Can praying before statues be supported biblically?

[brierpatch1974]

I am not a Catholic but it seems to me your making it more complicated than it is. The pictures and Statues are just a reminder of the past. Praying in front of one or in an open field is all the same. Statues just bring thoughts and memories to mind. A reminder of things that have been done.

 

[Gorgias]

Thanks for that. But any early statements from leaders of the Church? As it is common practice now, I would like to know the earliest that Priests or Popes or whatever were saying that it’s members may kneel before statues and pray. Also, how it somehow enhances or is beneficial to the person.

In the 8th century AD, St John of Damascus fought against the iconoclast movement which was attempting to stop the use of images in prayer. His Apologia Against Those Who Decry Holy Images not only gives his reasons that the use of images should be retained, but also quotes a number of Church Fathers who preceded him. You might find it interesting reading…

 

[in_servitude]

In the 8th century AD, St John of Damascus fought against the iconoclast movement which was attempting to stop the use of images in prayer. His Apologia Against Those Who Decry Holy Images not only gives his reasons that the use of images should be retained, but also quotes a number of Church Fathers who preceded him. You might find it interesting reading…

Adding to this, if it’s ok…

There was the a supposed “Council of Hieria” in 754. I say supposed because it was driven without papal authority. The Eastern Church also rejected the Council of Hieria’s conclusions because not one of their 4 patriarchs were present. But, the Council of Hieria said that praying before images was blasphemous to even paint or carve an image of a saint.

The teaching of the Council of Hieria was controverted by the officially recognized Second Council of Nicaea in 787 where the veneration of icons was strongly supported.

So, I think that is the “official statement” that you seek.

 

[TimothyH]

Thank you for the examples. Because there is nothing in the NT that suggests any figure be made into a statue or a picture to be prayed before, would someone be able to give me the history of where it began?

Who was the first in Catholicism to defend praying before statues and pictures. I know that many have over the years, but who did so first?

It is in the New Testament.

The first Christians existed when the Temple in Jerusalem was still operating. It wasn’t until 37 years after Christ ascended into Heaven that the Jerusalem Temple was destroyed. Contrary to what most people believed, the early Jewish Christians still observed Temple worship. They didn’t immediately abandon Temple worship.

Christ himself prayed, taught and brought offerings to be sarificed in the Temple. Peter and Paul taught in the Temple. Paul brought offerings to be sacrificed in the temple. The Temple was full of images. God himself appeared in the glory cloud between the images of the two angels in the Holy of Holies.

***Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour. **(Acts 3:1)

And when they heard this, they entered the temple at daybreak and taught. (Acts 5:21)

Then Paul took the men, and the next day he purified himself with them and went into the temple, to give notice when the days of purification would be fulfilled and the offering presented for every one of them. (Acts 21:26)*

These took place in the book of Acts, after Pentacost.

Worship in ancient Judea meant sacrifice, and Paul himself brings an offering to be sacrificed in the temple. Paul therefor, worships in a Temple full of images. There is no need to defend what Peter, Paul, James and John did. There is no need to defend what our Lord and Savior himself did.

Mary was the first Christian. Mary worshipped in the Temple full of images.

I prayed once whjile kneeling before the grand canyon, and many times while kneeling before the rising sun. Was I praying to the Grand Canyon or to the sun? And why should I have to defend anything about what I did?

-Tim-

 

[504Katrin]

Thank you for the examples. Because there is nothing in the NT that suggests any figure be made into a statue or a picture to be prayed before, would someone be able to give me the history of where it began?

Who was the first in Catholicism to defend praying before statues and pictures. I know that many have over the years, but who did so first?

There aren’t any examples. There’s nothing in the “OT” either that suggests any figure be made into a statue or a picture to be prayed before.

 

[504Katrin]

Numbers 21:4-9

4 From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient on the way. 5 And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.” 6 Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. 7 And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze[a] serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.

Also, please take note that a lot of catholic practices have Jewish roots.

ldsguy2catholic.wordpress.com/

In the Introduction to the book, titled “How I Discovered the Jewish Origins of Catholicism”, essentially giving an overview of his conversion to Catholicism after being a priest in another faith, Dr. Marshall recounts an experience he had talking with a Rabbi in a hospital waiting room (Dr. Marshall was visiting someone as a priest), who told him that Jews believe that “if someone is suffering and you invoke the name of his or her mother in prayer, God will be more merciful in granting your prayer for that person“. Dr. Marshall then goes on to make a connection with the Catholic veneration of the Virgin Mary, and goes on from there:
If Jews believed that invoking the mother of someone caused God to be more gracious in answering an intercession, then wouldn’t the name of Mary be worth invoking? Even more, Mary wasn’t just an ordinary mother. She was the only person ever created who could speak to God about our Son. That’s when it hit me. Catholic devotion to Mary is not merely based on sound Christological arguments. Veneration for the Blessed Mother is not just only in the writings of the early Church. Reaching back even further, the Church reveres and invokes the Blessed Mother because it inherited the Jewish custom of showing profound reverence for the spiritual role of the mother in a family. The rabbi’s answer was a surprising confirmation that Catholic customs are rooted in a Jewish understanding of reality.

