The Church and Religious Images

By Romanus

“The invisible things of God have been made visible.” 
—St. John of Damascus (676–749)

“The honor paid to an image traverses it, reaching the model, and he who venerates the image, venerates the person represented in that image.”
—Ecumenical Council of Nicaea II

The Old Testament Prohibition

Idolatry is the worship of someone or something other than God as though it were God; making explicit acts of veneration addressed to a person or an object, attaching to these creatures the confidence, loyalty, and devotion that properly belong only to the Creator.

The veneration of images did not exist in the Old Testament, and even the use of any images was severely restricted. To affirm His spirituality and transcendence and to protect His chosen people from the seductions of the idolatrous world surrounding them, God prohibited every representation of a living being made by the hands of man: “Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth. Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them” (Ex. 20:4-5).

However, the second part of the commandment makes it clear that what God has forbidden is only the making of such images with the intention of worshipping them; by no means has He banned the creation of all images.

Iconoclasm—English reformation.

St. John of Damascus argued that if this commandment had been absolute in its character then God would have contradicted Himself, as He directed or permitted the making of images that pointed symbolically toward salvation by the Incarnate Word. Thus, He commanded Moses to erect a brazen serpent in the desert to heal His people and instructed the Israelites to store the Tables of the Law in an Ark decorated with angelic beings, the Cherubim.

He also commanded the people to decorate the places where they worshipped with gold, bronze, and wooden images of animals and plants, as the Cherubim decorating the Temple and the oxen supporting the “molten sea” before the Temple. Even the prophet Ezekiel described carved images in the idealized Temple he was shown by God in a vision: “From the ground even to the upper parts of the gate, were cherubim and palm trees wrought in the wall of the temple” (Ez. 41:20).

Obviously, then, the prohibition against images was not absolute, but relative to the context and suited for a particular place and time. In order to prevent idolatry, God forbade the worship of statues or painted images, but did not forbid the use of those images in religious contexts.

Judaism itself interpreted the commandment with different degrees of severity in different periods and circumstances. The discovery of the synagogue of Dura-Europos revealed a tradition of Jewish narrative religious art—frescoes depicting many scenes taken from the Hebrew Bible—which qualified and tempered the historical prohibition of images of living beings.

The Practice of the Early Church

The veneration of images in the Church has a long and complicated history, the fruit of men’s gradual assimilation of the Christian faith.

Christianity was born in the Jewish cultural environment, within the framework of Greco-Roman culture. During the 1st century and the beginnings of the 2nd, the Church was still struggling to leave behind some Jewish practices and legal requirements—prominent among these were circumcision, the dietary laws and the injunction against images. The first two posed an obstacle for the universal reach of the Church and were soon abandoned, but resistance to the use of images persisted. Living immersed in a pagan world, the Church was keenly aware of the dangers posed by idolatry, both as seduction and threat, and consistently rejected it—an abhorrence strengthened by the sad experience of so much blood spilled because of refusing to burn some grains of incense before the image of the self-deified Roman Emperor.

Modern iconoclasm.

Thus, during the first three centuries, the Church does not seem to have addressed directly and explicitly the theological problem of the worship of images. Cardinal Newman remarked that “Christians probably did not like to raise the question of the legitimacy of images in Catholic worship, while they had superstitions before their eyes and the immoralities of paganism.”

Nonetheless, by the late 2nd century an incipient pictorial art had already appeared in the Christian Church. Those images were mostly symbolic, a sometimes naïve visualization of the belief of the faithful, which was being elaborated and expounded in theological terms by the Fathers.

By mid-3rd century, art inspired by pagan models as well as Christian themes began to be produced throughout the Roman world. Much as theologians were struggling to find the precise terms that could express unequivocally the truths of Christianity, artists were similarly seeking proper visual terms to express the Christian faith. In this situation, not having previous Christian examples, artists resorted to their usual models and patterns which were rooted in pagan visual language, choosing from them those that appeared more appropriate to express Christian ideas.

From the 2nd and 3rd centuries onwards, the Roman catacombs attest to the existence of unmistakably Christian representations (the Virgin with Child, the adoration of the Magi, Our Lord as healer and miracle-worker, etc.). These were straightforward, “literal” representations of evangelical passages, directly pointing to the mystery of the Incarnation—the images asserting what early heresies denied, both the reality of the human nature of Christ and the divine maternity of Mary. It must also be noted that these images were not objects of veneration, properly speaking. They were intended as decorations, but also and above all signs of recognition, a visual profession of faith and hope and an invitation to visitors to pray for those buried there.

That images were in use among Christians is proven also by some texts. Although they disapproved of the use of images, Tertullian speaks of the Good Shepherd engraved in chalices and Eusebius of Caesarea affirms having seen painted images of Sts. Peter and Paul, and even of Our Lord Himself.

The use of images spread in the Church, neither imposed by a decree nor introduced by surprise, but blossoming naturally from the Christian soul, remaining human under the empire of grace.

Pictures began to be more widely used in the churches when Christianity was legalized and supported by the emperor Constantine in the early 4th century, and they soon become part of Christian piety. The veneration of the images developed as Christians became less exposed to the contagion of idolatry, although for a time images continued to be opposed by some bishops and regional synods.

The Enemies of Images

Indeed, a hostile attitude towards images subsisted in the Church, and a long and complex struggle gradually developed. When facing the surrounding pagan world, it turned into a sometimes violent iconoclasm that led to the annihilation of much of the sacred art of the pagan religions of the Roman Empire. Within Christendom, the hostility to religious images was most violently expressed in Byzantium by the iconoclastic heresy of the 8th century.

