:: St. Stephen's Musings ::

:: Monday, March 22, 2004 ::

The Image of the Invisible God--Part II:

Once we've replaced God with text we can manipulate, then we start believing everything true comes, not from the Holy Spirit and God's working in the Church, but from our ability to construct arguments based on human wisdom.

For example this Calvinist thinks that the Orthodox simply "argue for a tweaking of the 2nd Commandment based on the Incarnation" to justify the use of iconography.

The problem here is that the 2nd commandment has nothing to do with icons because icons are not worshipped as God. It is idolatry, not reverence, that Exodus 20:4-5 condemns. (See the decree of Nicea II)

Since Christ is the "image of the invisible God" (Col. 1:15; Gr. "hos estin eikôn tou theou tou aoratou) we now see God in the God-man Jesus Christ and are thus in a position to make icons of Him. The OT teaching must be interpreted in the light of Mt. Tabor and the NT reality, not the other way around. But, I'm neither a Jew nor a product of Enlightenment hegemony, so I'm silly that way.

Once we've dispensed with a God that actually can commune and be in union with his creation, we are tempted to assume that "when his disciples looked at Jesus they could not see God"

Of course the violence this heresy does to things like, say, Jesus' own words in John 14:9 is part of our modern denial of the Incarnation.

Eventually we decide that throwing the baby out with the bathwater instead of taking the time to acquiring and living a more holistic and patristic worldview is the way to go. Christianity is so much more simple and easy when we can gut it out and start with the parts what we like.

:: Karl :: 7:27:00 AM [Link] ::