*This experience opened up an entirely new way of appreciating Christianity, that is to say Catholic Christianity. I soon learned that Orthodox Jews pray for the dead-as do Catholics. Jews have a special ark in their synagogues to house the Word of God. Catholics have a special tabernacle in their churches to house the Word of God made flesh in the Eucharist. All of the fascinating elements of the Old Testament-the liturgies, the holy days, the vestments, the lamps, the vows, the rituals-all of these were preserved or transformed in the sacramental economy of the Catholic Church. *

calledtocommunion.com/2012/08/relics-saints-and-the-assumption-of-mary/

I can’t believe that you come up with this one! How was that praying to idols?! The people admitted that they had sinned, and Gd taught them a lesson using a serpant they should look at and be healed. Had they trust enough in Gd they would do so. So they always knew that the serpant trancended Gds power. And they did look at it and were healed.
Later, when the danger came up that some knuckleheads could indeed start to worship the snake, the snake was destroyed immediately,.

 

[504Katrin]

Numbers 21:4-9

4 From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient on the way. 5 And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.” 6 Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. 7 And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze[a] serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.

Also, please take note that a lot of catholic practices have Jewish roots.

ldsguy2catholic.wordpress.com/

In the Introduction to the book, titled “How I Discovered the Jewish Origins of Catholicism”, essentially giving an overview of his conversion to Catholicism after being a priest in another faith, Dr. Marshall recounts an experience he had talking with a Rabbi in a hospital waiting room (Dr. Marshall was visiting someone as a priest), who told him that Jews believe that “if someone is suffering and you invoke the name of his or her mother in prayer, God will be more merciful in granting your prayer for that person“.

calledtocommunion.com/2012/08/relics-saints-and-the-assumption-of-mary/

Note that the Ark of the Covenant had statues of angels on it (EX 25:18-20)

So all prayer before the Ark was done before statues.

Well the USE of images I don’t know, sure someone does though, but let me throw this out:“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything
that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water
under the earth."
Exodus 20:4
If we are to take that 100% literally NO IFs ANDs OR BUTs, then we run into a BIG
problem when God instructs on the making of the Ark of the Covenant in saying:“You shall make two cherubim of gold, make them of
hammered work at the two ends of the mercy seat.”
Exodus 25:18
Last I checked, cherubim are things in heaven above, yes? So I don’t know about
using statues in prayer being biblical, but Exodus does demonstrate that images
are not ultimately forbidden.

Simple answer -

1. the gold cherubim above the Ark of Covenant (Exodus 25)
2. the cherubim woven into the Tabernacle tapestry/walls and the Veil of the Holy of Holies (Exodus 26)
3. the bronze serpent in the desert (Numbers 21)
4. The bronze oxen, lions and cherubs in the temple (1 Kings 7)

In the wilderness, of course, the people were commanded to look upon the bronze serpent as an act of faith. The statues and tapestries in the Tabernacle and Temple are more analogous, in that they were there to give glory to God and to assist the people in their devotion - but certainly when the priests prostrated themselves before the altar or the ark, they would have been “bowing in front of an image.”

It is clear from the adornment that God ordered for the Temple that the Israelites were made to understand that the “do not make any graven image” was a part of the “do not worship other gods” commandment, not a separate and specifically anti-image commandment. (In contrast Islam prohibited the making of images of living beings, hence the development of the geometric art typical of Islamic culture.)

It’s important to realize that in debates and decrees about doctrine, the official statement is generally issued in response to a challenge and after some length of time of debate - just like with the “do Gentile Christians have to keep the Jewish Law” discussion that culminated in the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15) and the later debates about the nature of the Incarnation that resulted in the decrees of Nicea, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon; or the debates about the canon of Scripture that resulted in the decrees from Carthage, Rome and eventually Trent. So a Pope doesn’t get up one day and invent a new doctrine and impose it on the Church. Council and papal decrees, which are quite rare, are almost always issued to settle a dispute and defend a long-standing belief or practice that has come under attack.

Sally

(and yes, this question is predicated on the notion of sola scriptura, which is an indefensible position. But the OP is a Protestant. If St. Paul could “become all things for all people” in order to reach different groups, shouldn’t we be willing to do the same?)

The Cherubs weren’t statues put on the Ark, but a part of the Holy of Holiest, we were instructed by Gd to make the Ark this way and Gd spoke through them.
As to the snake I already explained that one above. The snake was ordered by Gd, he instructed us to make it and “look at it” in order to show trust and be healed. Has nothing to do with idolworship at all, or with prayer in front of statues.

 

[504Katrin]

Two more examples from the OT. First, the tribe of Dan during their migration took a Levite (acting as Priest, son of Gershom, son of Moses) who had “an idol” (a statue) and they used this idol and the sons of Gershom/Moses as their priests until the time of exile.

