The nature of idolatry
To Capture a Creator
ἐπειδὴ καὶ ἑτέραν ἄϋλον φύσιν συνηνωμένην τῇ σαρκὶ ἔχει, καὶ μετὰ τῶν δύο φύσεων ἐκείνων εἷς ὑπάρχει, καὶ τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ, ἤγουν ἡ ὑπόστασις αὐτοῦ, ἀχώριστον τῶν δύο φύσεων ἐστίν, οὐχ ὑπολαμβάνομεν ὅτι δυνατῶς ἔχει περιγράφεσθαι, ἐπειδὴ καὶ τὸ χαρακτηριζόμενον ἓν πρόσωπόν ἐστι, καὶ ὁ περιγράφων τὸ πρόσωπον ἐκεῖνο, δῆλον ὅτι καὶ τὴν θείαν φύσιν περιέγραψεν, ἥτις ἐστὶν ἀπερίγραπτος,1
‘Since he has another, immaterial nature united to the flesh, and his person—that is, his hypostasis—is inseparable from the two natures, we do not suppose that he can be circumscribed. For whatever is portrayed is portrayed as a person, and whoever circumscribes that person plainly circumscribes the divine nature also, which is uncircumscribable.’ – Constantine V2
My friend, Todd Stanton, has recently published a rather thoughtful argument on the subject of images of Jesus and the Second Commandment. His conclusions are relatively straightforward: depictions of Jesus, whilst lawful when used as ordinary artistic representations, are neither particularly necessary nor generally helpful, and become unlawful when brought into worship or used devotionally.
There is much in his article that I agree with and, indeed, I appreciate that he has framed the question in terms of lawfulness rather than mere usefulness. Evangelicalism has long had an unfortunate tendency to ask as to whether something simply works (i.e., whether it attracts people or produces the desired outcome), before asking as to whether it is something that God has authorised. Todd has very rightly reversed that order. Likewise, he is also right to reject images of Christ within corporate worship, even where nobody may consciously understand themselves to be worshipping the image shown.
Yet, while appreciating Todd’s argument and also ending up in the same functional conclusion as him, I am not convinced by his argument’s central premise. Namely, that images of Jesus are lawful when serving as art, illustration or teaching aids, and simply become unlawful when entering the setting of worship or devotion. I find this division between artistic representation and liturgical use too narrow, as it leaves largely unaddressed the more fundamental question asked by the historic Reformed tradition. Namely, as to whether we, as creatures, have been authorised to manufacture a likeness of the Creator at all—particularly when that likeness claims to be representative of the incarnate Son.
Or, put differently, the question is not only what we subsequently do with an image, but also what the image claims to be.
A Rather Old Disagreement
Before I start, however, it is worth recognising that this is hardly a Puritan novelty or a theological problem invented by a Calvin that had become irritated by a particularly gaudy medieval church. This matter has had a very long and complicated history, stretching back to the early church. Indeed, early Patristic accounts tended to be generally against the creation of images or likenesses of Christ, as it was the sentiment that to create any material representation of God, which encompassed images of Christ as the divine Son, was to create a false and idolatrous object that was more akin to the liturgical practices of pagans, as opposed to those of faithful believers.
