random musings

let me apologize up front for the length of this post, but packer has got me thinking. i’ve been reading j.i.packer’s book Knowing God–it’s been a great journey, deep, but reaffirming my pattern of thoughts about God. and then came chapter four: THE ONLY TRUE GOD. it started out like any other chapter:

What does the word idolatry suggest to your mind? Savages groveling before a totem pole? Cruel-faced statues in Hindu temples? The dervish dance of the priests of Baal around Elijah’s altar? These things are certainly idolatrous, in a very obvious way; but we need to realize that there are more subtle forms of idolatry as well.

Look at the second commandment. It runs as follows, “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God” (Ex 20:4-5). What is this commandment talking about?

If it stood alone, it would be natural to suppose that it refers to the worship of images of gods other than Jehovah–the Babylonian idol worship, for instance, which Isaiah derided (Is 44:9-20; 46:6-7), or the paganism of the Greco-Roman world of Paul’s day, of which he wrote in Romans 1:23, 25 that they “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles….They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator.” But in its context the second commandment can hardly be referring to this sort of idolatry, for if it were it would simply be repeating the thought of the first commandment without adding anything to it.

and then he says this, and this is where i stopped reading for a second and looked around, as if the author were sitting at the table with me, inserting pages into the chapter as i read.

Accordingly, we take the second commandment–as in fact it has always been taken–as pointing us to the principle that (to quote Charles Hodge) “idolatry consists not only in the worship of false gods, but also in the worship of the true God by images.” In its Christian application, this means that we are not to make use of visual or pictorial representations of the triune God, or of any person of the Trinity, for the purposes of Christian worship. The commandment thus deals not with the object of our worship, but with the manner of it; what it tells us is that statues and pictures of the One whom we worship are not to be used as an aid to worshiping him…

huh? packer comments for a moment on how the church has traditionally used imagery in worship: the statues, the paintings of the divine, in the church for hundreds of years. we can obviously carry that forward to the graphics we use in Power Point, MediaShout, whatever software package we use, in stained-glass renderings of our Lord, in sculptures and artwork of our postmodern gatherings. yep, let me go on for a moment (or him, rather)…

…God says quite categorically, “Thou shalt not make any likeness of any thing” for use in worship. This categorical statement rules out not simply the use of pictures and statues which depict God as an animal, but also the use of pictures and statues which depict him as the highest created thing we know–a human. It also rules out the use of pictures and statues of Jesus Christ as a man, although Jesus himself was. . . man; for all pictures and statues are necessarily made after the “likeness” of ideal manhood as we conceive it, and therefore come under the ban which the commandment imposes… …The Bible shows us that the glory of God and the spiritual well-being of humans are both directly bound up with it. Two lines of thought are set before us which together amply explain why this commandment should have been stressed so emphatically.

These lines of thought relate, not to the real or supposed helpfulness of images, but to the truth of them. They are as follows:

1. Images dishonor God, for they obscure his glory. The likeness of things in heaven (sun, moon, stars), and in earth (people, animals, birds, insects), and in the sea (fish, mammals, crustaceans), is precisely not a likeness of their Creator. “A true image of God,” wrote Calvin, “is not to be found in all the world; and hence . . . His glory is defiled, and His truth corrupted by the lie, whenever He is set before our eyes in a visible form. . . . Therefore, to devise any image of God is itself impious; because by this corruption His majesty is adulterated, and He is figured to be other than He is.”

2. Images mislead us, for they convey false ideas about God. The very inadequacy with which they represent him perverts our thoughts of him and plants in our minds errors of all sorts about his character and will. . . . If you habitually focus your thoughts on an image or picture of the One to whom you are going to pray, you will come to think of him, and pray to him, as the image represents him. Thus you will in this sense “bow down” and “worship” your image; and to the extent you will fail to worship God in truth…

…The point is clear. God did not show [Israel] a visible symbol of himself, but spoke to them; therefore they are not now to seek visible symbols of God, but simply to obey his Word. If it be said that Moses was afraid of the Israelites borrowing designs for images from the idolatrous
nations around them, our reply is that undoubtedly he was, and this is exactly the point: all manmade images of God, whether molten or mental, are really borrowings from the stock-in-trade of a sinful and ungodly world, and are bound therefore to be out of accord with God’s own holy Word. To make an image of God is to take one’s thoughts of him from a human source, rather than from God himself; and this is precisely what is wrong with image-making.

wow! i’m not saying that i’m completely sold on this concept–i could read another book from another respected theologian that may speak to the benefits of using imagery in worship. but it certainly made me take a second look at what i do. how accurate is packer? was that God’s intent in issuing the second commandment? my intent is not to ramble, but i must post his response to some objections:

…arguments are brought against [my dissuasive from using images of God for devotional purposes]. First, the worship of God requires Christian aesthetic expression through the visual arts no less than it requires Christian moral expression through family love and neighbor love [Symbolic art can serve worship in many ways, but the second commandment still forbids anything that will be thought of as a representational image of God. If paintings, drawings and statues of Jesus, the incarnate Son, were always viewed as symbols
of human perfection within the culture that produced them (white-faced Anglo-Saxon, etc.), rather than as suggesting what Jesus actually looked like, no harm would be done]. Second, imagination is part of human nature as God made it and should be sanctified and expressed, rather than stigmatized and suppressed, in our communion with our Creator [The principle of the second is right, but the biblical way to apply it is to harness our verbal and visual imagination to the task of appreciating the drama and marvel of God's historical doings, as is done in the Prophets and the Psalms and the book of Revelation,
rather than constructing static and seemingly representational images of him]. Third, images (crucifixes, icons, statues, pictures of Jesus) do in fact trigger devotion, which would be weaker without them [The problem is that as soon as the images are treated as representational rather than symbolic, they begin to corrupt the devotion they trigger].

in processing what packer is saying, here’s my line of questioning. if painting the picture of God in human form, say, a stained-glass image of Jesus on a cross, limits our concept of God to a man; if visually representing God as a fortress, a strong tower, a warrior, does it stand to reason that the concept applies to other art forms as well? music, for instance? if we sing songs that say the Lord is a bulwark never failing, a mighty fortress, the air i breath, my daily bread; if i speak of Jesus as our whipping boy, our ram of sacrifice, am i placing limits on His glory? are we implanting images in our head that limit our idea of who God is, by attributing to Him characteristics of earthly objects? are we creating a concept of God in our image or in images that we are familiar with, or are these images given to us by God to reveal to us just a glimpse of His glory?

any opinions?

here’s a quick study for further food for thought