An article defending pictures of Christ
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Reformed Covenanter
Cancelled Commissioner
David Van Drunen has previously dealt with some of the author's arguments in his essay on the subject in the Confessional Presbyterian Journal (volume 5), which may be of use to you.
He repeats putting forth his own private interpretation on LC 109. I suspect he would not allow others to do that with a non literal view of six day creation so why should he get to do it here?
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FYI. For those which this may spark interest in the topic, I have put the 2009 vol. 5 issue where Van Drunen's article appears on a flash sale where you can pick it up and any other one issue, both for only $30 postage paid. That's up to over 600 pages (1200 if it were a normal book format) of material depending on what you pair with v5 which is 328 and one of our largest issues (with Calvin on the front). Limited time Oct 20-22 and sorry, but USA ship to addresses only.The vol 5 has a lot of good material including if I say so myself, the two article 90 page spread, The Westminster Assembly and the Judicial Law. https://www.cpjournal.com/store/pro...vol-5-plus-1-other-issue-for-30-postage-paid/
Parakaleo
Puritan Board Sophomore
Many men with an exception to the standards actually think it's the subscribers who have the real "exception". The point has been made before, and it's a good one, that no man should take an exception to the standards unless they earnestly believe it would lead them into sin to teach and practice according to them. How someone could believe they sin by not producing and using images of Christ, I can't grasp.
I'm was surprised and disappointed to see this exception is granted to hold and teach in one of the small conservative 'micro' Presbyterian denominations. That's just repeating the mistakes of the larger groups. Agreed, in the PCA holding the original on this has become the exception. Ditto the Sabbath.
Bill The Baptist
Puritan Board Graduate
These two paragraphs from the article seem to me to be contradictory. The first paragraph states that Christ is both human and divine without any division, but then the second paragraph says that images of Christ are merely images of his humanity, but how can this be if there is no division?
Parakaleo
Puritan Board Sophomore
One of our ARP presbyteries sustained the examination of a two men with the LC 109 exception over a year ago. Both passed by a margin of only a few votes, so there's that.
Getting back to Dr. Gentry's article, there's so much weak support for his central claim, "Simply put, pictures of Christ are not pictures of God." He accuses others of emotional defenses in prohibiting images, but honestly many of his own arguments strike me as based on emotion.
- If cameras were around in the first century, would God have forbidden pictures of Christ? Undoubtedly not!
- If mental images of Christ are forbidden, did the apostles sin when they reflected on memories of Him? Surely not!
- If children see images of Christ are intentionally left out of their books, won't they believe He had no real body?
- Should artists not be allowed to portray the most meaningful moments in human history? (He uses this one several times)
Why does any of that really matter? If God had desired accurate photographs of Christ to be seen by generations, we would have them. If the apostles thought of Christ sinfully, they sinned. If they were able to think of Him without sinning, they did not sin. It doesn't mean we can do the same. My suspicion is that they focused their mental energy upon revealing Christ to others as He has made Himself known in the Scriptures. Finally, I don't care if someone thinks prohibition of images of Christ leads to some kind of poverty in the arts. Since God has commanded artists not to make images of any of the three Persons of the Trinity, the arts could only be polluted by the making of them.
For a better refutation, see Turretin.
Agreed, in the PCA holding the original on this has become the exception.
To be fair, not that this is confessional, I was in charge of a PCA church library and the pastor made an exception for children's books that told NT bible stories and showed pictures of Jesus doing his earthly ministry, and were a reasonably accurate picture of the dress and buildings and settings of the time.
This is not the same as a church that has a picture up front or in the foyer, of the long haired sweet smiling Jesus face gazing upwards Joel Osteen style, holding a little lamb. I don't think that sort of picture would ever have been acceptable. But for accurate depictions of a historical event in kiddie books, they did make an exception. I realize this is not strictly confessional, but it isn't the same as a church having pictures of Jesus in a worship setting or on the building walls. I am not saying it is right or wrong to have kiddie bible books with pictures, but it isn't in worship settings....at least not in my PCA experience. I could lack exposure.....
