Truth Unites - The BEST and WORST Responses to my Icons Video

Episode Date: February 18, 2023

In this video I work through the best and worst responses to my video on venerating icons, identifying 5 arguments we need to leave behind, and then 3 we need to keep exploring. 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/

It's been awesome to see a lot of the response videos to my video on icon veneration. I think I've counted somewhere like 15 or 20 somewhere in there. So I'm grateful for that reception, grateful for people giving this topic some attention. I've done two responses already, one focusing more on an Eastern Orthodox view that allows for less doctrinal development, or really, in this case, not really much of any. And that's interfacing with Craig Trugglia. People could watch out that video. And then I responded to two Roman Catholic apologists, Trent Horn, Jimmy Aiken, who do allow

for more doctrinal development. So people might be interested in those videos. I can't respond to all of them. And as I've mentioned, I'm traveling this week, got a lot going on. But I wanted to target eight of the responses that are most common, not to close down discussion in this, but to clarify the target, try to move things forward. A lot of the responses have been really great. You know, I think of Eric Ybarra's Facebook posts.

I always enjoy reading these and seeing his thoughts, even where we disagree. he's trying so carefully to challenge his own side to be to be fair and I appreciate that and so many others do the Catholic brothers had a really good strong video response and there's been others as well you know there are some issues involved in this debate that are complicated enough that we're going to be talking for a while that's one thing that you know honestly in ecumenical engagement patience is needed it takes a long time to work through these things however there are are other responses that are more aggressive. They're obviously trying to discredit me and kind of triangulate me and make it seem like I'm being dishonest or they'll even say I'm being dishonest.

And so there are some responses that as well that I want to protest and argue we should leave behind. So what I want to do is target five responses that are like that, that I think we just need to move beyond. There is not helpful. And then three, where we need to keep exploring and do further work. So this is just one volley in the larger conversation, keeping things going, keeping things moving. First is the question of how I use scholarship and whether I'm being dishonest. You'll recall that in my opening video, I explained that I referenced the scholarship, by the way, coming over a cold and I got a new microphone. I have no idea how this is going to sound. Hopefully it'll sound better, but my throat is off, so forgive me. Hope that won't be a distraction.

But you'll recall, in my opening video, I had made reference to the scholarship and basically said, you know, people will accuse me I've gotten used to. It's funny. I think because I'm a little bit more out there off of the ledge, you know, that not a ton of Protestants are doing this stuff. Sometimes people respond to me in very strong ways. There's lots of gracious, wonderful people in these other traditions. And then there are some people who do attack you. And it's interesting to me. It's kind of a fascinating sociological experiment, putting myself out there and then just trying to gauge, you know. So I've learned to anticipate a lot of the less than kind responses and how people will react. So what I mentioned is if I mentioned the scholarship, people accuse me of being elitist and making an appeal to authority. If I don't, people dismiss me more easily. So what I did is I went through the scholarship and then I posed the question, well, why does the scholarship say that? And that served as a springboard into the primary sources. Now, the reason I referenced the scholarship is because it's harder for people to triangulate and dismiss me when I do so. Because basically the question that comes up, obviously, is if Gavin is being

dishonest to just pick and choose things and he's selective and prejudicial in how he's conveying the data so that he's giving a false representation, why is every other leading scholar also dishonest in the exact same way, including the secular and Roman Catholic scholars? In my video, I had referenced Price, Richard Price, a Roman Catholic priest who translated the acts of Nicaea II. He says, iconoclasm is a rare view today, but still he's honest about the evidence, and I had referenced his statement that 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. And I had mentioned that Price's view is entirely representative of the general scholarly consensus. I talked about the 2021 Brill book, My Comfrey's excellent introductory essay, which references the long scholarly tradition, dating the rise of the icon from relative obscurity to ubiquity to the sixth and seventh centuries. And then I discussed within that general time frame, two different schools of thought, the older view of Ernst Kitzinger, that icon veneration arose within the Byzantine empire beginning in the second half of the sixth century during the reign of Justinian I, that's 527 to 565, it starts to happen towards the end of his reign. He says the late 6th and 7th centuries saw the rise of a new kind of piety expressing itself

