Images and Miracles.
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Images and Miracles. |
Bible Truth Images and Miracles Communion: |
1. Images The use of Images in churches was one of the supposedly "unscriptural" practices of the Catholic Church that the non-Lutheran Reformers were determined to eradicate. From Zurich in the 1520s, and spreading to the Reformed, Calvinist and Anglican Churches, a wave of image-breaking spread across Europe, completely altering the appearance of churches. To this day, Evangelicals and Protestant fundamentalists oppose the use of most images in church. WHY DID THEY DO THIS? Opposition to Images, paintings and statues is supposedly based on the Ten Commandments; Exodus 20:4-5: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God..." This commandment was interpreted by many Protestants, as it had once been by the eastern iconoclasts, as forbidding the use of any sort of picture or statue in church. Unlike, say, the Moslems, Protestants did not interpret it as banning non-religious paintings, drawings and statuary. SO IF THE COMMANDMENT IS THIS CLEAR, WHY DID MOST NON-PROTESTANT CHRISTIANS IGNORE IT? Because the commandment is not actually that clear at all. The word "graven image" in the King James version is actually better translated "idol", and that is how most modern versions render it. Actually, the passage does not forbid producing images at all, or even pronounce against using them in churches. It is against producing and worshipping idols in place of the true God. HOW CAN WE KNOW THIS? Well, God wouldn't give the Israelites orders that broke the very commandments he had just given them, would he? But if you adopt the Protestant interpretation of this commandment, that is exactly what he does: In Exodus 25, God orders Moses to
build an Ark to hold the commandments. He tells Moses how
to build the Ark and cover it with pure gold, adding: So here we have God himself ordering Moses to produce religious statues of angels, immediately after the commandments had been given! Therefore the Protestant interpretation of this commandment must be incorrect. Again, in Numbers 21:8-9, when the Israelites were plagued by serpents, the Lord told Moses to "Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass, that everyone who is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live". Moses did so, and people were healed by looking at it! If God opposed all images, why would he have chosen to heal His people through one, and even made it a type of the Messiah (John 3:14-5)? 1 Kings 6:29 says
that the walls of the Temple were covered with "carved
figures of cherubims, and palm trees, and open flowers,
within & without". Does God ever object to this
proliferation of images in the Temple? BUT THE EARLY CHRISTIANS DIDN'T USE IMAGES, DID THEY?
Evidence from a third century church excavated at Duras Europa, shows that the walls were again covered with images from the bible. Once Christianity was legalised in the Roman Empire, and larger churches could be built, these churches were covered with paintings and mosaics, many of which survive today. ISLAM AND ICONOCLASM Around 700 AD, armies of a new religion, Islam, swept through the Ancient World, conquering Egypt, North Africa and the Holy Land from the Eastern Christian Empire, briefly reaching the gates of Constantinople. Islam preached the total abolition of all images, and in the Christian lands they conquered, the Muslims began to destroy all the images they found. Shocked by this series of crushing defeats, the Emperors in Constantinople began to listen to those who claimed that the muslims were right, and the use of images was responsible for Christian defeat and Moslem success. Emperor Leo ordered that all images be destroyed across the Empire, and launched a wave of Iconoclasm that destroyed thousands of ancient works of art. No images were destroyed in Italy and Western Europe, which were beyond the Emperor's reach. And in the East there was a hundred years of strife and turmoil before Icons were eventually restored. Iconoclasm returned to Western Europe in the 1500s, when Zwingli, Calvin, Knox, Cranmer and other Reformers led new waves of destruction of books and images. BUT DON'T CATHOLICS WORSHIP AND PRAY TO STATUES? Catholic statues aren't worshipped, like pagan Idols. Christian images exist to draw the minds and hearts of the people towards the reality of the persons and events represented, whether from the bible or Christian history. No-one prays to a statue or lights candles to it. The statue is an aid to bringing the mind of the observer to heavenly rather than earthly things. As we know from the rapid secularisation of society since the Reformation, and from the disappearance of nearly all reminders of God's Kingdom from the day-to-day world. The presence of images that remind us of God's Kingdom in our day-to-day lives is a desirable thing. With the passing of crosses, statues and biblical images from our streets and assembly places, and their replacement by advertising and grafitti, all thought of the ORIGINALS has also seemed to pass away. So no worship is ever offered to images by Catholics or the many other denominations, Orthodox and Protestant that use them. Worship is not outward appearance but what comes from the heart. 2. Miracles The Protestant Reformers condemned nearly all of the supernatural elements within the prectice of Christianity. The Age of the Miraculous had ended with the Age of the Apostles, they said, and that was that. Early Protestantism was almost rationalistic in its rejection of anything that was not in conformity with natural laws, condemning the belief in the miraculous as simple superstition and credulity. This condemnation was clearly not scripturally based, since the New Testament accounts of the Ministry of Jesus and the Apostles abound with healings and other miraculous events, and no date is set in the bible for the cessation of such events. However, like many protestant doctrines, this does not actually seem to be based on the bible at all - despite Protestant claims that all their doctrines arise from scripture. Catholicism has always taught that God acts in the world today, and that miracles and prophetic events have never ceased. This is enshrined in the Miracle of the Mass, which is the central aspect of worship, and in which the bread and wine of communion are transformed into the body and blood of Christ. Miracles of healing and other miracles are part of God's plan. In contrast, for most of its five hundred year history, protestantism has condemned the miraculous as either a fraud or a deception. Only within the last century, have pentecostal groups, and then some others "rediscovered" the miraculous, and claimed it as their own. Once again protestantism has shown itself to be a belief system whose truths are inconsistent, and ever-changing, rather than solid and eternal. |
The very earliest Christians were constantly
persecuted, and worshipped in secret or in private homes.
Nothing survives from the first century to show whether
or not they used images in worship. However the Catacombs
beneath Ancient Rome, where early Christians met and
buried their dead are alive with painted images like that
on the right.