The Sin of Idolatry

For all those who are interested, I am posting an article which explains the Catholic Church's position on the 2nd Commandment against Idolatry.  We follow all the Commandments, and in that light, I believe this post may offer an explanation as to why we have statues and paintings in our Churches.

The Catholic Church during the Council of Trent (1545-1563) issued a clear statement concerning images and statues. According to the 25th Session of this General Council:

The images of Christ and of the Virgin Mother of God, and of the saints are to be had and retained particularly in churches, and due honor and veneration are to be given them; not that any divinity or virtue is believed to be in them on account of which they are to be worshipped, or that anything is to be asked of them, or that trust is to be reposed in images, as was of old by the Gentiles, who placed their hopes in idols; but because the honor which is shown them is referred to the prototypes which these images represent; so that we through the images which we kiss...or bend the knee, adore Christ and venerate the saints, whom they represent. [The Canons & Decrees of the Council of Trent (TAN Books, 1978) p. 215-6]

The Church does NOT compel her members to kneel or pray before images. No one is allowed by the Church to pray to images since they have no ears to hear or power to help us. The Church allows for the veneration of images as long as the honor is directed towards Christ and His saints.

On a related issue, some Christians may object to the veneration of images of the saints since they believe that honor should be directed towards God alone and not towards Mary or the saints (1 Tim. 1:17). This objection arises from a confusion between divine honor (adoration - supreme honor proper only for God) and respectful honor proper for men. According to the Bible, the people of God bowed down before King David to show him honor (2 Sam. 24:20; 1 Chron. 29:20; 21:21). Obadiah in 1 Kings 18:7 fell prostrate before Elijah showing him reverence for being a prophet of God. In the Ten Commandments, we are told to honor our mother and father (Deut. 5:16). Even Jesus defended and obeyed this Commandment (Mark 7:9-13; Luke 2:51). At least for Mary, our honor to her is in imitation of Jesus, her Son (1 Cor. 11:1). The Church allows for the veneration of the saints and their images as long as it remains honor proper for men. It is good to honor the saints for their love and trust in God (Matt. 22:31-32; Heb. 11:1-12:1).

"The Catholic Church has not altered the Ten Commandments of God. The Church has not dropped the "Second Commandment". The Catholic numbering scheme may differ with the Protestant numbering scheme, but this is due to a difference in tradition and not an alteration of God's Commandments. Unfortunately the Bible is not clear on how to divide or number the Ten Commandments. If this difference is scandalous, it would be interesting to know what the author of the booklet thought of Jesus Christ when He reduced God's Commandments to the Two Great Commandments in Matt. 22:36-40. Finally the Church strictly condemns the adoration (divine worship) of statues, images or even the saints, since this is idolatry and in direct violation of the First Commandment. For Christians a crucifix should not be considered merely as a statue of Jesus hanging on a cross, but as a reminder of the high cost of our salvation as well as His words to us:

"If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me." [Mark 8:34]"

http://users.binary.net/polycarp/graven.html

If anyone has any questions or further comments on this subject, I would be happy to try to answer them, or clarify this explanation.

God's Peace.

The Eastern Church has very strict rules on what can be shown and how, but to answer Israfil.  No Prayers are not made TO the Icons, Statues or Mosaics.  Instead they are reminders and focal points.  I'm looking for a story about Icons and a Mongol from Russia.  The story goes something like this....

When sacking a village, the Mongol was tormenting a priest.  He demanded the Priest tell him about his "faith" and the Priest replied.  I will not tell you......But I will show you.  And he took the illiterate man into the Church and before him were all the stories of the Bible.  The Mongol saw and was converted. 

Of course this is legend, but throughout MOST of Christianity, the masses were illiterate and even if they weren't, they often did not read the language of the Scriptures, Latin or Old Church Slavic.  Thus, Icons, Statues, and Mosaics were important teaching tools.  When Christianity came to the Slavs, they did not even have a written language.  St Cyril (cyrillic) and St Methodius had to develop one for them.

http://www.orthodoxy.faithweb.com/ikonidol.htm 

Ikons or idols?

Many Protestants, on visiting an Orthodox Church, are struck by the number of pictures, called ikons. In long-established churches, ikons cover just about all the available wall space and there are also stands with portable ikons. The visitor will notice that members of the church kiss these when they enter the building, and that many bow and touch the ground with their right hand before they kiss the ikons.

Some Protestants are shocked by this, and have been heard to say that Orthodox churches are full of "idols". And if they say this in the presence of Orthodox Christians, the Orthodox are inclined to dismiss the Protestants as heretics and iconoclasts.

During the first centuries of Christianity, Christians held different opinions about pictures of Christ and the apostles. Some rejected representational art, or were uneasy about it, believing that it was prohibited in the scriptures. Others accepted it, and ikons came to be used more commonly in churches. The issue was not resolved until he iconoclastic controversy of the 8th and 9th centuries.

The Iconoclastic Controversy

Those opposed to the use of ikons were increasingly drawn from the heretical fringes of Christianity: the monophysites, who downplayed the human nature of Christ; those with gnostic tendencies, who thought that all matter was evil, and later the possible influence of Islam. The emperor Leo III believed that the use of ikons was hindering the conversion of Muslims and Jews to Christianity, and ordered that they be destroyed. The church was divided, and those who retained ikons (the iconodules) were persecuted by those who destroyed the ikons (the iconoclasts). After the death of the Emperor Leo IV in 780 his widow, the Empress Irene, encouraged the calling of the Seventh Ecumenical Council (the Second Council of Nicaea), which met in 787. The Council finally settled the issue from the theological point of view, and defined the way in which ikons were to be used, and carefully distinguished between the proper use and the misuse of ikons (which would be idolatry).