in a vastly increased use of images in worship and in devotional practices. The ground had been prepared in the preceding centuries by the use of commemorative portraits on the one hand and by ceremonial representations with their majestic central figures of the deity on the other. Now these central figures were put before the worshipper in stark isolation as a statue of a god or goddess had been in a Greek temple. I'd quoted Peter Brown. I won't quote him. I've got so many of these quotes. I'll just reference. So that's one view. Then there's the revisionist view, represented by Leslie Brubaker, John Heldon, and many others. And they basically date the emergence of image veneration in the church to about 680, 680, with a few possible exceptions earlier in the

7th century, and they conclude, the iconic class of 754 were right when they condemned image veneration as an innovation that ran counter to the venerable traditions of the church. Holy portraits were not new, but their magnified role was an ongoing contemporary development, and their veneration was a recent phenomenon. So all to say, I would like to, how do you say this, except just to say it, encourage the uncharitable critics who say that I'm presenting a skewed portrait of the historical development to reckon with the fact that that would be pretty conspiratorial, because I could quote many, many, many other scholars all saying the exact same time frame. The debate is about the details. Is it seventh or sixth century? How many iconophile in terms? How many iconophile in terms of

do we have in these texts? That's the debate in the scholarship. Now, the reason I quote the scholarship is not to say you have to agree with the scholarship. Dismiss them all. That's fine. Make your case. But what you can't do is just say that I'm misrepresenting the data because then you have to explain, well, why is every other leading scholar on this as well? And so my reference to the scholarship is a way to protect myself from those from being triangulated. Like this is a Gavin Hortland issue. What I'm said in my initial case is just standard fair. That's why I say there's such a curious gap between scholarship and popular level knowledge of this topic. So apologies again for my voice. Man, it sounds weird to me. I hope it doesn't out there. But the point is this first response that I'm being dishonest or misrepresentative. I would like to encourage people just to put that to bed. That is just so off. All I'm saying is just standard stuff. Okay. The second response that I have a concern about is people who move the goalposts. This happens over and over again.

These are not the best responses, but these are things we just get beyond so we can get to the best responses, which I'll mention is the last three of this. I had belabored this point in my introductory video that the issue at hand is the cultic use of images. Okay, sometimes I just want to say these words 10 times over and over and over and over

because it's just like clockwork. Even when you call it out as the first most emphatic part of your video, people still do it. Okay, cultic use of images. That's the target. That's the issue here. That means bowing down, prostrating before, and or praying through the image to the prototype. That is the issue. And so, but nonetheless, inevitably, there are so many of the responses, not all, but many of them will shift the target to something else. The biggest one is just general use of

images. And this is obviously problematic because there are so many uses of images other than veneration, other than a cultic use. Gregory the Great's emphasis in the year 600 all the way then is still on didactic use. The contrast for him is didactic use versus adoration. But then people want to restrict it to just those too. So they want to say, oh, so you're saying the images were just used didactically? No, I mentioned commemorative, didactic, and decorative uses, and then I also talked about aesthetic uses as well. All of those would fit well with the earliest art that we do find starting in the third century, which tends to be narrative art rather than portraiture art. That fits really well with like a didactic purpose, for example, or a commemorative.