Thus, scepticism of the place of such images can be found in the writings of Clement of Alexandria (AD c. 150-c. 215), Lactantius (AD c. 250-c. 325), and that patron saint of historians, Eusebius of Caesarea (AD c. 260-339). It is said that Eusebius, in particular, refused a request from Constantine’s sister, Constantia, for an image of Christ, arguing that any attempt to portray Christ according to his human appearance would fail to properly reckon with the identity of the one being portrayed. He asks, ‘What sort of image of Christ are you seeking? Is it the true and unchangeable one, which bears His characteristics in its nature; or the one which He took up for our sakes, when He put on the form of a servant?’3 The difficulty, for Eusebius, was that the humanity of Christ is not something that can be neatly detached from the divine person of the Son, although the artist were depicting an independently existing human subject. Nor, following Christ’s ascension and glorification at the right hand of the Father, could any painter reasonably claim to capture his present form: ‘And how could one paint an image of a form so wondrous and incomprehensible, if indeed one should still call the divine and intelligible substance a form?’4 To attempt such a thing was, he argued, to follow the pattern of the unbelieving Gentiles, painting that which bears no true likeness to its subject. Eusebius then turns explicitly to the Second Commandment, ‘God legislates not to make a likeness, neither of things in heaven, nor of things on the earth below.’ Such representations were not merely inadequate; they were forbidden—after all, ‘what better painter could we have than God the Word himself?’5
This is, however, not to say that the early church was uniform on this matter. Christian art did begin to appear in recognisable forms and while they were initially symbolic representations of Christ instead of explicit reproductions of his likeness, such as the representations by fish, Chi-Rho, or, even, the Good Shepherd, it is clear that by the 3rd century, at least, that the house-church at Dura-Europos, which archaeologists typically date as being from approximately AD 230-256, contained frescos of Jesus which were narrative in nature.
Yet, of written records from this period, most tended towards aniconism, that is, arguing for avoidance or prohibition of their use. Although regulation was also on the rise. Perhaps, the Council of Elvira, held in the early part of the 4th century, is the best attestation to this, whereby Canon 36 specifically states that there ‘shall be no pictures in the church, lest what is worshipped [saints] and adored [God and Christ] should be depicted on the walls.’6There is also the account of Epiphanius of Salamis (c. 310-403) and the ‘curtain incident’, whereby Epiphanius, a bishop, writing to John, the Bishop of Jerusalem in which there had been a rift due to the origienist crises, was wandering Bethel and recalls entering a church to pray, and noticing that a curtain that ‘…bore an image either of Christ or of one of the saints,’ and ‘being loth that an image of a man should be hung up in Christ’s church contrary to the teaching of the Scriptures,’ Epiphanius ‘…tore it asunder and advised the custodians of the place to use it as a winding sheet for some poor person.’7
This is not to say there was a definitive patristic consensus, as it is evident that theological objections were arising alongside the growing appearance of Christian images and, yet, the general mainstream patristic view did not endorse or commend the creation of icons or images that sought to capture the likeness of Christ. This growing tension would eventually erupt during the two periods of Byzantine iconoclasm. The ablest anti-image theologian of the first period being none other than the emperor, Constantine V (718-775), whom I cite at the very onset of this article.
Whatever one makes about his coercive policies aside, Constantine was no theological amateur. While much of his work survives only fragmentally in the works of his theological opponents, anyone who reads his Peuseis(theological questions) or the doctrinal definition of the Council of Hieria in 754, a council that was convened to forbid the use and creation of icons, can see a significant grasp of Christology through the sophisticated arguments that he, and his iconcolastic allies, advance. Namely, that any attempt to provide an image of Christ faces an unavoidable dilemma. For if an image attempts to portray both Christ’s divine and human natures together, it by necessity attempts to circumscribe the uncircumscribable divine nature and confuses what must remain distinct. Yet, if the image were to portray only Christ’s humanity, abstracted from his divinity, it would separate what had been personally united and risk an arguably Nestorian division of Christ. The person who was represented by the image was not an independent human individual but the eternal Son who had assumed human nature.
The Byzantine iconodules, particularly John of Damascus (c. 675-749), reversed the argument. They insisted that the incarnation made depiction possible: for the invisible Son had become visible in the flesh. Indeed, the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 reversed the Council of Hieria, restoring images and distinguishing between veneration offered to images and the worship that properly belonged to God—honour directed towards an image was said, it was argued, to pass to its prototype.