Second, when David was with his wife Michal, daughter of Saul, he was warned to flee from King Saul who wanted to kill him. After he left, Michal took a Teraphim (statue) and put it under the sheets with goats hair to make it look like David was still in bed.

So, even though the Law of Moses prohibited images, it seems that the people used them anyway, not necessarily as foreign gods/idols but as means to worship/reverence The Lord.

You are now totally reaching for straws! So this would mean that I when I was a kid and stuffed my bed so that it looked like I was in bed whilst I was upstairs and secretly reading, I used an image to idolworship? David never, NEVER ever had an idol or worshipped anyone else but the one Gd.

 

[patrick457]

So my question is, where does justification of kneeling before a statue or even a small idol or picture to help ones prayers in some way come from?

I’m gonna postpone posting a little something (well, not so much little as ten posts’-or-so worth of material) I wrote a while back but instead give the sort answer for now.

It might sound a bit surprising, but one idea has it that the Christian idea of veneration of images - the exact origins of which is quite obscure - probably has its roots on the concept of the funerary portrait. In the Greco-Roman world, portraits or masks were used mainly for commemorative, but also for cultic functions: Roman nobility for instance had the custom of hanging representations of deceased family members (imagines) in their houses. A good example of funerary portraits from the ancient world would be the ones attached to mummies at Fayum in Egypt.

Eusebius, writing in the 4th century, speaks about portraits of Jesus, Peter and Paul being made during their lifetimes and venerated by their contemporaries (Church History 7.18).

Since I have mentioned this city I do not think it proper to omit an account which is worthy of record for posterity. For they say that the woman with an issue of blood, who, as we learn from the sacred Gospel, received from our Saviour deliverance from her affliction, came from this place, and that her house is shown in the city, and that remarkable memorials of the kindness of the Saviour to her remain there. For there stands upon an elevated stone, by the gates of her house, a brazen image of a woman kneeling, with her hands stretched out, as if she were praying. Opposite this is another upright image of a man, made of the same material, clothed decently in a double cloak, and extending his hand toward the woman. At his feet, beside the statue itself, is a certain strange plant, which climbs up to the hem of the brazen cloak, and is a remedy for all kinds of diseases. They say that this statue is an image of Jesus. It has remained to our day, so that we ourselves also saw it when we were staying in the city. Nor is it strange that those of the Gentiles who, of old, were benefited by our Saviour, should have done such things, since we have learned also that the likenesses of his apostles Paul and Peter, and of Christ himself, are preserved in paintings, the ancients being accustomed, as it is likely, according to a habit of the Gentiles, to pay this kind of honor indiscriminately to those regarded by them as deliverers.

It is of course possible to dismiss this as a late anachronism (the supposed statue of Jesus is for instance doubtful: it could also well be another statue in Caesarea - a pagan one - that later Christians had misattributed). However it is equally possible that there may be a grain of truth behind this story. A negative attitude would seem to be out of place since, as far as we know, portraits of Christ and the apostles were neither common nor particularly venerated in Eusebius’ time. It would be wrong to see in his text a reflection of the state of affairs that he himself knew from what he observed around him and all the more so since Eusebius himself was no lover of images.

We are more likely to interpret correctly the passage of Eusebius if we consider it in connection with the story from the apocryphal Acts of John (ca. mid-to-late 2nd-3rd century) about John’s newly-converted disciple Lycomedes having a portrait painted of the apostle for private veneration. It should be added that the veneration shown it took the usual forms of the time: the portrait was placed on a table covered with a cloth, it was crowned with flowers, and two candles and altar were placed before it. John, upon knowing what Lycomedes had done, gives a discourse disapproving of portraiture and forbids the veneration of portraits and of a representation of himself. In spite of this, the fact remains that Lycomedes saw nothing wrong in possessing a portrait of his spiritual father, the apostle, or even in devoting to it a certain cult of veneration.

There is also the ambiguity of John not rejecting Lycomedes’ explanation that the painting helps keep his presence and teachings constantly before him. Instead, John focuses on another point: he convinces Lycomedes to forget about his physical appearance and instead paint a picture based on his words and on the palette of virtues that Jesus painted on the human soul: the art of preaching and restoring souls replaces painting. He calls his disciple’s eagerness and attachment for art “childish and imperfect,” but it is by no means a total condemnation of painting. His strongest remark is his criticism of Lycomedes’ possession of “a dead likeness of the dead,” but it apparently does not sway Lycomedes: the icon is a powerful substitute for the real man.


One of the Fayum mummy portraits from Egypt

 

[patrick457]

As some of you would know, Jews during the Greco-Roman period had adopted a very strict interpretation of the commandment against images (probably as a sort of reaction against Hellenism’s forced attempt to eradicate traditional Jewish customs and/or an attempt to cultivate and assert a unique Jewish identity) to the point that any representation of humans or animals were frowned upon: only plants and abstract, geometric patterns were considered to be okay. Josephus records a few incidents where Jews in Palestine at the turn of the era protested against what they perceived as ‘graven images’, which could (and in at least one case, did) end in bloodshed. To this end, most locally-minted Jewish currency at the time did not feature images of gods, men or animals as was common, but images of plants or suchlike as a concession. (The exceptions to this ‘no-images’ rule were Roman coins and, rather curiously, the Tyrian shekel in use at the Temple.) Jews would only begin to accept visual representations once more starting from the 2nd century onwards (the synagogue at Dura-Europos in Syria and those in Palestine from the 4th century onwards are a proof to this), perhaps due to gradual Hellenization, increasing minority status which made the need the accomodation to the outside world more pressing, the slow decline of paganism and the perception that images are not really a threat to Jews and Judaism after all.