To be fair, not that this is confessional, I was in charge of a PCA church library and the pastor made an exception for children's books that told NT bible stories and showed pictures of Jesus doing his earthly ministry, and were a reasonably accurate picture of the dress and buildings and settings of the time.
This is not the same as a church that has a picture up front or in the foyer, of the long haired sweet smiling Jesus face gazing upwards Joel Osteen style, holding a little lamb. I don't think that sort of picture would ever have been acceptable. But for accurate depictions of a historical event in kiddie books, they did make an exception. I realize this is not strictly confessional, but it isn't the same as a church having pictures of Jesus in a worship setting or on the building walls. I am not saying it is right or wrong to have kiddie bible books with pictures, but it isn't in worship settings....at least not in my PCA experience. I could lack exposure.....
Would 2 Corinthians 5:16 be relevant here: "Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more."
Following on Jeri's observation, I was thinking, maybe too speculatively, that Jesus had a way of making it so people did not remember what he looked like.
I'm thinking of the disciples in John 21 and the two on the road to Emmaus in Luke 24 ("but their eyes were holden that they should not know him. Lk. 24:16).
No need to push it too far, but combined with 2 Corinthians 5:16, and I think it is at least possible that the disciples could only remember him by his words.
In any event, in God's providence, there are no eye-witness sketches or even detailed descriptions of our Lord's physical presence. Playing "if only" or "what if" games seem very silly.
Pair all this with 1Pet 1:16-19.
Indeed, this verse is quite relevant to the issue. When men infantile themselves, and refuse to remain true and to insist there is one correct orientation to Jesus, they do themselves and others disservice.
The disciples first of all, along with original detractors, and those indifferent, and finally all those who have received the gospel message of the Risen Lord--everyone has been introduced to the One Jesus, the Man who was also God.
The disciples had to move from a state where they viewed Jesus purely after the flesh, that is exclusively as a man, then perhaps a great man, then as the greatest man ever. They had to go from where they began--and Paul started in an even worse condition since he began by thinking of Jesus as a human criminal devilish blasphemer who got what was coming to him--and end up worshipping this One as God with us, Emmanuel.
Pictures of Jesus, besides being necessarily artificial imaginations, must either be idolatrous (by prompting worship, the very essence of the practice); or else besides promoting a fiction, they encourage the Nestorian heresy by presenting "just" the humanity of him whose two natures cannot be divided. The image is more than fiction: it is impossible; and to say "No, but it is possible," is to place oneself cheek-by-jowl with the heretic.
But this intention, however much it is dressed up in pragmatic terms--as in the case: "theology or the Bible for the unlettered or the young"--deliberately walks in the opposite direction of the original disciples. Instead of beginning where they began, where men naturally begin thinking of another man as someone essentially like themselves; or wherever men start off with Jesus, and then raising him higher, higher, higher all the time....
No, instead the pragmatist reduces Jesus to someone he thinks will more easily be accommodated in the darkened thinking of the lost person. He assumes entirely the wrong original perception on the part of the child or the rebel. Their problem is not fundamentally that Jesus may be or become too "ethereal" for their access; but that being God he is not known to them at all.
The point of the Incarnation is not that a man became God; which is the natural regression of our thinking when we put the process in reverse, and is the telos for those we teach by the wrong method and motive. Not everyone ends up there, but that fact doesn't make rationalizing the wrong process all OK.
The point of the Incarnation is that God became a man (what did he become? flesh, you know: feel your skin, look in a mirror, cut yourself, get emotional--yea, that); and then selected witnesses came to recognize that what they saw, heard, and handled was more than they ever expected. He was more than they knew. They did not have to drop down to some baseline to find a Jesus to connect with.
Wait, what about Gnosticism? You mean, the spiritualizing religion where Jesus is etherealized? Do pictures of Jesus effectively combat modern variants of Gnosticism? Hmmm, are pictures of Jesus an idea that worked in the 2nd & 3rd centuries? Or, was that a "solution" that introduced images of Christ and icons into a church that was free of them prior to that moment?
The early church came to be filled with all sorts of humanistic-Jesus heresies, and also the excessively spiritualized. We can't blame the introduction of images for them; but we can say that the church thoroughly shunned depictions of Christ until in the East and the Greek-speaking church Gnosticism's mystical leaven made icons seem unobjectionable, or even salutary.
