After this Celsus says that we avoid
setting up altars and images and temples, since, he thinks, it is a sure
token of an obscure and secret society. He does not notice that our altars
are the mind of each righteous man, form which true and intelligible incense
with a sweet savour is sent up, prayers form a pure conscience. That is why it
is said by John in the Apocalypse ‘And the incense is the prayers of the saints’,
and by the Psalmist ‘Let my prayers be as incense before thee.’
Images and votive offerings
appropriate for God, which have been made by vulgar workmen, but which are made
clear and formed in us by the divine Logos, are the virtues which are copies of
the firstborn of all creation. For in him there are patterns of righteousness,
prudence, courage, wisdom, piety, and the other virtues. Accordingly, there are
images in all who, according to the divine word, have made for themselves prudence,
righteousness, courage, wisdom, piety, and the products of the other virtues.
We are persuaded that it is fitting for them to give honour to the prototype of
all images, ‘the image of the invisible God’, the only-begotten God. Moreover,
those who ‘have put off the old man with its deeds and put on the new man,
which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him who created it’, restore
what is in the image of the Creator and make images of him in themselves of
such a nature as the supreme God wishes.
Just as some image-makers do their
work with wonderful successes, as, for example, Pheidias or Polycleitus or the
painters Zeusix and Apelles, while others make them less skilfully than these
men, and other men even less skilfully than the second class, so that in general
there is much variation in the construction of images and pictures: in the same
way, there are some who make images of the supreme God in a superior way and
according to perfect knowledge, so that there is no comparison between the Olympian
Zeus wrought by Pheidias and whim who is made in the image of God who created
him. But of all the images in the whole creation by far the most superior and
pre-eminent is that in our Saviour who said, ‘My father is in me.’ (Origen, Contra
Celsum 8.17, in Origen: Contra Celsum [trans. Henry Chadwick; Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1953], 464-65)
Further Reading:
Answering Fundamentalist Protestants and Roman Catholic/Eastern Orthodox on Images/Icons