So, but no matter how many times you point this out, people will still go back to the paintings on the tombs, the catacombs, the temple iconography, all these things that are not used in a cultic manner, or they'll assume they were used in a cultic manner rather than argue for that. If you want to argue, like people will argue from Joshua 7 that there was a liturgical practice of arc veneration. Well, fine, then we talk about that and I addressed that in my video, but so often people just assume that, and it's moving the goalposts from cultic use of images, other use of images. The other thing, though, people do this in other ways, too. They'll try to shift the conversation to other usages of images like, you know, specific ideas about

the cultic use of images. So saying that the deity resides in the image or the specific use of pagan images, all kinds of things like this. And then on that basis, they say that I'm overstating my case when I talk about it being resounding and unanimous that the early church is against cultic use of images. If you keep with the target, cultic use of images, it is resounding, unanimous, as vigorous as anything in the Antinic church that the church opposes and condemns that, the cultic use of images. At least to the third response that I hear that I would like to protest, and that's what I'm going to call evasive hermeneutics. This is when people come along and say, and this relates to what I just said, they'll say, oh, it's just the pagan use of images

that the Christians were condemning. And this response kind of reminds me of when people say, the Bible isn't against homosexuality. What it's against is just exploitative homosexual relationship. or some specific kind of homosexual behavior or relationship. And this is just a major problem because it's just so at odds with the texts themselves. You have to read it into the text. The text themselves don't make that distinction. It's not what they say, nor is it possible to read them in that way consistently. So just to work through some examples to show this,

imagine that the claims of Nicaea II were true, that icon veneration was the ancient legislation of the church, that icon veneration was the faith of the apostles. Christians bowed down to and prayed through images to their prototypes in the second century, fourth century, sixth century, etc. That's the tradition of the apostles. And all that Christians opposed was just the pagan use of images around them. Okay. On that hypothesis, is can we make sense of the actual texts in question? Why is Christian worship routinely criticized for its lack of images? The first source that I cited was the North African Apologist Marcus Menusius Felix. There's a dialogue that he wrote called Octavius. And basically

in the dialogue, as I quoted, the Christians are being accosted for worshiping in a way that has no images. For why do they endeavor? That's the Christians endeavor. with such pains to conceal and to cloak whatever they worship, since honorable things always rejoice in publicity while crimes are kept silent. Why have they no altars, no temples, no acknowledged images? It goes on and talks about Judaism, how Judaism did, but the Christians don't. It's amazing. And then Octavius is responding and defending this on the basis of the nature of God, the doctrine of God, the omnipresence of God. This is not at all exceptional. This is why I find it so funny when people they're trying to, some of these videos, they're trying to cast suspicions upon me and make it seem like

I'm sloppy in my scholarship or something like that. And they're trying to pick this little quote or that little quote. I'm like, there's so many like this that we could quote. Clement of Alexandria was another one. People are trying to say, I'm taking them out of context and things. I'm like, you could get a dozen other quotes just from Clement alone that are to the same effect. And the contrast is not between the right use of images in worship versus the wrong. use of images in worship. It's again, it's between having images in worship and not having images in worship. And trying to get around that, you just have to mangle the texts in question. Same thing with origin and chalcis or celsus. I say celsus. There's this dispute. It's a big conversation, big public dispute between origin and celsus. And same criticism. Christians don't use images

in worship. The criticism is not that they're using images differently than pagans, but that they don't have images. And origin, you know, again, if I, if I give one or two quotes here, people try to pick them apart. And I'm like, well, how thorough do I need to be then? Because there's so many quotes in origin you can give. It's not in dispute that this is his view. And he does root it in the second commandment. And he's saying, like the quote I already gave, it is in consideration of these, that's the second commandment and many other such commands that Christians not only avoid 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 at the most

high God. Now one thing people do is they'll set this other passage in origin where he talks about our images and our altars at odds with this passage as though, well, see, he's not against all images. And what that shows is they have not read that passage in context, go to the few sentences earlier and then the two chapters earlier. And he's saying the temples, Christian temples are our bodies, Christian images, our virtues. He's using the terms altars, same thing. Images, altars, temples as metaphors. Okay, if you want the documentation for that, see my response to Craig Trugly. It's the first point I made. So the other thing people say about origin is they dismiss him, they dismiss Tritian because they're heretics. Here's the thing. Origin could be an atheist,

