Rite Reasons, Studies in Worship, No. 59
Copyright (c) 1998 Biblical Horizons
September, 1998
The Failure of the Church
Yet a third factor played an important role in this historical development, in addition to the imperial adoption of icons and the rise of the icons of the holy man. Brown writes: "The great Christian basilicas of the previous centuries tended to stand empty, except for great occasions. In these, the solemn liturgy of the Eucharist was celebrated. But this liturgy had become awesome and distant. In it, Christ was withdrawn from the masses in a deliberate attempt to surround the Eucharist with the trappings of an imperial ceremonial. Personal piety, therefore, leaked away towards the icons. For the icons were the way to the intercessions of the saints who formed the back-stairs government of the awesome throne" (p. 283).
In other words, the flourishing of this pagan piety was mainly the fault of the Church herself. The local Church had ceased long ago to be a gathered community, sitting around a table with Jesus. People hungry for contact with God, or "God," were virtually driven to look elsewhere.
Icons and Cities
A final aspect of the drift into idolatry is discussed by Brown. The Mediterranean city had always celebrated its founder, who was viewed as being divinized at death and becoming a god. This founder-god was the official protector of the city. When a city became Christian, the old founder was replaced by a new founder. The founder of the new Christian city was usually the evangelist who first brought the gospel to the city, and who often had been killed for his pains. This martyr-founder, now in heaven, became the official protector of the city. His image was put on the city walls and/or high on the walls of the church, facing outward against the city’s foes.
The Crisis
"The Arab raids of the late seventh century fell like a hammer-blow on the rich and loosely-knit world that we have described. They created a deep demoralization. Only one city, Nicaea, felt that it could convincingly ascribe its deliverance to its local icons. . . . Byzantines had faced enough crises to know what to do. They knew that God was frequently angry with them for their sins. . . . What the Iconoclasts were intent on removing and punishing was not particular sins but something more serious: the root sin of the human race, the deep stain of the error of idolatry" (pp. 284-285).
The position of the Iconoclasts was hard to refute. It was clear that the icons had failed to protect the cities they were supposed to guard. It was also clear that the Empire was being judged. It was further clear that this judgment came after a century and a half of proliferating images, images the Bible clearly condemned.
Politically, the situation in the Empire had changed. No longer was it possible for Byzantium to function as a loose association of cities with an Emperor at the top, for the cities were falling. The Emperors moved to centralize power, and part of centralizing power was to favor the Church against the monks, against the "holy men." This meant favoring the Iconoclasts and making the basilica, the cross, and the Eucharist the only "holy" objects.
Meanwhile, faced with justifying their practices, the Iconodules formulated arguments to buttress the use of veneration of icons. Grotesque misinterpretations of a few selected Bible texts, along with a greatly inflated argument that icons had always been used in Christendom, coupled with a complete adoption of Greek philosophical notions about truth and education, formed the bulwark of their arguments.9 The Iconodules demanded something relatively new. If the Empire was going to center its religious activities in the Church, the icons should be placed in the churches. Refugees had brought local icons from their defeated towns and cities, and they wanted these put up in the churches.
9For a completely sympathetic presentation of the Iconodule position, see Ambrosios Giakalis, Images of the Divine: The Theology of Icons at the Seventh Ecumenical Council (Leiden: Brill, 1994).
Although there was conflict and persecution back and forth for the next couple of centuries, eventually the Iconodules won the battle. The Church became the center of Byzantine Christendom, but the icons were included in the churches.
The Western Christian churches did not go through the Iconoclastic Controversy, and initially were reluctant to bring images into the Church. Eventually, however, the Roman Catholic Church became almost as enamored of the veneration of man-made objects as the Eastern Church had become, though in the West, statuary tended to predominate over painting.
Renaissance and Reformation
The tares grow alongside the wheat, and about the time that the Church truly rediscovered the Biblical revelation, Satan raised up a counterfeit that rediscovered the ancient pagan writings of Plato, Aristotle, and the supposed Egyptian writings of Hermes Trismegistus. After a millennium of Christianity, however, the neo-pagans of the Renaissance could not go back to putting themselves under the spell of art, music, number, and matter (chemistry), though they could still revive astrology. They were, however, able to coopt these things to a great extent.
