Musings on Idolatry and the {real} 2nd Commandment

[Eutychus]

Musings on Idolatry

Why did not the early Christians make statues of Jesus and the other apostles first hand?

Why is it that we have no true likeness of Jesus, contemporaneous to that age, if it is was "historically" customary within Catholicism to have statues of Saints and Deity?

Could it be that the early Christians were not Catholic and the early Christians would not think to make a statue of Jesus or other martyrs of their time? Or did they completely understand the prohibitions of God against making images of God for use in worship and religion, thus the bible is silent on word images of Jesus { while living } appearance?

Without delving too deeply into Jesuit apologetics and excuses, this really IS a very interesting historical question, one worth pondering.

[Akalyte]

[img]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3e/Good_shepherd_m2.jpg[/img]

Second Century image of Christ the Good Shepherd


some more images from the catacombs

[img]http://www.arsmar.com/crimago/cr-epasv.jpg[/img]

Saints Peter and Paul

[img]http://www.arsmar.com/crimago/cr-epdv.jpg[/img]

The Ressurection of Lazarus


They had images in the early church. Just not as much as they do now, of course its kind of hard when being fed to lions and hiding from persecution.

They did indeed have images and it was not thought of as Idolatry. I've also read that the roman's would force christians to paint pictures of their god, but the christian would paint Jesus instead...

[OLAM Dad]

Akalyte pretty much put this one to bed.

The prohibition against graven images is in Exodus 20 and yet we find God commanding Moses to do this in Exodus 25.

[quote]18
Make two cherubim of beaten gold for the two ends of the propitiatory,
19
fastening them so that one cherub springs direct from each end.
20
The cherubim shall have their wings spread out above, covering the propitiatory with them; they shall be turned toward each other, but with their faces looking toward the propitiatory.
21
This propitiatory you shall then place on top of the ark. In the ark itself you are to put the commandments which I will give you.[/quote]

Did God command Moses to violate His own commandments by commanding him to make golden cherubim?

[eddieloudog]

Statues have more to do with communications modes. There is more than one mode to communicate. We all use body language and words. We also use symbols that we string together to form words. This collection of symbols represent words with distinct meaning to anyone who can read. So, following this, statues are a mode of non-verbal transmission of knowledge or thought. We see them and then a thought pops into our head or we get a certain feeling just like when we read. Now, given the fact that illiteracy rates were really high up until the 20th century, it makes since that statues were used as evangelization tools while people were being told about Christ through the Gospels. Remember that the Apostles spoke the gospel; they didn’t just hand out those little green Bibles.


PS. Cold over-reverence for the physical Bible (the one you hold in your hand, the tangible one man made on a printing press) be some type of Idolatry? I mean, we may be venerating the Bible and taking away from any other form of communication that God may be telling us.

[ReinnieR]

wow

[Justified Saint]

Shesh, these kinds of discussions are starting to get real boring. I wish we had more honest Protestants around.

[Mateo el Feo]

[quote name='Eutychus' post='1042501' date='Aug 13 2006, 05:59 AM']Without delving too deeply into Jesuit apologetics and excuses...[/quote]Since everyone has already provided such helpful answers, I wanted to take this opportunity to mention that phrases like this hint at someone who is more driven by emotions and prejudice rather than reason and fact.

[Eutychus]

I guess SIMPLE reading, like ...

[quote]Why is it that we have no true likeness of Jesus,[u] contemporaneous to that age,[/u] [/quote]


Is asking too much of Phatmassers.

Sorry for stressing your brains too much.

[i]{ in case people are still confused, AD 32 - AD 100 is the Apostolic age. AD 250 is as far removed from Jesus, as we are from George Washington. ++ a little help for those that were educated under the new math programs...++ } by then, the pagan rites and usages were already becoming established as the new communities having virtually zero Jewish messianics were formed and grew...[/i]

[Akalyte]

Also please note, there are many other images from the "Apostolic age" in the Vatican Museum. Many, Many other images. Again, your argument is in ruins. As it was before it was even debated by Protestants.