Yet, as with many prior councils, the Second Council did not immediately settle the question throughout the entire Christian world. Contemporary Frankish theologians who gathered around the court of Charlemagne wrote a theological response against Nicaea, often referred to as the Libri Carolini (or more properly, the Opus Caroli regis contra synodum). Likely written by Theodulf of Orleans (c. 750-821), the work critiqued both Byzantine iconoclasm and Nicene iconophilia. However, it took umbrage at the Second Council’s drawn distinctions between veneration and worship, being seen, in essence, as a distinction without a difference. Yet, it also allowed for images to exist for commemorative or ornamental purposes, provided they were not venerated, and even then, provided certain qualifications on their use from a pedagogical perspective.
The Libri Carolini is of particular interest to the Reformation period, as after it resurfaced in 1549 by the Catholic Bishop, Jean du Tillet, it was subsequently cited approvingly by Calvin in later editions of the Institutes (Book I.11.14), although Calvin’s own position was to be much stricter than the somewhat middle ground marked by the Carolingians. Suffice to say, it is a historical truism that the place of pictorial representations of Christ has been a point debated since the early church, and did not simply originate in the imagination of Calvin and the Swiss Reformers as if they suddenly discovered that Exodus 20 dealt with the Second Commandment in a way that was overlooked for fifteen centuries. No, they inherited an ancient controversy, and reread it in light of a renewed doctrine of Scripture, worship, and divine revelation.
The Reformation Did Not Speak with One Voice
This is not say, though, that the Protestant answer was immediately uniform.
Luther opposed the worship of images, but was clear in his rejection of Andreas Karlstadt’s programme of compulsory removal. Images, for Luther, could remain as things indifferent, provided that no trust or veneration was placed in them. He even regarded biblical pictures as potentially useful in serving as memorials and teaching instruments. Melanchthon followed a similar position, condemning the religious abuses attached to images, but did not develop the same anti-image position found in the Swiss Reformed churches.
Indeed, the Reformed line was generally stricter. Zwingli, Bucer, Bullinger, Calvin, and Beza explicitly rejected images in churches and denied them an authorised function within worship. Bullinger was to reject the claim that pictures could be assigned ‘the office of teaching, admonishing, and exhorting,’ because this belonged to Word and Spirit. This is why, in the Second Helvetic Confession, Bullinger argues that Christ did not assume humanity simply to ‘set forth a pattern for carvers and painters.’8 No, Christ appointed preaching and the sacraments for the church’s instruction—not images.
There were, of course, still some qualificational differences within the Reformed family. Zwingli, after all, could permit, in theory, a portrait of Christ’s humanity outside worship, provided that it was not reverenced. Peter Martyr Vermigli likewise argued that Christ, considered according to his humanity, could theoretically be painted; a portrait of a human being does not depict the soul, he reasoned, but that does not mean the painter denies the subject possesses one.9 Neither, nonetheless, allowed for images of Christ as instruments of churchly devotion or worship, and one would argue their concessions were narrower than Todd’s broader acceptance of Children’s illustrations, evangelical drama, or biblical films as lawful teaching media.
It is also worth noting, at this point, that the Roman Catholic response was also consolidated gradually. The Council of Trent did no more invent Catholic image theology, any more than Calvin invented Christian aniconism. Its final session in December 1563 formally reaffirmed the veneration of saints, as well as relics and sacred images, insisting that honour shown to the image referred to that which was represented. Trent gave particular emphasis to the pedagogical benefit of images, while directing bishops to remove superstition and disorder from religious art. It is fair to say that the Counter-Reformation helped confessionalise and solidify the Roman position in direct response to the abounding objections of the Protestants.
However, by the seventeenth century, the lines had been clearly drawn. Lutherans broadly permitted non-venerated images. Roman Catholics defended their devotional and pedagogical use. The Reformed orthodoxy overwhelmingly rejected representations of God and, increasingly and explicitly, representations of Christ, a point to which I shall return momentarily.
Where I Believe Todd is Right
Before I press my disagreement, however, I want to recognise where I believe Todd’s argument is particularly helpful.
