Yet those who cannot read can hear the spoken word, which is how God’s Spirit worked through his apostles to convert the heathen. We nowhere read that the apostles went to the lost with images, nor that artistic skill at fashioning images is a gift of the Spirit. Yet time and again we hear of them preaching the word, some version of “preach” occurring eighty times (80) in the English Standard Version of the New Testament, and exhortation and prophecy being gifts of the Spirit (Rom. 12:6,8).

In the previous article we analyzed John of Damascus (Damascene)’s arguments for image worship in An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith (IV.16), which is considered one of the greatest works on the doctrine of the Eastern communions. Below is the remainder of his argument, intersected by my comments upon it.

Damascene

But besides this who can make an imitation of the invisible, incorporeal, uncircumscribed, formless God? Therefore to give form to the Deity is the height of folly and impiety. And hence it is that in the Old Testament the use of images was not common. But after God in His bowels of pity became in truth man for our salvation, not as He was seen by Abraham in the semblance of a man, nor as He was seen by the prophets, but in being truly man, and after He lived upon the earth and dwelt among men, worked miracles, suffered, was crucified, rose again and was taken back to Heaven, since all these things actually took place and were seen by men, they were written for the remembrance and instruction of us who were not alive at that time in order that though we saw not, we may still, hearing and believing, obtain the blessing of the Lord.

Commentary

Because these “things actually took place and were seen by men” and “were written” for “remembrance and instruction” so that “though we saw not, we may still, hearing and believing, obtain the blessing of the Lord,” therefore it is good to make images of Christ, is the substance of the argument. Here too is a leap of logic so large as to lay the brain prostrate. Damascene speaks of “hearing and believing” as a justification for images. But who ever heard an image speak? The point of an image is to be a visual representation that appeals to the sense of sight. Yet God says “faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ” (Rom. 10:17), and Christ, that “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (Jn. 20:29). Of manmade images it is said that “they have mouths, but do not speak” (Ps. 115:5) and “are like scarecrows in a cucumber field, and they cannot speak” (Jer. 10:5). Even if some claim to have heard images speak miraculously – and even if we were inclined to accept such accounts (which we dare not do uncritically, for we are to “test everything,” 1 Thess. 5:21) – yet still such instances would be exceptions. And could such rare exceptions count for anything against the thousands of images that have stood mute for centuries, and do they accomplish anything as against the thousands of Christ’s ministers who weekly preach his word that their hearers might be saved? God ordained the spoken word, not the drawn image, to be the means by which men are saved. And this he did after Christ had done his earthly work and ascended, for we find it in his apostles’ deeds and writings.

Damascene

But seeing that not every one has a knowledge of letters nor time for reading, the Fathers gave their sanction to depicting these events on images as being acts of great heroism, in order that they should form a concise memorial of them.

Commentary

Yet those who cannot read can hear the spoken word, which is how God’s Spirit worked through his apostles to convert the heathen. We nowhere read that the apostles went to the lost with images, nor that artistic skill at fashioning images is a gift of the Spirit. Yet time and again we hear of them preaching the word, some version of “preach” occurring eighty times (80) in the English Standard Version of the New Testament, and exhortation and prophecy being gifts of the Spirit (Rom. 12:6,8).

Damascene

Often, doubtless, when we have not the Lord’s passion in mind and see the image of Christ’s crucifixion, His saving passion is brought back to remembrance, and we fall down and worship not the material but that which is imaged: just as we do not worship the material of which the Gospels are made, nor the material of the Cross, but that which these typify.

Commentary

In the sentence immediately before Damascene said images were permitted for “depicting these events on images as being acts of great heroism” as a “concise memorial.” Now they are objects for worship before which men fall down. In this do we see the danger of images, for even if they are at first intended only for remembrance, how quickly do the hearts of men turn them to something more. In one sentence Damascene goes from a modest claim of ‘images are just there to help us remember’ to commending worshipping them in, to judge by the language, fits of religious ecstasy. And so it has often been with the proponents of images. They start modestly, saying they are only meant to help instruct the illiterate and as aids to memory and instruction, and then proceed from there to asserting that they are means by which we worship God.

Damascene

For wherein does the cross, that typifies the Lord, differ from a cross that does not do so? It is just the same also in the case of the Mother of the Lord. For the honour which we give to her is referred to Him Who was made of her incarnate. And similarly also the brave acts of holy men stir us up to be brave and to emulate and imitate their valour and to glorify God. For as we said, the honour that is given to the best of fellow-servants is a proof of good-will towards our common Lady, and the honour rendered to the image passes over to the prototype.

Commentary

Here again we see how quickly the error spreads. For having asserted that images of Christ are appropriate because they move us to worship him through them, an erroneous principle is let loose that does not hold still but spreads its evil. For it leads to the belief that the cross and the Gospels ought to be worshipped, and now also to worshipping Mary and “fellow servants.”

