One of the projects I’ve been engaged in recently is a commentary on the book of Romans with my father-in-law, brother-in-law, and wife, exploring the book verse by verse for one theological reason, but finding, of course, a wealth of topics unrelated to our original purposes. In reading Romans 1 I was struck for the first time how important the sin of idolatry is to all Paul writes about the pagan Gentiles in vv.18-32. If you’d asked me six years or even six months ago whether there was any special significance to idolatry over and against any other sin in Paul’s argument I probably wouldn’t have seen anything. If there was a charge of special importance, I probably would have thought it vv. 24-27, with idolatry being something of an undesirable norm for the pagans in the way that slight speeding and overeating are for Americans.
Yet on this re-reading it struck me how in Paul’s theology and in the structure of his argument pagan idolatry is the arch-sin, the sin which leads vv. 24-27. This is not because idolatry is bad for you but it can lead to something worse; rather, 24-27 is both the consequence and the judicial sentence of idolatry: humanity lost. Or to put it another way, the imago Dei drive into exile.
In typically Pauline fashion, his syllogistic philosophy evokes the Israel story. I long failed to understand in my reading of the Old Testament why idolatry was so gravely important. Israel might be full of murder, adultery, and oppression, but it was always idolatry that called down judgment, and somehow these other sins were all expressed in the language of idolatrous unfaithfulness. The people are idolatrous and the glory is taken from the temple; the people are idolatrous and receive ignominious defeat at the hands of their enemies; the people are idolatrous and forfeit their inheritance, ultimately led off into exile. In Romans 1, this pattern is echoed powerfully in Paul’s indictment of Pagan humanity’s failure.
Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising, since every vice can be somehow expressed as a form of idolatry—little bronze statues aren’t required. Chesterton speaks somewhere of how most religious error is preferring the symbol of something over the reality which that symbol represents. For example, a man prefers the image of the cross over the divine mercy of which the cross is a symbol, and he takes a sword to his enemies. He prefers the image of the hymnal over the praise to which the hymnal is an aid, and is no longer able to open his mouth. He prefers money itself, which is just green paper and metal discs, over the healthy things which money ought to represent, like wine and horses. The image of a woman is loved more than the love of a woman, and the image of one’s self is nurtured more carefully than the virtue, manner, and health which actually is one’s self. In advocating the realities of things over their images, I begin to sound like a Platonist!
It was Neil Postman who first pointed out to me how apart from all the other ancient peoples, the Jews alone did not depict their God, and even received specific instructions—over Thou Shalt Not Murder and many others more important—that they were not to do so. First came monotheism, and then the imagelessness of God, of which they were so respectful that they would neither write down nor speak Yahweh’s name.
The creator God would not be symbolized, imaged, or depicted in something created.
Remembering this truth helps one to realize afresh how spectacular the incarnation is, for after thousands of years of keeping—albeit with various success—this commandment, God finally acts for his people, and in doing so, he gives them the long withheld image. In other words, Jesus fulfills the second commandment, for now there is an image of Israel’s God, and he is come down form Galilee.
In light of this, I’m afraid that Protestantism might have been overhasty in reacting against the rich iconography of the Roman and Eastern churches. Yes, there is of course a danger in such ornate images, but there is also a danger in lack of images. Jesus came, and he was seen by men. There must be some way, and I’m very much open for suggestions, on how we can celebrate the way in which God’s image was uniquely revealed in him without slipping into pseudo-paganism on the one hand, or on the other hand preferring the barren ugliness of Protestant churches.
There’s much more to be said, from Plato to Wittgenstein—whose work I’ve recently started on—about the relation of real things to the symbols we use to represent them. This conversation not only includes images, but is deeply concerned with language. This probably means that it’s getting beyond me and it’s time for me to start writing about classical music again.
