It seems as if most denominations use Warner Sallman’s “Head of Christ” painting, or images
like
it. These
pictures obviously are
acceptable
images of
“Christ” for modern
Christians. But in the light of Scripture, can
they
really be excluded
from falling under
the Second Commandment?
1. Pictures of “Christ” are idols, not by popular definition, but by dictionary and Bible definitions.
Nowadays, on a popular level, the word “idol”
means only an image
of a
false god, or a heathen deity, the
word
“idol” has a
more
basic meaning also. However in Bible and theology
dictionaries the word “idol”
means “the worship of Jehovah by means of images”1, “the worship of Jehovah under image or symbol.”2 “Idolatry, strictly speaking, denotes the worship of deity
in
a visible
form,
whether
the images to which
the homage is paid are
symbolical
representations of the true God or of the false divinities which have been made the objects of
worship in His stead.”3 Baker’s Dictionary of Theology says, “Because God was unseen and
transcendent, men set up
idols as a materialistic expression of Him. Soon the
created thing was worshiped as a god instead
of the Creator.”4
The idolatry of the
golden calf
Everybody
knows that the golden calf of Exodus 32 was an idol, but most people do not
realize that it was made intentionally to represent God, “Elohim” who had brought the people up
out of Egypt. Exodus 32:4-5 states “And he [Aaron] received them at their hand, and fashioned
it with a graving tool, after he
had made it a molten calf: and they
said, These be thy
gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the
land of Egypt. And when Aaron saw it, he built an altar
before it; and Aaron made proclamation, and said, Tomorrow is a feast to the LORD.” In I Kings 12:28, Jeroboam, fearing that the people would return to the house of David, devised a plan: “Whereupon
the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them [the people], It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.” Both passages of Scripture make it clear that the people who
made and used those images used them as images of the LORD God, the
God
who delivered
Israel from Egypt. Even though our English
translations call the images “gods” with a small “g”,
the Hebrew word used, “Elohim”, is the same
word
that is elsewhere translated as God (e.g.
Genesis 1:1). The
Bible
will not give God’s name to any image. The
context shows that the
people intended to use these images to represent the “Elohim”
who
delivered them from Egypt. Every attempt to make a similitude of God--representing Him in
some materialistic form--is basically
a practice of the
same sin as making the
golden calf.
The issue at
stake in the making of idols is clearly presented in Deuteronomy 4:12-13, 15,
“And the LORD spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only ye heard a voice. And he declared unto you his covenant, which he
commanded of you to perform, even ten commandments;... Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the LORD spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire: lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the
similitude of any
figure....”
2. Pictures presume
to represent God
Acceptance
of pictures as professedly to representing God has deceived believers. They think
that our deity
pictures
are not idols,
especially since
they
are not three-dimensional and,
therefore, it cannot be idolatrous to use such pictures.
But the definition from the Bible says very
simply
“no similitude”.
What is at stake is
God’s glory and the authority of His written word! If we
hold to imagery and visualization of the
character of God, then we have
given up the very principle
of the Bible only being the
authority. We have given up the
very basis
of truth, negating the
very foundation on which we stand. Rather than an issue of preference or feeling, the
issue is most serious for in the
Bible, idolatry is clearly spoken of as something God hates. Idolatry has always been the Achilles’ heel by which the people of God have been wounded and brought down. In our own
day,
men desire to do it “my way”--to give in to the humanistic
way of portraying God in a manner
that He
has
commanded
He is not to be portrayed.
Christ is the all Holy God in His humanity. In His earthly days, His humanity contained the
fullness of His
divinity, but that humanity is now no longer on earth. We know
Him no longer
after the flesh, as the Scripture says, rather we know
Him now in spirit
and
in truth, for we know spiritual things spiritually5 and it is in God’s light that we see light.6 The Word of God is written now into the heart of the believer. His Word is crystal clear on the Second Commandment;
the clarion
call is as Paul says in
I Corinthians 4:6, “...not
to think beyond
what is written...”
The Gospel is at
stake, for the Scripture states that “Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by
the
word of God.”7 The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation as it is written, read, and
spoken one to another. The power of the Word is that it is propositional truth. Rather than subjective and tacit, “The word of God is
quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and
is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of
the heart.”8 Continually, in the
Old and New Testament, there is the
commandment of God and the warning of God not to depict Him in a
visual way. In olden times in Israel
people deviated from the written word and then there would come a famine in the land. For example, in Amos 8:11-12, “Behold the days are coming says
the Lord God and I will send a famine
on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water,
but of hearing the words of the Lord....” Thus in our day, if young children are given pictures of
“Christ”, or if they see videos of “Christ”, then in their hearts there is a famine for the written word. There is no desire or longing to know God because they think they have known Him
through the form of images, the
very thing that God
forbids in His Word.
