VANITY: Question for Christians

3/30/2004 | me

[yonif]

The Jewish tradition states that we should not make graven images of God. Is this in the Christian tradition as well? Because I have seen Catholics wearing crosses with Jesus on them and even houses having hung crosses with Jesus on them. How is this justified? Thanks

Ex.

[yonif]

I mean no disrespect to any Catholic. This question results for a conversation I had with a Christian.

[hole_n_one]

Rumor has it that there's a Mod devoted soley to the Religion forum, but like I said, it's only a rumor.

[mlmr]

I think that many Christians interpert graven image to mean something that is worshipped rather than a representation......a Golden Calf may I say.

[B Knotts]

A graven image is something (like the golden calf) worshipped in place of God. We do not worship graven images.

[yonif]

So Christians believe you still can make a representation of God in an image?

[B Knotts]

Here is a good explanation of our (Catholics') belief in this area:

Do Catholics Worship Statues?

[yonif]

Thanks.

[malakhi]

Ping.

[NeoCaveman]

So Christians believe you still can make a representation of God in an image?

While I look for a better answer, I'll start with this:
Since He was on earth, uses of His image are allowed.

[Titanites]

graven image

n : a material object that is worshipped as a god; "thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image"; "money was his god"

We don't worship the crucifix.

[NeoCaveman]

Hope this helps:

Iconoclasm (7th and 8th Centuries)

This heresy arose when a group of people known as iconoclasts (literally, "icon smashers") appeared, who claimed that it was sinful to make pictures and statues of Christ and the saints, despite the fact that in the Bible, God had commanded the making of religious statues (Ex. 25:18–20; 1 Chr. 28:18–19), including symbolic representations of Christ (cf. Num. 21:8–9 with John 3:14).

[kosta50]

This issue has been regurgitated over and over on many former posts -- usually initiated by Calvinists and other Bible-only litteralists.

In short: Jesus was a real Person. Christian doctrine teaches that He was fully God and fully Man. It's not as simple as it seems. The Jesus Who died on the cross was the Man; His other Nature, the divine one, never suffered or died. It is therefore permitted to represent Jesus the Man, fully human.

Inconography was successfully defended by the 9th century John of Damascus. Icons represent real people, not deities.

What is wrong in the Christian tradition is the practice of some to pray to the statues and pictures of real people as if the images somehow represent the real presence of a person or persons represented.

That is idolatry and neither the Eastern Orthodox nor Roman Catholic Church teaches that. People kneeling in front of and praying to graven images do not understand their own religion and are most likely superstitious, but the practice is heresy.

Icons and statues should be no different than pictures and statues of other people we revere, love and respect, such as our family members, national heroes, etc. Looking at a photograph of your loved ones must never be confused with looking at a real person, although we may smile at the image or even kiss the picture. The substance of the image is never the substance of the person represented in the image.

[yonif]

But don't some Churches have the image of Jesus on a cross right in front of the Church and people face it, praying towards it? What meaning goes into that?

[RobbyS]

Praying before a crucifix brings to mind HIM whom we worship, and reminds us of his suffering on the cross. In the Catholic Church, it also reminds us that the mass is a sacrifice, a remembering of the one sacrifice and his abiding presence with us.

[getoffmylawn]

What you're saying makes perfect sense, but then what's the beef with crucifixes, statues, and nativity scenes in Eastern Orthodoxy?

[The_Reader_David]

The tradition in the East is strongly in favor of icons--flat or at most bas-relief--depictions of Christ and the saints.

This is in part, I think, a guard against idolatry: statuary, images in the round, are too realistic. By confining our imagery to icons we make clear that the image is only an image, that veneration show it is directed to the prototype. In part it is because the original examples of iconography, the Icon-not-made-by-hand given by Our Lord to King Abgar of Edessa (via messengers) and the icons of the Theotokos executed as life portraits by St. Luke the Evangelist were flat and bas-relief respectively.

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

The Jewish tradition states that we should not make graven images of God. Is this in the Christian tradition as well? Because I have seen Catholics wearing crosses with Jesus on them and even houses having hung crosses with Jesus on them. How is this justified? Thanks ~~ Yonif

A graven image is something (like the golden calf) worshipped in place of God. We do not worship graven images. ~~ B Knotts

IMHO, this is not technically true. The Golden Calf was not "worshipped in the place of God".

Then all the people tore off the gold rings which were in their ears and brought them to Aaron. He took this from their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool and made it into a molten calf; and they said, "This is your god, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt." (New American Standard)

Some translations render "God" in the plural. I haven't checked my interlinear Hebrew to be sure, but I do know that the Hebrew Old Testament often refers to God in the plural -- something the Jews have never dealt with adequately IMO.