and it wouldn't matter because we're looking at his historical testimony of Christian worship at the time. Even if origin was an atheist, it's still historically significant. Not that he's saying this is my view, but he's describing Christian worship in his day as not having images. And even Selsus' testimony is significant because Selsus is criticizing Christians for that. And you just go through all these quotes over and over. If the theology of Nicaa 2 had actually been present early on, could Lactantia say there is no religion wherever there is an image? Why would he say that? Why wouldn't he qualify it to say, well, no, no, I'm just talking about that.

the pagan images. Again, it's the same kind of argumentation that people try to use to harmonize homosexual activity with scripture. They're saying, oh, no, no, no, it's evasive. It's reading things into the text. It's just not taking the language at face value. Another way you can see this is with Augustine. This is one of the passages I had referenced where he's talking about Christian instruments and vessels used, for example, in the Lord's Supper or the Eucharist. And basically, he's referencing how the pagans will appeal to that to defend their own worship of images. And Augustine, in responding, 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 love. living. So, you know, he's talking there. That's the implied answer to that question is no. We don't pray to them that way. He's talking about Christian physical objects used in the context of the

sacraments. And he's opposing the whole theology of Nicaea, too, of figural representation through the image to the prototype. This is just another, so, but people will still try to say, oh, no, no, no, no. He's just talking about pagan images. At a certain point, it's impossible to argue against this view. It becomes unfalsifiable because no matter how vigorously the early Christians condemn the cultic use of images, you could always just say, oh, that only applies to pagan practice. And that really is no different from a liberal use of scripture to evade the fact that it does condemn homosexual behavior as such. And the early Christians condemned cultic use of images as such. number four response I want to object to and encourage us to leave behind is what I'm going to call

misframed expectations. So people will say, oh, well, you're saying icons were in present or veneration of icons wasn't present in the early church. Well, where was your Baptist church in the early church? And then they say that you're just poking holes rather than offering a constructive alternative case. This objection misunderstands that we're offering an internal critique of the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church. We're engaging the historical claims of those churches on their own terms. They are saying that Nicaea II is infallible. We're saying, no, it isn't. They're claiming we follow the consensus of the fathers. We're saying, no, you don't. It doesn't follow from that responsive critique that we are maintaining the early church look just like my church.

Here's a parallel kind of argumentation. Imagine if someone said, my theology is the is exactly identical to St. Augustine's and yours is not. I'm with Augustine, you're not. And you replied, how much are you with, are you with Augustine on everything? Are you okay with the damnation of unbaptized babies? Are you okay with the idea that women are less intelligent conversationalists than men? Are you okay with slavery being an acceptable social institution for the fallen world?

Do you believe in dragons and incubi? and they say, oh, so now you're saying you're with Augustine on everything? Are you closer to Augustine than I am? Now your response to that is say, no, I never said that. I'm responding to your claims. The point is no one agrees with Augustine on everything. He's a great father in the faith, but he made errors. And he said things that are regrettable at times, as we all do, because he's not scripture. And it's naive and simplistic to think that we can be totally in line with Augustine. Well, just take that from one figure, Augustine, and extend it out. For Protestants, we view the early church as not similar in every formal appearance to any contemporary church today.

The external forms of the church have changed for every church. And in fact, there's enormous diversity within the early church itself. So we learn from the early church. These are great men and women of God, but it's impossible to try to replicate that exactly. For one thing, we don't live in the Roman Empire. The Roman Emperor had a massive role, convoking, and presiding over virtually all of the ecumenical councils. The Roman Emperor is called the co-ruler with God, so on and so forth. Well, the Roman Empire can go away, the church keeps rolling forward, but it changes massively. We just think, that's one example. There's so many others. We think the church changes significantly throughout church history and no contemporary church looks the same with respect to institutional

expression and outward form. But many churches today share the same substance of faith as the early church. For example, when Muslims have dreams and come to Christ and a church is formed, in which the gospel is believed, people's sins are forgiven, and the sacraments are practiced, we think that can be a true church. What is it that makes it a church? They have Christ, in word and sacrament. That is the Protestant view. You don't have to look the exact same in all the externals. That's not to say the externals are unimportant, but they're not essential to you being actually a part of the one true church. Now you can disagree with that and you can say that's wrong, but it doesn't advance the conversation when people simply say, well, where was the Baptist