Pictures of Jesus are endemic to the world of heresy. They are the natural outgrowth of humanistic heresies such as Adoptionism and Appolinarianism. They are a useless and ultimately harmful treatment for spiritualizing heresies like Docetism and Eutychianism. A bad-cure will prevent a proper cure from being introduced, and will not only fail to heal the harm; it will then nurse new errors. At the present time, Iconoclasm (the purposeful removal of images/icons as the idols they are) is regarded by many churches of both Eastern and Western tradition as a heresy in its own right, rejected by Second Nicaea in A.D.787.
The answer to spiritualizing heresies isn't discovered in images of Jesus, or in any proposition that compromises the Creator-creature distinction lying at the heart of the first Table of the Law. The answer IS the Creator-creature distinction; and a proper appreciation for and use of the Old Testament as Christian Scripture.
One of the losses of the first few centuries of the church, only gradually recovered and come into its own in the Reformation, was the OT as integral to the revelation of Jesus Christ; along with the understanding that OT saints were "Christians" before there was such a name or formal connection. It is not as if the OT was unknown; but that its essence became (for a variety of reasons) largely inaccessible, even to teachers of the church.
Faith of the OT does not express a fundamentally different outlook from faith of the NT. Only one's orientation to the Coming One is different. The outward conduct of the true religion was suited in former days to the conditions antecedent to His arrival. The "accidents" of the faith were quite distinct, and we don't simply map our current covenant-expression onto an OT schematic in order to understand the connections.
But it was a tremendous loss to the church to enter a time of profound forgetfulness respecting the only Bible the earliest church possessed (the OT), the very Scriptures the living apostolic witnesses interpreted to converts as the Hope now fulfilled in Christ--witness that was then safeguarded to future generations by inscripturation in the pages of the NT.
The very earthiness of the OT grounds our Religion in a deeply human, creational reality. It is that reality God the Son condescends to enter as fully and completely as could possibly be--a scandalous and foolish entry. But that happening is exactly what is revealed in Scripture. Unwillingness or inability to grapple with those facts is what brings on the spiritualizing heresy; or, makes the humanistic heresy plausible.
Either way, the absolute prohibition of images of deity fundamental to biblical religion going back to the beginning is not excepted in the Person of Christ, nor does the Incarnation logically lead to softening of this command and expectation.
Parakaleo
Puritan Board Sophomore
The Confessional view of the requirements of the 2nd Commandment is that these should be destroyed by those with the power and authority to do so. From LC 108:
MichaelNZ
Puritan Board Freshman
Roman Catholicism has a number of images of Mary and Christ that they believe were painted by Luke the Evangelist. As I mentioned in this blog post, one such image has been carbon dated to the 5th century.
So I suppose we will never know what Christ looked like until we make it to heaven.
One of the arguments in the article was that God told Moses to make a bronze serpent. I have heard Catholics use this very argument to justify their use of images in worship. One thing to point out is that this image was made at God's express command. The papists cannot show any command to make images of Christ, Mary and the saints,
So I suppose we will never know what Christ looked like until we make it to heaven.
One of the arguments in the article was that God told Moses to make a bronze serpent. I have heard Catholics use this very argument to justify their use of images in worship. One thing to point out is that this image was made at God's express command. The papists cannot show any command to make images of Christ, Mary and the saints,
What is the topic of debate? Pictures of Christ. Christ is a person, not a nature. It is the Person Himself who is depicted.
Ask the question, What is this picture depicting? The answer is, Christ; and Christ is the second person of the Godhead. The union of the person of Christ means that any depiction of His human nature is ipso facto a depiction of a divine person. The person hungered in the wilderness. The person slept in the boat. The person agonised in the garden. The person died on the cross. The person rose again from the dead. It was proper to human nature to do these things, but it was not an human nature which did them. It was a person who did them. It was a divine person who did them. And it is only because it was a divine person who did them that they have worth and efficacy to save.
