Many of the fathers expressly deny that the use of visible images for religious purposes (not to mention veneration of them) or even can be a Christian practice. Clement of Alexandria is one such father: “The Law itself exhibits justice. It teaches wisdom by abstinence from visible images and by inviting us to the Maker and Father of the universe.” (Clement of Alexandria Stomata, Book II, XVIII) Clement appears to the Law of Moses and its expression of God’s unchanging character. The reason that “Moses expressly commanded that neither a carved, nor molten, nor molded, nor painted likeness should be made” was, in Clement’s view, because God did not want us to “cling to things of sense. . . . For familiarity with the sense of sight disparages the reverence of what is divine.” (Ibid., Book V, V)
Although Tertullian does not usually carry much weight with Roman Catholics, his thoughts on this echo Clement’s above. Battling the charge of atheism, Tertullian asks rhetorically: “if we refuse our homage to statues and frigid images . . . does it not merit praise instead of penalty that we have rejected what we have come to see is error?” (Tertullian, Apology XII)
Origen is yet another father who rejected the use of images for religious purposes. In Origen’s judgment, those “who address themselves to inanimate objects as to God” must be “intoxicated.” Moreover, anyone who images that images, “fashioned by men of worthless and sometimes most wicked character, confer any honour upon genuine divinities” is equally “insane.” (Origen, Against Celsus, Book III, LXXVI) While it is true that Origen is specifically referring to images of “god,” and not specifically to the saints, no one who makes such statements can at the same time assume that images may legitimately be used in the religious practice of venerating the saints.
Origen is very clear that venerating and praying to images is quite inconsonant with Christianity when he later writes:
The Scythians, the nomadic Libyans, the godless Seres, and the Persians agree in this [rejection of images] with the Christians and Jews. However, they are actuated by very different principles. For none of these other groups abhor altars and images on the ground that they are afraid of degrading the worship of God and reducing it to the worship of material things. . . .It is not possible at the same time to know God and to address prayers to images. (Ibid., Book VIII, LXIV-LXV) [italics mine]
Origen’s words speak for themselves. Trent has mistakenly—and quite carelessly—asserted that the legitimacy of venerating images was the unanimous view of the fathers. On the contrary, Origen went to great lengths to defend the “conduct of the Christians in refusing homage to any object except the Most High God, and the First-Born of all creation.” (Ibid., LXX) Their refusal to venerate images was solely because they had “learned from Jesus Christ the true way of serving God. And we shrink from [images which], under a pretense of piety, leads to utter impiety.” (Ibid., Book VIII, XX)
Origen’s views were certainly not unique to him. This was the view of all of apostolic Christianity. The early Christians were convinced that “that which is incorporeal must be offered to God, for He accepts this. . . For, if God is not seen, he should be worshipped with things that are not seen.” (Lactantius, Divine Institutes, Book VI, XXV)
Also revealing is Trent’s insistence that the Catholic believer is not venerating the image but rather what the image is a representation of:
. . . [not] that trust is to be reposed in images, as was of old done by the Gentiles who placed their hope in idols; but because of the honor which is shown them is referred to the prototypes which those images represent; in such wise that by the images which we kiss, and before which we uncover the head, and prostrate ourselves, we adore Christ; and we venerate the saints, whose similitude they bear. (Council of Trent, Session XXV)
Yet, according to several of the early fathers, this was the same line of reasoning used by the pagans, and one which the fathers categorically rejected. This is well illustrated by the statement from Athenagoras:
It is asserted by some [pagans] that, although these are only images, yet there exist gods in honor of whom they are made. They say that the prayers and sacrifices presented to the images are to be referred to the gods, and are in fact made to the gods. (Athenagoras, Apology [To the Emperors Marcus Aurelius Anoninus and Lucius Aurelius Commodus], XVIII)
Athenagoras later tells us that he is not raising this point to indict the pagans but rather to provide justification for the Christian rejection of images:
And I would beseech you, greatest of emperors, before I enter on this discussion, to be indulgent to me while I bring forward true considerations; for it is not my design to show the fallacy of idols, but, by disproving the calumnies vented against us, to offer a reason for the life we follow. (Ibid.)