Church in the 4th century? This is as naive is asking, well, where's the theology today that's exactly like St. Augustine? The fifth response I want to respond to is this apples and orange to apples to oranges comparison that happens where people say things like, well, you're saying icon veneration is late, but where was the Protestant canon early on? And people have other issues like this that they try to appeal to. Now, there's all kinds of problems with this. One is the whole question with, so people will try to say that, you know, there was no Protestant canon before Jerome. Of course, the whole debate in the literature about the canon is, are the traditions Jerome is working with, Jerome is working with, are these earlier?

and better aligned with apostolic testimony than the traditions that Augustine and others are working with. And so it's not a question of it, starting with Jerome. And by the way, people are so oddly triumphalist about the canon. The shorter canon is well attested in the early church. There's a spectrum of options, but the mainstream option in the east, following the Synod of Laodosia, represented by Gregor Abnazianzianzis, Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, all the way to John of Damascus, is a shorter canon. It's not identical to the Protestant canon because they put in Baruch as a part of Jeremiah, Susanna as a part of Daniel.

They have a few things like that, but they've still got a 22 book canon corresponding to the 22 letters of the Hebrew alphabet. It's very close to the Protestant canon. The vast majority of the Dutero-Canonical books are excluded in that tradition. That's widely represented. So it's false that like Protestants have no historical basis for having a shorter Old Testament canon. But leaving that aside, the fact is that the finalization of the canon and the inauguration of a specific venerative practice are apples and oranges. The process of canonization does not begin in the fourth century. It concludes in the fourth century with respect to the New Testament canon. But it starts right away. Within the New Testament documents themselves, you see, Paul is citing the Gospel of Luke as Scripture. Peter is referencing Paul's

writings as Scripture. And throughout the first several centuries of the Church, there's a core group of texts that are referenced as Scripture, and they're functioning as authoritative scripture independent of any formal church pronouncement. The debate is about the fuzzy edges. So Christians understood, say, in the third century, that the Epistle to the Romans is scripture or that the gospel of Matthew is scripture, so forth. The questions are about like Revelation, Shepherd of Hermas, stuff like that. So there's an obvious difference between a practice concluding in the fourth century and then a practice starting in not even the fourth century, but several centuries after that. All right, those are a couple things that hopefully will move beyond.

Let me address some of the ones that we need to keep exploring, and I'll share my some general thoughts at this point, not in the spirit of closing things down, but in the spirit of hopefully, I don't know, specifying, clarifying, moving things forward a bit. The first is the relation between relics and icons. Because of the lack of evidence for early icon veneration, many people argue for it tangentially by kind of as an implication of relic veneration. And I'm not trying to dismiss this. Okay. This is an interesting idea. Now, I do think there are differences between icons and relics. I think that certainly for the Eastern Orthodox, but also to an extent for other traditions like Roman Catholicism, there are differences. Icons have a very specific role

that isn't totally interchangeable with relics, but let's leave that aside for now. I think the main danger I would like to highlight and kind of protest from my side is equivocation on this term veneration. Because what I see happening is people go to polycarp and then they draw a straight arrow forward. So the reasoning is like, you know, well, look what we have with polycarp. Therefore, relic veneration goes back to the beginning of church history. And then there's an attempt to draw icon veneration out of relic veneration. The thing I want to protest is that there are big differences between how polycarps bones were treated versus what the reformers were eventually facing in the medieval era. The use of relic just, you know, it's not like there's just one way to use relics. It mushrooms up

