Truth Unites - Icon Veneration is CLEARLY an Accretion!

Episode Date: January 9, 2023

Here I give an overview of the Protestant concern about venerating icons, looking at its development in church history in three phases, and the Protestant biblical interpretation of that development. Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

There's a couple of issues that just by themselves are enough for me to make me a Protestant. This video is about one that may be the biggest one, or in the top two, probably, and that is the veneration of icons. I suspect that anybody who looks into this with an open mind will be able to understand where I'm coming from and why I'm trying to state it strongly like that, because I think the evidence is just overwhelming for what is actually pretty shocking, namely an ecumenical council anathematizes what is actually the universal and resounding view of the early church. Let me justify why I say that.

Let me make my case here. I have three sections to this video. First, I want to explain what venerating icons is and why it is so important. Second, I want to go through church history. I want to offer an overview of the development of this practice and theology in three phases. Thirdly, then we'll look at scripture and we'll offer a biblical interpretation of that development. Now, before diving in, one thing to clarify, I've made one video on this topic earlier, but I wanted to update it because I've done a lot of research since that video came out,

and I thought people might find value to have all of my work just plunked down into one spot. So you have kind of a one-stop shop that can serve as an introduction to this issue, the scholarship surrounding it, the history, just at least an introduction to that. I think that's important. A lot of Protestants don't know about this issue very much. They're kind of unfamiliar with it. And then also hopefully it will help the non-Protestant traditions understand the historic Protestant concern so that we can push through a lot of the caricatures that are out there.

And hopefully this will be helpful in the interactions all the way around. I put a lot of work into this. If you find value in this video, it does help if you like it and share it and subscribe to the channel and all of that, especially with this video to like and share the video because it may get some negative reactions as well. But these issues are too important not to work through. So here's my case. First section, what is venerating icons? The word icon just means image, but the thing we have to understand is that it has a technical meaning. So an icon is a work of art, usually two-dimensional, though there are some three-dimensional. And often, though not always, it'll be a portrait of a singular

person, sometimes Christ, sometimes Mary, sometimes another saint. I'll put up a few pictures here a famous icon of Christ and then a famous icon of Mary as well. What we just have to get is that icons are distinct from religious art generally. They serve a special liturgical purpose. In Eastern Orthodox contexts especially, you'll often hear them called sacred images or windows into heaven. They have a kind of mediatorial role that I'll explain here. Let me just first say, trying to be as fair as I can, that this is grounded in the incarnation. Christ is the image of the Father, and so there's this idea that revelation takes place in both word and image. Here's how it's put in one important text by two Eastern Orthodox theologians.

The icon is placed on a level with Holy Scripture and with the cross as one of the forms of revelation and knowledge of God, in which divine and human will and action become blended. So that's a little interesting final little phrase there. By the way, this is why the rejection of venerating icons is often seen as a denial of the truth of the incarnation. But that last sentence there, in which divine and human will and action become blended, this starts us gets us into the role a little bit. Essentially, to try to be simple here, icons function as a point of access to the realm of divine glory and light. Okay, what is manifest in Jesus' transfiguration, the divine life.

the divine glory, the saints are participating in that now. That realm is reflected. Now you have to be careful here. Here's how that book puts it. The icon is not a representation of the deity, but an indication of the participation of a given person in divine life. And so as a point of access to that realm, as a window to heaven, it becomes a means for us to strive after participation in God. As they put it, the icon is both the way and the means it is prayer. itself. Now, so this is sometimes described as praying through the icon, not praying to the icon. Okay. This is a, this is the key concept that we'll reference again later is that basically behavior given toward the icon is considered to be transmitted to what the icon represents,

okay, from the object to its prototype. And this is why actions of veneration are appropriate for icons. Prostration, deep kneeling, sometimes kissing or lighting candles. This is what we have in mind when we talk about venerating icons. Now, this was the theology, not just a general use of religious art, but specifically the veneration of icons that led to the iconoclast controversy, which is this brutal, massive conflict in the church, especially in the east, though it reverberates into the west in the 8th and 9th centuries. So you have the iconophiles or the iconodules on one side. They're in favor of venerating icons.

You have the iconic clasks who are opposed to the practice. One thing to be clear about, iconoclasm did not necessarily mean physically destroying art. Some did that, but many, for many, and they didn't like that term. They didn't like the term iconoclasm that was given to them. They preferred the term iconomaki, meaning struggle about icons. But most of them did not oppose all religious art in any way. most of them argued that simply the practice of bowing down to icons, and this specific theology in which this is understood, does constitute idolatry. And then the iconodules, in contrast,

are saying, no, there's a distinction between worship, which is given to God alone, and veneration, which can be appropriately directed toward creatures without the sin of idolatry. Let me quote from the Catholic Catechism. Icons are especially emphasized within Eastern Orthodoxy, but they're a part of Catholic theology as well. Here's how it's put. The Christian veneration of images is not contrary to the First Commandment which prescribes idols. Indeed, the honor rendered to an image passes to its prototype, and whoever venerates an image venerates the person portrayed in it. The honor paid to sacred images is a respectful veneration, not the adoration due to God alone. We'll look at that first quote there.

That's basically a miscitation of Basel. It's taken out of context. We'll talk about that a little bit later. So here's what we want to be careful to distinguish, to clarify and hone the target that we're trying to focus on in this video. Icons are distinct from religious art generally, and the veneration of icons is distinct from other uses of religious art. Commemorative uses, decorative uses, didactic uses. So venerating an icon is not the same as having a painting of the Apostle Paul, preaching in Athens on your office. this wall or having pictures and churches. It's what we're specifically talking about is the veneration of icons. That is the issue.

And this is just so important to be clear about up front because over and over and over people will appeal to other uses of religious art as a supportive testimony for the veneration of icons. So we'll hear all the time. We'll say there's no veneration of icons in the early church. People say, but what about the catacomb paintings? and it just confuses the distinction between there. Now, you could make a case that the catacomb paintings,

paintings on tombs in the catacombs early on third century, that those were venerated as icons. You could make that case, but you can't just assume that. Okay, so that's what icon veneration is. Now, what are the stakes of this issue? Why is this so important? Essentially, the iconophiles won at the seventh ecumenical council, Nicaea, two, second council of Nicaea.

And that council is considered infallible by the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church as well. At the end of the council, the bishops present a series of anathemas against those who opposed their verdict. Here's a couple of them. To those who apply to the sacred images, the sayings in divine scripture against idols, anathema. To those who do not kiss the holy and venerable images anathema. To those who call the sacred images idols, anathema. to those who say that Christians had recourse to the images of as God's anathema, to those who knowingly communicate with those who insult and dishonor the sacred images

anathema. So it goes on. Those are just a couple. There's a lot of anathema. It goes on at length and with lots of color. But those just few examples give you a flavor of kind of what is at stake in the minds of the bishops at that time with this issue. This is really important.