First, he is absolutely correct that not every image is prohibited by the Second Commandment. The commandment is not to be understood as a blanket condemnation of painting, sculpture, or decoration. After all, the cherubim upon the ark, the ornamental designs of the tabernacle and temple, as well as the bronze serpent all demonstrate that visual and symbolic forms of art are not inherently evil.
Secondly, Todd is right to recognise that conscious worship of the physical object is not required before a Second Commandment problem arises. His example of a church projecting images of Jesus behind song lyrics during corporate worship is telling. The congregation, after all, may not be consciously addressing its praises to the pixels on the screen, but the image has nevertheless been introduced as part of the church’s approach to God without divine appointment. This is a genuine Reformed instinct. I think of William Ames’ observation on this point, whereby he states:
Although such a worshiper does not in intention offend against the primary or highest object in worship, yet from the nature of the thing itself he always offends against the formal worship of God. In his mind a new God, who is delighted with such worship, is imaged as the object of his adoration; religious worship is also given to the image itself. This occurs even when the worship is not considered to be ultimately bound up with the image but is directed to God himself.10
In other words, directing the heart ultimately towards God does not sanctify a form of worship that God has not appointed.
Thirdly, Todd is also correct when he argues that every picture or dramatic performance necessarily gets Jesus wrong. The artist or actor supplies what Scripture has not (i.e., Christ’s facial features, complexion, voice, accent, gestures, and visible emotional responses). Todd’s example of an effeminate dramatic Christ, Warner Sallman’s passive Christ, or even his own tongue-in-cheek suggestion of Christ in military fatigues illustrate that every depiction is also an interpretation. Evidently, the Christ shown on the canvas is inevitably shaped by the theological and cultural instincts of the artist.
Lastly, Todd’s warning that film can—and does—displace Scripture and preaching is well made. As we have increasingly unpacked above, biblical dramas do not merely provide neutral illustrations. They establish tone, pacing, and emotional emphasis that may thereafter govern how biblical texts are then treated. Many people can no longer read the Gospel accounts without imagining a face, a voice, or a mannerism of a particular actor.
This is to say, Todd assembles a formidable case showing images of Jesus are inaccurate, spiritually formative, and potentially substitutive—only to conclude that they are, nevertheless, lawful because they are not ordinarily worshipped. I am not quite persuaded that his conclusion follows from his premise.
More Than Art or Worship
Todd’s argument is undergirded by two principal categories:
- Ordinary artistic representation; and
- liturgical or devotional use.
But there is a third category that cannot be dismissed, that of religious instruction.
A picture of Jesus is not merely an artistic portrait hanging in an unrelated gallery. It has been inserted precisely to teach that child about Christ. A dramatic performance of Mark’s Gospel is not merely an exercise in the techniques of the theatre. It presents itself as a means of communicating Christ’s words and works. A film involving Jesus is intended to acquaint its viewers with Jesus and, frequently, to serve in an evangelistic manner.
These images are therefore catechetical even when they are not formally devotional. They teach a Christ whom Scripture has not visually revealed.
This is where Todd’s statement becomes a bit too easy—i.e., no idol has been made. No image has been set up, nor any worship has gone on. Consequently, no sin has been committed.
But an image certainly has been made; an image purporting to represent Jesus Christ. Whether that making is lawful is the very question here under consideration, for saying that no idol has been made because nobody has yet bowed before it assumes the first clause of the Second Commandment has no independent force:
You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above … You shall not bow down to them or serve them. (Ex. 20:4-5)
The Reformed tradition generally understood the making and worshipping clauses as related and yet distinguishable. The commandment does not prohibit the representation of every creature; otherwise, the commanded cherubim would present an immediate challenge. But Deuteronomy 4 explains the concern regarding God particularly:
Therefore watch yourselves very carefully. Since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb … beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves. (Deut. 4:15-16)
The absence of revealed form is not an unfortunate gap waiting for some creative license or artistry to fill. It is itself part of the theological lesson.
