The more sophisticated pagans back in the day would also argue that they knew that the Chemosh image thru which they sent their children to be burned was just a “focal representation” of the larger reality of the true Chemosh. These statues or graven images were the focal point thru which they could worship and bow down to get their deity’s attention.
Mars hill had all the images and staues of the greek gods but there was also an unadorned altar noted as the “Unknown God”...because though many pious folk did what they could to placate what Gods they held to be true....there was always that nagging doubt that they missed one somewhere. It was on that subject, “to the unknown God”, a faceless formless God, that Paul preached the greatest apologetic sermon for Christ in the whole of the Bible including, the general conditions of darkened humanity before the coming of Christ, the love that God had for men, even beyond the nation of Israel, his “winking” at men as they groped in darkness so that they would not lose hope, and Paul, finally making the connection between the worship of “ the unknown God” with that same God of Gods that sent Christ into the world, stating that all men were now commanded to come to Christ as his was the only name under heaven by which men could be saved!
By using an altar devoted to an “unknown God” which had no form of man, object, or any device of Heaven..Paul illuminated Christianity for the Greeks and for the church itself for all time. It is not as important that we see the image of Christ so much instead that God should see the image of Christ in each of us! The Bible promises us that in that day of resurrection...”We shall be like Him for We shall see HIM AS HE IS”. So much for statues,images, amulets, rosaries, and sacred relics.....!
Sorry Thomas...I was trying to post to the other ‘sainted’ one!