosaic as of other fit materials, should be set forth in the holy churches of God, and on the sacred vessels and on the vestments and on hangings and in pictures both in houses and by the wayside, to wit, the figure of our Lord God and Saviour Jesus Christ, of our spotless Lady, the Mother of God, of the honourable Angels, of all Saints and of all pious people. For by so much more frequently as they are seen in artistic representation, by so much more readily are men lifted up to the memory of their prototypes, and to a longing after them; and to these should be given due salutation and honourable reverence, not indeed that true worship of faith which pertains alone to the divine nature; but to these, as to the figure of the precious and life-giving Cross and to the Book of the Gospels and to the other holy objects, incense and lights may be offered according to ancient pious custom. For the honour which is paid to the image passes on to that which the image represents, and he who reveres the image reveres in it the subject represented…. Anathema to those who do not salute the holy and venerable images. Anathema to those who call the sacred images idols. Anathema to those who say that Christians resort to the sacred images as to gods. Anathema to those who say that any other delivered us from idols except Christ our God. Anathema to those who dare to say that at any time the Catholic Church received idols.”
“The honour which is paid to the image passes on to that which the image represents, and he who reveres the image reveres in it the subject represented” would imply that images were not simply to be used as books for the illiterate or to call to mind the divine doctrines, but to be honoured and revered, saluted, “given due salutation and honourable reverence”. In context, this has meant physical veneration of the image, e.g., kissing, bowing, prostrating, incensing, etc.
Even if such things are not required, refusing to do so is implicitly a denial of the Incarnation. This is similar to the fact that Baptism is not ‘required’, e.g., the Good Thief, but that refusal of Baptism is damning.
The comparison between Pelagianism and Iconoclasm is interesting. The primary difference being that Iconoclasm was defined, whereas Pelagianism was simply denied generally. Both East and West received the decrees of the Councils, but the Seventh says specifically that the icons “should be given due salutation and honourable reverence“, whereas the unnamed and undefined errors of Pelagius are anathematized and mainly insofar as he and his teachings were associated with Nestorius. Ephesus did not require a specific, positive solution to the errors of Pelagius akin to the positive “should” regarding reverence of the icons by the 7th EC.
St. Gregory was speaking well before the 7th EC, so his position, while correct, is not as full as the Church would later come to realize was needed. Similarly, homousios and Trinity were not terms that were ‘required’ before Nicea for orthodoxy, but they are since.
Chris,
I am a bit surprised that you haven’t seen the argument that Nicaea II is permissive rather than imperative on the veneration of icons, because I have made the argument myself on blogs that you and I both frequent.
Taking the language of the tomos at face value one might think that the Council indeed mandates veneration: Anathema to those who do not salute the holy and venerable images. But I think the context demands that we understand “do not” as “refuse to” rather than simply “neglect to” or “fail to.” First, the historical context was not that people were simply omitting veneration of the icons, but that they were destroying the icons and forcibly forbidding their veneration. The problem facing the Council Fathers was more than mere laxity and neglect. Secondly, the textual context makes clear that the problem was more than a simple failure to venerate. The tomos gives a series of anathemas: those who do not venerate the icons; those who call the icons idols; those who say that Christians worship the icons as gods; those who say that the Church has received idols. I do not think that these anathemas name separate groups of heretics. Instead they are a series of different characterizations of the same heretics. In the same way, when the Fathers at Nicaea I said whosoever shall say that (1) there was a time when the Son of God was not (ἤν ποτε ὅτε οὐκ ἦν), or that (2) before he was begotten he was not, or that (3) he was made of things that were not, or that (4) he is of a different substance or essence [from the Father] or that (5) he is a creature, or subject to change or conversion — all that so say, the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes, they were not anathematizing five heresies, but anathematizing one heresy and characterizing it in five different ways.
Thus a Christian who is personally uncomfortable with overt veneration, but who does not have the animus of a true iconoclast (i.e. doesn’t believe or say that “those Orthodox are a bunch of idolaters”) does not, in my opinion, fall under the anathema of Nicaea II.
Ok, so what does the Greek say? I don’t have the Decrees except in Schaff’s (Protestant-spun) English translation.
Rgardless of the Greek, the practical effect of Nicea II was that people began to venerate icons; this was their understanding of the decree, the proper context of the decree’s authors and the laos tou Theou.
It is true that the West never really got what the whole thing was about, they even misunderstood the decree when it was delivered to them, but they did accept it in the long term and are therefore ‘bound’ by it – not just by their understanding of it – if one accepts the ECs as authoritative.
Besides, ‘the West’ is really only ‘authoritative’ as a witness to the apostolic faith insofar as it is of apostolic foundation (cf., Irenaeus) and in harmony with the other apostolic foundations – 100s of which are in the East, with only 1 in the West. Those 100s were agreed in the apostolic content and associated praxis of Nicea II.
I agree that one could read the texts as being permissive rather than imperative if ‘should’ is only understood as ‘may’, but the argument is like faith and works and whether you can have one without the other. But there is as much different between ‘should’ and ‘may’ as there is between ‘should’ and ‘must’. That is, while there is no law that a Christian must venerate icons, crosses, etc. or you will be anathematized (I don’t always venerate an icon on entering the Church), should is pretty clear that, well, you should. Understanding that as ‘do it if you want, or not’ is rather disingenuous – especially when the christological underpinnings of the issue are understood and how the arguments used against veneration (even of the ‘may’ variety) often echo the theological argumentation of the iconoclasts.
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