Children brought up to see “Christ” rather than to meditate on the God given words of Him who is the brightness of God’s glory and the express image of His person.9 So quite easily they fail when it comes to understanding that they are dead in trespasses and sin10 and therefore in
need of “being justified freely by His grace” (Romans 3:24). The one whom they see is so easy to look upon and the
message “to receive Him into their hearts”
is
such an easy action, it is one quick ritual. They have been sold idolatry while failing to be
taught the Gospel verse by verse,
and doctrine by
doctrine, that salvation is freely given to the sinner by
God’s grace alone through
faith alone and to God alone be the
glory. To furnish children (or anyone for that matter) with pictures and videos of “Jesus”
is to withhold the
birthright and to serve them a mess of pottage
instead. “Woe to those who cause
these little ones to
stumble...”
3. These pictures break God’s law and
defile God’s grace.
The present day Bible believing church seems ignorant of the meaning of the
Second
Commandment which
forbids using images to represent God. Exodus 20:4-6 states, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or
that is in the
earth beneath, or that
is in the
water
under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity
of the fathers upon the children unto the third and
fourth generation of them that hate me; and showing mercy unto
thousands of them that love
me,
and keep my commandments.”
God’s Law is Christological: that is, it points to Christ. God’s Law is eternal and His grace writes it on the believer’s heart. In the old covenant, the Law was written on tables of stone. In the
grace of the new covenant, the Law is written on the hearts and in the minds of God’s covenant people.
While we blame the Supreme Court for not allowing the
Ten Commandments to be posted on schoolroom
walls, we in the church break this commandment whenever we use a
picture to
represent Christ. We teach our children to break the Ten Commandments when we
give them pictures to represent Christ. Can we legitimately expect Holy God to refrain from applying
Exodus 20:5 to our children, grandchildren, and
great grandchildren?
4. The picture
as a mediator opens the door for
pantheism.
The picture is a
part of creation. The creation is not God. To picture a created man, and to
label that picture with the name of the Creator is to confuse the Creator with the creation.
Romans 1:21 states the cause of such confusion is “Because that when they
knew God, they glorified
him
not as God, neither were thankful;
but became vain
in their imaginations, and their foolish
heart was darkened.” The regression continues, “Professing themselves to be wise, they
became fools, And changed the glory of the incorruptible
God
into an image made
like to
corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beats, and creeping things.” (Vv. 22-23) Isaiah 40:18 states the problem, “To whom then will
ye liken God? or what likeness
will
ye compare
unto
Him?” Romans 12:2 states the Scriptural answer to this problem unequivocally, “And be
not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may
prove what is that good,
and acceptable,
and perfect will of God.”
Any picture of “God”
makes the picture itself into a
mediator because the viewer thinks
Gnostically that he knows God, at least
in
some measure, by seeing the
picture. In this Gnostic-type
knowledge of Christ, the viewer is allowed to go on silently thinking his own thoughts unhindered by the transforming power of God’s Word; thus the viewer’s mind continues to be
conformed to the world by the limits of the created image and
by his own
subjectivity. In this Gnostic type knowledge of Christ,
pictures of
“Jesus” silently
address the physical senses of the
viewers
without presenting His propositional
truth objectively and explicitly to their minds.
Rather, the viewer of a picture attaches his own subjective interpretation to whatever the
picture presents to him. Thus the artist and the viewer blend God and His creation into a single continuum in the
picture.
Since these pictures confuse and obscure the distinction
between God and His created world Delightful as they may be to the senses, nevertheless they have presented a deception. The
pictures confirm to the pantheist that Jesus
is merely part
of their pantheon. Similarly, to the
natural
man puffed by his
own
darkened imaginations, these pictures confirm that the
Word
of God is of no interest to himself. The
pictures lay the
foundation for the
pantheistic concepts of
“God” in the church. No wonder the western church is now being
ravaged by
eastern cults. No wonder that such peoples, as Hindus love pictures of “Christ” as much as they do those of Lhatchme. Yet God has ordained the means by which people, old and young shall
be saved and
taught. It is clearly spelled out
in Romans 10:14-15,
“How then shall they call on
him
in whom they have not believed?
and
how shall they believe in
him
of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a
preacher? And how
shall they preach, except they be sent? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of them that preach
the gospel of
peace, and bring glad tidings of
good things!
