Okay, well, there is a lot -- a lot! -- on that video, and I didn't watch all of it. And then, too, there are a number of different ins and outs that relate to the matter of iconography, regardless of who is giving the lecture.
You notice that Ortland was careful always to refer to the issue as the veneration of images, not to the use of images in churches and private worship. So, right there, we separate some of the churches. Protestants of the more fundamentalistic variety would condemn the mere use of images as props, whereas other churches would focus on the idea of venerating them...or using them to venerate the personage represented in that art. And that's not all; the declaration by the Second Council of Nicaea mainly concerned the rightness or wrongness of destroying images.
So maybe it's not so surprising that we now also have to note that the "Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches" are not really on the same page when it comes to this issue. "The Iconoclast Controversy" is important in Eastern Christianity, but not nearly as big an issue in the West, although both consider the seven Ecumenical Councils to be authoritative.
Everyone agrees that it is wrong to worship the artwork itself or consider it to have magical powers, yet the typically convoluted theology of Orthodoxy allows for something that looks for all the world to be icon worship. In Roman Catholicism, the normal position is that these statues or paintings, etc. are stimuli to the senses of the person who is praying or contemplating divine matters, including the saintly life of whoever may be pictured. There is some waffling on the matter in everyday life, but the use of images in the two communions is quite different. And then we have non-Catholic churches such as the Anglican and Lutheran which do use images without any controversy but do not condone praying to the saint, if that's the figure involved, let alone attribute special powers to that being.
There is much more than can be said on this subject, but let's not forget the historical sequence of events, since that is what started this thread. Dr. Ortland was clear, on the part of the video I saw, that the use of images--or was it the veneration of images?--didn't go very far back in history before Nicaea II. But I disagree. We have bona fide images from Christian worship places in the catacombs of Rome showing images of Christ and other Christian figures.
It's true that the very earliest Christians preferred simple imagery, not crucifixes, for instance, but what is the famous "fish" insignia that we all know if not an image (however simple) of a created being that lives beneath the waves? (Exodus 20:4-6 “You must not make for yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens or on the earth or in the sea.)
So much of this is a gradual development, and there are plenty of nuances built into it, making this particular issue more difficult, in my view, than some of the ones I thought you might be thinking of, such as Transubstantiation or the Papacy.