[ReinnieR]

do you believe in apostasy after the death of St. John??

[Mateo el Feo]

[quote name='Akalyte' post='1042763' date='Aug 13 2006, 06:31 PM']Also please note, there are many other images from the "Apostolic age" in the Vatican Museum. Many, Many other images. Again, your argument is in ruins. As it was before it was even debated by Protestants.[/quote]Ironically, the proof of our argument lies in ruins...mostly the ruins that anyone can see on a vacation to Rome.

[Socrates]

The Second Commandment was from the Book of Exodus in the Old Testament, and was clearly forbidding the worship of pagan idols.
However, in the same Book of Exodus, God commands the making of two golden cherubs for the Ark of the Covenant. (Exodus 37:8-9) Obviously, it was not the mere making of "graven images" in itself that was forbidden, but the worshipping of idols.

[Mateo el Feo]

[quote name='Eutychus' post='1042702' date='Aug 13 2006, 04:36 PM']I guess SIMPLE reading, like ...
Is asking too much of Phatmassers.

Sorry for stressing your brains too much.

[i]{ in case people are still confused, AD 32 - AD 100 is the Apostolic age. AD 250 is as far removed from Jesus, as we are from George Washington. ++ a little help for those that were educated under the new math programs...++ }[/i][/quote]I'm actually a bit confused about your mention of 250 AD. The first and only date mentioned in this thread was regarding images from the second century, in Akalyte's post. For someone who was apparently educated under the "old math programs", you should know that 250 AD is in the [i]third[/i] century.

I do hope you will drop the patronizing tone. It neither facilitates dialogue, nor does it reflect Christian charity.
[quote name='Eutychus' post='1042702' date='Aug 13 2006, 04:36 PM'][i]...by then, the pagan rites and usages were already becoming established as the new communities having virtually zero Jewish messianics were formed and grew...[/i][/quote]
If someone is concerned about the corruption of Christianity by the non-Jewish converts, wouldn't it be natural to show similar skepticism of the arguments of St. Paul when he stood against the judaizers (cf [url="http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/acts/acts15.htm#v1"]Acts 15:1ff[/url])?

[Socrates]

[quote name='Socrates' post='1042887' date='Aug 13 2006, 07:19 PM']
The Second Commandment was from the Book of Exodus in the Old Testament, and was clearly forbidding the worship of pagan idols.
However, in the same Book of Exodus, God commands the making of two golden cherubs for the Ark of the Covenant. (Exodus 37:8-9) Obviously, it was not the mere making of "graven images" in itself that was forbidden, but the worshipping of idols.
[/quote]
Oops, I see OLAM Dad beat me to this. (Though Eutychus has not responded, choosing instead to simply throw out more of his customary silly insults.)

[CoffeeCatholic]

So, if Jesus really hated images of his face, why did he give us at least one directly?

Remember Veronica?

oh, and the shroud of Turin, but considering the possibility of falsification and that it's not mentioned in the Bible, i won't use that as an example.

ps: Prior to most people being able to write, simple drawing were common to explain a story. However, simple drawing are also easily lost, destroyed or otherwise unable to stand the test of time. Until better materials were used later in the centuries after Christ's death, and because of the lack of proper materials in Israel at that time, it is not unheard of to think that probably there were other artifacts of Biblical art of that period, but because of the small and increasingly persecuted size of the original Christian following they're missing. Along with this, most of the people had seen Jesus face to face somehow, and anticipated the second coming to be rather soon so they felt no need to spend time sculpting Him for later generations but rather converting the pagans of THAT generation.

and finally: Luther made up that second commandment, purely out of spite of a few Catholic churches spending too much of their money on pretty things and not enough on the poor people. Yes, they should have been giving their money to feed people first, but that's no excuse to go changing a 6000 year old document to fit whatever you please!

[missionseeker]

The walls of the underground city underneath St. Peter's in Rome (the Scavi tour) are COVERED in pictures.

