Basil also said that “the idea of the image would be lost were it not to preserve throughout the plain and invariable likeness”.  By that standard any image purporting to show Christ cannot be deemed his image, since we cannot know it preserves “plain and invariable likeness” to him—and since there are as many purported images of Christ as there are artists who make them.

Some have begun to commend retrieving the teachings of Eastern Orthodoxy. Of particular interest is John of Damascus (or Damascene), who is regarded as one of the greatest Eastern teachers. Below is the text of his section on image worship in An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith (available here), intersected by my comments.

Book IV, Chapter 16. Concerning Images.

But since some find fault with us for worshipping and honouring the image of our Saviour and that of our Lady, and those, too, of the rest of the saints and servants of Christ, let them remember that in the beginning God created man after His own image. On what grounds, then, do we shew reverence to each other unless because we are made after God’s image?

Commentary

Man being the image of God is a very different thing from a painting being the image of Man. For Man is the image of God in truth, but his imagehood does not consist in physical similarity, whereas drawn images purport to represent physical likeness but often fail, in that they do not bear a likeness to what they represent. For God’s acts in creation are different in nature and result from Man’s in imagemaking, the former occurring in God’s knowledge, the latter in ignorance: for men do not know Christ’s appearance and must therefore draw him according to their imagination, which means they draw him after their own image. Medieval Europeans drew him like a European, Byzantines like a Greek, and so on. Moreover, respecting a man is very different from worshipping him, the former being commanded by God (Lev. 19:18) and the latter forbidden (Lk. 4:8). And as Man, the work of God, is greater than art, the work of Man, so Damascene’s argument proves nothing. He argues that because the greater thing (Man) is honored with the lesser (reverence), therefore the lesser (images) may be honored with the greater (worship), which does not follow.

Damascene

For as Basil, that much-versed expounder of divine things, says, the honour given to the image passes over to the prototype. Now a prototype is that which is imaged, from which the derivative is obtained.

Commentary

Basil also said that “the idea of the image would be lost were it not to preserve throughout the plain and invariable likeness”.[1] By that standard any image purporting to show Christ cannot be deemed his image, since we cannot know it preserves “plain and invariable likeness” to him—and since there are as many purported images of Christ as there are artists who make them. (See article two for a response to a claim of an authentic portrait of Christ handed down over the centuries.) Basil also says that “he, who has, as it were mental apprehension of the form of the Son, prints the express image of the Father’s hypostasis, beholding the latter in the former”.[2] Notice he says mental apprehension, not sensual/visual perception (as would be expected if our knowledge of Christ came from viewing an image). If it be objected that these statements occur in Basil’s Trinitarian reflections, then recognize that his statement that Damascene quotes does so as well:

How, then, if one and one, are there not two Gods?  Because we speak of a king, and of the king’s image, and not of two kings.  The majesty is not cloven in two, nor the glory divided.  The sovereignty and authority over us is one, and so the doxology ascribed by us is not plural but one; because the honour paid to the image passes on to the prototype.  Now what in the one case the image is by reason of imitation, that in the other case the Son is by nature.[3]

The Son is the image of the Father (prototype), so that honoring the Son honors the Father. Moreover, even if his argument presupposes that honor passes through physical images to their prototypes, that is not decisive, for it was only a partial analogy. In Basil’s day the king might send forth his image on coins or in statues as a symbol of his authority, but he had minters and architects who could see him and work their replicas off his likeness. Yet those who would image Christ have no access to his person to make their representations accurate and have only their own imaginations, which are tied up in their hearts; and “the heart is deceitful above all things” (Jer. 17:9). Moreover, the king’s portrayers were commissioned by him and acted at his command. To disrespect their creations was to disrespect the king’s authority and majesty. Yet where did Christ the King commission these men to make his images? Is it not rather his law that “you shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything” and that “you shall not bow down to them or serve them” (Ex. 20:4-5)? Concerning which, more later. But let us remember that Christ has no need to send forth images as symbols of his authority, for he is spiritually present with his people always (Matt. 28:20).[4]

More to the point, Basil elsewhere said things like “I think anyone with even a slight concern for the truth would dismiss corporeal comparisons, avoid sullying the notions about God with material imaginations, and follow the theological teachings transmitted to us by the Holy Spirit.”[5] Also:

They should, on the other hand, conceive of the image of the invisible God, not as that which is produced later than the archetype like those images produced by human skill, but as that which is co-existent with and subsists alongside the one who brought him into subsistence. For the image exists by virtue of the fact that the archetype exists. The image is not formed through imitation, since the whole nature of the Father is manifest in the Son as in a seal (emphases mine).[6]

Basil was keenly interested in imagery, if by that we mean that he was transfixed by the Son as the image of the Father, which truth is spiritual in nature: “the way of the knowledge of God lies from One Spirit through the One Son to the One Father” and “they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth”.[7]

Damascene

Why was it that the Mosaic people honoured on all hands the tabernacle which bore an image and type of heavenly things, or rather of the whole creation? God indeed said to Moses, Look that thou make them after their pattern which was shewed thee in the mount. The Cherubim, too, which o’ershadow the mercy seat, are they not the work of men’s hands? What, further, is the celebrated temple at Jerusalem? Is it not hand-made and fashioned by the skill of men?