significantly, especially in late patristic era in some ways and then further in the medieval era. This may be a topic where we can come a little bit closer together today, because many of the excesses are no longer practiced, that were especially bad in the medieval era, and historically, Protestants haven't had problems with venerating relics in the sense of treating them with respect and honor and using them for commemorative purposes, or other purposes, didactic, etc. The historic Protestant concern is that the use of relics spills over into idolatry and superstition. You already see a bit of worries about this in the patristic era, even among the church fathers. You'll find warnings from St. Augustine, for example, that the use of relics goes too far.

People are sometimes thinking, if I'm praying by the tomb of the martyr, then this is going to make my prayers more efficacious and so forth. Things like that mushroom up to great excess in the medieval era. People are thinking that if you have the tooth of a martyr, you can hang this up in the center of the village and this will protect us from the plague. People are thinking that if I get some piece of clothing from this saint, I can hang it over my garden and it will grow better crops. People are thinking that the Eucharist will be more efficacious if it is celebrated at an altar that displays relics. people are making vast pilgrimages, spending huge sums of money to purchase or touch or gaze upon relics, sometimes getting indulgences from them. Sometimes oaths will have a special meaning if you take the oath with reference to a relic and all kinds of other things.

You can see my video on relics and see other examples. Now, not all of that is like official doctrine. So again, this is why I say we can come back together a little bit. But the point is there's clear changes from patristic practice. And the fact is, if you hear nothing else on this, this, what people were doing with polycarps bones is not the same as later. Okay, people are not bowing down to polycarps bones. People are not praying through polycarps bones as a window or mediation of some kind to polycarb himself or something like this. People don't think, well, I'm where polycarps bones are.

Therefore, my prayers are more efficacious, anything like that. So to put it simply, the actual issues that would be relevant to the pointed hand, cultic use of images, those aren't present with polycarp. And any, to my awareness, any early usage of relics like that. This is more commemorative use of relics. They speak of them as immeasurably valuable, but it doesn't have this theology of mediation that comes in later. In the literature, it's typically said that's fourth century. I haven't done, I'm not 100% sure about that. I've looked into it a little bit, but it's been a while.

So my point is there's a danger of equivocation on the word veneration, to where you're talking about what you're doing with polycarp, to then bowing down to images and praying to them. It's not the same thing. And so, you know, if you want to argue from one to the other, that needs to be visible in the argumentation. You can't just act like, whoa, we just got there all of a sudden because relic veneration goes back to the beginning.

Hopefully that makes sense. You also see the equivocation with other examples like in the Bible, the bronze serpent. people argue that simply looking at the bronze servant is one form of veneration. Well, that's ridiculous. It's just, you know, it's like, again, how many times do we have to say it? What the target is is cultic use of images involving things like bowing down, praying through the image to the prototype, etc., etc. So looking at a bronze serpent is not, and I talked about the bronze serpent, it's different in so many ways. The other thing on the topic of relics to address is just from scripture where people try to get this from Paul's handkerchiefs and from Elisha's bones. And again, there's this danger that I'd like to protest and make visible where people will stretch from one thing to another without making that visible.

So when Elisha has his dead body thrown into the sepulchre and there's a resurrection, this was done because there's a marauding band coming at them. And no one was expecting this to happen. After it happened, no one is saying we need to exhum the bones of Elisha, elevate them, parade them around so people can adore them and gaze upon them and honor them with candles and venerate them and invoke them for help and so on and so forth. There's a big difference between like a one-off event like this and a regular liturgical practice and theology, which it's easy to see how it veers off the tracks. Pretty consistently throughout Scripture, the regular practice for treating God's servants when they die is bury them. You see that with Moses, with David, with John the Baptist, with Stephen.