The case of the Byzantine iconoclasts (literally, “image-breakers”) originally relied mostly on the Old Testament prohibition, but the argument was easily refuted, as it was clear that this prohibition was not absolute. Later, the emperor Constantine V offered a more nuanced argument, claiming that depicting Jesus’ human nature meant endorsing the Nestorian heresy, which held that Jesus’ divine and human natures were separate; likewise, depicting Jesus’ divine nature risked endorsing the heresy of Monophysitism, which stressed Jesus’ divinity at the expense of his humanity.

Iconoclasm—Syrian church.

In the Latin Church, various medieval lay movements and sects manifested their opposition to the use of images, virulently culminating in the 16th-century Protestant rebellion, when numerous churches and monasteries in Germany, France, England and the Netherlands were plundered and their once-revered images were formally condemned and publicly burned on bonfires or mutilated by having their hands and heads knocked off or their faces smashed.

Despite the different historical types of iconoclasm, their theological argumentation presents a great uniformity: they contend that the divine is beyond all earthly form in its transcendence and spirituality and to represent it in earthly materials and forms is already a profanation. They argue that the relationship to God, who is Spirit, can only be a purely spiritual one; the worship of the individual as well as the Church can happen only “in spirit and in truth” (Jn. 4:24), without the need of any external support exercising its influence upon the senses.

The Theological Foundation

We have already seen in Scripture that God Himself commanded the making of images as good and appropriate for religious ends. We have also seen that the first Christians had naturally and spontaneously adopted this simple method of instruction and edification. The ecclesiastical magisterium expresses itself in the general and local councils approved by Rome, in the papal documents and in the teachings of the Fathers, and, throughout the centuries, has shown the usefulness of images and established and regulated their veneration. Reason itself shows us that the use of religious images is good, useful, in accordance with the legitimate needs of our nature and, therefore, acceptable and praiseworthy.

But in the confrontation with iconoclasm, the Fathers found the decisive theological argument for the use and veneration of images in the mystery of the Incarnation. The incarnation of the Son of God as a human being, who was created in the “image of God,” granted theological approval to the images as, indeed, it is only since the Incarnation that man can represent God in an anthropomorphic way.

St. John Damascene and St. Theodore Studite denounced the confusion underlying the iconoclastic argument of Constantine V. Images of Christ do not depict natures, either divine or human, but a concrete person, Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God. In Christ the meaning of the Old Testament prohibition is revealed: God prohibited any representation of God (or anything that could be worshiped as a god) because it was impossible to depict the invisible God. Any such representation would thus be an idol, a false god. But in Christ’s person, God became visible as a concrete human being, so painting Christ is an assertion that God truly became man.

In the very words of St. John Damascene: “How to make the image of the Invisible? As long as God is invisible, do not make the image of it; but, as soon as you see the Intangible who has become Man, make the image of the human form; when the Invisible becomes visible in the flesh, paint the likeness of the Invisible. Formerly, God, the Incorporeal and the Invisible, was never represented. But now that God has manifested Himself in the flesh and lived among men, I represent the ‘visible’ of God. I don’t adore matter, but I adore the Creator of matter.”

St. Theodore of Studion introduced a Marian note: “Since Christ was born of the Indescribable Father, He cannot have image; but, since Christ is born from a describable Mother, He naturally has an image that corresponds to that of His Mother. If He could not be represented by art, that would mean that He was born only of the Father and did not become incarnate. But this is contrary to the whole divine economy of our salvation.”

The Second Council of Nicaea explicitly declared that images “provide confirmation that the becoming man of the Word of God was real and not just imaginary,” and thus decreed that “the revered and holy images, whether painted or made of mosaic or of other suitable material, are to be exposed in the holy churches of God, on sacred instruments and vestments, on walls and panels, in houses and by public ways, these are the images of our Lord, God and Savior, Jesus Christ, and of our Lady without blemish, the holy God-bearer, and of the revered angels and of any of the saintly holy men.”

The Council also made an important distinction between veneration and worship: “We declare that one may render to icons the veneration of honor (proskynesis), not true worship (latreia) of our faith, which is due only to the divine nature.” Latreia means absolute worship, which is reserved exclusively for God. Proskynesis refers to the bodily act of bowing down, meaning an expression of respect offered to saints worthy of such honor on account of their closeness to God.

Fra Angelico, The Virgin and Child with Sts. Dominic and Thomas Aquinas, c. 1435.

Finally, the Council, quoting St. Basil of Caesarea, affirmed that “the honor rendered to an image passes to its prototype,” and “whoever venerates an image venerates the person portrayed in it.”

St. Thomas Aquinas explicitly concurs: “The worship of religion is paid to images, not as considered in themselves, nor as things, but as images leading us to God incarnate. Now movement to an image as image does not stop at the image, but goes on to the thing it represents.”

Thus, the Christian veneration of images is not contrary to the first commandment which forbids idols.

Nicaea II summed up the Catholic position in its final condemnation of the iconoclastic heresy: “If anyone does not confess that Christ our God can be represented in his humanity, let him be anathema. If anyone does not accept representation in art of evangelical scenes, let him be anathema. If anyone does not salute such representations as standing for the Lord and his saints, let him be anathema. If anyone rejects any written or unwritten tradition of the Church, let him be anathema…”