Even it's amazing. It's almost like if you know the term second degree. separationism, which comes up in fundamentalist circles, you almost have something like that here with the anathema toward those who knowingly communicate with these people. Now, what is an anathema? There's a lot of confusion about this, because some try to downplay that, and they act like it's not as serious. It's a separation from the church, but not necessarily a separation from God. We hear claims like this. Historically, it meant separation from God as well, and that's drawn from the paradigmatic usage of this in Galatians 1, 8, and 9, and the other usages of

this term in the New Testament. There's five other usages. Certainly at Nicaea, too, that's the understanding of the bishops. Let me show that. In 784, the incoming patriarch of Constantinople, he gives a speech, Terezius. He's giving a speech upon his nomination. He says, an anathema is a terrible thing. It drives its victims far from God and expels them from the kingdom of heaven, carrying them off into the outer darkness. Throughout the speech, he's basically saying, here's why we need to have an ecumenical council to overcome division. vision in the church, and he's insisting that you have to have unity, and he even expresses a concern for himself. He says, lest I be subjected to an anathema and found condemned on the day of our

Lord. After the council is over, the patriarch and all of the bishops at Nicaea, too, write a letter to the emperor, Constantine, and then also to his mother, Irene, we'll talk about her a lot, summarizing their conclusions, and in the letter, they link the iconic clasts with the various heresies condemned by the first six ecumenical councils. They characterize them as conducting an insane war on piety, and they specify the result of their anathemas. Quote, an anathema is nothing other than separation from God. I could go on with some juicy quotes from this letter about God's unbearable wrath for the iconic clasts, how God has scorned them, how they are like the Jews who opposed Christ, they lack the image of God. Their teachings are satanic statements, and on and on.

You get the idea. So here's the point. Let this sink in. This is astonishing. An ecumenical council regarded as infallible by both the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church anathematizes to hell those who reject icon veneration. Now, some will want to say, well, the anathemas aren't the infallible part of the council. That's debated.

Leave that. Let's grant that. The point remains. Now, here's the shocking truth. That is just amazing. The position anathematized at Nicaea II as a damnable heresy is, in fact, the universal, resounding witness of the early church and the scripture. Not only does the veneration of icons not go back to the first century, the only question is whether it originated in the sixth or the 7th century. And for hundreds and hundreds of years prior to that time, the early Christians are so clear and vigorous in their opposition to the veneration of icons and to the use of images in worship in any way, that you can't see this as a doctrinal development because that's a doctrinal U-turn. Nicaea, too, is the triumph of a late patristic innovation, because it's

anathematizing what was once. It's requiring something that was once, shock and unheard of. Let me prove that. Let me show that. And I, by second section of the video, giving a historical overview of how this accretion comes in in three phases. First, I'll summarize the scholarship on the question so that people don't think I'm just making this up. I'm amazed at how much there's a gap between the apologetics world and the scholarship world, between just general understanding of these things at the popular level and at the level of scholarship. And people are not even aware of the scholarly consensus about this. Now, if I just quote the scholarship, people will say I'm making an argument from authority. And if I don't quote it, people will dismiss

what I'm saying. So I'll do both. Let's talk about the scholarship, and then I'll work through the patristic data. A good summation of the scholarship can be found in Richard Price's recent translation of and commentary on Nicaea II, translation of the Acts. He's a great scholar. He's a Roman Catholic priest. He's done a, it's an incredible work of scholarship. I've just been working through it a lot over the last couple months. He opens the whole book by outlining recent scholarly discussion as to whether the rise of icon veneration should be dated to the seventh century, late seventh century or slightly earlier. Okay. He then comments, the fathers of Nicaea too would have found this whole debate bizarre. Their concern was not to argue that the veneration of images went back to the

beginning rather than the end of the 7th century, but that it had the support of the great church fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries and went back through them to the apostles themselves. And that's true. The bishops at Nicia 2 are arguing this is an apostolic tradition. Price himself finds iconoclasm an isolated view today, but he's honest. This is why I love the scholars. They're honest. Here's his summary of what the historical evidence suggests.

The iconoclast claim that reverence toward images did not go back to the golden age of the fathers, still less to the apostles, would be judged by impartial historians today to be simply correct. The iconophile view of the history of Christian thought and devotion was virtually a denial of history. Now, here's the thing that I would like for people to understand is that Price's position is entirely consistent with the general scholarly consensus concerning the origins and and development of icon veneration in the church. It's regularly spoken of and acknowledged as a scholarly consensus. The debates are in the details of when exactly, and then in what sense exactly the early church was against icons, which we'll talk about that.

There's a great book that came published by Brill last year. 2021, Mike Humphreys has a long, really helpful introduction. I mean, if someone's going to read one thing on this, if they can find it, Brill books tend to be super expensive. So it may be too tough to get. But his introductory chapter is the first thing I encourage people to read on this. It's really helpful. He refers to the long scholarly tradition, dating the rise of the icon from relative obscurity to ubiquity to the 6th and 7th centuries.

Now, that's a general time frame. Within that general time frame, there are two basic schools of thought in the scholarship. Just to give a real brief canvas of this before we get into it. There's the traditional view, the revisionist view. The traditional view is most associated. It's the older view. This is associated with Ernst Kitzinger, who's a renowned historian was, a renowned historian of Byzantine art. And he basically just set the table for the scholarship back in the mid-20th century.

Basically, his position is there's a gradual increase in the practice of venerating icons sometime toward the end of the reign of Justinian I first. He was the emperor from 527 to 565. And that basically is the direction the scholarship goes in. and if you know the scholar Peter Brown, he wrote what is widely considered the best biography of St. Augustine of Hippo. He follows that proposal. He's very much in that stream of thought. So are many others.

Brown puts it like this, the rise of the cult of icons, therefore, in the sixth and seventh centuries, and not the origins of iconoclasm, this is the central problem of the iconoclast controversy. More recent scholarship, the revisionist view, is well represented by this fantastic book. I've been carefully working through just this past week by Leslie Brewbaker and John Haldon. But basically they're saying that Kitsinger's work had relied upon iconophile interpolations. Now, that's a mouthful, isn't it? Interpolations, as opposed to interpretations, are later projections back into a text. So someone in the 7th century is adding a little thing to a 6th century text, that kind of thing.

This is what makes it so hard to adjudicate this question of, is it 6th or 7th? century, is because, frankly, if I can just be blunt, the iconophiles rewrote the history. And so it's very hard to disentangle the doctored texts and propaganda and interpolations from the actual historical evidence. Now, both sides did that, but because the iconophiles won, it's their doing of that that is really a tricky thing for the scholarship. So as a result of this, Brubaker and Haldon date the emergence of icon veneration much later. They say, quote, there is little support for a cult of sacred images in pre-iconoclast Byzantium. The textual and material evidence agree that sacred portraits existed,

but there is no indication that these images received special veneration in any consistent fashion before the late 7th century. Elsewhere, they used the year 680 AD. So there's some wiggle room there. It's not neat and tidy because they point to an exception. these are a couple of objects that are both relics and icons. But that's when it gets prominent, late 7th century for them. Now, for our purposes, we don't need to resolve this.