You just bury them in hope of resurrection. You treat their body. with honor. But, you know, again, the massive equivocation that can come in here, when you even just saying treat them with honor, people are going to try to go from one form of veneration to another. So keep that in mind. But that's something we need to keep vetting. And I'd like, that's something we'd like, need to keep talking about is what is the relationship between relics and icons and can you really pivot from one to the other? I think that's problematic, but I think we need to keep talking about it. All right. The second, uh, response that we need to keep working on and is complicated is development of doctrine. And I've addressed this a little bit already. By the way,

some people say, well, it's not doctrinal development. It's cultic development. I think that's true, strictly speaking. But the cultic development is related to doctrinal development. And you can't really talk about cultic development without getting into the principles of doctrinal development. So I don't want to separate those too much. But basically, what I've already said in my response to Aiken and Horn is just looking at Newman's principles for doctrinal development, also what is said of Vatican 1 about doctrinal development, which in my opinion do rule out U-turn theories of development. But what a lot of people say is it just took the early Christians some time to work out the implications of the incarnation. So they're saying this is like,

they're saying it's not a U-turn. It's more like other areas of development. You know, you think of the Trinity and the deity of Christ. There's other things that develop in the early church. My response this is to say this is very different, okay? First, you don't have a resounding and unanimous opposition to the Trinity in the first several hundred years of church history, but more basically, the basic idea is there in the New Testament itself. I would argue that the divinity of Christ is a theme or motif of the New Testament. Christ is frequently worshipped, he's explicitly declared to be God in the epistles. That frequently, that's a thing. That's a thing. that's a theme throughout the epistles. He's crucified because of blasphemy. That's the concern in

Mark 14 and Mark 2 from the beginning of Jesus's ministry to the end. The concern is you're blaspheming because you're acting with divine authority. You're claiming to be able to forgive sins. You're applying Daniel 7 and the divine glory to yourself and the right to judge at the end of history to yourself and so on and so forth. So you've got explicit repeated affirmations that Jesus is God. Thomas bows down, worships him, and says, my Lord and my God. That's just one anecdote. There's so many. So the development in the understanding of both Christology and the Trinity stems out of this foundation. That's different from icon veneration where there simply is no foundation. Okay. Now another challenge here is that people will try to, they'll spin out the

development here in a way that looks like a logical linear progression, but it's not. not neat and tidy in the progression. There's a spectrum of views of an iconism in the early church, but it's not clearly in the direction of becoming more and more open. Some of the more strident expressions of an iconism come later, and already in the third century you have paintings in certain rooms of churches. So I would simply say there's just a spectrum of views, not a clear development. But the key point is this. There's a qualitative difference between venerative use of icons and non-venerative use of icons. Remember, the targeted hand is cultic use of images.

So if we talk about doctrinal development, there's a difference between, you know, one basic idea that is unfolding in the understanding versus crossing a boundary from not venerating icons to now venerating them. That's not a development of one idea. I would argue that's a change from one idea to another. That's honestly how it looks to me.

I think we need to keep talking about this. I want to keep here considering the other side. But it just seems not even any other doctrine, like doctrines that Protestants and Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians agree upon like the Trinity, they're just so different, you know? You're baptizing people in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, right out of the gate,

right there with the Great Commission. The changes that come with like the Trinity are understanding it, but you're not trying to build something where there is no foundation. And with respect to icon veneration, there just is no foundation. It's just not there early on. So, you know, here's what I would say.

People will say, but it's an organic development. Not all organic developments are good. Cancer is an organic development. Lots of things develop in the church that are bad. This is, you know, the fundamental, maybe the fundamental difference between Protestants and other traditions about how we look at church history. It's like you can't just assume that we're, whatever is becoming mainstream over time is necessarily good.

There's a lot of things that are good. I think we could all agree on that in principle, but sometimes we think that's what other traditions are doing. I would put it like this. If anybody applies Newman's sixth criterion of a valid development to this issue, I would say by Newman's criteria alone, this would be what he calls a corruption, a deviation from the apostolic deposit.