Commentary

Yes, but the prohibition on making images was a prohibition on making objects for worship. Ex. 20:4-5 are two verses but one command. The question of propriety is not whether men use artistic skill to make objects, but what objects they make, and for what purpose. And where did God command the Jews to worship these things Damascene mentions? The Cherubim were not worshipped and were seen only by the High Priest, and that once a year (Lev. 16; Heb. 9:7), yet many Greeks venerate their icons every time they enter their cathedral, and they include icons in their private prayer rooms.[8] Thus do the Easterners act as though they are wiser than God: objects of adornment that God commanded to be made are confused with objects of worship that he forbade, the rare is made an excuse for the common, and the public property of the Jewish nation is made an excuse for professing Christians to keep private images. Exodus 33:10, which Damascene says proves the Jews “honoured . . . the tabernacle” says rather “the people saw the pillar of the cloud standing by the door of the tabernacle, and all the people stood and worshipped every one at the door of his tent” (Orthodox Bible), meaning they worshipped God’s presence in the cloud when it appeared, not the tabernacle itself. And if there be any doubt as to Damascene’s unreliability as an expositor of scripture in these matters, consider not only the above but that he has argued for the propriety of worshipping images of Christ and saints from the fact that God had a manmade temple. He actually argues that because God had the Jews make him a temple in which he was worshipped (without images!), therefore Christians can worship images of saints, as if the mere fact of the temple’s existence in some way justifies image-making. I trust it needs no comment that the temple was not an image which the Jews worshipped, as though it were the object of their worship.

Damascene

Moreover the divine Scripture blames those who worship graven images, but also those who sacrifice to demons. The Greeks sacrificed and the Jews also sacrificed: but the Greeks to demons and the Jews to God. And the sacrifice of the Greeks was rejected and condemned, but the sacrifice of the just was very acceptable to God. For Noah sacrificed, and God smelled a sweet savour, receiving the fragrance of the right choice and good-will towards Him. And so the graven images of the Greeks, since they were images of deities, were rejected and forbidden.

Commentary

Neither Noah nor the faithful Jews sacrificed to images, and so mentioning them proves nothing viz. the permissibility of images. Indeed, it proves rather that they are not necessary. The problem with idolatry is not only that it involves worship of that which does not exist (as the false gods of Greece), but that it involves giving the worship that is due to God to material things. Yes, demons used idol worship to deceive pagans, but it is also idolatry to attempt to worship the true God in images. Hence the account of the golden calf says that Aaron the high priest “made them a molten calf, and said, These are thy gods, O Israel, which have brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And Aaron having seen it built an altar before it, and Aaron made proclamation saying, To-morrow is a feast of the Lord” (Ex. 32:4-5, Orthodox Bible). Why did he declare “a feast of the Lord” unless he took the calf to be an image of the true God who had brought Israel out of Egypt? Note that the plural “gods” is thought to be a statement of majesty (a royal “we”), for “calf” is singular. Hence some translations render it as the singular “god,” and the recollection of it in Neh. 9:18 is almost always rendered in the singular, except by those that use the Septuagint.

In Judges 17 and 18 we read of the idolatry of Micah and the Danites. Micah’s “mother said, ‘I dedicate the silver to the Lord from my hand for my son, to make a carved image and a metal image” (17:3). Hence the images were meant to honor God; yet the story is told, like many of the stories of Judges, to demonstrate how far the Israelites had fallen into ignorance and sin, and of how “everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (17:6). For Micah stole the silver from his mother (v. 2), abetted the images with “household gods” (v. 5), set up his own shrine and consecrated his own priest (v. 5), corrupted a Levite from his proper service to being his personal priest (v. 10), and in the midst of it all expected God’s blessing in spite of his sins (v. 13), while the Danites stole the images and the priest (18:18-20) and thus repaid Micah’s hospitality to them – about the only good in the whole sad tale – with betrayal (comp. Prov. 17:13). The Israelites stumbled into idolatry not only by worshipping false gods, but also by trying to worship the true God in material images.[9]

Tom Hervey is a member of Friendship Presbyterian Church in Laurens County, SC. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not of necessity reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation, and helped modernize Volume I of James Hervey’s classic dialogue on evangelical faith, Theron and Aspasio, available now at Monergism.

[1] Letter XXXVIII to Gregory of Nyssa. Basil’s authorship of this letter is disputed by some, who assert that it was written by Gregory of Nyssa rather than to him. See note 2022 in Schaff’s edition.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Of the Holy Spirit, 18.45. P. 218 in Schaff’s edition of Basil’s works linked in note 1.

[4] I ask, if any one should often contemplate the likeness of a man who has settled in a foreign land, that he may thus solace himself for him who is absent, would he also appear to be of sound mind, if, when the other had returned and was present, he should persevere in contemplating the likeness, and should prefer the enjoyment of it, rather than the sight of the man himself? Assuredly not. For the likeness of a man appears to be necessary at that time when he is far away; and it will become superfluous when he is at hand. But in the case of God, whose spirit and influence are diffused everywhere, and can never be absent, it is plain that an image is always superfluous. (Lactantius, Divine Institutes, II.2)

[5] Against Eunomius, 2.16, available here.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Of the Holy Spirit, 18.47

[8] “When you enter the Cathedral it is customary to venerate the holy icons” and “you should set up a small home icon stand. On it place an icon of Christ, Theotokos, and your patron saint,” as the one of the local Greek cathedrals (Greenville, SC) puts it in their catechism.

[9] The Apostle Paul, though provoked by the many idols of the Athenians (Acts 17:16), yet said to them of their altar to “the unknown god” that “what therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you” (v. 23). And he then said that God needs nothing, “nor is he served by human hands” – and is it not hands that make images? – “. . . since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (v. 25) and since “he is actually not far from each one of us” (v. 27). He continues that “being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man” (v. 27). Tell me, how is it that the Greeks served only demons, as Damascene says, and yet the Apostle Paul tells the Athenians that they, albeit in ignorance, had an altar to God among the “objects of your worship” (v. 23)? And does his understanding of worship – namely God’s omnipresence, spirituality, and self-sufficiency, and the insufficiency of human hands and images to honor him – match with the practice of making and worshipping images?