Is religious iconography considered idolatry? What is an icon?

What is an image? It is not a likeness. An image might be no likeness whatever. Look at the stamp. It has the Queen's head upon, it; it is not a bit like her, but it represents her. An image is that which represents and stands for one who is not in the scene; it gives the idea of representation. "The image of the invisible God" is One who stands for and represents God. The Lord Jesus is the One who comes down to represent God — He is God; and if I want to know the living God, where do I go? I gaze into the face of Jesus; I look at Him in the three-and-thirty years of His wondrous history in this sorrow. stricken and sin-stained world, where He was the Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and I say, There is the One who is the image of the invisible God! Do you want to know God? Gaze on Jesus.

The language of these laws is absolute and peremptory. “You shall” or “you shall not.” No allowance is made for any deviation. First, no other god could be allowed to take God's place. Nothing must in any way be used even to represent God, no image, no likeness of anything in creation must have any place of spiritual honor in people's minds. This is idolatry. Even pictures of this kind were forbidden (Num. 33:52)

Supposing a person were to say, I find myself very cold in worshipping God, and I want something to arouse my soul; what more proper than to have a picture of my Saviour, that as I look upon Him and the crown of thorns, I may feel more deeply His love, and have my heart's affections more drawn out to Him? That is idolatry now, if it would not have been so at any time. But there were certain of these things allowed under the legal system, because of the hardness of their heart; they had sacrifices of beasts and an earthly priesthood; but for a Gentile to turn to these things is going back to idolatry in the sight of God. The Holy Ghost presses this upon these Galatian believers, for the evil was only in the germ. If this be true, what a sin to take part in, to countenance or sanction, in any way, that which is idolatry in God's judgment! The evil is increasing most rapidly. It is not confined now to popery; but the stride which has been made of late years towards Catholic principles is the same thing. If it has any religious element at all, it is an idolatrous one, making use of certain feelings of awe in our fallen nature to make people feel more reverent in worship. That is precisely the thing that is opposed to faith. The essence of our blessing lies in the soul's enjoying Christ by the word of God — the Holy Ghost giving this enjoyment of Christ apart from everything that acts upon the natural eye or mind. For it is precisely this very abuse that the apostle here so strongly denounces, and which he calls the weak and beggarly element. What God prizes in worship would now be generally considered meagre and poor; for it supposes the absence of outward decoration and of excitement, in order that it may be the real power of the Holy Ghost acting among the saints.

How apposite then the closing words, "Children [the word meaning all the family of God] keep yourselves from idols." An idol is anything which usurps in our hearts that supreme place which belongs to God alone. If we live in the reality and power of verse 20, we shall certainly say like Ephraim, "What have I to do any more with idols?" (Hosea 14:8).

Once let the Son of God, and all that He has done and brought, fill our hearts, and the idols, that charmed us once, will charm us no more.

For more than three hundred years after the first publication of the gospel there is good reason to believe, that neither images nor any other visible objects of religious reverence were admitted into the public service of the churches, or adopted into the exercises of private devotion. Probably such a thing had never been thought of by Christians before the days of Constantine; and we can only regard it as an early fruit of the union of Church and State. Up till this period the great protest of Christians was against the idolatry of the heathen: for this they suffered unto death. And it is not a little remarkable, that the Empress Helena, Constantine's mother, was the first to excite the christian mind to this degrading superstition. She is said, in her zeal for religious places, to have discovered and disinterred the wood of the "true cross." This was enough for the enemy's purpose. The predilection of human nature for objects of veneration was kindled; the flame spread rapidly; and the usual consequence — idolatry — followed.

Similar memorials of the Saviour, the Virgin Mary, the inspired Apostles, and the Fathers, were found. The most sacred relics that had been concealed for centuries were now discovered by visions. So great, so successful, was the delusion of the enemy, that the whole church fell into the snare. From the age of Constantine till the epoch of the Arab invasion, a veneration for images, pictures and relics gradually increased. The reverence for relics was more characteristic of the Western, and that for images of the Eastern churches; but from the time of Gregory the Great the feeling of the West became more favourable to images. In consequence of the almost total decay of literature, both among the clergy and the laity, the use of images was found to give immense power to the priesthood. Pictures, statues, and visible representations of sacred objects became the readiest mode of conveying instruction, encouraging devotion, and strengthening religious sentiments in the minds of the people. The more intellectual or enlightened of the clergy might endeavour to maintain the distinction between respect for images as a means and not as objects of worship. But the undiscriminating devotion of the vulgar utterly disregards these subtleties. The apologist may draw fine distinctions between images as objects of reverence and as objects of adoration, but there can be no doubt that with ignorant and superstitious minds the use, the reverence, the worship of images, whether in pictures or statues, invariably degenerates into idolatry.

