You didn’t deal at all with the central reality, which is that God is everywhere, present in every place. -— except it is we ourselves who are not “present” to Him because our”whole hearts” and “whole minds” are not open to Him.
The function of sacred art is not to “make God come to us” like some conjuring charm, but to open our eyes, hearts, minds, to Him.
In this sense an icon can mediate His presence just as a Bible can, or a good sermon, or a poem, or as the hymn says, “I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder...” the prodigious power of the Universe mediating our awareness of God’s power and presence. “How great Thou art.”
But you did not even comment on God’s omni-presence, or on any other notion I shared. So this is not much a dialogue we are engaged in, as it is two monologues, being pushed along parallel tracks.
What do I care about Tertullian? He did not deal with the power of art and beauty to convey to our awareness, the presence of the ever-present God.
“The function of sacred art is not to “make God come to us” like some conjuring charm, but to open our eyes, hearts, minds, to Him.”
No, that’s the function of the Holy Spirit, not the work of men’s hands.
“In this sense an icon can mediate His presence just as a Bible can, or a good sermon, or a poem, or as the hymn says, “I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder...” the prodigious power of the Universe mediating our awareness of God’s power and presence.”
Even if those things could “mediate” God’s presence, we have no need of them, since we have perfect Mediator in Jesus Christ. Trusting in anything else is trusting in the inferior when the superior is available to you, thus it is foolishness.
“But you did not even comment on God’s omni-presence, or on any other notion I shared.”
Why bother, when those notions aren’t really relevant? I would rather focus on the central issue here than wander off down side paths that lead away from clarity.
“What do I care about Tertullian? He did not deal with the power of art and beauty to convey to our awareness, the presence of the ever-present God.”
He certainly dealt with that type of objection too, when he answered people who objected that the bronze serpent of Moses was an example of religious art that was not forbidden, in contrast to idolatry:
“But some one says, in opposition to our proposition of “similitude being interdicted,” “Why, then, did Moses in the desert make a likeness of a serpent out of bronze?” The figures, which used to be laid as a groundwork for some secret future dispensation, not with a view to the repeal of the law, but as a type of their own final cause, stand in a class by themselves. Otherwise, if we should interpret these things as the adversaries of the law do, do we, too, as the Marcionites do, ascribe inconsistency to the Almighty, whom they in this manner destroy as being mutable, while in one place He forbids, in another commands? But if any feigns ignorance of the fact that that effigy of the serpent of bronze, after the manner of one uphung, denoted the shape of the Lord’s cross, which was to free us from serpents— that is, from the devil’s angels— while, through itself, it hanged up the devil slain; or whatever other exposition of that figure has been revealed to worthier men no matter, provided we remember the apostle affirms that all things happened at that time to the People figuratively. It is enough that the same God, as by law He forbade the making of similitude, did, by the extraordinary precept in the case of the serpent, interdict similitude. If you reverence the same God, you have His law, “You shall make no similitude.” If you look back, too, to the precept enjoining the subsequently made similitude, do you, too, imitate Moses: make not any likeness in opposition to the law, unless to you, too, God have bidden it.” Tertullian, “On Idolatry”, Chapter 5