Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!seismo!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: syl@cs.brown.edu (Shin Y. Lee) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Commandments or Suggestions Message-ID: Date: 27 Sep 90 08:59:05 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science Lines: 87 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In reading the ten commandments we find the second commandment is "YOU MUST NOT MAKE FOR YOURSELF A CARVED IMAGE...YOU MUST NOT BOW DOWN TO THEM NOR BE INDUCED TO SERVE THEM.' Would anyone care to explain why, then, so many so-called Christian churches/ places of worship are swamped with images of saints,icons, idols and other such graven images that clearly offend the (TRUE) God who gave these commandments. . .or was it Suggestions? The prophet Isaiah in chapter 44 verses 15-20 clearly shows the foolishness of believing such things could actually please God. Didn't Paul tell the Christians in Corinth to "Flee from idolatry"?(1 Cor. 10:14) Does the commandment become the suggestion because it is 1990 instead of 55 CE? If the early Christians were alive today, would they worship God in a church filled with carved images? Could this be another factor in determining truth from false worship? Shin Y. Lee ----------------------------- **** ------------------------------ [Isaiah was clearly talking about worshipping idols, i.e. thinking that the idol itself had some power. The commandment (Ex 20:4-5) could be taken as somewhat broader, since it starts out by saying not to make an image at all. However given the next sentence, many people read it as talking about the same thing Isaiah is, i.e. not simply doing sculpture, but making images that you are going to worship. In fact the commandment has been taken by various as people prohibiting at least the following: - any sculpture of any living thing, whether for use in church or anywhere else. This is based on a literal reading of 20:4, without taking it in the context of 20:5 - making any image at all of God, even if the intent is to worship God himself and not the image - making any image of something other than God and worshipping the image (what Isaiah seems to have had in mind) - making any image of something other than God for use in worshipping that thing The first is unusual among Christians. Jewish and Christian interpretation normally accepts the other three prohibitions. However Christians normally make an exception for pictures of Jesus. Of course we do not worship the picture. But the Incarnation seems to have change the situation somewhat. Before the Incarnation, God was somewhat of a mathematical point. The prophets gave us comamnds from him, but it was hard to know much about God himself. Thus no image could possibly do him justice, and they run the risk of making us think of God as less than he actually is. However with Christ the situation seems to have changed. Here we have something visible that is an accurate revelation of God. Of course we don't have any actual pictures of Jesus, but it seems that most Christians consider "artists conceptions" to be allowable. There are few churches that don't have pictures of him hanging on a wall in the Sunday School, in a stained glass window, etc. As I'm sure you know, there are often issues of what such pictures can be used for. Clearly the basic idea is that we don't want to worship the picture -- or more subtly, the image of Jesus created by the picture (e.g. Jesus as a white, American-looking fellow). The exact implications of that are a matter for judgement, and different traditions make slightly different judgements on where it is appropriate to put pictures or other images of Jesus, and of what kind. As for pictures, statues, etc., of other people, unless you follow the concept of banning all representations of people, then the basic rule seems to be that they must be used in a way that does not encourage us to worship either the picture or the people pictured. Agaio, there are differing judgements as to what that means. Protestants normally don't use statues, but most think nothing of pictures in stained glass windows. The point would seem to be to make sure that whatever we do, we make sure people think of the pictures or statues as like the ones you see in the village square: heros that we honor and who inspire us to do likewise, but not things that we worship. What is appropriate may depend upon the situation. E.g. in a place when superstition has been allowed to build up, images may be dangerous to people and should be eliminated, whereas in a place where the gospel is preached correctly, and people understand how pictures are intended to be used, they may play an edifying role. I'd like to caution people that this is an area that has historically cause much ill feeling among Christians. I believe there have been many circumstances where getting rid of images was necessary, or at least helpful. But stepping inside somebody else's church, and condemning it immediately without bothering to see how people really think about what they are doing, strikes me as a rather un-Christian practice. --clh]