By contrast, non-Jews did not have this restriction, and it is possible that some early Greco-Roman Christians had carried over the custom of commemorative and cultic portraiture with them. If these Christians did possess representations of Christ, the apostles, or martyrs, (not one of which of course survives today) they apparently saw no wrong in surrounding them with material symbols of respect in memory of the person portrayed. In doing so, they were conforming to the usages of the social milieu to which they belonged. It was probably later that clergy, fearing a tendency to idolatry, opposed the practice and forbade not only the cult of veneration but funerary portraits themselves.

(Incidentally, I should note here the fact that the portrayals of Peter and Paul have been remarkably consistent since early Christian times: Peter is almost always this bearded man with the full head of hair, while Paul is this balding guy with the pointy beard. Because of this it has actually been proposed that if Roman Christians did not actually possess now-lost portraits of Peter and Paul, at least a tradition existed as to their general appearance, and that the early representations of them conform to this tradition.)

See, the thing is, Christian art was originally the preserve of the laity. Some of the clergy objected to the practice of making artworks, not so much due to the ban in the Old Testament against graven images per se, but due to a natural association in the early Christian mind of images and image-making with paganism and the whole pagan way of life. Reactions could range from outright condemnation of all images to a selective tolerance of some forms and types of artworks (as in A is okay, B is not) to a complete embracing of them. These are consistent with two main ways that early Christians dealt with ‘pagan’ stuff: they either rejected them or appropriated them for their own use.

Already by the mid-3rd century, however, we have evidence in Christian literature of changing attitudes and by the next century, religiously meaningful paintings began to occur in Christian contexts. With Constantine’s legalization of Christianity, Christian-produced art was ‘officially’ appropriated and sanctioned. Christians are now more free than in earlier centuries to express themselves via art. Whereas before Christian art was more of a folk art which derived its style and much of its iconography from popular Roman art (although usually executed more crudely), from this point grand Christian buildings built under imperial patronage (the basilicas) brought a need for Christian versions of Roman elite and official art to accomodate the wealthy newcomers to the faith, of which mosaics in churches in Rome are the most prominent surviving examples.

The favored media of the early Christians were mostly two-dimensional, such as frescoes and mosaics. They didn’t like three-dimensional, free-standing statuary much because it reminded them so much of the statues of emperors and Greco-Roman gods. This is the reason why Eastern art is mostly limited to two-dimensional media. In the West, on the other hand, the stigma wasn’t as strong, which allowed it to revive sculpture during the 8th-10th centuries. As a result, most surviving specimens of early Christian art were frescoes on walls or mosaics on floors or walls. (The only examples of early Christian sculpture in the round we have before the 4th century are the Cleveland marbles [=field_artist%3Alate%20Roman%2C%20Asia%20Minor%2C%20early%20Christian%2C%203rd%20century"]from 3rd-century](http://www.clevelandart.org/art/collection/search?f[0) Asia Minor.) Relief sculpture on things like sarcophagi (coffins) and ivory carvings and book covers and church doors was however tolerated and were produced.

 

[504Katrin]

amazon.com/The-Crucified-Rabbi-Christianity-ebook/dp/B002TLUMR4/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1375976754&sr=1-2&keywords=taylor+marshall

…Mr. Smith formally introduced me to the rabbi and shared an interesting conversation about how some Jews bend their knees and raise up their toes when they pray…….

We all do (hopefully) druing the Amida that is.We bend our knees in reverence to Gd and get on our toes three times to be like angels. This is during the Keduscha, when all Jews stand united and together before the A1mighty. It’s a holy prayer. This is why, everyone, even those that are at schul but don’t participate in the service, should join in the Keduscha.

It has nothing to do with images or statues or idolworhip

 

[patrick457]

Another factor why some Christians opposed images during the first three centuries is due to the influence of Platonism. Plato objected to art on the grounds of it being removed from the ‘truth’ and appealing more to the lower, sensuous part of our nature and the passions. Such base stuff should be best left to pagans.

By the 4th century, however, Christians have begun to see the potential value of art as a teaching and inspirational tool: the Cappadocian fathers mention Christian images in terms other than those of their educational value, acknowledging that images have the power to evoke a strong sense of emotion to the viewer.