The biggest problem with the doctoral development claims seems to me to be it's just ruled out by Nicaea to itself, I read in my last, in my response to Trent Horn and Jimmy Aiken from the climactic conclusion of the seventh session, where, you know, it introduces the anathemas by saying, this is the faith of the apostles. This is the faith of the fathers. This is the faith of the Orthodox. This is the faith that has surpassed, sustain the world. Believing in one God to be praised in Trinity, we kiss the honorable images. May those who do not hold accordingly be anathema. Then they talk about the ancient legislative. of the church. We're following that, but we anathematize those who have intrusive innovations. You know, you get to a point where you're starting to really defend the practice and the theology of Nicaea II by pushing against the whole way of thinking at Nicaa II, because Nicaa II is not arguing for this as a development. Now, you can still find ways to piece it together. You can say, well, these parts of Nicaa II

aren't infallible, the historical claims aren't infallible. I find it hard to disentangle the historical and the theological claims at Nicaea 2 because both seem to come with anathema. Those distinctions are not present in the minds of the bishops or in their language. So I think it's really hard to do. But at any rate, that's the challenge. If you want to say doctrinal development, you have to realize that's not what Nicaa 2 is saying. So you have to find some theory of way of dealing with that. And I think that's a challenge. But that's another area we've got to keep working on. The third and last thing I want to comment on is the relationship between Oriental Orthodox practice and perhaps that of other traditions as well with the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic.

I'm surprised people find this to be such a strong argument. People are saying, oh, you know, this, if Icon veneration was a later accretion, then why would it be present in the Oriental Orthodox Church? And I just, I don't really get this. So I'll put my concern as a question in response. to my awareness, the Oriental Orthodox Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church are basically similar in like 99% of doctrine and worship to give a conservative figure. Even the Christological disputes of the 5th century that mark their split are often seen today as more political and verbal than substantive. These two churches remained geographically close to each other. And so they basically are like in every way as they keep going forward.

The fact that they're not in full communion with each other doesn't mean. that they don't have contact with each other or they start looking really different in every way. So I would flip the question and ask, and I'm sincerely curious why people see this as forceful, why would we expect a divergence when it comes to the cultic use of images? Given the development we see in the 6th and 7th centuries and how images are being used, why would we think that that would only impinge upon one church and not the other? I'm sincerely curious about that. Okay, I'm going to be, I'll wrap it up there.

I'm going to be traveling this week. I'll be checking in, try to read comments when I can. I'm grateful for these discussions, and hopefully this will help target some of the areas where we can keep making progress. Thanks for watching, everybody. Thanks to those who are engaging this topic and this video, especially those who are doing so thoughtfully.

Some people on the other side, I'm honored to interface with and we have these good sharpening interactions. And what else? You like my new microphone? I finally caved in and got the blue Yeti. My other one was giving weird crackling noises, and I just said, let's just do this. So, hopefully it works. I was speaking this weekend at a conference in Santa Clarita, and it was really

a great time with this wonderful church talking about apologetics. And then my voice started to go. My family's been sick continuously for about six months. It's just crazy. It's like as soon as one person gets healthy, you know, when you have five kids that happens. So it's just constant. it. So hopefully in my voice won't be too much of a distraction. But now I'm looking forward to resting. I'll put this out. I'll be gone. Um, and I'll, uh, I probably won't be able to follow up on anything. Once I get back, I have another trip. Then I'm preparing for my debate with Trent Horn on Solo Scripura. So probably nothing more on this for a while for me, but hopefully these will be specific ones. Let me know what you think in the comments. I'll try to read that at least the comments that

get the most number of likes and just see what people are thinking. If there's specific things that I haven't yet addressed, you think I should. All right. Now, I'm officially ended by everybody.