Can the Creature Capture the Creator?
Here, I believe, is the nub of the issue—the Creator/Creature distinction.
The prophet Isaiah asks, ‘To whom then will you liken God, or what likeness compare with him?’ (Isa. 40:18). The apostle Paul makes the same observation at Athens: ‘…We ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.’ (Acts 17:29). Romans 1 identifies idolatry as the exchange of the glory of the incorruptible God for the likeness of corruptible creatures (Rom. 1:23-25).
I have no doubt Todd would agree that these texts prohibit attempts to depict the divine nature. His answer would likely be that Christ became incarnate, assumed a visible human body, and could therefore be seen.
This is all true and yet, it does not actually, I believe, settle the question.
For while the incarnation means that the eternal Son truly assumed a complete human nature, it does not mean that His humanity existed as an independent human person who can be detached from the Son and painted in isolation. The subject who walked through Galilee, taught the crowds, touched the leper, and hung upon the cross was the one divine person of the Son acting according to his human nature.
To put it slightly differently, an image labelled ‘Jesus’ does not merely claim to portray generic humanity; it claims to portray Him.
And yet, the artist has never seen Him. Scripture has preserved no description upon which a likeness may be constructed. The result is not a portrait of Christ but a portrait of what the artist imagines Christ might have looked like. It is the creature who has supplied a face to the Creator that the Creator himself has not supplied to us.
I believe the Heidelberg Catechism speaks here with considerable force:
Q96. What does God require in the second commandment?
That we in no wise represent God by images, nor worship him in any other way than he has commanded in his word.
And when the familiar pedagogical defence is raised:
Q98. But may not images be tolerated in the churches, as books to the laity?
No: for we must not pretend to be wiser than God, who will have his people taught, not by dumb images, but by the lively preaching of his word.
The Catechism does not regard visual instruction as a harmless supplement. It presents the proposal as a form of presumption: attempting to improve upon the very pedagogy that God, Himself, has instituted.
The Westminster Larger Catechism (Q109) goes even further to state the prohibition in even clearer language, identifying among the sins that are forbidden by the Second Commandment:
[T]he making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature whatsoever.
Now one may disagree with Westminster’s exegesis here, of course, but it is evident enough that, by the middle of the 17th century (and certain by the 18th), the confessional Reformed position had become quite explicit: the question was not merely whether an image was to be subsequently worshiped but, rather, as to whether the creature possessed the authority to represent the Creator at all—including the person of the incarnate Son.
The human imagination, after all, is not innocent. Like the rest of our faculties, it has been affected by sin. This, of course, does not mean that imagination, then, is itself evil, but it does mean that our imagination can by no means be treated as a reliable source of divine revelation. When Scripture gives no likeness of Christ, the imagination inevitably steps in and invents one drawn from elsewhere, usually the available cultural material.