Around AD 400, at the time that Christian figurative art burst into vigorous bloom and borrowed so many of the artistic usages of the past, this interdiction - if it was ever systematic - was definitely raised. Christian portraits and miniatures of these portraits became more and more frequent and were increasingly tolerated by Church authorities. Coincidentally, this happened at the very same time that Theodosius II (reigned 408-450) forbade the pagan ancestor cult, in a prohibition which ought to have been fatal to the art of the funerary portrait. But one branch of funerary art was saved by the Church, that of the portraits of the blessed dead, who were, by virtue of this, the legitimate objects of an authorized cult.

As a result of the prohibition, the funerary portrait of the simple mortal disappears at the end of the 4th century, while the iconographic formulas of funerary portraiture are retained exclusively for images of the saints. Something similar must have occurred with respect to the veneration which originally was devoted to any portrait of the deceased and which after about 400 was reserved for the images of saints. It goes without saying that at this period the veneration of saints had a commemorative character and involved only the forms that the early Christians reserved for the cult of commemorative portraits of any kind.

It’s not just the portraits of the dead that was involved in the development of Christian image veneration, but the portrait of the emperor himself. The imperial portrait overlapped the divide between icons and idols: they were not icons, but honor was still shown to them. (In fact, the importance of the imperial image and its veneration seems to have grown under Christian emperors.) The Byzantine emperor, because he was thought to be chosen by God, was the object of a highly-complex ritual veneration; he was crowned in elaborate sacred ceremonies, at public receptions he sat on his throne receiving prostrations (proskynesis) from his subjects, and in a fixed ritual would be revealed and hidden by curtains. In the same vein, imperial portraits were usually accorded the same gestures of respect as the live emperor. The idea is that since the emperor, being human, cannot be everywhere all at once, it is necessary to set up an image of him in public areas - in every place, in fact, in which an official acts, there needs to be an imperial portrait present so the emperor may be a witness and ‘confirm’ what takes place.

The symbolic and moral function of imperial art was accepted by early Christians, despite their attacks on pagan idolatry. The Church Fathers argued that pagan rulers had placed their statues in public places in order to turn their subjects from crime and delinquency through the awesome sight of the kingly likeness.

 

[patrick457]

St. Athanasius in the 4th century once said this in the context of discussing the Son’s relation to the Father:

And we may perceive this at once from the illustration of the Emperor’s image. For in the image is the shape and form of the Emperor, and in the Emperor is that shape which is in the image. For the likeness of the Emperor in the image is exact; so that a person who looks at the image, sees in it the Emperor; and he again who sees the Emperor, recognises that it is he who is in the image. And from the likeness not differing, to one who after the image wished to view the Emperor, the image might say, 'I and the Emperor are one; for I am in him, and he in me; and what you see in me, that you behold in him, and what you have seen in him, that you hold in me. ’ Accordingly he who worships the image, in it worships the Emperor also; for the image is his form and appearance. Since then the Son too is the Father’s Image, it must necessarily be understood that the Godhead and propriety of the Father is the Being of the Son.

Under a similar dictum by the Cappadocian St. Basil the Great that “the honor paid to the image passes to its prototype, and he who pays homage to (proskynon) the image, pays homage to the person whom it represents,” a legitimacy was given to the veneration of the Imperial portrait (which itself was not an uncontroversial practice).

Due to fears of possible excesses, however, measures were made beginning with Theodosius II to curb the excess of this practice of imperial image veneration. Finally, after Justinian (reigned 527-565), efforts were made to substitute the icons of Christ and of the saints for the portrait of the emperor. It is suggested that the the forms of obeisance traditionally enjoyed by official portraits of the monarch was transferred to images of Christ as sovereign and, by way of these images, to all portraits of saints. So what you have is a double influence: the practice of honoring and commemorating the deceased via funerary portraits and that of paying homage to the emperor via the imperial image gave way to the commemoration and veneration of Christ, the King of Kings, and the blessed dead via their respective images. What is new is not the appearance or the increase of Christian portraits, but the development of a religious, rather than purely commemorative, veneration of Christian portraits and perhaps especially of the portrait of Christ.

This is where I should note the difference in emphasis between the East and the West on the function and nature of images.

The West has traditionally emphasized more the didactic, commemorative, and aesthetic aspects of the image. St. Augustine was a huge influence in this view: on the one hand, he was somewhat indifferent to art, arguing that images were unhistorical, juxtaposing elements which did not belong together and thus misleading the looker, and accused artists of over-literalism and anthromorphism, yet on the other hand, he had also praised beauty and the work of artisans as creations of God, and considered pictures to have at least an important illustrative value for the uneducated. More superior than pictures, however, is the word: images are viewed more as substitutes for the written text for those who cannot read.

This is partly the reason why the art of manuscript copying and illumination became a fully-developed art form in the West: the image is married to and pressed to the service of the text. It is particularly telling that by 5th century, manuscript illuminations are clearly subordinate to the written text in striking contrast to earlier images, which are largely or completely independent of text. The pictures illustrate or comment upon the written word. (Cf. the Vatican Virgil or the Vienna Genesis). The West took this one step further: the text itself is treated as a piece of art (cf. historiated initials, Hiberno-Saxon manuscript art, or Carolingian carmina [.jpg"]figurata]("http://www.public.asu.edu/~cschleif/2 [640x480)).