We don't need to figure out, is it the 7th centuries, a 6th century? That's a really tough question because you're basically doing, you're going into it and you're trying to figure out what are the, what's the valid data from the 6th century and what isn't. And that takes, that's really hard to do. And it's very much disputed. There's a few other scholars working in that right now. But the general point is clear that this is way.

after what the bishops of Nicaea 2 were claiming, namely that it goes back to the apostles. Okay, why is that the scholarly consensus? Let's work through three phases of the development of veneration of icons. Number one, the anti-Nycine period, so Council of Nicaa has 325. So in the first roughly 300 or so years of church history. In this period, the use of images in worship is a hallmark distinctive difference between pagan worship and Christian worship. As we get into this, we need to understand something about the Greco-Roman Mediterranean context in which the early church is functioning. The cultic

usage of images and physical objects, especially statues, is one of the most common features in human religion. All places, all times, it's virtually universal. Within the Greco-Roman world, in particular, religious usage of images depicting the divine. was ubiquitous. It's everywhere. And particularly this understanding that the image is a means of embodying or mediating the divine person that it's representing. Here's on Mike Humphreys puts it, it was part of the religious common sense of the classical world that images of the gods could and should be made, some of which could and should be the focus of various cultic practices. For presumably many viewers, the cult statue was more than a simple representation, a reminder,

a useful focusing tool for worship. Rather, it embodied or mediated the divine, making it in a way really present and therefore engaged with the ritual being performed with it. In short, the kind of idolatry condemned in the Old Testament was ubiquitous in the Roman world and the Jewish-Christian rejection of it really did mark them off from the religious mainstream.

Okay. So the commonplace observation of the scholarship is early Christianity is an iconic, meaning opposed to the use of images and worship. as distinct from this broader pagan context. What is tricky to figure out is what does that mean precisely? Because the word an iconic, there's a spectrum of options for what that can mean. So Paul Finney has written an important book where he's saying, he's referring to this consensus that all the scholarship says early Christianity is an iconic, but there's the question of

what precisely does that mean? And what he's saying is it doesn't necessarily mean that all Christians opposed all usage of art. And he says, starting in the third century, you find tombs on the paintings on the tombs, you find symbolic engravings on lamps, you find carvings on furniture, eventually you find sarcophagy, which is basically like statuary or images upon the tombs, basically, box-like structures used as to hold a corpse. Early Christians were not always opposed to all of that, just general usage of art. what they're opposed to is the cultic usage of art, venerating it, praying to it, anything like that.

And this is seen to be, it's universal without, and it's seen to be the hallmark distinctive of what makes Christian worship different from pagan worship. Here's how Robin Jensen puts it, the fundamental problem early Christian critics identified, aimed less at the simple existence of iconic statues or paintings of the gods, that on the ways viewers treated these objects. They identified idolatry with ritual actions more than with the objects themselves. Now, it is true. This is tricky because you've got a spectrum of options. Some of the early Christians are more rigorously and iconic. That's true, as we'll see, of Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, even Eusebius. They're against pretty much all religious imagery, and they have to find ways of, like

Tertullian will even say that the bronze serpent of Moses is symbolic, things like this. But the general position is opposition to... all. So the only question is how rigorous the Christians are. All of them, resoundingly unanimously, are against any sort of cultic usage of images, ever praying to an image, venerating an image, anything like that. You just see this everywhere. The early apologists, in my forthcoming book, I document this at a little greater length. I'll go into a fair amount of length here, though. The early apologists, Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, all of this. They're just ridiculing the pagans for their pagan practice of making images to be treated like deities, and their claim is they're

lifeless. Don't pray to them. They're not alive. They can't hear you. They say basically demons are active through them. Then they're saying the true God is invisible, so we worship God who is distinct from matter altogether. And then the pagan critics of Christianity in return consistently are making fun of the Christians for their lack of images. Here's an example I'll give. This is from a fictional dialogue written by the North African apologist Marcus Menusius Felix. He died in the third century, mid-third century. He wrote this dialogue called Octavius, where it's basically a Christian and a non-Christian dialoging. And the non-Christian is attacking the Christians for their lack of images in worship. He says, why do they endeavor with such pains to conceal and to cloak whatever they worship?

Why have they no altars, no temples, no acknowledged images? Now, this is an odd question to ask, of course, images are a part of Christian worship in some way. But what's interesting is Octavius, that's the Christian in the dialogue, his response is basically to say because God is invisible, just like Deuteronomy 4, like we'll talk about. God is invisible. God is brighter than light. Therefore, we do not represent God in any way. If there's a conception, as John of Damascus will later argue, that the incarnation somehow has changed something, that was lost upon all the anti-Nicine Christians. Nobody had this thought of, oh, well, well, because of the incarnation, it's changed now.

The contrast between Octavius and the pagan critic is not between one use of images versus another. It's between you have images in your worship, we do not in ours. Same thing, exact same thing, in the dialogue between Origin and the pagan critic, Salsus, or some people say Kelsus. When Selsus attacked Christians for their lack of images, Origin did not dispute that.

He says, Christians, being taught in the school of Jesus Christ, have rejected all images and statues. To explain this, he quoted the Second Commandment. And then he said, it is in consideration of these and many other such commands that Christians avoid not only temples, altars, and images, but are ready to suffer death when it is necessary, rather than debase by any such impiety

the conception which they have of the Most High God. There are many passages in origin I have located where he maintains that exact position. It's difficult to fathom how he could have said that if, in fact, Christians did use images in worship. Now, origin will sometimes be dismissed because of his theology, but he's representing Christian practice at his time. Moreover, his view is perfectly consistent with other Christians. The only difference might be that others, some others, are more rigorous than him. His teacher, Clement of Alexandria, was even more an iconic.

He basically said, the law of Moses taught us against sensible images. He contrasts that with the worship of the true God, who is invisible. He seems to have a platonic preference for the invisible realm. So he's saying familiarity with the sight disparages reverence for what is divine. And because images are associated with the material realm that you can see, he says works of art cannot be sacred and divine. Now, this is the contrast. It's so common.

It's so ubiquitous. people are not even arguing for it. They're arguing from it. It's just taken for granted. There's a passage in Ironaeus and against heresies where he's observing a Gnostic group that honors images and claims to have an image of Christ made by Pontius Pilate. And it doesn't even seem to occur to him to argue against it. He's just referencing it as a pagan holdover from paganism. The most, perhaps no one was quite as rigorous as Tritullion. He wrote an entire treatise on idolatry. on, he observes idolatry did not exist in the ancient times under the same form, since you didn't

have images within the temples and triance. Then he says, but when the devil introduced into the world artificers of statues and of images and of every kind of likenesses, that former rude business of human disaster attained from idols, both a name and a development. Thenceforth, every art which in any way produces an idol, instantly becomes a fount of idolatry. And he just goes on citing a barrage of Old Testament passages to oppose the making and worshipping of idols. For him to make them is as bad as to worship them. I mean, you know, even the people who are trying to be so evasive with the data will admit Turtullian was an iconic. And he's very clear that the Second Commandment applies.

There's no change with the incarnation. We do not worship with means of images. In fact, he doesn't even allow for any use of him. He's more on the rigorous side of the spectrum. Sometimes in opposing the cultic use of images, the early Christians will appeal to this contrast between the invisible realm and the visible realm. Heavenly versus earthly things. And so God's invisibility is associated with his purity.

