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Presbyterian Deacon · #8 (**permalink**) 05-05-2008, 10:05 PM

This maybe slightly

, but I bring it up anyway.

The reformed tradition (DUTCH) have their own R. C. Sproul type departures in this area.

J. Douma, The Ten Commandments: Manual for the Christian Life, (P & R Pubblishing), 1992. This is an excellent contemporary exposition of the 10 Commandments by a Dutch theologian. However, in this area of images and what the second commandment forbids, he is as mistaken as some Presbyterians we've discussed in another recent thread.

"Iconoclastic Campaigns" and "Images Today" (pages 58-71)

Douma advocates "religious art" as being a good a thing, but maintains it's place is "outside the walls of the church."

Quote:

Religious art must be able to develop, but it develops best outside the walls of the church. Rembrandt was in his own way an interpreter of Scripture, but you must not make the Rembrandt Bible the pulpit Bible. Religious art reflects the history of exegesis, but that is different from the living preaching of God's Word.

(page 66).

He does not hold that images of Christ are forbidden, but that they don't belong in the church:

Quote:

Since this kind of portrait of Christ is controversial, people should not put it in a church. Representations of Christ are numerous. You should compare the subdued portrayals of the sufferings of Christ with the tearful expressionsso often portrayed in religious art. Nevertheless, it would be good if both remained outside the church building.

(page 66).

So it is not the commandment that keeps such out of church, but the fact that it's controversial? A catering to the opinions of men rather than obedience to God?

But, he then enters into a discussion of "mental images" which is very interesting:

Quote:

If you are intersted in the relevance of the second commandment, you must not restrict it to the idol images mentioned in the commandment, but ask whether, apart from materials like wood, stone, or paint, you can construct wrong mental images of God. For then you are doing exactly what the image-making craftsmen were doing in the Old Testament world: fashioning God according to your own understanding.

(page 69-70).