 

[patrick457]

The East, by contrast, took a sacramental view of images, developing a complex theology surrounding them, which itself is closely tied with the Eastern-Western debate about divine essence and divine energies.

In the East, the icon does not only represent the prototype (i.e. the subject portrayed) but actually makes it present by participation in its uncreated energies or grace. The aim of the iconographer is thus to induce that presence in the icon with divine assistance. The image achieves its full meaning by the principle of identity between the image and the prototype; identity achieved through likeness or hypostatic relation and “familiarity” wth the prototype are constitutive principles of the image.

In the midst of the Iconoclast controversy of the 8th and 9th centuries, St. Theodore the Studite (759-826) once pointed out how the image and its prototype are identical in likeness and name, but are distinct from each other in essence. It is because of this relational connection that one can offer veneration to an icon, and the honor thus given to the image passes on to its prototype. The Iconodule Fathers ensured the realization of the principle of identity between image and prototype; there is a clear distinction between icon and idol.

The Iconoclast controversy was centered around the idea of theosis, the assimilation of the divine likeness through cooperation with God’s uncreated energies. So what Christ is by nature, the icon and the saints are by grace. According to the theorists, the icons represented not just the humanity of Christ, but His deified humanity. The Iconoclasts (those who rejected icons) rejected the view of the icon as a bearer of divine energies or grace (charis), which was confused with the divine essence or substance (ousia); in so doing they restricted the possibility of participation in the divine energies by means of icon veneration. The Iconodules (those who supported Christian use of images), on the other hand, had a more charismatic approach, not recognizing a division of God’s creation into sacred and profane parts. The icon, the relic, the holy man and the monk are all channels through the world was permeated by the holy, so that man himself could “[become] by grace what God is by nature.” (So St. Athanasius.)

There are also the ideas of oikonomia and enigma, as per St. Nicephorus. Oikonomia or ‘economy’ signifies the servitude and humiliation of God through the Son of Man. In taking on flesh, the holy countenance is made visible and salvation is brought to humanity. If the flesh of the Son is the carrier of salvation, then this salvation is likewise carried through the image, through the visible. The concept of enigma, meanwhile, goes deeper into the definition of “visibility.” It brings the system of referral into the visual medium. The iconoclast considered the icon to be the same as what is represented and must therefore refuse it on the basis of conflict between the sacred and the profane.

With the concept of enigma, Nicephorus had introduced a “semiotic” dimension into the ontology of the image. This means that the image of Christ is a “visible invisibility;” in other words it makes visible in this life what will be visible hereafter: God the Father. The image is a veil, the affirmation of the hidden, and likewise the only possibility to see “what no eye has seen.” In Byzantine thinking, looking and honoring are always coupled with anagogy toward the divine being. This essence is guarded by a strictly regulated artistic canon.

 

[patrick457]

Still, veneration of images continued to be a sensitive topic during that time; some people feared that it might lead to idolatry. Pope St. Gregory the Great once wrote a letter to Serenus, bishop of Marseille (ca. AD 600), reprimanding him for his decision to destroy images in his diocese the grounds that it might foster idolatry. Gregory’s reply summarizes adequately the Western view of image as educational tool:

Word has since reached us that you, gripped by blind fury, have broken the images of the saints with the excuse that they should not be adored. And indeed we heartily applaud you for keeping them from being adored, but for breaking them we reproach you. Tell us, brother, have you ever heard of any bishop anywhere who did the like? This, if nothing else, should have given you pause. Do you despise your brothers and think that you alone are holy and wise? To adore images is one thing; to teach with their help what should be adored is another. What Scripture is to the educated, images are to the ignorant, who see through them what they must accept; they read in them what they cannot read in books. This is especially true of the pagans. And it particularly behooves you, who live among pagans, not to allow yourself to be carried away by just zeal and so give scandal to savage minds. Therefore you ought not to have broken that which was placed in the church not in order to be adored but solely in order to instruct the minds of the ignorant. It is not without reason that tradition permits the deeds of the saints to be depicted in holy places. If you had tempered your zeal with discretion, you could certainly have better achieved what you wanted, and rather than scatter the flock that was scattered, and so have enhanced the glory of your name of pastor rather than acquired the guilty name of a disperser. But by following your own rash impulse you, as I hear, have so scandalized your flock that the larger part of it is no longer in communion with you. How will you lead wandering sheep to the Lord’s fold if you are not able to keep in it those you already have? Therefore we exhort you to lay aside false pride, and immediately to do all you can to call back, with paternal love, those disaffected souls that you know to be outside the unity of your communion.

For these dispersed children of the church must be called back, and those passages of Holy Scripture should be shown to them that prohibit the adoration of man’s handiwork, for it is written, “Thou shalt adore the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.” But then you should add that because you saw that those painted likenesses, made for the instruction of the ignorant, so that they might understand the stories and so learn what occurred, were being adored, you were so enraged that you ordered them to be broken. And you should also tell them: “If you wish to have images in church in order to gain from them the instruction for which they were formerly made, I freely permit them to be made and placed there.” And explain that it was not the sight of the story there related in a painted text that angered you, but the worship which had been paid to them illicitly.