Athenagoras writes to defend the course of life “we” follow (as distinct from the pagans), and to refuse the accusations against “us.” Clearly, Athenagoras is speaking categorically for all Christians in his day, and he tells us that the singular Christians practice is to reject visible images. Similarly, Arnobius, quoting his opponents, reiterates and then rejects the argument used by the pagans to justify the use of images:
Here also the advocates of images are wont to say this also, that the ancients well that images have no divine nature, and that there is no sense in them, but that they formed them profitably and wisely, for the sake of the unmanageable and ignorant mobs. (Arnobius, Adversus Gentes, Book VI, XXIV) . . . “But you err,” says my opponent, “and are mistaken. For we do not consider either copper, gold, silver, or those other materials of which statues are made to be in themselves god and sacred deities. Rather, in them we worship and venerate those beings whom their dedication as sacred items cause to dwell in those statues made by workmen.” (Ibid., Book XI, XVII)
The arguments used by Arnobius’ opponents are strikingly similar to those used by Trent and Catholic apologists as a whole. Both attempt to justify their practice by claiming that to venerate the image is in reality to venerate the person represented by the image. Arnobius flatly denies that this is possible. Lactantius also provides us with similar testimony:
What madness is it, then, either to form those objects that they themselves may after wards fear, or to fear the things that they have formed? However, they say, “We do not fear the images themselves, but those beings after whose likeness they were formed, and to whose names they are dedicated.” No doubt you fear them for this reason: because you think that they are in heaven. (Lactantius, The Divine Institutes, Book II, II)
But again, the rationale of the pagans in regard to images is precisely that proffered by Trent. They were not really venerating images, but rather what those images represented. As with Origen, Lactantius is thinking here about images of gods and not specifically saints; but this is not surprising when we consider that the invocation of saints was completely unheard of in the primitive church. Yet he rationale that he gives here applies equally to images of saints:
So, why, then [since you think that they are in heaven], do you not raise your eyes to heaven? Why do you not invoke their names and offer sacrifices in the open air? Why do you look to walls, wood, and stone—rather than to the place where you believe them to be? What is the meaning of temples and altars? What, in short, is the meaning of the images themselves, which are memorials either of the dead or of the absent? (Ibid.)
These statements from the fathers condemning the practice of venerating (and even creating) images are by no means confined to images of pagan gods. Irenaeus relates an early attempt by the Gnostics to set up Christian images for veneration:
[They] call themselves Gnostics. They also possess images, some of them painted, and others formed from different kinds of material. They maintain that a likeness of Christ was made by Pilate at that time when Jesus lived among them. They crown these images, and set them up along with the images of the philosophers of the world. That is to say, they place them with the images of Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle, and the rest. They have also other modes of honoring these images, after the same manner of the Gentiles. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, Book I, XXV.6)
As with the other fathers cited above, Irenaeus’ statement betrays a categorial rejection of the use of images for religious purposes. He observes the Gnostics from a distance and notes that “they” possess images, and they “they” maintain a legend about an image of Christ made by Pilate. “They” honor these images the same way the Gentiles honor their pagan images. No one who speaks this way can at the same time entertain a legitimate Christian use of images. Indeed, it was the heretical Gnostics (not Irenaeus and orthodoxy) that set up and venerated the image of Christ—a decidedly Christian image. It would require very little imagination to conjecture what Irenaeus’ response would be to the Catholic crucifix!
Such was the view of the earlier fathers. There was no such thing as a Christian image made after the likeness of a saint in the earliest years of Christianity. Such things were frowned upon, even if the images were created merely for artistic merit. As Clement of Alexandria once noted: “It is with a different kind of spell that art deludes you. . . It leads you to pay religious honor and worship to images and pictures.” (Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Heathen, IV) For this reason, “works of art cannot be sacred and divine.” (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, Book VII, V) Clement was so opposed to the use of images that he would not even allow that the images of the cherubim on top of the ark should be taken literally:
These golden figures, each of them with six wings, signify either the two bears (as some would have it) or rather the two hemispheres. For the name cherubim means “much knowledge.” . . . For He who prohibited the making of a graven image would never Himself have made an image in the likeness of holy things. (Ibid., Book V, VI. Ironically, many Catholic apologists use this same biblical passage to justify the current practice of Rome)
Similarly, Tertullian goes so far as to ascribe demonic activity to the veneration of images:
We know that the names of the dead are nothing, as are their images. But when images are set up, we know well enough, too, who carry on their wicked work under these names. We know who exult in the homage rendered to the images. We know who pretend to be divine. It is none other than accursed spirits. (Tertullian, De Spectaculis, X) . . . for idolatry, in fact, is a sort of homage to the departed; the one as well as the other is a service to dead men. Moreover, demons have abode in the images of the dead. (Tertullian, Elucidations, XII) . . . “Not that an idol is anything,” as the apostle says, but that the homage they render to it is to demons. These are the real occupants of these consecrated images—whether of dead men or (as they think) of gods. (Tertullian, De Spectaculis, XIII)
Whatever view one takes of the decisions of the later fathers regarding the veneration of images (namely, those at Nicaea II), one thing is absolutely clear; the acceptance of images for religious purposes was by no means the “unanimous teaching” of the fathers as Trent so erroneously claimed. Indeed, as we have shown, it was roundly rejected by the earliest fathers, and can therefore have no basis even in a supposed oral tradition of the apostles. *(Eric D. Svendsen, Evangelical Answers: A Critique of Current Roman Catholic Apologists [Lindenhurst, N.Y.: Reformation Press, 1999], 147-52)
Further Reading:
Eric D. Svendsen, In the Image of God: A Dialogue With a Roman Catholic Apologist on the Veneration of Images (a thorough response to Robert Sungenis on the overwhelming early Christian evidence against the later defined RC/EO dogma)
Answering Fundamentalist Protestants and Roman Catholic/Eastern Orthodox on Images/Icons