Ensuing assessment of Nicaea’s II
implied christological argument favors iconoclasm for several reasons.
Admittedly, iconodule arguments from John of Damascus and others are more
expansive than Nicaea II or this necessarily brief response can portray. But,
first, the second of the Ten Commandments is emphatic in both its
comprehensiveness (not worshiping any graven image) and its consequences.
Second, pedagogical arguments (from visual representation of God in Christ, to
address illiteracy and the like) do not authorize a redemptive-historical shift
in which the incarnation nullifies the second commandment’s import. Third, the
distinction between latria and dulia is contested (as noted
above), while being incoherently applied to Mary and the saints along with
Christ. Fourth, purported biblical support and patristic precedents for icons
are inapplicable or nonexistent. (Daniel J. Treier, Lord Jesus Christ[New
Studies in Dogmatics; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Academic, 2023], 182-83)
Again, contra of John of Damascus:
Christ’s humanity is hypostatically united to God whereas Mary (or the wood of
the cross) is not, so that “honour rendered” to an image must pass over to a
“prototype” differently. “Where indeed has God instituted the relative worship
of latria, whose proximate object is the creature and remote object God? Were
not the calf-worshipping Israelites of old (and so the pagans themselves) ready
to encrust their idolatry with the same distinction?” So Turretin, Institutes
of Elenctic Theology, 2:57. (Ibid., 183 n. 81)
Further Reading:
Answering Fundamentalist Protestants and Roman Catholic/Eastern Orthodox on Images/Icons