If we naturally form mental images of contemplated objects then it follows that we naturally form mental images of God Himself. Yet God expressly forbids making images of Him. The argument from natural imagination must be false. Even if it were proved that this was natural to men it would not justify the practice of making pictures of Christ. We have been given the ability to think through the nature and consequences of our actions; and believers have the grace of sanctification to enable them to depart from evil and to do good.
The apostles saw and knew the physical, visible image of Christ, but they never passed on any particular, visual description of it. They have taught us to know Christ by faith, not by sight. They have expressly taught that our faith in Christ and love to Him are not conditional on seeing Him, but are entirely dependent on the acceptance and consideration of Him as He has revealed Himself in His names, attributes, offices, works, words, and benefits.
Finally, we have a visible sign of Christ which has been given to assist faith in our sensory condition. It is called the Lord's supper; and a part of the exercise of communion at the Lord's supper is stirring up faith to spiritually feed upon Jesus. The practice of drawing sensory images of Christ and of contemplating Christ in them is counter-productive to the process of strengthening faith by means of the sacrament. Such a practice sets itself up in direct competition with the institution and ordinance of God, and is accurately called will-worship.
If any are tempted to think this is a light and trivial matter, please think again in the light of God's holy word. The Word calls us to separate from idolatry because idolatry corrupts our spiritual communion with God and defiles both flesh and spirit. Consider 2 Corinthians 6:16 - 7:1:
Ask the question, What is this picture depicting? The answer is, Christ; and Christ is the second person of the Godhead. The union of the person of Christ means that any depiction of His human nature is ipso facto a depiction of a divine person. The person hungered in the wilderness. The person slept in the boat. The person agonised in the garden. The person died on the cross. The person rose again from the dead. It was proper to human nature to do these things, but it was not an human nature which did them. It was a person who did them. It was a divine person who did them. And it is only because it was a divine person who did them that they have worth and efficacy to save.
If we naturally form mental images of contemplated objects then it follows that we naturally form mental images of God Himself. Yet God expressly forbids making images of Him. The argument from natural imagination must be false. Even if it were proved that this was natural to men it would not justify the practice of making pictures of Christ. We have been given the ability to think through the nature and consequences of our actions; and believers have the grace of sanctification to enable them to depart from evil and to do good.
The apostles saw and knew the physical, visible image of Christ, but they never passed on any particular, visual description of it. They have taught us to know Christ by faith, not by sight. They have expressly taught that our faith in Christ and love to Him are not conditional on seeing Him, but are entirely dependent on the acceptance and consideration of Him as He has revealed Himself in His names, attributes, offices, works, words, and benefits.
Finally, we have a visible sign of Christ which has been given to assist faith in our sensory condition. It is called the Lord's supper; and a part of the exercise of communion at the Lord's supper is stirring up faith to spiritually feed upon Jesus. The practice of drawing sensory images of Christ and of contemplating Christ in them is counter-productive to the process of strengthening faith by means of the sacrament. Such a practice sets itself up in direct competition with the institution and ordinance of God, and is accurately called will-worship.
If any are tempted to think this is a light and trivial matter, please think again in the light of God's holy word. The Word calls us to separate from idolatry because idolatry corrupts our spiritual communion with God and defiles both flesh and spirit. Consider 2 Corinthians 6:16 - 7:1:
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Parakaleo
Puritan Board Sophomore
This is the issue Dr. Gentry raised as an argument in favor of didactic images of Christ. During family worship this evening, my nine-year-old son (unprompted by me) asked a deep question. He said he knows it is wrong to make any pictures of God or Christ, but he wonders about the images that he thinks about in his head when he reads about the Lord. Are they wrong?
We talked about how these mental pictures are wrong, because they are still images of God that are made by men. I was surprised to hear two other of my children, my seven and six-year-old daughters, tell me they also had an image of the Lord that flashed across their minds at times! They have never spoken of this before. We all discussed how images of the Lord are very wrong and that they are really very silly. None of these images are right and none could ever show us Who God is. I encouraged my children to banish the thought of what God looks like and instead pray that God would bring His Words to their minds.