John Owen is particularly incisive here. In his The Glory of Christ, he warns against much the same:
Many there are who, not comprehending, not being affected with, that divine, spiritual description of the person of Christ which is given us by the Holy Ghost in the Scripture, do feign unto themselves false representations of him by images and pictures, so as to excite carnal and corrupt affections in their minds. By the help of their outward senses, they reflect on their imaginations the shape of a human body, cast into postures and circumstances dolorous or triumphant; and so, by the working of their fancy, raise a commotion of mind in themselves, which they suppose to be love unto Christ. But all these idols are teachers of lies. The true beauty and amiableness of the person of Christ, which is the formal object and cause of divine love, is so far from being represented herein, as that the mind is thereby wholly diverted from the contemplation of it. For no more can be so pictured unto us but what may belong unto a mere man, and what is arbitrarily referred unto Christ, not by faith, but by corrupt imagination.11
Owen’s concern here, however, also brings us quite naturally to what is possibly the deeper problem. For, if the imagination can ultimately supply us with no more than ‘what may belong unto a mere man’, then what exactly are we claiming to represent when we place the name Jesus Christ beneath an image? Owen’s Puritan peer, Thomas Watson, makes this connection somewhat explicitly, when after affirming that ordinary images for civil use are lawful, he turns specifically to the obvious objection: if the Father cannot be represented because He is invisible, what of the Son, who truly ‘took upon him the nature of man’? Watson here is (characteristically) blunt:
It is Christ’s Godhead, united to his manhood, that makes him to be Christ; therefore to picture his manhood, when we cannot picture his Godhead, is a sin, because we make him to be but half Christ—we separate what God has joined.12
His theological point is important; the difficulty is not simply that we do not possess a sufficiently accurate description of Jesus’ face, it is that the humanity being represented never belonged to an independently existing human person. Indeed, in Christ, ‘all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form’ (Col. 2:9). The humanity of Christ is to be understood as the very humanity of the eternal Son. A point that was central to the Council of Hieria and Constantine V’s own argumentation—i.e., when an image-maker produces an image and calls it Christ, either the painter claims somehow to circumscribe the uncircumscribable divinity together with the flesh, or he isolates the humanity from the divine person to whom the humanity belongs. Or as Watson notes, makes but a ‘half Christ’. Such attempt to ‘separate the flesh united to the hypostatis of God the Logos’.
Of course, an objection may present itself here, and it is one that Peter Martyr himself had already anticipated. After all, no portrait exhaustively depicts the reality of the person represented. A painting of a man cannot depict his immaterial soul, and yet we do not declare that the artist has wrongly divided the man or denies that he possesses one. In like vein, the iconodule could argue that an image of Christ does not claim to depict His divine nature at all, but simply only looks to present His visible humanity by which He could truly be seen.
Now, this is a strong objection that cannot be simply discounted, but I do not think it resolves the difficulty. Christ is not merely another human subject whose invisible properties happen to lie beyond any competence of the painter. The person that is being sought for identification is the eternal Son Himself. The picture is labelled Jesus Christ, not ‘first century Jewish man possessing an unseen divine nature’. What is therefore being visualised through an imagined and unrevealed likeness is the person of the Son. The issue here, particularly, is not that an image must exhaustively represent everything which is true of its subject but, rather, that the particular likeness by which this divine person is being identified has not been revealed to us—i.e., given to us by revelation.
In this respect, the problem is not simply solved by uttering that the image depicts Christ ‘according to His humanity’. The humanity is certainly visible and circumscribed. No, the Reformed objection is rather that this humanity has never subsisted as an independent personal subject. It is always the humanity of the Son. Thus, while the painter may intend to portray what belongs to Christ’s human nature, the resulting image is nevertheless presented to the viewer as a likeness of Christ Himself.
After all, when Scripture tells us that ‘the Word became flesh’ (John 1:14), it does not tell us that the Son temporarily inhabited an independently existing man. Nor does Paul permit us to imagine a humanity that may be conceptually detached from the person of Christ. The one who possesses the form of a servant is the very one who eternally exists in the form of God (Phil. 2:6-8). Likewise, the one whom Hebrews describes as the ‘exact imprint’ of the Father’s nature is the same Son through whom God made the world (Heb. 1:2-3).
Christ was made flesh, ‘born in the likeness of men’ (Phil. 2:7), but at the very same time He was the God-man. This is why I believe the incarnational defence, that Christ became visible and, therefore, may be depicted, does not quite carry the theological freight that modern evangelicalism in particular has assigned to it. Of course, Christ did become visible. The disciples did not walk alongside an apparition. Thomas could place his fingers in the wounds of a real body. The question, however, is not whether the incarnate Son could be seen by those standing before Him. Rather, it is whether those who have never seen Him may construct an imagined likeness and then identify that likeness with the person of Christ.