This is a theme in the early Christian writer Lactantius, who basically is following other early Christians and saying that cultic images are presided. over by demons. And he's saying, to worship the true God, you lift your eyes up to the invisible. And he says, wherefore, it is undoubted that there is no religion wherever there is an image. For if religion consists of divine things, and there is nothing divine except in heavenly things, it follows that images are without religion, because there can be nothing heavenly in that which is made from the earth. There is no religion in images but a mimicry of religion. That which is true is therefore to be preferred to all things which are false,

earthly things are to be trampled upon that we may obtain heavenly things. Can anyone seriously imagine Lactantius speaking like this if the theology of Nicaea II had been alive in his day? Sometimes in their criticism of cultic images, the early Christians almost sound as if they're anticipating the later arguments made by the bishops at Nicaea too. Arnobius, early 4th century. He's writing a treatise where it looks like maybe Maybe the Christians were blamed for things for not worshipping images, so he's very firm in his opposition to the usage of images in worship in any way, and he deals with this objection. When he anticipates the objection, they're going to say, oh, but we're not worshipping the

image, we're just worshipping the one the image it represents. And his response to this is, what then? Without these, do the gods not know that they are worshipped? What greater wrong, disgrace, hardship can be inflicted than to acknowledge one God and yet makes supplication to something else, to hope for help from a deity and pray to an image without feeling. And then he proceeds to discorn and pour contempt upon this idea. He quotes a proverb to compare it to basically when you're looking for a human opinion, but you ask an animal. He's quoting a proverb, but that's his metaphor to say it's, to pray to an image is

like you're trying to get a human opinion and you're talking to an animal. It's dead. it can't understand you. The image. So again, it's like unfathomable to think that Arnobius would be arguing like this if the theology of Nicaa II that what's given to the image passed it to the prototype had been alive in his day, and that's the linchpin of iconophile theology. We could go on. I haven't even gotten to Canon 36 of the Synod of Vira yet. Early four century says pictures are not to be placed in churches. So they do not become objects of worship and adoration. It's like, okay, that seems pretty clear, right? But people will try to find all these ways to get around this.

But here's the thing. There's no exceptions. There's no opposition. There's no awareness of any opposition. This is why, you know, I try to be careful. I try not to be, to use rhetoric in ways that just merely stir the pot. But there's those times where you think something is clear enough. You need to lean into it to help people get it.

Because I'll make a video on something like this. And in the comments and in dialogue, you realize people aren't. not feeling the forcefulness of it sufficiently. That's why I use adjectives like unanimous and resounding. I would go so far as to say, if there's anything we can glean about the anti-Nicene period, it's that it's against cultic use of images. You don't pray to images, ever. That's what the pagans do. All right, phase two. How does this begin to change? Very little, actually, in phase two, as we'll see, till the very end. But the difference is, at least it's now a temptation that has to be addressed. Okay. Phase two is between Niceney.

Nicaa 1 and Nicaea 2. Between 325 and 787. Nicaea is in 325. This is a significant time of change right around the first Dacumenical Council. In 313, you have the Edict of Milan. This gives Christianity legal status in the Roman Empire following the conversion of Constantine. Under Theodosius, the first, in 380, Christianity becomes the official state religion. So throughout the 4th century, the church is changing rapidly. It's acquiring buildings overnight, you know, with some. then accumulating wealth and institutional power throughout the fourth century. Amidst the so many, some positive, some negative, some benign changes that go along with that.

One is there's a lot more art and statuary, even within churches. And so this is when you get, you know, a third century art tends to be a lot more modest. It might be an engraving on a piece of furniture or something. There's not a ton of it, but this is when you start to get portrait pictures of Christ and a and the saints. Robert Jensen notes, iconic portraits of apostles, saints, and Christ mostly appeared only toward the end of the 4th century. They're still rare at this time, and they're definitely not venerated. But at least now there's the possibility of that, because you've got this flood of pagan converts coming into the church. So this is why we make the distinction here, because now you've

got a new situation, what was previously just unimaginable, that Christians would be bowing down to images. Now does need to be addressed here and there. Here and there, people will cross the line and the use of images will cross over into a cultic use of images. And when that happens, you find these crackdowns from various church leaders. For example, in the late 4th century, Epiphanius, Bishop of Solomon, relates to this incident in a letter to John, the Bishop of Jerusalem. I came to a villa called Anablatha. Don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, don't know where it is, it's somewhere under Jerusalem. And as I was passing, I saw a lamp burning there. Asking what place it was and learning it to be a church, I went in to pray and found there

a curtain hanging on the doors of the said church, died and embroidered. It bore an image either of Christ or of one of the saints. I do not rightly remember whose image it was. Seeing this and being loth, that an image of a man, lo, that we would say today, I think that's how we pronounce that loathe, as in hesitant or against. That an image of a man should be hung up in Christ's church, contrary to the teaching of the scriptures, I tore it asunder and advised the custodians of the place to use it as a winding sheet for some poor person.

He goes on for a bit, and he's basically saying that he took it away, so he's explaining he sent a new curtain to John to replace the one that he destroyed, and then he makes this request to John, I beg that you will order the presbyter of the place to take the curtain which I have sent from the hands of the reader, and that you will afterward give in directions that curtains of the other sort, opposed as they are to our religion, shall not be hung up in any Church of Christ. A man of your uprightness should be careful to remove an occasion of offense,

unworthy alike, of the Church of Christ, and of those Christians who are committed to your charge. So he's saying this usage of images in the church is against the teaching of scriptures, it's against our religion. What's interesting is he doesn't seem to think that this needs to be argued for. His relationship with John is strained at this point, but he doesn't seem to be anticipating that there could be resistance to this. He's just kind of assuming this is what we do. This is what Christians do.

This is unworthy of the Church of Christ to have those there. Now there's a bunch of other passages from Epiphanius where he has a similar view, but they're sometimes disputed. So rather than get into that, I'm not going to go into those. I deal with that more in the book. But here's what's important to understand is that even in the fourth century, there's still a lot of the an iconic rigor of a Tertullian or a Clement of Alexandria and so forth. The church historian Eusebius seems to be of this mindset. At one point,

he writes a letter to Constancia. That's Emperor Constantine's sister. Evidently, she had requested an image of Christ from him. Now, Richard Price, in his commentary on this, suggests from that that images must have been rare at this time, images of Christ must have been rare at this time because you have a wealthy person trying to hunt one down like this. But what's so interesting is Eusebius's response. He rebukes her for this request. He talks about Christ's divine nature, Christ's human nature. He makes this whole appeal that you can't depict either one. Depicting Christ in his human nature and his glorified state is both impossible and unlawful. And he basically is asking Constancia, how can you even ask me this? He says, can it be that you have forgotten that passage in which God

lays down the law that no likeness should be made either of what is in heaven or what is in the earth beneath? Have you ever heard of anything of the kind, either yourself, in church or from another person? Are not such things banished and excluded from churches all over the world? And is it not common knowledge that such practices are not permitted to us alone? Now, how do you even say, say it's strong enough after a patty? He's saying it's common knowledge, okay? But, By the way, Eusebius is the father of church history. His knowledge of the church in its early history is second to none. Can anyone take it seriously that venerating icons was an apostolic practice

when you've got Eusebius saying that it's common knowledge that images are banished and excluded from churches all over the world? That passage alone. Now, some people dispute the authenticity of it. Again, precisely because it is so decisive. but the best of scholarship in my book I reference an important 1981 article that goes through all the internal evidence, all the external evidence says, no, this is, we have no reason to question that this is Ezebius, and we have many reasons to question that it's spurious, it's later.

