Another wrote: Thanks for your latest posting Nathan. Some good food for thought there. Just wondering: Given that Jesus is revealed to us in written form, i.e. in the words of the Bible, what makes any representation of Jesus, icon or not, not an idol? But the God-chosen method of revealing himself is through the words of the Bible. Our God is a talking God.

Nathan responded:

I would quite agree that any use of visual iconography that takes us away from encountering God in the Word is an abuse, but I think that pitting the two against each other as you have is false. The foremost “God-chosen method of revealing himself” is not through the words of the Bible, but through the sensorily accessible person of Jesus the Christ. One of the things which most sets Christianity apart from other religions is the doctrine of the incarnation. It says that God’s big statement was not made in words, but in the flesh. The words about him testify to this primary revelation, but they are forever secondary. And it is not even true to confine that to history and say that since the ascension we have access to this incarnate revelation only through the words of scripture. Christ gives us bread and wine and says “this is my body.” Christ calls together the Church and says “this is my body.” God’s radical movement of incarnation continues as God continues to use the material things of creation through which to reach out and communicate with us. I understand the use of the Bible and preaching as being the same sort of thing. The reading and preaching of scripture are sacramental events. They use ordinary created things – words on a page, words spoken, human readers and preachers, ordinary sound waves travelling from mouths to ears – and through and in those ordinary things, God graciously becomes present to his church, communing and communicating with us. The Word of God becomes flesh among us and within us in the event of the proclamation of scripture. And just like with other sacramental manifestations of the presence of God, we can respond openly and be nourished by the God who is feeding us, or we can dismiss it as nothing or as “mere signs” – distant reminders of an absent God.

It is of the essence of a faith in a God-made-flesh that we expect to perceive and encounter God in the ordinary stuff of our world and our lives. Christianity is not a faith that seeks to release us from the captivity of the flesh in order that we may have disembodied communion with a disembodied God. We encounter God embodied, and we are drawn – bodies and all – into the resurrection embodiment of Christ. We encounter God embodied in bread and wine, in our neighbours, in “the least of these”, in the words of scripture, in the words of preaching, in the gathered body of Christ. All of these are thereby “icons” – physical sensory means by which God reaches out to us and encounters us. All of them are at risk of being idolised. The Bible is reduced to an idol at least as often as any of the others. They become idols when we accord them ultimacy instead of recognising them as the points of contact with the God who is alone ultimate. When we think that the Bible IS the light and truth instead of allowing it to be a sacramental source (or icon) from which God breaks forth his light and truth, then we have turned it into an idol – we have given it the place of God. We probably won’t be thinking that we have made it equal to God, but we will have given it the highest authority in our lives and simply displaced the living God entirely. Idolatry is not usually about thinking that something is equal to God – it is usually about putting our trust in something which is less than God and making it the highest goal of our lives. We may, in theory, know that this thing is less than God, but we aspire no higher than to know and possess or be possessed by this thing. While it is true that some people in the Orthodox and Roman churches use traditional icons in idolatrous ways (such as thinking of them as lucky charms that will protect them), in my experience, idolatry of the Bible by evangelicals seems even more prevalent. I think it has something to do with the modernist mindset that believed that ultimate truth could be fully grasped and expressed if we just set our minds to it. We end up trusting in the words, rather than entrusting ourselves to the mysterious and unfathomable source of the words.

I hope that helps. With regard to the specific question of the relationship between the second commandment and the church’s use of painted icons, the following link is to a sermon I did on the subject some years ago: http://www.laughingbird.net/SermonTexts/0119

Peace and hope,

Nathan