[homeschoolmom]

[quote name='CoffeeCatholic' post='1043077' date='Aug 13 2006, 09:49 PM']
So, if Jesus really hated images of his face, why did he give us at least one directly?

Remember Veronica?
[/quote]

Well, to my knowledge, Veronica isn't mentioned in the bible either (if that's your criteria). And Protestants probably aren't really familiar with that either.

[Guest JeffCR07]

[quote]{ in case people are still confused, AD 32 - AD 100 is the Apostolic age... [/quote]

Eutychus, no scholar in his or her right mind would ever expect to find a image of Christ in that period. In 33 AD Paul was still killing Christians. Look at history and that will tell us what to expect. Paul's earliest epistle was written in 51 AD and his latest was written in 59 AD. So that means that, based on purely textual evidence, we can say with confidence that until at least 60 AD, the focus was still heavily on actually establishing Churches and the Faith in new areas. Art follows evangelization, not the other way around. So really, you're asking us to provide you with an example of depictions of Christ from between 60 AD and 100 AD.

But Christians were being persecuted by Nero in Rome from 64-68 AD, and we aren't gonna find much art amongst a persecuted group. So Roman Christian communities are out.

The largest and most stable christian community (and therefore the one most likely to have forms of art) was in Jerusalem. But before the Temple fell, the Christians were having part of their liturgical life at the Temple and then would go to a designated house for the Eucharist, and the eucharistic meal didn't demand any art. Moreover, the Temple didn't fall until 70 AD. Uh oh, now we have a problem, because the Christians [i]fled[/i] Jerusalem at the fall of the temple and didn't return from the surrounding deserts for about ten years, and at that point they were focusing on rebuilding, not painting.

So the fact remains that the time period you're demanding is a time period where Christians are either a.) trying to spread the religion in places like Corinth (you can't expect them to produce art when they are focused on conversion and forming a community), b.) trying to spread the religion while being persecuted in Rome (you can't expect people who are focused on conversion and forming a community while being persecuted to produce art), or c.) trying to spread the religion while remaining integrated into Judaic practice, then having to flee into the desert to escape ransacking Romans.

So the time period you suggest is the time period where no historical art scholar would expect to find much art. But the period immediately following, once the communities of faith [i]have[/i] been established, actually do produce art, and many times in spite of persecution.

History hurts your argument Eutychus.

Your Brother In Christ,

Jeff

[Brother Adam]

[quote]Why did not the early Christians make statues of Jesus and the other apostles first hand?[/quote]

I'm confused; did Jews make statues as part of their customs in the 1st century? We know that the Lord commanded them to make many images, including the image of the snake made in bronze who healed them (Numbers 21). Is there some writing that you have reference to that says that Jews were not allowed to make or have any images or pictures? How would the lack of any statues in the 1st century while the Church was very new indicate any idolatry? This is a logical fallacy. You will need to verify theologically that the presence of a statue or other types of images indicates the idolatrous worship of said object. I suggest starting with Schonborns "The Human Face of God: The Christ Icon" if you would like to speak intelligently on this subject.

[quote]Why is it that we have no true likeness of Jesus, contemporaneous to that age, if it is was "historically" customary within Catholicism to have statues of Saints and Deity?[/quote]

How do you know there were no images of Christ in the first century? Perhaps none of them survived, perhaps we have not found any of them to date, or perhaps as someone else mentioned maybe they were too busy dealing with the current persecutions.

[quote]Could it be that the early Christians were not Catholic and the early Christians would not think to make a statue of Jesus or other martyrs of their time? Or did they completely understand the prohibitions of God against making images of God for use in worship and religion, thus the bible is silent on word images of Jesus { while living } appearance?[/quote]

No, it could be though that you are making serious logical mistakes. If you want to prove that the early Church was not Catholic and that the creation or use of images, be they icons, photographical pictures, statues, paintings, or otherwise automatically indicate the sin of idolatry, I would at the very least strongly suggest reading the history of St. Cyril and the iconoclast controversy before making such rash accusations. However, reading Eusebius, Apollinaris, Gregory of Nyssa, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Athanasius, and Origen would be helpful as well. In reality the question of images, especially the question of any images of Christ is a very complex question reaching far back into Christian history. It ultimately asks who this Christ is, what is His nature, and how do these natures interact.