And that's Richard Price's view as well and others. So it seems to be an authentic letter. Just after this, he says, he recounts another episode in which he had to confiscate an image of Christ and Paul, and he says, I took it away from this woman and kept it in my own house as I thought it improper that such things ever be exhibited to others, lest we appear like idol worshippers to carry our God around in an image. In his church history, he also makes references, Eusebius makes reference to Christians paying homage to statues of Christ, Peter, and Paul. And he says, he's not surprised because they're acting out an old habit that they retained from

their former pagan world. So again, it's just assumed that's what the pagans do. Now, some people will say, okay, yeah, there's a lot of opposition to images in the context of worship, praying to images, venerating images, etc. But they're just opposing the pagan practice of that. Now, I think anybody who is paying attention to these quotes will see that that's a rather convenient evasive maneuver. But another way you can see that is as you're getting through phase two, okay, Christians are distinguishing their usage of physical objects from the whole idea of figural representation. So the theology that will later come to prominence at Nicaea

two, what's given to the image transmits to the prototype. This is the very idea that is opposed. It's not simply the pagan usage of that idea. It's the whole concept. So you see this in Augustine, for example. At one point, Augustine is basically criticizing the pagan use of images in worship, and he's saying they're not alive. So we don't pray to them because they can't hear us. and then he anticipates that someone will lay the same charge against the church because of the physical objects used for the sacraments. He says, but it will be said, we also have very many instruments and vessels made of materials or metal of this description for the purpose of celebrating the sacraments, which being consecrated

by these ministrations are called holy, in honor of him who is thus worshipped for our salvation. and what indeed are these very instruments or vessels but the work of men's hands? Now, listen to how Augustine counters the charge. He says, but have they mouth and yet speak not? Have they eyes and see not? Do we pray unto them? Because through them we pray unto God? This is the chief cause of this insane profanity

that the figure resembling the living person which induces men to worship it hath more influence in the minds of these miserable persons than the evident fact that it is not living so that it ought to be despised by the living. So it's this whole idea of figural representation that the non-living thing is a point of mediation or transmission to the living that Augustine is opposing. Now, as you keep pushing forward through phase two, you continue to find where the boundary is crossed into idolatry, into praying to images, venerating images, anything like that, as opposed to other usages of images, commemorative, decorative, didactic usages of images, that there's opposition and people are saying, be careful, don't do this, phloxinus, he's a bishop in Hieropolis

in the 5th and 6th centuries. He talks about, it's interesting, they're not always destroying the images. What they'll often do, like for him, he'll say the images of angels, he destroys, but the images of Christ or images of the Holy Spirit depicted as a dove, he'll simply hide because he's concerned about them being venerated or worshipped. And you can see the discussion. There's a great book by a scholar named Mango, who has lots of examples of these. If you want to get more, I'll go into more of those in my book. But here's the thing that we want to emphasize. It's mainly the cultic usage. So in this period, you don't have as many rigorous. After you're Zibius. You don't have many rigorous. The basic position that comes to predominate seems to be images are acceptable for didactic or aesthetic purposes.

That's fine to have images in churches that can be useful, but you don't adore them, you don't venerate them, you don't bow down with them, you don't pray to them, etc. This can be seen in a very important flashpoint in the year 600 when Gregory I, Gregory I, the great, Bishop of Rome, is writing a letter to another bishop named Serenus, and this bishop has been an iconoclast in the sense of destroying, physically destroying the images. Here's how Gregory responds. It has come to our ears that your fraternity, seeing certain adorers of images, broke and threw down these same images in churches.

And we commend you indeed for your zeal against anything made with hands being an object of adoration. But we signify to you that you ought not to have broken these images. For pictorial representation is made use of in churches for this reason, reason, that such as are ignorant of letters may at least read by looking at the walls what they cannot read in books. Your fraternity, therefore, should have both preserved the images and prohibited the people from adoration of them, to the end that both those who are ignorant of letters might have wherewith to gather a knowledge of the history, and that the people might by no means sin by adoration of a pictorial representation. Hopefully that's clear. There's a

another later where he maintains the same position. He's basically saying, don't destroy the images because they serve a didactic purpose. They're for teaching, especially for the illiterate. But also, don't adore the images or anything made with human hands. The contrast for Gregory is not between worship versus veneration. It's between adoration and teaching. You use the images for teaching, not for adoring. Jensen gives a helpful summary of the significance of this anecdote. The exchange between Gregory and Serenus. The exchange between Gregory and Serenus shows that the Christian problem with holy images is far more complicated than simply a matter of general disapproval of pictorial art. It also gives a more nuanced view of the gradual but inexorable inclusion of iconography in Christian worship spaces.

Narrative images were never an evident problem, and so were accepted from the beginning. The emergence of saints' portraits in the fourth and early fifth centuries posed new problems, insofar as these eventually came to be regarded as objects of veneration and a widely accepted component of Christian devotional practice. Okay, when does that happen? When do they start to become venerated? Well, as we've said, the general consensus, 6th and 7th century, that's after Gregory, writing there in the year 600.

But, and again, an intermediate step is the veneration of relics there. And it's a messy process. You know, you're not going to say it's like one day it just happens. Let me read how Brubaker and Haldon summarized this process of development. They say, holy portraits did not carry the same range of meanings in late antiquity as they did in the Byzantine Middle Ages, and their significance changed profoundly over the course of the 6th, 7th, and 8th centuries. By the year 800, the icon could serve as an intermediary between the viewer and the holy person represented. This was not the case around the year 400, nor even around the year 600.