God Has Not Left Us Without a Picture
It is at this point, perhaps, that an objection might be raised that such a position may leave us with something relatively abstract. If we cannot supply a likeness of Christ—what are we left with? Does, for example, the rejection of images leave Christianity somewhat the poorer? Bereft of the visible?
I don’t think it does.
Indeed, I think such an objection inadvertently assumes the very thing that the Reformed tradition has historically denied—that is, that God has left some deficiency in His revelation that only the creaturely artist can supply.
Christianity is not, after all, hostile to materiality. The eternal Word truly became flesh. Christ ate, drank, suffered, bled, died and rose bodily from the grave, and ascended bodily into heaven. We are not Gnostics, adopting some malignant blend of Docetism and Marcionism, locating our great hope as being escape from the body. No, we look to that glorious hope of resurrection unto life in the new creation.
The issue is not matter against spirit, but rather a question going back to the very foundations of the Reformed tradition—of divinely appointed means against humanly invented ones.
God has never left His church without a means by which Christ can be—and is—vividly presented before us. Paul could tell the Galatians that it was before their eyes ‘that Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified’ (Gal 3:1). And yet, Paul was clearly not speaking about a painted likeness of Christ. Christ had been set before them through the apostolic proclamation of the gospel. The Word preached did what no painter could do: it presented Christ according to the revelation that God Himself had given.
In like fashion, we understand that faith comes ‘from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ’ (Rom. 10:17). Indeed, Peter writes to believers who had never enjoyed the privilege of having seen Jesus that despite the fact they ‘have not seen him, you love him’ (1 Pet. 1:8). Scripture never presents the absence of sight as being some unfortunate deficiency that exists in the Christian life. No, God has given us His Word, which is useful in all respects for the Christian as to ways of righteousness.
But more so, he has given us more than words alone.
He has given His church visible signs. In baptism, we are washed with water. At the Lord’s Table, we eat bread and drink the fruit of the vine, thereby proclaiming the ‘Lord’s death until he comes’ (1 Cor. 11:26). These are material, visible, and tangible things. They are the signs that seal and signify, and their legitimacy does not arise simply because the church had decided that they were pedagogically useful. No, their legitimacy arises because Christ Himself appointed them.
This is a distinction that the Dutch Theologian, Wilhelmus à Brakel, presses well. When confronted with the objection that images possess educational value, À Brakel answers that such is ‘pagan thinking’ and that ‘we should not pretend it to be beneficial, since it is forbidden.’13Indeed, À Brakel recognises the tendency within man to want to portray the unportrayable, to worship God in accordance with our own customs, and to take that which is high and bring it low, so that the creature may meet the Creator on the former’s terms. This being what the Reformed tradition notes as will-worship, we imagine ‘God will be pleased with our work as long as we have a good intent to serve Him by means of that activity. The Lord Jesus rejects this in Matt 15:9.’14
As À Brakel opines, that being we have no understanding of the appearance of Christ, or the apostles for that matter, ‘the images made of them are without resemblance, and it is vanity to make an image and say: That is Christ, that is Mary, that is Peter, etc.’ No, ‘God will not have us taught by dumb images, but by His Word.’15
Indeed, supposed usefulness does not establish lawfulness. We are not permitted to infer that because something may capture attention, or aid memory, or even provoke emotion, that it, therefore, is appointed as a means of religious instruction. However, there is the tendency within us to never being quite satisfied with what we do have, and so either to amend the boundaries or create exceptions, in turn.
For God has hardly left us with too little of Christ. Scripture gives us the Christ who speaks with authority, who touches the unclean, who weeps before the grave, who rebukes hypocrisy and welcomes sinners. That very Christ who has conquered death, ascended in triumph and, now, reigns at the Father’s right hand. The problem here is not that Scripture has given us too little information; someone has, in their kind benevolence, supplied the remainder; it is that we have chosen to go beyond and supply information that God chose not to reveal.
Lawful but Unhelpful?
And so we return, finally, to Todd’s conclusion.
