Images And The Visible Christ

Point: If the Son truly became visible, images of Christ cannot be dismissed lightly; if God forbids idols, they cannot be handled casually.

After thinking about embodied confession, I notice another embodied dispute: icons. A bare anti-material instinct will not do, because Christianity confesses that the Word took flesh (John 1:14), and Paul calls Christ the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). The Orthodox and Catholic argument begins there. The Orthodox Church in America treats icons as witnesses to the Kingdom and to Christ's real humanity. The Catholic catechism links the veneration of icons to the incarnation and to the Seventh Ecumenical Council at Nicaea in 787.

That argument has force. If Jesus can be seen, touched, crucified, and risen in the flesh, then a picture of him is not automatically a denial of God's invisibility. It may be a confession that the invisible God has truly made himself known in the man Christ Jesus.

But the Reformed warning is not merely nervousness. Exodus 20:4-5 forbids graven images and bowing down to them. The Westminster Larger Catechism reads this as forbidding any representation of God for worship. The Church of England's Articles of Religion reject the adoration of images. That caution protects a real biblical jealousy: God is not an object I can manage, decorate, or possess.

My current leaning is that the icon-affirming argument is stronger when it keeps strict worship for God alone and begins from Christ's incarnation rather than aesthetic preference. Still, the Protestant fear is a needed guardrail. An image may teach attention to the visible Lord; it must never become a rival centre. If I ever learn from icons, I should learn to look through them to Christ, not stop with the painted thing.