Question regarding images of God

[LittleFaith]

For some time, it has seemed to me that images of any of the three persons of the Trinity are not  merely a violation of the 2nd commandment. They would also seem to be violations of the 3rd commandment - because God is disrespected and his name taken lightly when it is attached to a manmade image - and the 9th commandment - because it seems most untruthful to deign to represent the invisible God in creaturely form and to claim knowledge of what God "looks" like.

Is there precedent for this line of thinking? Has anyone here had, or read of, such a conviction?

Note: I realize that in some sense every sin is a violation of all ten commandments in some way - that when you kill, you "steal" someone's life and you fail to honor the relationships of superior/equal/inferior, etc. etc. This type of tangential inclusion of every commandment under every sin is NOT what I am referring to here. I am saying that I consider it as much a 3CV as a string of profanities employing God's name, and as much a 9CV as plagiarizing an essay or perjuring one's self in a court of law.

And, in asking, I am prepared to discard such a way of thinking if my wise friends here show me that this is a novel or problematic thought.

 

[erickinho1bra]

Would you mind elaborating a little more on the difference between the core of your question regarding multiple violations committed in creating a image of God and the note you added to the question regarding “tangential” inclusions of other commandment violations?

(I hope my question asking for more clarity made sense lol
My brain is not as big as the average Puritan Board member!)

 

[NaphtaliPress]

Rule 3 in Larger Catechism 99 says, "3. That one and the same thing, in divers respects, is required or forbidden in several commandments." and cites Colossians 3:5. Habbakuk 2:18 says the idol and graven image is a teacher of lies.

For some time, it has seemed to me that images of any of the three persons of the Trinity are not  merely a violation of the 2nd commandment. They would also seem to be violations of the 3rd commandment - because God is disrespected and his name taken lightly when it is attached to a manmade image - and the 9th commandment - because it seems most untruthful to deign to represent the invisible God in creaturely form and to claim knowledge of what God "looks" like.

Is there precedent for this line of thinking? Has anyone here had, or read of, such a conviction?

Note: I realize that in some sense every sin is a violation of all ten commandments in some way - that when you kill, you "steal" someone's life and you fail to honor the relationships of superior/equal/inferior, etc. etc. This type of tangential inclusion of every commandment under every sin is NOT what I am referring to here. I am saying that I consider it as much a 3CV as a string of profanities employing God's name, and as much a 9CV as plagiarizing an essay or perjuring one's self in a court of law.

And, in asking, I am prepared to discard such a way of thinking if my wise friends here show me that this is a novel or problematic thought.

 

[LittleFaith]

Would you mind elaborating a little more on the difference between the core of your question regarding multiple violations committed in creating a image of God and the note you added to the question regarding “tangential” inclusions of other commandment violations?

(I hope my question asking for more clarity made sense lol
My brain is not as big as the average Puritan Board member!)

Sure. I was trying to articulate (and maybe not very clearly) that while in some sense every sin violates every commandment, the line between specific sins and specific commandments may be more or less direct.

Murder, for instance. This is very clearly a direct violation of the 6th commandment. Maybe somewhat less directly, it's a violation of the 8th commandment - you steal from that person's loved ones in terms of the friendship and time he would have invested in them and the income he would have generated for their benefit. Still somewhat less directly, it's a violation of the 1st and 2nd commandments as one idolizes whatever "god" was more important in that moment than the God who commands us to love our neighbor, or rationalizes that God would have been okay with what they did because "a loving God would want me to be happy".

In that context, acknowledging that murder involves those other sins, and may actually be accompanied by direct violations of other commandments, I feel comfortable thinking of murder as a 6th commandment violation, and not feeling a need to preach to friends and family about how murder is a 2nd commandment violation.

What I was trying to articulate in my original post was that I have wondered whether images of God are also violations of the 3rd and 9th commandments in more than a merely tangential way - whether attaching the divine name to an image is really that much different than saying "Oh my --" in a flippant way, or whether pretending that created beings can visually represent the invisible Creator is much different than wilfully and intentionally telling a lie.