Religious Images in Christian Theology

Religious Images In Christian Theology

A cult image or idol is a material object, representing a deity, to which religious worship is directed. It is also controversially and pejoratively used by some Protestants to describe the Orthodox Christian practice of worshipping the Christian God through the use of icons, a charge which Orthodox Christians reject. In a similarly controversial sense, it is also used by some Protestants to pejoratively describe various Catholic worship practices such as scapulars and the veneration of statues and flat images of the Virgin Mary and saints, which Catholics do not consider idolatry. Concern over idolatry is the driving force behind the various traditions of aniconism in Christianity.

Idolatry is consistently prohibited in the Hebrew Bible, including as one of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:3-4) and in the New Testament (for example 1 John 5:21, most significantly in the Apostolic Decree recorded in Acts 15:19-21). There is a great deal of controversy over the question of what constitutes idolatry and this has bearing on the visual arts and the use of icons and symbols in worship, and other matters. As in other Abrahamic religions the meaning of the term has been extended very widely by theologians. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: "Idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship...Man commits idolatry whenever he honours and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons (for example satanism), power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money etc." Speaking of the effects of idolatry, Benedict XVI says, "Worship of an idol, instead of opening the human heart to Otherness, to a liberating relationship that permits the person to emerge from the narrow space of his own selfishness to enter the dimensions of love and of reciprocal giving, shuts the person into the exclusive and desperate circle of self-seeking"