Anonymous Asks (390)

“Are religious icons idols?”

For readers with limited exposure to “high church” traditions, an icon is an artistic depiction of Bible persons or events in paint, mosaic or wood. Icons are common among the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics and some Lutherans. The Lord Jesus, Mary, ‘saints’ and angels are the most frequent subjects.

Depending whom you ask, what makes an icon ‘iconic’ is that, rather than simply being decorative, it serves as an object of devotion.

Evangelicals have an uncertain relationship with religious art. We tend to avoid it in our church buildings, though our practices at home may be inconsistent. I have often seen cute little pictures in the hallways and bedrooms of evangelical believers, things like a white hippie Jesus with a blissed-out expression holding a lamb or the hand of a child. But nobody prays to these. They are merely decorative and sentimental. I use art with religious subject matter on this blog all the time, but I tend to avoid pictures of Christ, mainly because any attempt to imagine his physical appearance is inevitably closer to fantasy than fact. I don’t need a picture of the Lord Jesus in my wallet so I can recognize him when he comes for me.

Superstitions and Pathology

Let’s concede evangelical queasiness about religious art verges on pathological for some, an artefact of the much-misunderstood Second Commandment. There is little agreement among the superstitious about what sorts of images should be accepted or prohibited. A few believe God forbade all representational art in Israel that had living things as its subject. More believe God frowns on such things in churches today. And some of us just don’t like anything that smacks of high church affectations.

However, understanding how Israel interpreted the Second Commandment in the centuries immediately after God gave it is not difficult. Later OT passages make it evident God was not offended by the simple carving of an artistic image of something earthly or heavenly — even for religious purposes.

Them Graven Images

On several occasions, God specifically ordered it:

• The carved cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant were there in accordance with God’s explicit instructions;
• The veil of the tabernacle had “cherubim skillfully worked into it”, again at God’s direction;
• An image of a serpent in bronze was created at God’s specific direction and raised on a pole so that Israelites dying from snakebite could look at it and be miraculously healed (it survived intact for hundreds of years until Hezekiah destroyed it, but only because people had begun to worship it); and
• The twelve bronze bulls that supported the “sea” in Solomon’s temple, while not created at God’s specific behest, demonstrate that pious Israelites hundreds of years after the law was given did not perceive such images to be in violation of the second commandment.

Since both the Second Commandment and the rest of the law originated with YHWH, it should be evident that the words “carved images” refer only to objects worshiped as rivals to YHWH. The twelve bronze bulls did not violate the Second Commandment. The golden calf, created as a rival to YHWH, absolutely did.

So then, the Law of Moses bans idols, not art.

Purpose and Usage

As this Orthodox site puts it, an icon is not an idol but rather a liturgical “encouragement to prayer” that leads the worshiper “through itself to its prototype”. That’s pretty much the conventional wisdom. However, a Romanist friend once sent me a picture of herself on her knees in a tiny Las Vegas chapel, eyes closed and hands clasped in prayer to (or through) a three-foot tall statue of a female Catholic ‘saint’. From what I have read, RCs do not normally consider statues icons, but for my friend that statue became something more than just a prayer aid. I admit to finding it a little creepy.

So then, in practice, the man or woman in a high church pew may have a personal attachment to icons that goes beyond what church literature describes as their intended purpose.

Full disclosure: I find most icons ugly and unpleasant. The Byzantine art style most typical of icons does not appeal to me in the slightest. I would find staring at ugly, misshapen figures in washed-out, yellowy colors a hindrance rather than an aid to prayer. I fully recognize that not all Christians from high church backgrounds agree with me there.

But Are They Idols?

The most obvious objection to icons is not that they are always idolatrous, but that first century Christians did not use them. Not ever. The practice didn’t even develop until several centuries after Christ, so naturally the New Testament says nothing whatsoever about either using or avoiding them. For that reason alone, I’d have nothing to do with them.

Like so many other ecclesiastical accretions over the centuries, icons have the potential to lead the believer’s thoughts away from what Paul called “a sincere and pure devotion to Christ”. At very least they are a distraction. Praying “through” an icon to the Father is the spiritual equivalent of putting mud on your windshield to go for a Sunday drive. Praying “through” an icon to a dead created being is not only utterly futile, but an abandonment of a privilege Christ won for us at the cross to worship the Father in Spirit and truth, not in any way bound to objects, times, rituals and locations.

Still, used for the purpose for which high church scholars say they are intended — to pray “through” rather than “to” — I would not call icons idols in the Old Testament sense. They are more like superfluous “prayer training wheels”. That’s not to say they cannot easily become idols to immature or untaught believers, but the problem there has more to do with the practice of venerating the pious dead, Mary included, than the objects people use to point toward them.