It was only in the seventh century that all the features we now associate with holy portraits fell into place and only in the eighth and ninth that they were codified. Again, you have to understand this is messy, it's not neat and tidy. And it's interesting, many prominent churches remain altogether and iconic, even during this time. At one point, Richard Price describes how during the reign of Constantine the 5th, so this is 8th century. Even at this time, he says there were some prominent and iconic churches that lacked even, even, decorate frescoes or mosaics. I think that says decorative frescoes or mosaics, including Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. Likewise, the an iconic churches of Cappadocia are likely to be even later than the 9th century triumph of orthodoxy. So it's not like there's just one turning

point. It's a gradual process. Let's talk about that process. Let's talk about phase three briefly. I know there's been a longer video, but believe me when I tell you what I'm about to share with you now if you've been bored. It is as grisly and dramatic as you can imagine. I have a sentence in my book where I say, the story of the iconoclast controversy is a story of tongues cut out, noses sawed off, eyes gouged out, skulls turned into drinking bowls, castration, torture, and family members betraying one another to death. And I'm not exaggerating when I say that, all of those. The only one of those that, you know, is not between the iconophiles and the the icon of jewels was that the skull turned to a drinking ball. That was one of the emperors that was done at the

hands of the bulgars. But still, all of these other things, it's as brutal as you can imagine. You know, one emperor is an iconoclast, so now he's torturing the iconophile priests. The next emperor is an iconophile, so now he's mutilating the iconoclast monks back and forth, the seesaw power struggle, back and forth like that. This is why, so when we refer to Nicaea II as an Ecumenical Council. The criteria for how you tell which councils are ecumenical, that's a notoriously difficult question. For our purposes here, we don't need to resolve that. I'll speak of it as an ecumenical council, but let me just clarify for people to understand that we don't mean by ecumenical council. That's a technical term. It doesn't mean what is the on-the-ground consensus of the church

at that time. Nicaea too was as vicious and as political and as back and forth as it gets. After 787, and there's a further lengthy wave and brutal under Theophilus, wave of iconic chasm in the 9th century. And then you've got the Western churches, a lot of them resisting, as I'll talk about in a second. The individual responsible for convoking Nicaeatu is Empress Irene. Fascinating figure. For a while, she's kind of co-ruling with her son, Constantine the 6th, and then eventually she takes over. She has his eyes gouged out, sends him to prison where he dies. again, I'm telling you, this is as dark and grisly as you can imagine. That's her own son. Her motives are very political. I won't go give you a documentation on that. I go into it a lot

in the book. Basically, it's universal in the scholarship. So she's seeking political advantage to convoke an ecumenical council. Before Irene, iconoclasm seems to have gotten the upper hand. You've got these long reigns of two iconoclasts emperors, Leo the third and Constantine the fifth. And in 754, there's a large council, the council of Hyaria, attended by 338 bishops. That's a big council. That's twice the size of Constantinople 1, for example, an ecumenical council. More than that. And this is condemning the iconophile position on Christological grounds. It's basically arguing that images of Christ tend to either separate his human and divine natures, leading to Nestorianism or confuse them, leading to monophysitism.

And in the definition of hyauria, which is preserved for us in the acts of Nicaea 2, the bishops are saying, no, it's the Eucharist, that is the image of Christ, not icons. And then for non-Christological images, they're saying they're just pagan, and they're saying they're demonic. So that's hyaria, a big council. Hyaria had claimed to be an ecumenical council. Now, the bishops at Nicae two are going to say, no, no, no, hiaria was not ecumenical. because it didn't have representation from the five major patriarchates of the early church,

the so-called Pentarchy, Rome, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria. But the problem is, neither did Nicaea, too. The supposed legates from the east were not actually representing the Eastern patriarchs, and that's acknowledged now pretty widely. Richard Price talks about that, and then he says, the Oriental Patriarchs did not know the decrees of Nicaa II and presumably did not recognize it as the seventh council. And indeed, for centuries afterward, Nicaa II was not added to the list of ecumenical councils in Syria, Palestine. Now, there's a lot I could go into in terms of the sheer politics that drove Nicaa II. But here's what I'll do for the sake of time. I go into it more in the book,

is I want to talk about the Western reaction, because I think it's a helpful lens to see how contentious this was and some of the problems. Because in the West, the Carolingian theologians in the West are just appalled. There's one named Theodulf of Orleon, who in 790, a few years after Nicaea 2, produces this massive works, hundreds of pages, just scathing critique, attacking, venerating icons. And then Charlemagne, in 794, convokes another very large council, the Council of Frankfurt, which is also very much opposed to Nicaa II. But it's a little different from Hyaria. The essential Western position is that art is acceptable for decorative or commemorative purposes, but it should not be worshipped or bowed down to, and it should neither be destroyed nor mandated. This is really

interesting and helpful to understand this. Thomas Noble, great scholar who's written a book on the Western reaction to Nicaea II among the Frankish theologians in the West, he calls this the principle of principled indifference. And this was a particular point of emphasis within Frankish theology. What they're saying is so reprehensible about Nicaea, too, is its insistence upon the necessity of venerating icons at the risk of anathema. Okay, here's how Theodolf put it. It is one thing to have images for fear of oblivion and another to have them for love of ornament, one thing for will, another for need. The Carolingian theologians had a lot of, of other problems with Nicaa II as well. They noted the abundance of forged, spurious, and apocryphal

documents upon which Nicaa two depended. Some of these were obvious. Some of them have been uncovered only more recently. But some of these were obvious even at the time. These are not legitimate documents. Like one example of this would be the supposed letters from Jesus to King Agbar of Odessa. Everybody at the time kind of knew. That's not real. That's a forgery. In the book, I give some more examples. Another concern from the Council of Frankfurt was the strained employment of Scripture at Nicaea II. In the acts of the second session of Nicaeatou in Pope Hadrian's letter, which the bishops approved, you find appeals like this. When making his great announcement of the coming of our Redeemer in the incarnation of the very Son of God,

he recommends the worship of his face according to the dispensation of his manhood by saying, I shall seek, O Lord, your face. And later, all the wealthy of the people will supplicate your face. And again, the light of your face is stamped upon us, O Lord. Now, that's Psalm 26, 8, Psalm 44, 14, and Psalm 4.7. The Western theologians, probably like most of us today, in reading through the Acts of Nicaea, too. And I had many moments like this reading through, I'm just like, seriously, that's not about icon veneration. You know, when the Psalms talk about seeing the face of God. So here's how later Protestants will do the same thing. I'll just make fun of this. Here's how Martin Keminetz put it. He said, surely if some satirist had wanted to attack the teaching

of the papalists about images wittily and to set it forth to be ridiculed, he could not have adduced scripture more ridiculously. There's a lot of misuse of scripture. There's also misuse of the fathers. The big one is one I've mentioned several times already from Basel. There's a statement that the honor shown to the image is transmitted to the prototype. That was foundational. That was a linchpin for the theology of Nicaea II. In context, it has nothing to do with icon veneration. That statement is a theological argument about the Trinity, the father and the son, drawn from the analogy of the emperor and his image on a coin, for instance. So the term image is often equivocated upon by the bishops at Nicaea 2.

Perhaps the most pervasive problem with the argumentation at Nicaea 2 that the Council of Frankfurt draws attention to is just the lack of patristic support. So Richard Price talks about this. He uses the term the golden age to refer to the period between Nicaa 1 and the Council of Chalcedon, 325 to 4.51. And he says, the real problem for the iconophile cause lay in the poverty of support for their cause, even in the Golden Age of the Fathers, in a context of a debate that treated the fathers of the Golden Age as the primary authority, it was a serious weakness in the iconophile cause,

that no single passage from any of these fathers gave an explicit stamp of approval to such veneration. Mike Humphreys notes the same thing. He talks about the Florilegium. They came up with at Nicaea, too, basically a list of patristic citations. What strikes a neutral reader of Nicaea's Floralegium is the relative posity of its evidence. The compilers could not find any church fathers explicitly supporting icons. So opposition lasts in the West for a long time. It's not like just immediately after Frankfurt it dissipates. This more moderate Western position that icons should be neither destroyed nor venerated. It was maintained at a council in Paris in 825. That's during the second wave of iconicalism, 9th century. And then throughout the 9th century, this is a live issue.