After this disloyal and offensive salutation, the pope attempts in the usual way the defence of image-worship. He endeavours to prove to Leo the vast difference between christian images and the idols of antiquity. The latter were the fanciful representation of demons, the former are the genuine likeness of Christ, His mother, and His saints. He then appeals in justification of their worship to the decorations of the Jewish temple; the mercy-seat, the cherubim, and the various ornaments made by Bezaleel to the glory of God. Only the idols of the Gentiles, he affirms, were forbidden by the Jewish law. He denies that the catholics worship wood and stone: these are memorials only, intended to awaken pious feelings.

In conclusion it was decreed that even as the figure on the cross was honoured, so images of the Saviour and blessed Virgin, of angels and of saints, whether painted or mosaic, or any other suitable material, are to be set up for kissing and honourable reverence (proskunesin); but not for real worship (latreian) which belongs to divine nature alone. Incense and lights are to be offered to them, as to the cross, the Gospels, and other holy memorials; "forasmuch as the honour paid to the image passes on to the original, and he who adores an image, adores in it the person of him whom it represents."

Decrees were issued for a council to be held at Nicaea — a city, hallowed by the sittings of the first great council of Christendom — to decide the question of image-worship. The number of ecclesiastics present was about 350. Her chosen men took the lead; everything was, no doubt, pre-arranged. Among the preliminary acts of the council, it was debated to what class of heretics the Iconoclasts were to be ascribed. Tarasius, president of the assembly, asserted that it was worse than the worst heresy, being an absolute denial of Christ. The whole proceedings of the council were characterized by the same condemnatory tone towards the adversaries of image-worship. After assenting to the decrees of the first six councils, and to the anathemas against the heretics denounced therein, they passed — acting, as they declared, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit — the following canon:

"With the venerable and life-giving cross shall be set up the venerable and holy images, whether in colours, in mosaic work, or any other material, within the consecrated churches of God, on the sacred vessels and vestments, on the walls and on tablets, in houses and in highways. The images, that is to say, of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ, of the immaculate mother of God; of the honoured angels; of all saints and holy men — these images shall be treated as holy memorials, worshipped, kissed, only without that peculiar adoration which is reserved for the Invisible, Incomprehensible, God. All who shall violate this, as is asserted, immemorial tradition of the church, and endeavour, forcibly or by craft to remove any image, if ecclesiastics, are to be deposed and excommunicated; if monks or laymen, to be excommunicated."

The council was not content with this formal and solemn subscription. With one voice they broke out into a long acclamation. "We all believe, we all assert, we all subscribe. This is the faith of the apostles, this is the faith of the church, this is the faith of the orthodox, this is the faith of all the world. We who adore the Trinity worship images. Whoever do not the like, anathema upon them! Anathema on all who call images idols! Anathema on all who communicate with those who do not worship images.... Everlasting glory to the orthodox Romans, to John of Damascus! To Gregory of Rome, everlasting glory! Everlasting glory to all the preachers of truth!"

Again she is the patron of what is most offensive before God — of idolatry in every shape. It is in vain to say that there never has been idolatry under Christianity; in vain to plead that the objects adored are only images for memory, not idols. The self-same excuse the old heathen philosophers used to urge. They sought to excuse their superstition by the assertion that nobody thought the idols were the gods, but only the visible tokens that reminded them of beings above and behind them. The apology of idolaters in Christendom is exactly similar to that of the pagans. The truth is, that to have such visible tokens or signs is the denial of faith, the destruction of the principle and power in which the Christian is told to walk. He is called to "walk by faith and not by sight." All efforts therefore to make people religious by palpable symbols of the sort is false and pernicious in principle; it is but heathenism christened. Every Christian person is bound to set his face against it. No doubt all this came in by slow degrees, with an apparent show of pious reasons: when have they been wanting for bad things? The truth is however that we are not competent to judge in divine things; and God therefore has revealed His will that we may be subject as children. Then, when we honour Him by subjection of spirit, we find out the excellence of God's will in Christ. We learn that there is nothing arbitrary but good, yea, the best in all the Lord lays on us. Although we accept it, not because we understand it but because He says it (and we accept it therefore gladly and simple-heartedly as His authority over our souls), yet, having done so, we learn that our God and Father is infinitely wise in all He says, and as good as He is wise.

In the second place they were to make no attempt to have an image or material representation of any unseen power. God is "in heaven above," and anything purporting to be an image of Him is forbidden. Many other powers there are both invisible and visible, and no representations of such are to be made. All the idols of the heathen are strictly forbidden, and in this connection the warning is issued as to the sins of the fathers descending in retribution on the children. God knew how terribly infectious such idolatrous practices are; and, that if the fathers start them the epidemic rages with tenfold virulence in the children, and brings down the judgment upon their heads.