As I noted at the outset, there is much in Todd’s article in which I happen to agree. Indeed, in pure practical terms, we probably arrive at something approaching a very similar destination. After all, neither of us wishes to see images of Christ introduced into the liturgy of the church. Neither of us, I suspect, believes that the proliferation of Jesus films, dramatic performances, or artistic representations has done much to seriously enrich or augment evangelical piety. We also both recognise the very real danger that an imagined Christ can begin to displace the Christ whom God has actually revealed in His Word.
Where we differ is on the road taken to get there.
Todd wishes to retain the category of a lawful image of Jesus which, nevertheless, may prove unhelpful or imprudent. However, I struggle to see how that category can bear the theological weight that is being placed upon it. For if:
- the image necessarily supplies an appearance that Scripture itself has not supplied and if that image is identified not merely as some anonymous first-century Jewish man but with Jesus Christ;
- the humanity represented belongs not to an independent human person but to the eternal Son;
- that representation necessarily acts upon and shapes our imagination;
- in its common evangelical uses, it takes on a distinctly catechetical function;
- and Scripture itself warns against the creature supplying a likeness by which God is represented;
…then, the question of lawfulness would seem to arise a lot faster than simply at the point in which somebody bows before it.
This is where the distinction between the Lutheran and Confessional Reformed trajectories is particularly instructive. The Lutheran position permitted images, provided they were not honoured, and allowed them to represent and stimulate religious thought. That seems remarkably closer to the position that Todd is articulating. However, the Reformed response was to press the mark further. À Brakel does not simply ask as to whether an image ought to be worshipped; he asks whether there is anything that could reflect a true resemblance at all. We do not know Christ’s physical appearance and, therefore, as he puts it, ‘it is vanity to make an image and say: That is Christ.’
There were, as stated, some qualifications within the Reformed tradition, yet these seek to demonstrate that there was no cold mathematical uniformity at every point. I have no particular interest in manufacturing a relatively pristine historical consensus where one did not exist, but simply to emphasise that these qualifications should not obscure the much clearer confessional trajectory that emerged from the 16th Century and into the 17th.
Bullinger denied images a place for religious instruction. Heidelberg rejected the concept that they could serve as books for the illiterate. Calvin attacked both the representation of God and the pretence that images could teach divine things. Westminster expressly included representations of any of the three persons among the sins forbidden by the Second Commandment. Ames denied that sincere intention could sanctify a form of worship that God Himself did not institute. Watson argued that portraying Christ’s humanity apart from His deity produced, in effect, a ‘half Christ’. Owen, À Brakel, Van Mastricht, Gill, and many others can be added to this running and consistent tangent, all upheld by the same theological foundation.
And this foundation matters because the issue is ultimately larger than pictures. Much larger. Beneath it lies the Creator-creature distinction, and through which theological truths such as the sufficiency of divine revelation, the corruption of human imagination, the unity of Christ’s person, and ultimately the conviction that it is God, rather than the ingenuity of men, who determines the means by which He is to be known and worshipped.
This has been an issue the church throughout the centuries has wrestled with, and far be it from the Reformed that they merely stumbled upon a previously unknown scruple. Indeed, the very theological approach taken by the Reformed in their theologia principiarequired this subject to be reckoned with.
Whereas modern evangelicalism tends to treat this subject as though there is scarcely a reason to bring it up. Images of Jesus are simply part of the furniture—they appear and are expected everywhere. Their ubiquity has itself become an argument for their innocence. However, familiarity is oft a poor substitute for theological warrant.
No, the question is whether the creature has been authorised to give a face to the incarnate Creator that the Creator Himself has chosen not to give us. I remain convinced that God has given us something considerably better than a Christ fashioned according to the limitations of fallen imagination. He has given us the Christ of divine revelation that is proclaimed in His Word, received by faith, and set before His church in those visible signs that He Himself has instituted.
This is a sufficiency in which we would do well to trust.
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