The venerable Bede, writing in the 8th century, repeats Gregory’s line of reasoning, while adding a line about the potential of images to inspire and move the viewer:

There are some who believe that God’s law forbids us to sculpture or to paint, whether in a church or any other place, the figures of men or animals or the likeness of any other object … [They would not think thus] if they considered the works of Moses, who, at the Lord’s command, first made the cherubim in the propitiatory, and later on the brazen serpent in the desert, at whose sight the people were saved from the wild serpents’ poison. Now if it was permissible to lift up a brazen serpent on a piece of wood so that the Israelites who behold it might live, why should it not be allowable to recall to the memory of the faithful, by a painting, that exaltation of our Lord Saviour on the cross through which he conquered death, and also his other miracles and healings through which he wonderfully triumphed over the same author of death, and especially since their sight is wont also to produce a feeling of great compunction in the beholder, and since they open up, as it were, a living reading of the Lord’s story for those who cannot read? The Greek word for pictura is indeed zoographia, that is, “living writing.”

Some pagans at the time even charged Christians with what looked like hypocrisy: attacking pagan idolatry only to pay homage to images. (cf. The anonymous Consultations of Zacchaeus and Apollonius, where the pagan character Apollonius chides the Christian Zacchaeus for the honor Christians pay to the Imperial portrait.) There was also the fact that pictures are indeterminate. Physically depicting angels could mislead the faithful (Epiphanius of Salamis complained about this very thing in the 4th century), artists do not agree on how to portray a particular saint or subject, leading to general confusion. Literal representations of symbolic things are sometimes even frowned upon.

 

[patrick457]

Some decades before Gregory wrote to Serenus (around the 530s), bishop Hypatius of Ephesus also wrote a letter in response to certain concerns about images raised by his suffragan, Julian of Atramytion. Julian was alarmed about the veneration of images in his diocese and wrote to his metropolitan for counsel. Julian was concerned that “those who set up in the sanctuaries what is revered and worshiped, in the form of paintings and carvings like, are once again disturbing divine traditions.” He apparently cited biblical prohibitions against such representations (“not only does [the Scripture] forbid the making [of representations], but even bids us to destroy them when they are being made or are already in existence”), but added that he permitted the veneration of paintings but not statues. In response, Hypatius wrote:

It is necessary to examine the reason why Scripture says such things, and to understand at the same time why it is that the moulding of sacred objects is allowed. Inasmuch as some people believed (as Holy Writ says) that “the Godhead is like unto gold and silver and stones and the tracing made by man’s device;” (Acts 17:29) inasmuch as they invented to themselves material gods according to their fancy and “worshipped the creature more than the creator;” (Romans 1:25) [for this reason] it says: “Destroy and cut down their altars and burn with fire their graven images, (Deuteronomy 7:5,25) and take good heed of your souls, for ye saw no similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you on the mount of Horeb out of the midst of the fire, lest ye corrupt yourselves and make you a graven similitude.” (Deuteronomy 4:15-16) For no existing thing is similar or equal or identical to the Trinity that is good and divine above all beings, and is the creator and cause of all beings. For “who is like unto thee, who shall be likened to thee?” (Psalm 70:19; 82:2 LXX) as we hear the divines sing.

This being so, you say, “We allow venerable paintings in sanctuaries, but in forbidding, as we often do, carving in wood and stone, we do not regard the latter as being free from sin, except on doors.” But, O my revered friend, we neither confess nor set down in writing that the Divine essence (whatever it may be) is similar or identical or equal to any existing thing. And as for the inexpressible and incomprehensible love of God towards us men, and the holy patterns set by the saints, we ordain that these should be celebrated in sacred writings, since, for our part, we take no pleasure whatever in any sculpture or painting. However, we permit simple folk, inasmuch as they are less perfect, to learn such things in an introductory manner by means of sight, which is appropriate to their natural development, having found that on many occasions that even the old and new ordinances of God may be brought down to the level of the weaker for the sake of their spiritual salvation. Indeed, even the holy prophet Moses, who made the above legislation at God’s prompting, set up in the Holy of Holies golden images of the cherubim of beaten work. And in other cases we see the divine wisdom through its salutary love of men sometimes relaxing its strictness for the sake of souls that are as yet in need of guidance. …

For these reasons, we, too, permit material adornment in the sanctuaries, not because God considers gold and silver, silken vestments and vessels encrusted with gems to be precious and holy, but because we allow every order of the faithful to be guided in a suitable manner and to be led up to the Godhead, inasmuch as some men are guided even by such things towards the intelligible beauty, and from the abundant light of the sanctuaries to the intelligible and immaterial light….

We can compare to Gregory’s letter to Serenus. Hypatius himself does not like art much and prefers the word over the image, but admits a definite, though subordinate, place for them in Church life, arguing that they are useful for “simple folk [who] are less perfect” and that God Himself had relaxed His laws for the weak - why should we do any less?