But how did God’s servants act when men tried to worship them? “I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel who showed them to me, but he said to me, ‘You must not do that! I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers the prophets, and with those who keep the words of this book. Worship God’” (Rev. 22:8-9). “When Peter entered, Cornelius met him and fell down at his feet and worshiped him. But Peter lifted him up, saying, ‘Stand up; I too am a man’” (Acts 10:25-26). Neither apostles nor angels would tolerate men worshipping them rather than God. For they knew that such honor did not pass through them to Christ, but rather ended with them and entailed them in idolatry.

Damascene’s words here prove that we must “avoid irreverent babble, for it will lead people into more and more ungodliness” (2 Tim. 2:16). For having irreverently taught men to disobey the plain commands of God, the ungodliness has increased until it includes worshipping the cross and images of men, and, indeed, everything to do with Christ’s work. As Damascene says in Chapter 11:

So, then, this same truly precious and august tree, on which Christ has offered Himself as a sacrifice for our sakes, is to be worshipped as sanctified by contact with His holy body and blood; likewise the nails, the spear, the clothes, His sacred tabernacles which are the manger, the cave, Golgotha, which brings salvation, the tomb which gives life, Sion, the chief stronghold of the churches and the like, are to be worshipped.

By this reasoning, we ought to worship images of Pilate and Caiaphas, since Christ came into contact with them and they were instruments by which he was “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23), as well as the bones of the soldiers who crucified him. Indeed, we ought to worship the whole world, since Christ died for it; and lest you think I unfairly take Damascene’s argument too far, he himself said “creation has been sanctified by the divine blood” (ch. 4).

Damascene

But this is an unwritten tradition, just as is also the worshipping towards the East and the worship of the Cross, and very many other similar things. A certain tale, too, is told, how that when Augarus was king over the city of the Edessenes, he sent a portrait painter to paint a likeness of the Lord, and when the painter could not paint because of the brightness that shone from His countenance, the Lord Himself put a garment over His own divine and life-giving face and impressed on it an image of Himself and sent this to Augarus, to satisfy thus his desire. Moreover that the Apostles handed down much that was unwritten, Paul, the Apostle of the Gentiles, tells us in these words: Therefore, brethren, stand fast and hold the traditions which ye have been taught of us, whether by word or by epistle. And to the Corinthians he writes, Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the traditions as I have delivered them to you.”

Commentary

A certain tale? Yet the tale itself contradicts the gospel accounts of Christ’s appearance, in which the only occasion in which he shone with unbearable glory was during the transfiguration (Matt. 17:2), after which he commanded silence (“tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead,” v. 9). Nor did Christ have many dealings with outsiders, saying “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (15:24), and apparently granting no audience to some Greeks who sought one (Jn. 12:20-36). For “Christ became a servant to the circumcised to show God’s truthfulness” (Rom. 15:8), and it was mainly after his resurrection and commissioning the apostles (Acts 1:6-9) that his salvation was extended to Gentiles.

Yet King Abgar (as his name is now spelled) was a Gentile, and not only that, but Eusebius (4^th century) records him as having exchanged correspondence with Christ during his first advent and Christ rejecting his invitation because of his mission to the Jews, and praising him for believing in Christ without seeing him. Eusebius mentions no portrait, which is only reported at a later time. The thing bears the marks of those “cleverly devised myths” which Peter “did not follow . . . when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 1:16), and which Paul tells us to avoid (“have nothing to do with irreverent, silly myths,” 1 Tim. 4:7). And Damascene simply presupposes, without any attempt at explanation or proof, that image worship is an unwritten tradition of apostolic origin, and that in the face of both a dearth of scriptural evidence in its favor and against those ancients that declaimed against it.[1]

Conclusion

Damascene labored mightily to prove that image worship is not a form of idolatry. Yet one sees here that his efforts are strained to the point of being ridiculous, and that they twisted and denied scripture in favor of tradition (Matt. 15:1-9). Venerating images has entailed both the East and Rome (which uses similar arguments) in hypocrisy. For they say it is impermissible to portray God (as above); yet Rome has its Sistine Chapel, which purports to show the Father, and many at the East purport to image the Trinity (e.g., Rublev’s famous icon). Such images are an idolatrous stumbling block, all the more as they are taught as objects to be worshipped. Remember then, reader, “not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater” (1 Cor. 5:11) and avoid Damascene, no matter how much others praise him.[2]

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] Lactantius says in his Divine Institutes (circa 311):

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. And this, indeed, may be plain to a wise man from the very name. For whatever is an imitation, that must of necessity be false; nor can anything receive the name of a true object which counterfeits the truth by deception and imitation. (Bk. II, Ch. 19)

[2] The 2023 Credo Magazine book awards gave an award to a translation of Damascene’s On the Orthodox Faith (the same work considered here, but by a different title), and said “readers would do well to receive this gift from Christianity’s Great Tradition with gratitude.”