There's another person from Orlean, Jonas, who's writing a text responding to the iconoclast actions of a bishop named Claudius. There's debate about this rumbling on. It stopped till 880, more than a century after Nicaea 2, that there's an official recognition by Rome of the ecumenical status of Nicaa 2. But the more interesting thing is, on the ground, there are centuries of resistance to the practice. And Martin Kemnitz talks about this in Germany, places like this. it's illegal to adore images in certain regions of Germany into the 1,100s, mid-12th century. It's only in 1140 that it becomes a part of canon law in the West. So, third section of the video.

Now we step back and we ask, what's the overall biblical interpretation of what is happening here? The first thing to note is that throughout Scripture, idolatry is presented as the continual temptation of the people of God. nothing throughout the Old Testament is warned against more frequently and more urgently. Idolatry evidently is not the kind of sin that one simply needs to be informed of on one occasion, and then you're good. It seems to be a subtle, constantly encroaching danger. And you can see that in the fact that throughout the Old Testament, God's people continually fall into idolatry. This is one way of summarizing the entire story of the Old Testament. The people of Israel get ensnared. by the encroaching idols of the surrounding nations over and over and over.

From the golden calf in the book of Exodus to the lurid images of spiritual prostitution and the later prophets, this is one way of putting the whole story together. And then you've got the good kings like Hezekiah, Josiah, and others, and one of the things they're praised for is their iconic chasm, tearing down the images. Josiah's activity in 2nd Kings 2315 is a good example of this. It says the altar at Bethel, the high place erected by Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin. That altar with the high place, he pulled down and burned, reducing it to dust. He also burned the ashura.

This is portrayed positively in the text. It's good to destroy these. Humphreys puts it like this. The Hebrew Bible is stridently, repeatedly, unavoidably, anti-idolatory, and pro- idol destruction. Now, I'm not really making an argument yet. I'm just setting the background context. as we start to turn to church history, a conscience that is informed by the testimony of the Old Testament is already going to be wondering, well, will the people of God fall into idolatry in the new covenant era

as they did in the old, or is that going to change? Now, what people will, of course, want to say is that it's not idolatry to venerate icons. This is different, and this is where the distinction between worship and veneration comes in. Let me interact with that a little bit, because my concern is that this distinction is completely alien to both scripture and to the consciousness of the early church. When the scripture boughs, condemns bowing to images, it does not ever make that or any comparable qualification. It's the act of bowing down that is part of what is condemned in scripture. The second commandment, but many other passages. Here's Leviticus 261. It says, you shall not make idols for yourselves or erect an image or pillar, and you shall not set up a figured stone

in your land to bow down to it for I the Lord. I am the Lord your God. So what people will say is, well, people say various things. One of the things people will try to say is, yeah, but these commandments were just against the pagan images, not necessarily against all images. But that very distinction is nowhere in the text. Moreover, as with the early Christian apologists, it's precisely the invisibility of the one true God that forms the basis for the prohibition of images. For example, in Deuteronomy 4, it says, therefore watch yourselves very carefully, since you saw no form on the day that the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves in the form of any figure,

the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, etc., etc., etc. etc. The worship versus veneration distinction is not visible in scripture with respect to the use of images. Nowhere do you get the idea that it's saying, thou shalt not bow down to images unless, of course, you're venerating them. Then it's fine. That distinction is a later innovation. The metaphor I like to use to describe this is imagine a husband and wife living in a culture where kissing is a form of cultural greeting. and the wife is jealous for her husband's affections. She says, I don't want you to be like the other people out there. Don't ever kiss other women.

And she says this repeatedly to him. Later, when it's discovered that he is frequently kissing other women, he replies, oh, but it's just a kiss of friendship, not a kiss of romance. The wife would justifiably feel that this distinction is simply a way of getting around her request, because the request was simply about kissing per se. and no such distinction was on the table at the time. Similarly, God's commandments simply prohibit bowing down to images as such, and there's no distinction between worship and veneration, one kind of bowing to images versus another that's visible in connection to those commandments of God.

Now, this is not to say that the distinction between worship and veneration or other forms of respect has no validity in any context. When a knight bows down to a king, for example, This can be an act of homage, not an act of idolatry. Bowing down to people has a different range of meanings throughout different human cultures, and it occurs in many places of the Bible. But that is disanalogous to an ongoing liturgical act of veneration directed to non-living objects. Here's how this was put at the Council of Frankfurt. It is one thing to adore a man that is to greet him with the duty of a salutation

and with the obeisance of politeness and reverence. It is another to adore a picture. For, that we should show brotherhood, love, and reverence toward our neighbors. We are taught by examples of Scripture, but we are expressly forbidden to adore or to greet images. And they quote the Second Commandment there. And that's true that you find examples in Holy Scripture of people bowing down to other people. You never find examples of people bowing down to non-living objects in this liturgical act of reverence. Now, some people argue that you do, and they appeal to things like the bronze servant

and the Ark of the Covenant. So let's deal with that. The temple iconography, for example, that exists in the Old Testament. I'm amazed at how frequently people will appeal to this without addressing the elephant in the room. That is, it's not venerated. The cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant, you don't have Israelites coming in and regularly lighting candles beneath them, kissing the cherubim, bowing down, falling prostate before the Ark of the Covenant as some distinct act of veneration toward the Ark as opposed to the worship given to God or something like that. There's nothing like that. Some people try to read that into Joshua's falling down before the Ark in Joshua 7, verse 6. But this is an act of mourning in response to a military defeat. It's not a continual religious practice

of venerating the ark. If Joshua's falling down before the ark is a proof text for icon worship or veneration, we could just as easily insist that David's dancing before the ark in 2. Samuel 6, 14, and 15 is a proof text for ritual dancing before images as an obligatory part of Christian worship. You can't use a one-off event like this to support an ongoing practice when the one-off event is occasioned by a very specific set of circumstances, especially when the text itself never talks about the ark being the specific object of veneration, as opposed to it being the occasion for mourning before God, since the ark represents the presence of God.

There are just no examples of people venerating the ark. I've even seen people try to appeal to Psalm 995 as a support, which says, exalt the Lord our God, worship at his footstool, holy as he. because the Hebrew verb here means to bow down, and people say the footstool means the arc, so people are saying, oh, you can translate it as bow down to his footstool, i.e. bow down to the ark, rather than bow down at his footstool. Now, grammatically, you could render it like that, but my gosh, even if you say, okay, fine, let's say the footstool is the Ark of the Covenant here, every modern

translation I can find and every commentary I consult always remember. renders it at his footstool, this is simply designating the ark as the location at which God is worshipped. Just like in verse 9, the same parallel construction is used. Exalt the Lord our God and worship at His holy, for the Lord our God is holy. If you think verse 5 means arc veneration, then verse 9 means mountain veneration. Beyond that, if you want to say this is a proof text for venerating the ark, you have to disrupt the parallelism in verse 5. So we've got bowing down, meaning two different things in the two halves of the parallelism, one veneration, the other worship. You also have to change the phrase, holy is he, at the end of verse five, to holy is it.

