No, we are fully aware of the rationalization. This had been argued many times. What we have a hard time accepting is the use of any statuary in any way associated with the divine worship, after God spent thousands of years conditioning Israel to reject the same. This suggests His disapproval runs much deeper than the absurdly narrow case of some primitive thinking a pile of wood or stone might somehow respond to his requests for aid.
What could it be then? For one thing, all such statuary is inherently a lie. It does not accurately represent the thing it alleges to represent. Assume for the sake of argument we could agree on the elimination of all created beings as the mental focus of prayer or any degree of worship. We would still have statues of Jesus. But we cannot represent the divine being in manufactured and false images of His physical being. He is glorified now. John saw Him in Revelation, and no image can capture that, or stimulate in the soul the impetus to true worship that His true presence inspires.
Bottom line, images are a cheat, not so much on God, but on us. What did God choose to give us as the mental focus for worship? All that Jesus said and did, recorded in a book. We come to the story of His birth, and we are told of heavenly choirs of angels greeting His arrival among us. We go to the Gospel stories and we read how He raised Lazarus from the dead and calmed the wind and the sea. We read of Him dying for our sins and rising from the dead and being exalted to sit at the right hand of the Father, where He Himself condescends to be our personal intercessor and advocate before the Father.
Given all that, we can fully understand why He would command ee should make no attempt to represent Him out of our own feeble imaginations. All our statues do is cheat us of His truth. He loves us, and is jealous for us, and will not give His glory to another, and a statue, no matter how well intended, is always ... not Him.
And beyond this, even if you say these manufactured bits of nothing are only aids to worship and not the true object of worship, there are many, many people in the world who are much less able to make those fine distinctions. These are the ones who think they please God by bringing gifts to the statues, dressing them up, taking them on parades, etc. These are souls that are not able to keep their true mental worship only on God, and look past the statuary. These souls are being defiled daily by a religious system that fosters rather than forbids this kind of fawning over mere objects. This is why, though Paul says there is nothing in a statue, and foods offered to such are not unclean, yet he testifies he would have nothing to do with such things, if it could harm the souls of the weak. In Revelation, Jesus confirms this as forbidden, so we know Paul’s position is the right policy.
But even if you dismissed all of the above, there is a line crossed in the theory of transubstantiation, which makes out a wafer to be very God. This is an all or nothing proposition. If this object is not God, if in fact it is nothing but medieval alchemy falsely superimposed on a simple memorial by which we are to think of our Savior’s dying love for us, then any adoration offered it is by definition idolatrous, which no amount of rationalization can rescue.
So we do understand the means by which you seek to justify each of these practices. But we cannot overcome the impression that God forbade these practices for good reason, either because we cannot safely differentiate worship from its visual intermediary, or because God Himself does not accept the sophistry, and sees both as rejection of His clear commands. Like my dad used to day, that’s a risk I’m not willing to take. You can keep the statuary. I’ll keep my Bible. Thanks all the same.
Peace,
SR
>> What we have a hard time accepting is the use of any statuary in any way associated with the divine worship <<
See, now THAT’S an honest comment. But Iscool didn’t say, “Catholics pray in the presence of statues in a way that is uncomfortably similar to the practices of pagans which God prohibited.”
>> God spent thousands of years conditioning Israel to reject the same. <<
He also didn’t say, “Catholics don’t interpret the bible the way the Jews do.” You want a discussion about whether Christians should follow the Jews’ Iconoclasty? Fine THERE’S a reasonable debate.
But you say, “No, we are fully aware of the rationalization.” That stubbornly insists that we aren’t merely praying in the presence of statues, but that we actually are praying TO statues. And that’s simply slanderous. A rationalization would have been if I tried to argue that it was, in fact, OK to pray to statues. But no-one’s making that argument. I’m saying we don’t pray to statues.
What did God prohibit? Obeying false gods. It’s not like the bible didn’t provide examples! If you want to see what praying to a statue looks like, Read the book of Daniel, which depicts the prophet having to prove to the Babylonians that their statue doesn’t come alive and eat their offerings or issue commands.
Do did God really spend thousands of years conditioning the Jews not to pray in the presence of a statue? Absolutely not. In fact, through Moses he commanded them to bow their heads to a statue of a seraph!
>> But even if you dismissed all of the above, there is a line crossed in the theory of transubstantiation, which makes out a wafer to be very God. This is an all or nothing proposition. If this object is not God, if in fact it is nothing but medieval alchemy falsely superimposed on a simple memorial by which we are to think of our Savior’s dying love for us, then any adoration offered it is by definition idolatrous, which no amount of rationalization can rescue. <<
Ah, this is a whole different argument. We do not pray to statues. We do pray to God in the form of the eucharist. And not just prayer, in the sense you will find archaic references to praying to saints. The word, “pray” archaically means to ask or supplicate; hence a court filing is actually called a prayer in many states, but in that sense, we’re talking full-blown worship. That type of prayer is called “adoration,” and oh, yes, that is exactly what the bible forbids us to do to false gods, or anyone else but God, Himself.
See, I don’t shrink away from controversy! When another thread turned to bones in a church, I told him all about how there’s remnants of dead people in churches far more than he knew! I won’t hide the truth! We Catholics adore the Eucharist! That’s one reason why we God Luther’s “consubstantiation!” How can something be God and bread at the same time? That’s why we reject some Protestant’s notion that Christ is present in the bread if the believer believes he is receiving Christ by consuming the bread: How can God be present or not present depending on a notion in someone’s brain?
But this is a topic where Catholics uphold what the bible actually says, and Protestants brush it away as mere symbolism! “THIS IS MY BODY. TAKE OF IT AND EAT”