5. Pictures of
“Jesus” corrupt
true worship of
Christ.
People who use pictures
of “Christ” deny that
they worship the pictures, but
rather that
the pictures help them to worship Christ. This is essentially justifying the use of a medium, a practice
well established in the Roman Catholic Church. In rationalizing her setting aside of the Second Commandment, the RCC states clearly and heretically, “...the honor rendered to an image passes to its prototype, and whoever venerates an image
venerates
the person portrayed in it.”11 While
in
fact the pictures do help to form a
concept of “Christ” for those
who
use them in
worship, the basis of their worship is not the
written word of God but rather becomes the visual depiction before them.
Rather than drink from the fountain of living water, they have turned for their knowledge of
God to broken cisterns, which
they
have hewn out with their own
hands.
Pictures of Christ corrupt the meanings of many Biblical words. The definition of
idolatry is changed so that the
category
will exclude
pictures of “Christ”, pictures of the
Father, and representations of the Holy Spirit. To so redefine idolatry is an attempt, however sincerely undertaken, to corrupt what man is to believe concerning God as given to us through the Scriptures. The pictures eventually impact and change the meaning of “salvation” and the
“church”. First, we accept the false pictures to “know” Christ (Gnosticism again). These
Gnostic pictures serve as mediators for knowing Christ. Using the pictures serves as mediators
for knowing Christ. Using the
pictures rituals are developed. The
representative pictures need a special priesthood to officiate in the development and performance of a suitable liturgy. The
Roman Catholic
Mass is a
classical example of such go-between priesthood. In the Mass, the
highest point of Rome's liturgy she claims "wo
rship
which is due to the true God" for the Communion bread.12 All this, in Roman Catholicism is claimed to be done in His name. The end result is that Christ is replaced, as people look
to the
image. Thus evangelical
world
a similar reasoning tries to justify the false pictures of Christ. These pictures corrupt evangelism, the
Christian education, and true worship of the Church. The Bible accepts no man-made picture as being a picture
of Christ. Neither should we.
6.
The Bible is sufficient.
In the
sixteenth century when the great Reformers preached, there was a return to Biblical
truth. The Bible was seen to be the ultimate authority, the words of the Bible were all sufficient
to
show the transcendent character and person of God, Who He is, that He
is Spirit, infinite,
eternal, unchangeable
in His being,
wisdom,
power,
holiness, justice,
goodness and truth.
The words of the Bible and the power of God unto salvation in the Gospel
message were paramount.
Until quite recently, this was still the
case
in
the evangelical world. There were no pictures
of “Christ”, no giving in to the worldly ways of mankind on this issue, but rather the
truth
of God
was explained in God’s way, in
written
words of propositional truth. The
punishment of idolatry is severe, as the Second Commandment and the Old Testament make
clear. The temptation to visualize Christ, the Father, or the
Holy Spirit must be repented of, for
God
is holy and the Bible is sufficient. “And we know that the
son
of God is come, and hath given us an understanding,
that we may know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true,
even in His son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life. Little children, keep
yourselves from idols.” (I John 5:20-21)
Notes
1 Zondervan Pictorial
Bible Dictionary, p. 368.
2 Unger’s Bible
Dictionary, p. 512.
3 Peloubet’s Bible
Dictionary, F. N. Peloubet & Alice D Adams, Eds. (Philadelphia, PA: The
John C. Winston Co., 1925) p. 271.
4 Baker’s Dictionary
of Theology, “Gods” (Grand Rapids, MI:
Baker Book House, 1960) p. 248.
11 Catechism of
the Catholic Church (San Francisco, CA:
Ignatius Press, 1994). #2132.
12 Vatican Council II Documents, No. 9, Eucharisticum Mysterium, Vol. I, Sec.
3, p. 104.
Permission is given by the authors to
copy this article if it is done in its entirety without any changes.
Permission is given also to publish this
article in its entirety on the Internet
Virgil Dunbar has written a book on this topic, Christ
Can’t Be Pictured—God is not like Art.The book is available for free online
at notlikeart.blogspot.com
