|
|
|
News and Ideas from around the Anglican World |
|
_____________________________________________________________________________
January 2008
SUE CARELESS on reading JAMES PAYTON’S LIGHT FROM THE CHRISTIAN EAST
What is God forbidding in the second commandment when he declares: “Thou shalt not make unto thyself any graven [carved] image, nor the likeness of anything in heaven above, or in earth beneath, or in the water under the earth…” Is he forbidding religious sculpture and imagery in general, only religious sculpture, or only idolatry? Does the coming of Christ change how Christians are to obey this command?
During the Hellenistic period, Jews allowed flat mosaics and frescoes in their synagogues, but forbade three-dimensional sculptures of the human form. A third-century Syrian synagogue has wall paintings of biblical stories but God is not portrayed directly. Instead his presence is symbolized by a hand appearing from the heavens. Muslims are stricter in their observance of the second commandment and decorate their mosques with only abstract geometrical patterns.
Some Protestants have churches with almost no art in sight. However even in such bare churches there are still abundant pictures in children’s story Bibles and Sunday school literature. Jesus as the Good Shepherd or praying in Gethsemane or standing at a door knocking (Rev. 3:20) are also popular images in these otherwise bare churches.
As James Payton writes in his fine book Light from the Christian East, Pope Gregory the Great in the 6th century defended religious imagery out of pastoral concern. He believed that religious statuary and stained glass could serve as “books for the illiterate” reminding parishioners of Bible stories they could not read for themselves. However during the 16th century this “books for the illiterate” argument for religious imagery came under attack. Most Protestant reformers argued that people could now read the Bible for themselves and should be hearing it faithfully preached. And so began the mass destruction of medieval statuary in churches and cathedrals across Europe. Payton notes that on Feb. 9, 1529, no less than thirty-five wagon loads of debris from religious imagery were carted away from the cathedral in Basel, Switzerland.
But the second commandment goes on to say: “Thou shalt not bow down to them nor worship (serve) them” (Exodus 2:4-5). Was God then not forbidding religious imagery as such but rather idolatry: that such imagery should not be worshipped nor the created thing represented by it be worshipped? After all God himself commands the hammering from gold of two angels or cherubim over the mercy seat of the ark (Exodus 25:17-22). Later Solomon has two colossal 15-foot high angels carved of olivewood. Their wings span the wall of the inner sanctuary yet God does not rebuke or punish him for these graven images in his holy temple (1Kings 6:27). Still, they are not images of God himself. Until the coming of Christ no one had ever seen God and therefore could not truly represent him.
Payton, a professor of history at Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Ontario writes: “the frequent Old Testament affirmation –‘No one has ever seen God’—was overcome by God himself when ‘the Word became flesh.’….In the second commandment, God had forbidden his people to worship images and had called them to worship him alone, but he had forbidden them to try to make any kind of image of him, because he intended to send his own!”
Payton, who is Christian Reformed, explains, “The God who had forbidden making images had now sent his own image, in his incarnate Son, who had made the invisible Father known. Indeed according to St. Paul, Christ is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15); in that phrase the Greek word translated ‘image’ is eikon (icon). In view of all this, to make icons of the incarnate Son was not a violation of the second commandment but a recognition of God’s fulfillment of it—and, consequently, an obedient response to the commandment.”
Iconoclasts feared that icons of even Christ would lead to idolatry and so wanted them all destroyed. But defenders of icons, called iconophiles, “urged that icons were not God but representations of God in the flesh” writes Payton. “In using an icon in devotion, one could legitimately accord it honour, because of the one portrayed in it, but this did not constitute idolatry. All such honour was directed to the one portrayed in the icon, and not to the painted materials themselves.”
We treat photos of loved ones with special care but that doesn’t mean we worship the photo itself. Respect or reverence (douleia) might be shown to pictures or other created things, but worship (latreia) is reserved for God alone.
So it is the Eastern Church which has given Christianity the strongest defence--based primarily on the theology of the Incarnation--for religious imagery. Now if we are confident that it is permissible to use religious imagery in our worship and in our teaching, what are some practical ways this can be done using both classical and contemporary art? See page 5 “Teaching Theology through Art.”
For an introduction to the theology of the Incarnation as justifying Christian art read Light from the Christian East: An Introduction to the Orthodox Faith by James R. Payton Jr., IVP Academic, 2007.
Payton himself recommends Jaroslav Pelikan’s Imago Dei: The Byzantine Apologia for Icons, 1990, as “the best presentation of the Orthodox argument in favour of icons.”
|
|||
|
|
|
Copyright The Anglican Planet © 2008 |