 

[zz912]

Let’s also not forget one very important, but overlooked verse:

Gal 3:1 O stupid Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?

Note, the Galatians weren’t present when Jesus was crucified on Good Friday. So HOW was Jesus publicly portrayed as crucified?

Because they had a **CRUCIFIX **at Mass. Which they prayed in front of.

 

[SoMissCatholic]

Thank you for the examples. Because there is nothing in the NT that suggests any figure be made into a statue or a picture to be prayed before, would someone be able to give me the history of where it began?

Who was the first in Catholicism to defend praying before statues and pictures. I know that many have over the years, but who did so first?

Are you sure about that statement? What about Galatians 3:1? “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?” Jesus was publicly portrayed, before their “eyes”, as being crucified. That sounds like a Crucifix to me. Now whether it was an image, a carving, or a statue I don’t know, but clearly, the fact that it was portrayed before their “eyes” means that it was something that they could see.

Edit: zz912 beat me to the punch! Great minds must think alike!

 

[zz912]

Edit: zz912 beat me to the punch! Great minds must think alike!

 

[patrick457]

Are you sure about that statement? What about Galatians 3:1? “O foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified?” Jesus was publicly portrayed, before their “eyes”, as being crucified. That sounds like a Crucifix to me. Now whether it was an image, a carving, or a statue I don’t know, but clearly, the fact that it was portrayed before their “eyes” means that it was something that they could see.

I think you’re both reading too much into the verse and its use of “publicly portrayed” (proegraphē). The literal sense of the word is “to write before,” either in a temporal or spatial sense (cf. Romans 15:4; Ephesians 3:3; Jude 4). The phrase “before whose eyes” requires the verb be translated in another sense: to proclaim or portray publicly. I don’t think Paul was talking so much about a literal piece of sculpture or painting showing Jesus crucified but rather about how his preaching had the graphic effect of presenting the crucified Christ to the Galatians. In other words, his public declaration served as a visual image of the Messiah nailed on a cross for them.

Besides, here’s the thing: we do have what could be a possible evidence for the early Christian use of a cross (not a crucifix) from the late 1st century, but at the same time we don’t have any solid evidence that crosses were already used liturgically at that time. In a house at Herculaneum (one of the towns buried by ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in AD 79) there was this room containing a cross marking engraved on one of its walls. Nail markings could be seen in and around this cross. Under the stucco surface a piece of furniture was found resembling a small cabinet, with a flat top surface and containing two rough clay lamps, a dice box and a die. Leaning against this cabinet was a small wooden stool. The measurements of the horizontal arms of this cross are slightly unequal, and the top piece is not quite aligned to the base, which suggests that it was not an accurately made liturgical object of some kind. The nail marks however suggest that the cross was originally made of wood and that it had been removed before the eruption of AD 79. These marks may also indicate that a moveable panel had once covered the cross.

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It has since been debated whether this was really a Christian cross at all: some have suggested that it may simply been, among other things, a miscellaneous wall marking. But even if it really were a Christian cross, it would still be a mistake to read conditions of later centuries back into the period before 79. Christians in the 1st century kept to themselves and met at each other’s houses. There were apparently no specific Christian monuments or no Church buildings or any fixed liturgical cult until the 3rd century. Is it not possible then that the cross was placed by a Christian simply as a sacred symbol and as a witness to his/her faith in a room used then (or later) for non-religious purposes?

There is also the fact, first and foremost, that for the first three centuries, most mainstream (i.e. orthodox) Christians shied away from overt depictions of the crucified Jesus. In fact, our only surviving representations of Christ crucified at that time include graffitifrom Romeanti-Christian (there’s another graffiti showing a crucified person from Pozzuoli, but that is most likely not a depiction of Jesus) and a few carved gemstones which functioned as talismans.

In fact, you could almost sense that mainstream Christians were deliberately avoiding to show Jesus crucified most of the time. On early Christian sarcophagi, such as the sarcophagus of Junius Bassus (AD 359) or the Dogmatic Sarcophagus or the Passion Sarcophagus (mid-4th century), scenes from Jesus’ passion were represented - just not the episode of the crucifixion. The Passion Sarcophagus instead seemingly portrays it in a symbolic way as such that it is conflated with the resurrection. The closest thing you can get to it is the staurogram symbol (this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/29/Christliche_Symbolik_(Menzel)_I_193_2.jpg/20px-Christliche_Symbolik_(Menzel)_I_193_2.jpg), which has been interpreted as a sort of cipher depicting the crucified Jesus. Our earliest overt orthodox portrayals of the crucifixion date from the early 5th century.

Speaking of which, the idea of an altar crucifix (or even an altar cross) is an anachronism. Altars originally did not have anything placed upon then except for the cloth/s which were draped over them. The first appearances of a cross upon the altar occurred approximately in the 6th century, although it remained unusual for several centuries, and even discouraged. (They only became fixed custom during the Middle Ages.)