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05-05-2008, 12:01 PM
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| | | LC 109/Images of Christ bibliography
As noted on other threads I've posted on this topic, I'm constructing a bibliography on the subject of idolatrous images, specifically of Christ as covered in the Westminster Larger Catechism Q&A 109.
I would like to pull the best and most succinct statements upholding LC 109 from the Puritans forward. Specifically I'd like input on what time periods to demarcate and the best authors to cite from those periods. There's obviously James Durham, Watson and Vincent from the heart of the Puritan period. How about later? Any thoughts, quotations to add would be much appreciated.
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Chris Coldwell
Lakewood Presbyterian Church (PCA), Member Naphtali Press: Presbyterian & Reformed Books The Confessional Presbyterian, A Journal for Discussion of Presbyterian Doctrine & Practice The Blue Banner Archive When heresy rises in an evangelical body, it is never frank and open. It always begins by skulking, and assuming a disguise. Its advocates, when together, boast of great improvements, and congratulate one another on having gone greatly beyond the old dead orthodoxy, and on having left behind many of its antiquated errors: but when taxed with deviations from the received faith, they complain of the unreasonableness of their accusers, as they differ from it only in words. This has been the standing course of errorists ever since the apostolic age. Samuel Miller, Introductory essay, The Articles of the Synod of Dort (1841).
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05-05-2008, 05:34 PM
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| | | See Thomas Ridgeley on the Larger Catechism. | | The Following User Says Thank You to Daniel Ritchie For This Useful Post: | |
05-05-2008, 05:44 PM
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| | Chris, I am sure you are already familiar with this book, but I will take the opportunity to put in another plug for a book by a friend of mine. Why Christ Can't Be Pictured: God is not like art by J Virgil Dunbar 
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05-05-2008, 06:08 PM
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| | | A.A Hodge's commentary on the Confession would be a good place to look for 19th century thought... (cf. pg. 274 of the Banner of Truth edition, 2002). He unequivocally says the Confession forbids Religious imagery. | | The Following User Says Thank You to Backwoods Presbyterian For This Useful Post: | |
05-05-2008, 07:48 PM
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05-05-2008, 07:56 PM
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05-05-2008, 09:09 PM
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| | | Besides the names I already cited in the aforementioned thread, I can add a couple of more:
Wilhelmus a'Brakel, The Christian's Reasonable Service (1700), Vol. 3, pp. 108-110 re the second commandment.
George Estey, Certain Godly and Learned Expositions Upon Divers Parts of Scripture (1603), p. 42 re the second commandment. |
05-05-2008, 10:05 PM
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| | 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). 
__________________ Sterling Harmon
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05-05-2008, 10:13 PM
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| | | Sterling,
Yes, there are some moderns in our Dutch Reformed circles that permit pics of Jesus, but some us are trying to get back to our original practice. I have a little book on this issue coming out sometime at the end of '08 entitled, In Living Color: Pastoral Counsel on Images of Christ.
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Carlsbad/Oceanside, California
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05-05-2008, 10:17 PM
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| | Quote:
Originally Posted by dannyhyde  Sterling,
Yes, there are some moderns in our Dutch Reformed circles that permit pics of Jesus, but some us are trying to get back to our original practice. I have a little book on this issue coming out sometime at the end of '08 entitled, In Living Color: Pastoral Counsel on Images of Christ. |
I look forward to reading that.  | |
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