Many of the theological contributions to settle the dispute came from outside the empire, one of the most notable being that of St John of Damascus. His contribution was all the more significant since he lived in a place under Muslim rule.

Though the Church had settled the matter theologically, there was still opposition to ikons from the secular power, and some of the later emperors also supported iconoclasm.

The meaning of ikons

One of the things that persuaded the Church to accept ikons was John 1:18: "No man has seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has revealed him." When God became incarnate in human form, when the Word became flesh, then men could see the incarnate God in the flesh, and Christ was the image of God. A picture of Christ, then, was a picture of the incarnate God.

Not only was Christ himself depicted in ikons, however, but so were the saints of the past. When Christians gathered to worship, the ikons of the saints helped to make them aware that we are "surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses" (Hebrews 12:1). The ikons therefore helped to make visible the invisible. They were also a reminder that the Church is a community not bounded by space and time. The ikons remind us that in Christ we have fellowship, communion, with Christians of other times and places.

This is perhaps seen most dramatically in the Paschal Vigil, where we celebrate the resurrection of Christ. Members of the congregation come forward to greet the priest with a kiss, and they also kiss the book of the gospels, the deacon, the ikon of the risen Christ, and one another. We greet the risen Christ and our fellow Christians, both those who are with us in the flesh, and those whose presence is seen through their ikons.

Dead saints?

At this point some Protestants raise another objection. They object to the idea that we should either ask the dead to pray for us, or that we should pray for them. They see this as interposing dead saints as mediators between ourselves and God. Most Orthodox Christians find this objection very difficult to understand. St Paul insists that death cannot separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:38-39). Those who raise this particular objection seem to be revelling in being the most pitiable of all men (I Corinthians 15:18-19), for did not our Lord Jesus Christ himself say that "he who lives and believes in me shall never die"? Orthodox Christians therefore usually find such objections incomprehensible, and think that those who make them are denying the fundamentals of the Christian faith, yet still claiming to be Christians.

Windows into heaven

When Christians gather for the Divine Liturgy, they gather at a place on earth, but it is also a place where earth meets heaven. We have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, where millions of angels have gathered for the festival, with the whole church where everyone is a first-born son and a citizen of heaven, with the spirits of the saints who have been made perfect (Hebrews 12:22-23), and when we enter a temple where all the walls are covered with ikons of Christ and the saints and angels, this is made visible to our senses.

The ikons are not simply for decoration; nor are they purely didactic, to teach the scriptures to the illiterate (though they do these things). Their primary purpose is to enable us to see what is normally unseen, to make visible what is normally invisible. So ikons are an intrinsic part of our faith; they are evidence of things hoped for (Hebrews 11:1).

So when the iconoclastic controversy finally ended, Orthodox Christians celebrated the "Triumph of Orthodoxy", and still do so, on the first Sunday of Lent each year, going in procession around the church with ikons.

Veneration and worship

We honour the ikons and greet those depicted there. But the ikon is a window, not a solid statue. The honour given to the image passes to the prototype. We may keep a photograph of someone we love, and, especially when we are far away from that person, the photo reminds us of them. We might even kiss the photo, if the absence has lasted a long time, but it is not the photo that we love, but the person shown in it. So with the ikons. We do not love them for themselves (which would be idolatry), but for the ones depicted on them.

So the Seventh Ecumenical Council decreed that ikons may be venerated, with honour (proskinesis) but we may not give them the worship (latria) that belongs to God alone. That latria is the "latry" in "idolatry".

The veneration of ikons, therefore, is nothing like idolatry, because it is ikons that draw us to worship God. Idolatry, on the contrary, is offering worship (latria) to something other than God, to something that is a substitute for God in our mind. Idolatry is when we worship and serve creatures rather than the creator (Romans 1:25), the gift rather than the giver. Ikons are not idols (except to those who collect them as works of art or as investments). Idols are created things that we substitute for the creator in our minds and hearts and loyalties. Wealth, or a luxurious life-style, loyalty to or family or country, the love of power, these things can become idols. In the world in which we live, idolatry is all around us. Ikons, however, lead us out of idolatry and back to God.

Bibliography

Ouspensky, Leonid & Lossky, Vladimir. 1989. The meaning of icons. Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press.

Hello Suzanne,

You stated this:

"Because they do not know what Jesus pbuh looks like."

No, we don't know "exactly" what he looks like.....but we have a pretty good idea, based on his ethnicity, where he came from, his race, what men looked like during that time, etc.  We know from pictures which have been handed down from the 1st century CE.  We know what features people from the Middle East have, which of course allow for some varience....unless they're identical twins. But seriously, we do have a good idea.

Gotta run....more later.

Jesus told us to worship him.  He said this in the following verse:

"...and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind..."this is the great and first commandment!" (Mark 12:30, NIV). 

I can't say I see a picture of what I perceive as Jesus (as we have been shown he would possibly look) when I'm praying.  I am "talking" to Jesus when I pray, and not necessarily in Church.  I pray to Him a lot when I'm at home, or out in the woods surrounded by the beauty of nature.  I am worshipping Him as I pray to Him.  Sometimes I am totally silent and listen for Him to speak to me through the Holy Spirit.  He said, Be still, and know that I am God."

If you have pictures of your dear friends and relatives, are you worshipping them by looking at their pictures?  No.  You are remembering how much they mean to you, how many good times you've had with them, and how much you love them.  But you are not worshipping them.  Or, if you are, you need to stop it.

So I hope I have somewhat answered your question.  If you want more clarification, please let me know.

God's Peace.