But the exact same phrase occurs in verse three, holy as he, where it clearly refers to God. So bottom line is you have to kind of mangle the text. It's like, do you really think this is plausible that's sandwiched into this verse, talking about the worship of God, is this oblique? little reference that we were supposed to pick up on that somehow every Christian missed out on for the first several hundred years of church history. It's just, efforts like this seem to me to prove not the thing in question, but rather the desperation of the cause of trying to prove the thing in question that people would appeal to a verse like that. If the Israelites as a liturgical act

regularly venerated the Ark of the Covenant, why don't we see that? Is it too much to ask that there'd be some mention of it somewhere, especially in light of the fact that would seem to go against other commandments? The ark represented the place of God's special presence among his people is where God speaks to Moses. It holds special objects like the tablets of the law, other objects that have a special role of signification. Aaron's staff is to be put there, quote, to be kept as a sign for the rebels in number 17. And quote, over its lid, the mercy seat, was sprinkled on the day of atonement ritual, this typified Christ's death. In other words, the Ark of the Covenant had a special symbolical purpose among the people of God, and it was built

at the commandment of God. There's a big difference between iconography that's commanded by God for purposes of symbolism, warning, instruction, and commemoration, versus iconography that's never commanded by God for a purpose, namely veneration that is expressly against God's commandments. Now on top of all that, there's another problem. That is, the ark represented God's presence. So even if you wanted to say the Israelites venerated the ark, that still would not justify the veneration of icons of Mary, saints, people like that. What about the bronze serpent? Here's another one where it backfires, because first of all, it's a unique one-off event. Second of all, it's not venerated. Over and over, these things are appealed to that are not venerated. But the biggest

problem is it was destroyed by Hezekiah, and he's praised for destroying it precisely because it had become a snare to his people. Second Kings 184, Hezekiah removed the high places and broke the pillars and cut down the Asherah, and he broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses has made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it. So, you know, this is a great example of what Protestants think happened. Something good happens, and then people start to idolize it in various ways. And Hezekiah is praised for destroying it. Okay, to finish off, let me address a couple of other objections on this third section about the biblical teaching about icons. Some will say, they'll try to make it sound less problematic by saying,

oh, but wouldn't you kiss the Bible? However, although kisses can be an expression of veneration, they're not always an expression of veneration. They can be an expression of affection or respect, or even in some cultures, greeting, you know, friendship. So if a Christian, you know, Christian were to kiss a Bible that's not necessarily venerative, especially if it's not a ritual practice in the context of worship. Basically, Christians should treat physical objects like Bibles or crosses or religious art with respect and with affection, but that's not the same as venerating them, seeing them as channels to heaven requiring such a practice on the pain of anathema. Now, another thing people do is they try to frame icon veneration as an implication of the goodness of

creation and above all of the incarnation, as though the iconoclast concern is somehow Gnostic. People do this over and over. This is simply rhetoric. There is no difference with respect to our affirmation of the goodness of creation or the incarnation. We fully agree on that. From neither principle does it follow that we should specifically bow down to non-living images. That just does not logically follow from the goodness of creation or from the incarnation. And the early church is an example of that. Okay. Here's the ultimate Protestant concern on this third point is that I think there's a naivety about how idolatry can sneak in. In actual practice, if you imagine a person who's bowing down before a statue of Mary outside of a church asking for forgiveness, or a woman who's lighting candles

and kneeling before an icon of the Apostle John nightly in her home. Is there any Christian anywhere in the first 500 years of church history who would not conclude that that is idolatry. Externally, it looks the same. And internally, it's extremely hard to know when that line is crossed in the human heart. In the heart of a person engaging like this, is it not easy for feelings of loyalty and hope and affection and trust to sneak in being given to this creature that should only be given to the creator? Given the dire mentality of scripture regarding idolatry, Why are such practices not more concerning? For Protestants, this is just really strange to us.

Now, I know people say, no, no, no, you're thinking of it wrong. It's not that bad. Well, look, I don't know anyone's heart. I don't judge like this person or that person. I don't know when idolatry is happening. But here's what I do know. I read through the acts of Nicaea too, and I notice that the prayers being commended there

to saints via images are best are begging for forgiveness, assurance, and salvation from the saint. So, like, here's an example. This is a forged passage, miscited as though Basel said this. He said, I also accept the Holy Apostles, prophets, and martyrs, and in supplication to God, I invoke them, that through them, or rather through their intercessions, God, in his benevolence, may be merciful to me, and that a ransom may be made and given for my offenses. I therefore also honor and venerate the figures of their images.

Now, why would we not be worried about idolatry when the very particular benefits perceived to be received in connection with the veneration of and prayer to icons are precisely those things that the gospel teaches us we already have straight from the hand of Christ. We don't need another ransom. We don't need another propitiation. We don't need another source of assurance of salvation. We have that fully through Jesus Christ, through simple faith in His gospel. So I get to a point where I say, my gosh, if these prayers being commended in the acts of Nicaea too are not idolatry, I simply don't know what is. So basically, in other words, to sum up point three here, what I'm saying is there's just

no biblical support for icon veneration, and therefore its intrusion into the church over time must be interpreted as happens in the Old Testament, the creeping intrusion of idolatry. Now, does this mean that church died? No, we're always told that if we criticize something that happens, we're, means the church died? No. Did the people of God die in the Old Testament when they committed idolatry? When they fell into idolatry? Did God's purposes fail? No. Were God's promises to Israel unraveled? No. They simply needed reform like happens under Hezekiah and Josiah and others. So we believe for the church today. All right. And let me conclude by summarizing to put a fine point on it.

Cardinal Newman famously stated that to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant. We hear this quote a lot. The fact is that when it comes to this issue, the veneration of icons, to be deep in history, necessitates being Protestant. It is to cease to be Roman Catholic or to cease to be Eastern Orthodox. The witness of the early church is unanimously and resoundingly opposed to this practice, in complete consistency with the witness of Scripture. And yet, the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which both the Roman Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox traditions regard as infallible, casts anathemas widely and liberally.

on all who abstain from this practice or even knowingly communicate with those who do. That's not doctrinal development. That's doctrinal U-turn. The Seventh Ecumenical Council reversed the view of the early church. What was once prohibited with shock and indignation now became required by anathema. Unfortunately, those traditions that consider Nicaea 2 to represent infallible teaching can't reform it because by definition, that which is infallible is irreparable. So the Protestant tradition offers us a way to be, number one, deep in history, to live consistently with the practice of the early church,

as well as that of later contexts like the Council of Frankfurt, for example. It also allows us to obey the Second Commandment, and there are no anathemas that we are required to adhere to. Therefore, the Protestant position of rejecting Nicae II is the position that is deep in history as well as more. biblical and lowercase C Catholic. That's my case. I hope it is helpful for people who are reviewing this issue and I welcome interaction and comments in the comments but let's keep it charitable and keep it focused on the argument. Bring your argument but let's

try to keep it charitable. All right thanks for watching everybody. Hope this is helpful. Don't forget to like the video share it and subscribe. God bless.