Now look, heretics that opposed images of Christ did so because they believed it is impossible to capture the image of Christ since He is God and man, and the image of Jesus Christ cannot capture at the same time the image of God. When we deal with the scriptures we want to understand what Jesus is telling us about himself. And the meaning of what he says. We want to understand what it means when he says he is the Son of the Father, when he inaugurates the kingdom, when he says he is the Christ, the Messiah. If you take, collectively the witness of the Gospels, Jesus is saying that the kingdom of God has come in Him, and that you must have personal communion with him in order to be a citizen of this kingdom. In order to be in communion with him, is to be in communion with God. Jesus is the consubstantial image of the Father.

God then is a communion of persons. There are not three God’s there is one God. If you want to know who God is you look at who Jesus is. Jesus reveals the character of God. This is the wonderful thing about Christianity, you can get an insight into the nature of God simply by reading the Gospels. When God tells us about God he tells us about us (image and likeness).

The Council at Nicea settled the question on what kind of divinity Jesus has. Affirms the HS is the same as the Father and Son is. It says that Apollinaris’ mistake is to be rejected (he rejected the human mind of Christ). We reject his thought because Jesus speaks of himself as having a human mind. Jesus saves us by becoming one of us. He overturns death by dying. He gives us life as one of us rising. He overturns human sin by a perfect human love of God. This truth is witnessed to all over the scriptures. All the heretics make the mistake that there cannot be a union between the word of God, the mind of God, and the human mind. They think of this union in too earthly terms. You can grant them their assumption in the case of any two created minds. You cannot have an intrinsic union of two creatures and yet observe the autonomy of both of them. But what Nestorius, Apollinaris, and Theodore don’t think of is that it doesn’t not apply to God. We realize the intimacy that God is able to have with his creation precisely because he is God.

We cannot think of the Son of God as the one assuming and the man Jesus as the one assumed. If Jesus is not the Son of God then the human actions of Jesus, in particular his suffering and death, they do not reveal the son of God. They are not his actions. The Son of God must make his own the human mind and the human body (Cyril), if they are not truly his, if they are not impressed with the identity with the Son of God, if they are not formed by his hypostasis, then they cannot reveal him and they cannot reveal the Father. The suffering and death reveal God to us. You cannot then say that they are not his.

Then if we see Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity in his incarnate form, and any image of the incarnate Christ does not intend to actually be Christ, but a reminder of Christ (just as the photograph of your girl or boyfriend in your pocket is not your boyfriend or girlfriend. You may look and point at the picture of your boyfriend and say “this is my boyfriend”, but indeed the picture itself is not your boyfriend. You see the illustration I am making here). One can point to Jesus and say “This is Jesus” without believing the statue is actually Jesus. It indicates a form of the second person of the Trinity which we dare make because He has come incarnate. We can pray with a statue of Jesus not because we believe the statue to be Jesus, the worship of stone, paint, graphite, oils, ink or otherwise is absurd to accuse any Catholic of unless Catholics shall accuse Protestants of idolatry for praying with their favorite Bible and accusing them of worshipping the pages and ink.

That’s about as far as I can go without my actual texts which are at home.


[quote]Without delving too deeply into Jesuit apologetics and excuses, this really IS a very interesting historical question, one worth pondering.[/quote]

Iconoclasm is an interesting question, but I hardly see what "Jesuit apologetics" has anything to do with it. I'm not even sure why you would bring the Jesuit society up unless if it is out of ignorance or arrogance.

[Eutychus]

[quote]do you believe in apostasy after the death of St. John?? [/quote]

I believe in apostacy starting INSIDE the life of John. So did John, by the way.

[quote]1 John 4:1 (KJV)[u][b] Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world.
[/b][/u]
2 Hereby know ye the Spirit of God: Every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God:

3 And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that [spirit] of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.[/quote]