The reason is that the Reformation, necessarily perhaps, threw the baby out with the bathwater. Not only did they say that the arts and sciences were merely human devices, and in no sense divine, but they also removed them from the worship of the Church. They knew that a highly symbolic and decorous architecture characterized the central worship sites of God in the Old Creation (tabernacle and Temple), and that a powerful music with choir and orchestra was used in the Temple, but they rejected these as unfit for the more "spiritual" (read: intellectualized) worship of the New Creation. Very strange exegetical manouvers were needed for this, but the Reformers and their followers proved up to the task, sadly.
The result was that that arts ceased to be tied to worship as the place where this human gift was offered to God. Visual art moved almost exclusively to museums and the homes of the wealthy. Art music moved almost exclusively to the concert hall.
This was a necessary stage in the development of Christian and human consciousness, but it is a stage that must now be brought to an end. We now see that cutting the tie between the Church and the arts has led to their being taken over the neo-pagans. And increasingly we see music reverting to a kind of paganism in which people go to rock concerts or hyper-Pentecostal churches and are absorbed and rendered helplessly enthused by the sheer volume of sound. Once again people are "coming under the spell" of music, instead of taking it in hand and offering it to God as praise.
Image and Tradition
Tradition is a very trick item. Most people have the idea that their traditions go back for centuries, but very often what is thought of as an ancient tradition is only a few decades old. The generation that grows up under the spell of a new idea tends to think that that idea is older than it is, and the next generation takes it for ancient tradition. We see this in the Bible itself. The Pharisees of Jesus’ day believed in a supposed Oral Law tradition handed down from Moses. This tradition did not exist at the time the last writings of the so-called Old Testament were issued, nor did it exist at the time of the Maccabees. It was only a few generations old in Jesus’ day, and Jesus repeatedly attacked it as a demonic invasion of the community of truth. But the Pharisees were convinced that it was ancient, and eventually wrote it down in the Mishnah, wrote commentaries on it in the Talmuds, and to this day the Oral Law tradition continues to define Rabbinic Judaism.
Similarly, the iconodules came to believe that the service of icons in the Church had been present from the beginning, although there is no evidence of any such a practice before the 700s. This myth is perpetuated in the Roman and especially the Eastern Churches. In these semi-Christian groups it is regarded as a fact that God instituted the service of icons, though how such a service is to be understood is open for debate. Modern Orthodox theologians, for instance, are far too sophisticated to believe that icons contain any kind of "stuff," whether God-stuff or the stuff of the person pictured in the icon. Rather, they maintain that the icon is a kind of telephone to the person of the saint (or God) at the other end. The icon is a window into heaven, and thus to stare at the icon is to gaze at the saint, and to speak to the icon is to chat with the saint; to kiss the icon is to kiss the saint, and to bow to the icon is to honor the saint. Yet, in spite of these "advances" in conception, the notion of a transmission of some kind of power is not absent from the modern advocates of icon veneration. The icon is not merely a pictorial representation, a symbol of a person or event, but actually makes a connection and transmits power.10
10For a discussion, see Leonid Ouspensky and Vladimir Lossky, The Meaning of Icons, trans. G. E. H. Palmer and E. Kadloubovsky (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1983).
There is no need to repeat here the arguments against such a notion, for we have done so in our essays on the Second Word (Rite Reasons 33-36). The Bible strictly forbids such veneration on pain of horrible curses, and so the Christian mind seeks to understand why the Bible makes this prohibition, and does not seek to justify disobedience. For the Orthodox, the image is a visual communication of truth just as the Bible is a verbal communication of truth, but Biblical religion teaches that God never intended the eye as the organ whereby divine truth is received. Truth is verbal, never visual, for while God is Word, God is not visible.
Image and Theology
Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism, and their imitators in Anglo-Catholicism, can never attain to a fully Christian understanding of reality as long as they maintain the veneration of man-made objects. These groups refuse to hear God’s "No!" As a result, there is always some point in their philosophies where God and the creation merge in an ultimate pantheism. It is to the credit of the better theologians in these circles that they resist this tendency, but until they burn their images, they will never completely avoid it.
Biblical religion clearly distinguishes between art and icon. Art is symbolic representation. It is something that man makes and that may and should be offered to God as a gift, as a service. It is not something that comes from God to man. Visual art can be sermonic, but it can never be on the level of the Word of God. Just as we do not treat the preacher’s sermon as the same as God’s own words, so we must not treat religious art as some kind of silent communication from God.
And this brings us back to our beginning. Christianity sorts out chemistry from alchemy, astronomy from astrology, and science from magic. Important as these advances have been, they are not the heart of the matter. At the center of human life is worship, and it is at the point of worship that the essential distinction must be made. Liturgical observance of the Second Word is the foundation of all other advances is knowledge and dominion.
There is another aspect of the matter that must also claim our reflections. Art is glory. It is man’s labor to continue God’s original work of bringing light, form, and filling to the world. The Spirit who entered the world to work on the first day of creation, entered the dust to make man as His agent on the sixth day. Man is the agent of cosmic glorification. Now, since God is glorious, man’s work of glorification is a work of revealing God’s glory in the cosmos and history. (See my paper, Christian Piety: Deformed and Reformed, available for $2.00 from Biblical Horizons .)
Glory is not, however, the place where God meets man; and this is what the Orthodox semi-Christians forget or do not admit. Glory is an outflow of God’s relationship with man — apart from God, men tend to uglify rather than glorify the cosmos. God meets man in language, in personal discourse. Music may glorify that conversation — and it should do so in worship — but God does not meet man in music. Nor does He meet man in visual art of any sort. He meets man in the Word of God, in language; and because God is incorporeal, He meets man in language alone.
Another way to put this is that God meets man only through the Son of God, the Word. The Spirit is the glory, the music, the visual display, of God; but God does not meet man through the Spirit. By insisting that icons are a separate channel of non-verbal communication with God and the saints, the Orthodox separate the Spirit from the Son. Understandably, they deny that the Spirit proceeds from the Son. Biblical religion, however, insists that the work of the Spirit is to enable us to understand the Word of the Son, not to be a separate way of approaching God. God’s "No!" is a rejection of any attempt on the part of man to approach God apart from His Son.
The Son has promised to meet us two places: in our sin and in our weakness. He will rejoice in our glory, but only if we have first encountered Him in our humility. As sinners, we must meet Him in our sin, and as creatures, as newborn babies, as little children, we must meet Him in our weakness. Good works, maturity, and glory must be the outflow of that encounter, not the basis of it.
Worship is the heart of life, the repeated new-beginning point set at the center of the world on the first day of the week. Thus, worship is the place where we come back to being sinners and come back to being infants. True, we are more than that, and it is very appropriate to offer to God the best of the firstfruits of our hands in worship. It is appropriate that worship have an element of glory, therefore. But we must never confuse that element of glory with the foundation of worship, which is the simplicity of confession of our sin and our re-adoption as children. The first part of the covenant renewal, the Entrance, consisting of call, confession, and absolution, should not be glorified. This is the time for kneeling and speaking, not for standing and singing. When people are attracted to the Church because of her glory, whether that glory be great rhetorical preaching or a wonderful interior design, they are attracted for the wrong reasons and by the wrong aspect of the Church. And when that happens, the Church must sometimes set aside her glory in order to make clear her purpose and mission.
In summary, the heresy of icon veneration destroys Biblical religion along the following lines:
1. It confuses eye and ear. The eye is the organ of dominion, seeing the visible cosmos, not the invisible God. The ear is the organ of submission, hearing the Word of God. The eye can only reveal things, while the ear reveals persons. Looking at a person only reveals his or her "thingness"; it is only in listening to a person that we discern his or her personhood. Icon veneration, thus, reduces persons to things.
2. It separates the Son and the Spirit, viewing glory as an avenue to God apart from the Word.
3. It positions the glory-work of human beings at the foundation of human life, implicitly displacing God’s Word as the foundation of the life of sinners and helpless infants. It makes the eschatological glory of the Bride equal to the protological humility of the Son as the foundation of the Kingdom, and by so doing eternalizes time and destroys history. Pagan contemplation replaces Biblical obedience.
4. And, apart from all theological considerations, it openly violates the Second of the Ten Words, thereby bringing down the curse of God to the third and fourth generations of those who thereby "hate" Him.
BIBLICAL Horizons, No. 109
Copyright (c) 1998 Biblical Horizons
September, 1998
Last month, in our essay "Patriarchal Dominion," we observed the flow from Abraham to Jacob to Joseph. Our concern here is to advance our understanding of that narrative flow. I should mention that I am assuming much that is found in my book Primeval Saints: Studies in the Patriarchs of Genesis, which is available from Biblical Horizons .
We observed last time that altars and sacrifices play a large role in the Abraham narrative (11:27–25:11), little role in the story of Jacob (25:12–37:1), and no role in the history of Joseph (37:2–50:26). We now observe that in the story of Abraham, God frequently appears to Abraham (12:1-3; 13:14-17; 15:1-21; 17:1-22; 18:1-33; 22:1-19), while God only appears four times to Jacob in the Jacob story (28:10-17; 31:10-13; 32:24-30; 35:10-13), and once later on in the Joseph story (46:1-4). The Abraham narrative reads like an extended life-long dialogue between Abraham and Yahweh, and indeed, there are several actual dialogues between the two. In the Jacob narrative there are no dialogues, and God appears only at three/four crisis points. God does not personally appear at all in the Joseph story. If there is something to be learned from this fact is it this: As we mature, God chooses to recede further into the background of our lives, and leads us by means of His Spirit. This is an aspect of how He brings us to maturity.
There are a great many deliberate parallels between the Abraham and Jacob narratives, and these serve to bring out contrasts between the two stories. To begin with, Abram moves from Ur to Haran, and then to the land of promise. Jacob starts out in the land, is exiled to Haran, and then returns to the land of promise. Yet there are a clear differences. For one thing, Abram starts in a place of idolatry, sojourns in Haran until the older generation has died off, and then enters the land. Jacob begins in the land, though because of Isaac’s sin and Esau’s evil, it has become defiled. He is exiled to Haran, and then returns. The Abraham story is about taking the land, while the Jacob story is about maintaining possession of it. We shall have more to say about this below.
Moreover, Abram enters the land alone, as far as the text is concerned, though from a few statements it is clear that he had a sheikhdom with him (e.g., 13:7; 14:14). Jacob, however, enters the land with a large family, already becoming organized as a nation of sorts. As Bernard Och writes, "The journey from Haran to Canaan is no longer that of a childless individual moving towards an unknown destination, but that of a family, a people in miniature, returning to its parental home." [Bernard Och, "Jacob at Bethel and Penuel: The Polarity of Divine Encounter," Judaism 42 (1993): 164ff.]
Upon entering the land, Abram sets up places of worship (altars) at Shechem, Bethel, and Hebron. Jacob dwells in the same places, but in context the emphasis is on his livestock and economic strength (33:18; 35:1, 27). The establishment of worship is the first form of the conquest of the land, preceding any other type of dominion in it.
Both stories recount two struggles with relatives, and one climactic struggle with God. Lot and Ishmael correspond to Laban and Esau respectively. Och writes, "The Laban/Lot correlation is of special interest: both are men of means who are driven by selfish motives. They prosper as a result of contact with the bearer of God’s blessing, and are finally deceived by their [two each] daughters, who deprive them of their manhood/authority." And of course, Ishmael’s struggle with Isaac corresponds to Esau’s with Jacob. Here again, however, there is a clear difference, this time in magnitude. The struggle of Lot’s herdsmen with Abram’s is relatively minor and is quickly resolved, while Laban’s abuse of Jacob continues for years. Ishmael merely laughed, and thus provoked Sarah to jealousy for her son Isaac (Laughter), while Esau sought to murder Jacob. As history moves along, the conflict intensifies.
There is also a difference in the intensity of the two large exoduses of the two men. Abram left Ur, a place where sons die and wives are barren (12:28-29). Jacob left the land of promise because Esau was trying to murder him. Moreover, Abram sojourned at Haran until his father — the older generation (compare the Mosaic Exodus) — had died out-side the land; while Jacob, after fleeing Ha-ran, was pursued by (Pharaoh) Laban and al-most had to fight him before entering the land.
Here are the exoduses:
Ur – Haran – Land
Haran – Two Camps (32:2) – Land
Egypt – Sinai Camp – Land
One of the important similarities of the two stories is that human efforts, though well-intentioned, prove futile. In the Abraham narrative, we see the patriarch attempt to protect Sarah by claiming (rightly) to be her brother on two occasions. This should have meant that Pharaoh and Abimilech would negotiate with Abraham for Sarah’s hand in marriage. This worthy plot, however, fails when the two men turn out to be tyrants who seize Sarah without regard for any custom and law. Abraham’s attempts to protect the bride and the future seed come to naught, except for God’s intervention. Similarly, Sarah offers Hagar as a substitute mother for the promised seed, and to this plan Abraham acquiesces; but it is thwarted when Hagar refuses to let Sarah adopt Ishmael (16:2) and rears him as her own son (16:4). It becomes clear that only God can provide and protect the seed.
Similarly, Jacob’s worthy attempts to secure the land prove bootless. Esau cared nothing for the covenant; his god was his belly, while Jacob loved the Lord. Thus, Jacob got Esau to make a formal and official transfer of the birthright to him in exchange for a stew of lentils (28:31, 33; "this day" makes it formal). Along the same lines Rebekah, knowing that God had commanded that Jacob inherit, took steps to deceive sinful Isaac into giving the covenant blessing to the chosen son. All of this came to naught, however, for Esau had an army and decided to kill Jacob and take the inheritances for himself. Also, Jacob’s scientific attempt to produce spotted and speckled sheep and goats would not have worked except for God’s intervention (31:10-13).
The Jacob story is particularly important because it means that we cannot simply inherit the land, the Kingdom. It must be given anew by God. Jacob must leave the land and come back into it. He must learn that possession of the land is not a natural right, acquired through birth, inheritance, or marriage, but a free gift of God that is granted to His people. The same lesson is taught repeatedly in the book of Judges and by the prophets. It is a lesson that applies directly to the Church as she moves through history: Every generation must receive the Kingdom from God anew.
Two Crises
Both the Abraham and Jacob stories are bracketed by special visits from God. In the case of Abraham, the visits take place early and late in the narrative: as he leaves Ur and as he is told to sacrifice Isaac. In the case of Jacob, the special visits come as he leaves the land, at Bethel, and as he comes back into it, at Peniel. In the cases of both Abraham and Jacob, especially the latter, God appears initially at a moment of greatest vulnerability, when the person has lost his history and his protection, and becomes the Divine Benefactor. Abram is leaving everything behind, and Jacob is fleeing Esau and losing his family ties.
At these two first encounters, God appears as Friend (Life); but in the climactic encounters He appears as Enemy (Death). Everything that Abraham had lived for was concentrated in his son, Isaac, the promised seed. God comes to him and tells him that he must kill his son. Everything that Abraham had lived for, living under the promise of God and with faithful obedience to God, was about to be destroyed by God. Abraham was required to see through this awful threat and learn three things. One, that Isaac would be brought back to life again, since God had promised that through Isaac the world would be blessed. Two, that God and God alone is the Governor of history; human participation is secondary. And three, that Abraham was not really adequate to be a father (Abraham = "Father of Many"), and that the only adequate Father is God, to whom Isaac must be committed.
Similarly, God appears as Enemy to Jacob at Peniel. Jacob is at a point of total vulnerability, faced with Esau’s vengeful army ahead and fearing the return of jealous Laban from behind. Jacob has sent his entire clan across the river, where Esau is, and now God comes and tries to prevent him from entering! God had built him up as a large clan, with wives, children, flocks, and herds, and now God was going to take it all away, though Jacob had been faithful since before he was born, wrestling with Esau in the womb. Like Abraham, Jacob was required to see through this encounter. God stated that Jacob was a good wrestler, and that he had won the match. In other words, all of Jacob’s previous trials had been brought on him by God to make him strong, able to lead the Church. Jacob was required to see that God offers blessings through the trials He brings upon us, and to demand a blessing after wrestling with God.
The result of both awful encounters with God is that Abraham and Jacob briefly see God "face to face," as is implied in Genesis 22:14 and stated in Genesis 32:30. Both men had come to a place of maturity.
The Two Trees
Now, the difference between God’s first appearance to these patriarchs, and His later threatening appearance, is the difference between the Tree of Life and the Tree of Judgment. Remember that death is connected to the Tree of Judgment: When you eat of it, you die (2:17). God comes to Abraham and commands that Isaac die, and puts Abraham through a death & resurrection crisis. God comes to Jacob and tries to kill him, putting him through a death & resurrection experience.
The result of eating the Tree of Judgment is that one’s eyes are open and one becomes like God in a new and fuller sense (3:7, 22). This is exactly what happens in the Abraham and Jacob stories. Abraham’s eyes are opened to see the ram as substitute for Isaac. Jacob’s eyes are opened to see who the Wrestler really is.
Becoming like God in the fuller sense means that one has entered into the mature phase of life. This is implied in the Abraham encounter, for after this event Sarah dies and Abraham takes a new wife, has many sons, and exercises a new and much fuller kind of dominion for the rest of his life. It is clearly stated in the Jacob encounter, when God tells Jacob that Jacob has won the match, and is now mature enough to move into the land and take dominion in it.
Thus we see in these narratives that God is restoring the proper relationship of the Tree of Life and the Tree of Rule. God comes at the beginning and gives life through the promise. God comes much later on and threatens death in a crisis, through which He bestows the Tree of Judgment and Rule.
This is not something that happened only to these two men; it happens to all of us. In baptism, God gives us the Tree of Life. Through the Lord’s Supper, God gives us the flesh-bread of the Tree of Life (bread = life), and also the blood-wine of death (blood = death), which symbolizes rule and authority, and which promises that in Christ we will mature to the point of becoming like God in the fuller sense. In our lives, we will at some point go through a "mid-life crisis," which is the time when God comes and tries to kill us. We likely experience great trial, and in the midst of that trial we lose any sense of God’s friendly presence. It seems that all is against us. We want to quit and die. Many men abandon their wives at this point in their lives and take up with younger women. For women, the mid-life crisis is usually associated with the change of life.
This is the time when we have to learn more fully what it means to live by faith alone. Previously we had the enthusiasm of youth to carry us. Previously we may have had a close relationship with God as Friend to carry us. Previously we had the expectation of doing great things before we died. But now all those expectations are gone. Hope dies. All we have worked for, with God as our Friend, seems to be ruined. We have to see through this crisis and keep going even though it is unpleasant, seeing the reward at the far end.
This crisis, which varies greatly from individual to individual, is the essential turning point in development toward maturity. For this reason, the Bible says that rulers should be elders, or if they happen to be younger men, they must hearken to elders. The elder is the man in his 50s or 60s who has been through this experience and has come out of it and lived in terms of it for a time.
The crisis is the time of sacrifice. Consider that in the first part of our lives we build up an estate of some sort, like Abraham’s son Isaac, like Jacob’s clan. Maybe it is our family and children, which are now old enough to leave home. Maybe it is our job, which falls apart in some sense. Maybe it is our marriage, which no longer seems to work. All of these things are part of us, and all of these things die with us when we die in the crisis, and come to life again in a new and unexpected form when we exit the crisis. It turned out that Isaac did not die after all. It turned out that Esau had lost interest in killing Jacob. Life went on, but in a new and unexpected way.
Everything is killed and given up, but is received back. Yet, paradoxically, what is received back is both more glorious and more humble. After the crisis, we limp like Jacob. The works of the later part of our lives may well be far less visible and outwardly effective than the works of the first part of our lives. Yet, because we ourselves have been transformed, our secret influence will be far greater. We may no longer have "any form of comeliness that men should desire" us as we become more Christlike, but our Christlike in-fluence will be multiplied in the same way His has been, though we probably won’t see it.
Thus, Abraham pretty much passes off the scene after his crisis, though he lived for about forty more years. Who knows how much influence he had among the Gentiles during those years? We do know that his later sons were faithful, and generations later, the God-fearing Midianite Jethro became Moses’ father-in-law and guided Israel in the wilderness for a time (Exodus 18).
Similarly, though Jacob came into the land, his new dominion was paradoxically thwarted by the evil actions of his sons (Genesis 34). His son Joseph was taken from him, and shortly thereafter his favored wife Rachel died in childbirth. "Few and evil" were his days, as he told Pharaoh (47:9). Yet, the influence of the post-crisis Jacob on his son Joseph turned out to be the salvation not only of the Hebrews but also of the whole world (41:57). Joseph became a father to Pharaoh, and Pharaoh knelt to ask Jacob’s spiritual blessing (45:8, 47:10).
These are things that we also may expect.
