“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.” – Exodus 20:4-6

Tonight I read a couple of chapters of the book I’m currently reading, Knowing God, by J.I. Packer.  The book, as the title suggests, teaches that we were created to know God, and consequently, the most important thing we can do with our lives is dedicate ourselves to knowing Him better.

In the fourth chapter, Packer takes an interesting take on the second commandment. He outlines idolatry as being: worship of idols to false gods and worship of idols to the One True God.  This is totally reasonable and I think this last point is often neglected. Certain denominations or sects of Christians probably should take note of this.

From here, he makes two more points:

1. Christians should not use paintings or other symbolic representations of God, whether Father, Son or Holy Spirit.

2. Christians should not conjure up mental images of the Triune.

The basis for these arguments rests in the inadequacy of imagery when it comes to God. He says that any image will fail to capture God in his true form and thus lead to incorrect thinking which leads to incorrect theology. He advocates that the wisest choice is for Christians to avoid crucifixes, paintings, statues, or imaginations of what God, in any form, “looks” like.

As I read this, beyond being surprised at the boldness of his position, I found a couple aspects of his idea to be untennable and incompatible with scripture.

To be human is to imagine. We have mental representations of anything that exists and that we have knowledge of.  While it is true that any such representation will fail to capture God in His entire essence, this is true of anything we say or think about God.  God is so vast in His self-existence, that we are better to define what God is not than what He is.  However, since we do not understand things by what they are not, this is not realistic. We do not look at a chair and understand that it is a chair because it is in no way like water.

Secondly, I find that scripture is full of imagination concerning God.  David describes God in numerous ways…from an eagle, to a mighty warrior, to a shepherd,  to a father…etc. The list is nearly endless. While I would never suggest that David believed God to actually hold any of these forms physically, I would suggest that David, in his meditation, visualized God as being these things or having qualities that are reflected in His creation.

Thirdly, Jesus, by neccessity of being born and living as a man, had a very real earthly form and existence. It is not sacreligious in my opinion, to think and portray Jesus as a man. Even though these paintings do not represent Jesus’ Deity, they do represent his manifestation to us on earth.  It is doubtful that the disciples avoided thinking of Jesus in the way He appeared as a man.

The idea is ludicrous.

Lastly, any representations or ideas we have about God are completely insufficient. It is impossible for us to have one single idea about God that could truly capture who He is. Ideas themselves are inferior to the magnificence of our Creator. By his logic, all of our thinking about God would have to cease.

So, while I can agree with the essence of Packer’s position, that we should avoid the worship of any images, no matter what they represent, I cannot agree that we should avoid all imagery or ideas about who God is. They are not harmful unless the images themselves become more important to us or define God, instead of the other way around.

I welcome any feedback.