In other words, Aaron did not set up the Golden Calf "in the place of God". The Idolatry was far more egregious -- Aaron told the Israelites that the Golden Calf WAS God, the very image of the God who had brought them out of Egypt.

In other words, Aaron was not merely allowing the people to turn away to the worship of "Lesser Gods".... he was directing their worship of the One True God towards a cow. Telling them, "This IS the One TRUE GOD".

This was a blasphemous and totally-unsanctioned Icon.

---

Ahh, but there's the rub, Yonif -- it was an unsanctioned Icon.

For do not your Jewish Ten Commandments read as do ours?

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above...

AND YET...

Exodus 25:17-19
And thou shalt make a mercy seat of pure gold: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof. And thou shalt make two cherubims of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them, in the two ends of the mercy seat. And make one cherub on the one end, and the other cherub on the other end: even of the mercy seat shall ye make the cherubims on the two ends thereof.

Tsk, tsk, tsk.... you NAUGHTY, NAUGHTY Jews!! Making graven images of Heavenly Cherubim when the Commandments tell you "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above..." How dare you?

And the correct answer which you can (and must) give, is simply this: "We dared to fashion the graven Cherubim, for these were the Biblically-sanctioned Icons which were ordered for us."

Yes, indeed. But that's exactly the point.

For Jesus Christ is, likewise: the Living Word, the Torah Enfleshed, the Express Image, the One and Only Biblically-sanctioned Icon of the One True God.

THE EPISTLE OF APOSTLE PAUL TO THE HEBREWS, Chapter 1 verses 1-3
God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.

And no man can see the Father Most High, unless he looks upon the Son:

JOHN 14: 8-10
Philip saith unto him, Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.

And this is the great tragedy of the Jews.

You will allow yourselves to acknowledge the Graven Cherubim as a Divinely-sanctioned Icon not prohibited by the First Commandment; and yet, you will not permit yourselves to look upon the Divinely-sanctioned Icon of God Himself, the Living Word, the Lord Jesus Christ -- and to be Saved in Him.

best, OP

---

Hmm. Speaking of the Mercy Seat, must post Punk Rock lyrics from "Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds". Sorry, folks. We all gotta do what we all gotta do.

I hear stories from the chamber,
How Christ was born into a manger,
And like some ragged stranger
Died upon the Cross.
And might I say it seems so fitting in its way,
He was a carpenter by trade,
Or at least that's what I'm told

And the Mercy Seat is waiting,
And I think my head is burning;
And in a way I'm yearning
To be done with all this measuring of truth,
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,
And anyway I told the truth,
And I'm not afraid to die.
~~ Nick Cave, "The Mercy Seat", 1988

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

a Divinely-sanctioned Icon not prohibited by the First Commandment

Errata: The *Second Commandment*. (My typing got ahead of my brain)

"We dare not allow our interpretation of the second commandment to lead us into a docetic diminution of the Reality of the Incarnation." ~~ Rev. Dr. Greg Bahnsen, Orthodox Presbyterian (RIP)

[Romulus]

According to the Church father John Damascene who lived in 8th century Syria (yes, under an islamic ruler), veneration -- NOT worship! -- of icons is licit because the image is merely a conduit; the veneration passes through to the prototype.

Furthermore, Christians of an apostolic ecclesiology (mostly Catholics and Orthodox) believe that images of Jesus are OK, because the apostle Paul tells us that Jesus himself is the image of God. Christians being not subject to the Law (being a new creation in Christ who we believe frees man from law -- a response to man's estrangement from God -- by his passion and resurrection), we hold it not unlawful to do what God has done in making an image of Him.

[MarMema]

The icon is a witness to the Incarnation. It is for us a theology all its own, about the created revealing to us the Uncreated, just as Christ did. The icon cannot be taken out of the church and seen on its own, but is an integral part of the whole theme of the Incarnation, which is seen everywhere in the Orthodox church. And the icon cannot be viewed with secular eyes and have meaning.

"The contemplation of the Church is different from the secular vision precisely by the fact that, in the visible, the Church contemplates the invisible; and in the temporal, the eternal, which is revealed to us in worship. Like worship itself, the icon is a revelation of eternity in time. This is why in sacred art the naturalistic portrait of a person can only be a historical document: in no way can it reflect the liturgical image, the icon." (Ouspensky)

But in truth, we are all icons. Made in His image and hopefully able to convey the Uncreated.