Is the Whole Earth a Living Icon of the Face of God?

By John Sanidopoulos

There is a quote attributed to St. John of Damascus circulating around the internet that says:

"The whole earth is a living icon of the face of God."

One website says that it comes from his "Treatise", but other than that I have no idea where it came from. I assume this means his treatise on icons, otherwise known as his Apologia Against Those Who Decry Holy Icons. However, the above quote I have not been able to locate in either this work or any other that has been translated into English, and I doubt it comes from one of his untranslated texts. In fact, I know it doesn't, because the quote is nonsensical and overly sentimental, and I can't imagine any Church Father making such an absurd statement.

St. John of Damascus on How Paradise in Genesis Should Be Understood

By St. John of Damascus

Now when God was about to fashion man out of the visible and invisible creation in His own image and likeness to reign as king and ruler over all the earth and all that it contains, He first made for him, so to speak, a kingdom in which he should live a life of happiness and prosperity. And this is the divine paradise , planted in Eden by the hands of God, a very storehouse of joy and gladness of heart (for "Eden" means luxuriousness). Its site is higher in the East than all the earth: it is temperate and the air that surrounds it is the rarest and purest: evergreen plants are its pride, sweet fragrances abound, it is flooded with light, and in sensuous freshness and beauty it transcends imagination: in truth the place is divine, a meet home for him who was created in God's image: no creature lacking reason made its dwelling there but man alone, the work of God's own hands.

The First Chapter of Genesis Explained in One Sentence

In his An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith (Bk. 2, Ch. 6), St. John of Damascus lists the various possible theories circulating in his time concerning the nature of the heavens, or the universe, and without discounting any of these theories he gives us the essential teaching behind the first chapter of Genesis that must not be contradicted, thus revealing the boundaries between science and theology when interpreting Genesis 1: