I believe I am the Latter-day Saint apologist who has done the most work against the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox dogma of icon veneration. With that being said, there are some arguments against this doctrine that I think should not be used, my strong disagreements with the dogma notwithstanding.
One of the most popular of these arguments is the charge that
Roman Catholics omit the prohibition against venerating/worshiping idols from
the Ten Commandments. Paul Gee, a former Latter-day Saint and now a
member of Calvary Chapel (talk about selling your birthright for a bowl of pottage!), has an article entitled "Catholics Removed The 2nd Commandment," which is representative of this 'argument.' Paul writes:
God’s Ten Commandments from Exodus 20 are below…
1 1“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” (Exodus 20:3)
2 1“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.” (Exodus 20:4) 1“Thou
shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a
jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the
third and fourth generation of them that hate me;” (Exodus 20:5) 1“And
shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.” (Exodus 20:6)
Continuing, he notes that
The Catholic Church’s Ten
Commandments is a modified version of Exodus 20. It is not the same thing, but a very slim
down version of the real deal. And when
I say slim, I mean, they took a lot of details out of the true commandments of
God, along with removing a commandment all together. How sneaky they were in making it seem that
the 3rd commandment is really the second and the 10th commandment is really the
9th and 10th. . . . .
The Catholic Ten Commandments are below…
1. I am the Lord they God: thou shalt not have
strange gods before me. (Exodus 20:3)
2. You shall not take the name of the Lord,
your God in vain. (Exodus 20:7)
So
why would the Catholic Church remove the 2nd Commandment and replace it with
the 3rd, while splitting up the 9th and 10th into the 10th commandment?
In order to understand why, we need to examine the verses that they removed,
which comprise the true 2nd commandment. It reads, “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.” (Exodus 20:4) “Thou shalt
not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous
God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and
fourth generation of them that hate me;” (Exodus 20:5) “And shewing
mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.” (Exodus 20:6) What this is
talking about, in summary, is to not make any graven image nor bow down to
them. And if you were to walk into a Catholic Church, you would see a
variety of different idols that they bow down to on a daily basis.
This makes me wonder if Paul has ever read a Catholic translation
of the Bible. The following is from the Douay-Rheims:
2 I am the Lord thy God, who
brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
3 Thou shalt not have strange gods
before me.
4 Thou shalt not make to
thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above,
or in the earth beneath, nor of those things that are in the waters under the
earth.
5 Thou shalt not adore them,
nor serve them: I am the Lord thy God, mighty, jealous, visiting the iniquity
of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them
that hate me:
6 And shewing mercy unto thousands
to them that love me, and keep my commandments.
7 Thou shalt not take the name of
the Lord thy God in vain: for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that shall
take the name of the Lord his God in vain. (Exo 20:2-7)
So, while the Douay-Rheims has the prohibition against the worship
of images in the first commandment, Catholic translations/enumerations of the
Decalogue do contain such a prohibition.
Also, anyone who bothers to take time to study the Catholic side
of the argument, it won't be too difficult to find responses thereto. Even if
one does not find them persuasive, one should at least demonstrate they are
aware of them and interact with them (this thing called "intellectual
honesty/integrity"). For example, the following from Mario Lopez (AKA
Matt1618):
Graven
Images: Do Statues Violate the 2nd Commandment?
To quote Lopez’s argument in favour of the Catholic enumeration of
the Decalogue:
Catholics have
Exodus 20:4 in their Bibles and do not hide from it. The Protestant critics of
the Church on this issue have the not making graven images as its own
commandment, separate from the 1st commandment to worship no other God. It must
be recognized that not all Protestants who number the commandments differently
from Catholics, make the charge of Catholics violating what they call the
commandment to not make graven images, because they recognize that even in
making graven images, it is condemning idolatry, which the Catholic Church also
condemns. Nonetheless, in addressing the critics, a reading of the passage in
context shows that the commandment to not make graven images is not isolated
from that first commandment, but a part of it. Verses 2-6 are all related to
the same thing. He lays the foundation of the first commandment of verse 3 by
saying he is the Lord your God in verse 2. God then says in Verse 3 ‘have no
other gods before me’. Verse 4 says immediately after that to not make a graven
image. Verse 5 gives further elaboration by saying to not bow down or serve
those images because God is jealous of other gods. Who? The other gods who God
spoke of not to worship in verse 3. One must have love and have God as their
only God, and He will bless those who keep his commandments in V. 6. There is
one big flow of the whole first commandment. To say the 2nd commandment is
given in verse 4, as separate from the prior 2 verses, (such as to not kill and
to not steal in verses 13-14 are separate commandments), breaks the whole flow
of thought in verses 2-6. The anti-Catholic who says that this commandment
about making graven images is separate, gives us a more disoriented reading of
Exodus 20:2-6. This view has Verses 2 and 3 to be about one thing - worshipping
only the one God. That is thus the end of the commandment. Verse 4 according to
this view is a totally different commandment about graven images. Just making
graven images is idolatry. Then, he has God going back to elaborating on the
reasons why to have no other gods, in verses 5 & 6, while he spoke of
having no gods back in verses 2 and 3. This breaks the continuity of thought.
The Catholic view is the more reasonable idea that verse 4 is in mid-flow of
the whole first commandment to not worship other gods. Why not make graven
images? Because if you bow down or serve graven images in
place of God, you are violating the commandment to
worship no other gods, and iniquities will be visited upon you, because God is
a jealous god (v. 5, 6). The Catholic, and in my opinion more reasonable view
is that God’s concentration is not the graven images per se, but if one makes
those graven images, and serves those graven images, one is making those graven
images god. That is idolatry and a worshipping of other gods, thus violating
the first commandment. In other words, if graven images become gods, then God condemns that. The
Catholic Church condemns idolatry precisely because it condemns the violation
of the first commandment. The Catholic Church has never taught that graven
images are god.
As an aside, the numbering of the commandments differ
based on the Protestant making the making of graven images the second
commandment, whereas the Catholic view is that this directive is only a part of
the first commandment. The Protestants thus combine v. 17, which says to not
covet another's goods, and covet another's wife as the 10th commandment. This
numbering makes no distinction in coveting property and people. The Catholic
view is that the coveting of somebody’s goods in the 9th commandment is
separate from and a different type of coveting than when one covets somebody's
wife, and marks that as the 10th commandment. But of course that is for a
different discussion.
For fuller discussions from a Catholic perspective, see the
discussion of the first commandment in the Catechism of the Council of Trent
(AKA Roman Catechism) from 1566 as well as the following from the Catechism of the
Catholic Church it its discussion of the Decalogue:
IV. "You Shall Not Make For
Yourself a Graven Image . . ."
2129 The divine injunction
included the prohibition of every representation of God by the hand of man.
Deuteronomy explains: "Since you saw no form on the day that the Lord
spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, beware lest you act
corruptly by making a graven image for yourselves, in the form of any
figure...."66 It is the absolutely transcendent God who revealed himself
to Israel. "He is the all," but at the same time "he is greater
than all his works."67 He is "the author of beauty."68
2130 Nevertheless, already in the
Old Testament, God ordained or permitted the making of images that pointed
symbolically toward salvation by the incarnate Word: so it was with the bronze
serpent, the ark of the covenant, and the cherubim.69
2131 Basing itself on the mystery
of the incarnate Word, the seventh ecumenical council at Nicaea (787) justified
against the iconoclasts the veneration of icons - of Christ, but also of the
Mother of God, the angels, and all the saints. By becoming incarnate, the Son
of God introduced a new "economy" of images.
2132 The Christian veneration of
images is not contrary to the first commandment which proscribes idols. Indeed,
"the honor rendered to an image passes to its prototype," and
"whoever venerates an image venerates the person portrayed in it."70
The honor paid to sacred images is a "respectful veneration," not the
adoration due to God alone:
Religious worship is not directed
to images in themselves, considered as mere things, but under their distinctive
aspect as images leading us on to God incarnate. the movement toward the image
does not terminate in it as image, but tends toward that whose image it is.71
66 Deut 4:15-16.
67 Sir 43:27-28.
68 Wis 13:3.
69 Cf. Num 21:4-9; Wis 16:5-14; Jn
3:14-15; Ex 25:10-22; 1 Kings 6:23-28; 7:23-26.
70 St. Basil, De Spiritu Sancto
18, 45: PG 32, 149C; Council of Nicaea II: DS 601; cf. Council of Trent: DS
1821-1825; Vatican Council II: SC 126; LG 67.
71 St. Thomas Aquinas, STh II-II,
81, 3 ad 3.
There are, I would argue, very strong arguments, both biblical and
especially patristic against the Catholic (and Eastern Orthodox) claim that
icon veneration is apostolic in origin and a dogma of the faith. However,
this argument, as popular as it is, is not a good argument and no
intellectually honest individual should ever use it.
Further Reading
Answering
Fundamentalist Protestants and Roman Catholic/Eastern Orthodox on Images/Icons