This made me realize something else. Anyone who thinks that images of Christ or the Lord can be shown to children for didactic purposes only, and that children will not in turn visualize these in times of prayer or their own worship is very naïve about the folly bound up in a child's heart. Children are curious. They want to know what God looks like. They are undiscerning unless guided by their superiors. As I think on it more, it's astonishing how foolish it is to show children images of Christ and expect them not to worship by them.
Jerusalem Blade
Puritan Board Professor
A picture cannot capture the infinite majesty and dignity of the person of Christ, neither the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in His face. A two-dimensional object cannot depict the infinite One.
I guess they forgot what Hezekiah did to the bronze serpent because of idolatry-- 2 Kings 18:4
Yahtzee and bingo. Also, an image even for didactic purposes that doesn't stir up worship of the Lord is vain; just as it is idolatrous if it does. These didactic purposes only guys don't have the right understanding of the third commandment let alone the second. Teach children early to suspect and deal with these things and I suspect it will yield from them a wealth of thanks when they are our age.
hammondjones
Puritan Board Junior
I do appreciate that the HC specifically covers this:
It was pointed out to me a few weeks ago in a podcast that the OT prophets who were the most outspoken against images (Moses and Isaiah) were the ones who had gotten a glimpse of the LORD, even ever so small.
As for my own experience - we use Bibles with no images for family worship (thanks PB for the recommendations, by the way), and around the season of, um, "incarnational remembrance", when have had a nativity scene, it has had no child figure. Neither of these practices has led my children to think that Jesus was without a body. Of course, this is probably because we teach them precisely that he currently DOES have a body; in fact, a resurrected body - which is no small part of our own hope.
It was pointed out to me a few weeks ago in a podcast that the OT prophets who were the most outspoken against images (Moses and Isaiah) were the ones who had gotten a glimpse of the LORD, even ever so small.
As for my own experience - we use Bibles with no images for family worship (thanks PB for the recommendations, by the way), and around the season of, um, "incarnational remembrance", when have had a nativity scene, it has had no child figure. Neither of these practices has led my children to think that Jesus was without a body. Of course, this is probably because we teach them precisely that he currently DOES have a body; in fact, a resurrected body - which is no small part of our own hope.
earl40
Puritan Board Professor
I remember reading here that there are only 3 ways to God is revealed or imaged.
The first one would be by communication. Which only Jesus can do in that He is both God and man.
The second is by revelation. Which believers "see" or believe by faith.
The third is literally by direct sight or "pictured", to which all men will see Jesus when they die physically.
I also hasten to mention that when we see Jesus directly we will only see Him in His flesh like when He dwelt on earth, albeit in His glorified state. For no one, which includes angels, can see God in His divine essence.
Romans922
Puritan Board Professor
Yahweh already gave us images of Christ, so why take it upon ourselves to create more:
1) Generally found in man as the image of God.
2) Marriage - image of Christ/Church
3) The Lord's supper - sign/seal of Christ's work.
These are all images the Lord has instituted Himself. [Just a thought, tell me if I'm off base on this one. ]
1) Generally found in man as the image of God.
2) Marriage - image of Christ/Church
3) The Lord's supper - sign/seal of Christ's work.
These are all images the Lord has instituted Himself. [Just a thought, tell me if I'm off base on this one.
]
BGF
Puritan Board Sophomore
I will certainly look into this. Thanks.
BGF
Puritan Board Sophomore
Great deal! Thanks.
BGF
Puritan Board Sophomore
This was my assessment as well. Assertions don't make convincing arguments.
Peairtach
Puritan Board Doctor
Some of these guys are inconsistent in the sense that they don't mind "pictures of Christ" but if you had a statuette of Christ in your living room or a picture of Him on your wall, they would balk at that.
I think Luther said that the only picture of Christ for him was the Word of God.
Christ is the Image of God made real to the believer by means of the Scriptures and the Spirit. To put any image before the Image is at best to obscure the Image
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I think Luther said that the only picture of Christ for him was the Word of God.
Christ is the Image of God made real to the believer by means of the Scriptures and the Spirit. To put any image before the Image is at best to obscure the Image
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This is rather futile canard. Taking for granted that the apostles had vivid memories of their time with Christ, those memories were not images that they made but images that they were given. We are not in the same situation by any stretch of the imagination.
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