Common Questions & Answers
"Catholics worship
statues!" People still make this ridiculous claim. Because Catholics have statues
in their churches, goes the accusation, they are violating God’s
commandment: "You shall not make for yourself a graven image or any
likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath,
or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow down to them or
serve them" (Ex. 20:4–5); "Alas, this people have sinned a
great sin; they have made for themselves gods of gold" (Ex. 32:31).
It is right to warn people against
the sin of idolatry when they are committing it. But calling Catholics
idolaters because they have images of Christ and the saints is based on
misunderstanding or ignorance of what the Bible says about the purpose and uses
(both good and bad) of statues.
Anti-Catholic writer Loraine
Boettner, in his book Roman Catholicism, makes the blanket statement,
"God has forbidden the use of images in worship" (281). Yet if people
were to "search the scriptures" (cf. John 5:39), they would find the
opposite is true. God forbade the worship of statues, but he did
not forbid the religious use of statutes. Instead, he actually commanded
their use in religious contexts!
God Said To Make Them
People who oppose religious
statuary forget about the many passages where the Lord commands the
making of statues. For example: "And you shall make two cherubim of gold
[i.e., two gold statues of angels]; of hammered work shall you make them, on
the two ends of the mercy seat. Make one cherub on the one end, and one cherub
on the other end; of one piece of the mercy seat shall you make the cherubim on
its two ends. The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing
the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another; toward the mercy
seat shall the faces of the cherubim be" (Ex. 25:18–20).
David gave Solomon the plan
"for the altar of incense made of refined gold, and its weight; also his
plan for the golden chariot of the cherubim that spread their wings and covered
the ark of the covenant of the Lord. All this he made clear by the writing of
the hand of the Lord concerning it all, all the work to be done according to
the plan" (1 Chr. 28:18–19). David’s plan for the temple,
which the biblical author tells us was "by the writing of the hand of the
Lord concerning it all," included statues of angels.
Similarly Ezekiel 41:17–18
describes graven (carved) images in the idealized temple he was shown in a
vision, for he writes, "On the walls round about in the inner room and
[on] the nave were carved likenesses of cherubim."
The Religious Uses of Images
During a plague of serpents sent
to punish the Israelites during the exodus, God told Moses to "make [a
statue of] a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole; and every one who is bitten,
when he sees it shall live. So Moses made a bronze serpent, and set it on a
pole; and if a serpent bit any man, he would look at the bronze serpent and
live" (Num. 21:8–9).
One had to look at the
bronze statue of the serpent to be healed, which shows that statues could be
used ritually, not merely as religious decorations.
Catholics use statues, paintings,
and other artistic devices to recall the person or thing depicted. Just as it
helps to remember one’s mother by looking at her photograph, so it helps
to recall the example of the saints by looking at pictures of them. Catholics
also use statues as teaching tools. In the early Church they were especially
useful for the instruction of the illiterate. Many Protestants have pictures of
Jesus and other Bible pictures in Sunday school for teaching children.
Catholics also use statues to commemorate certain people and events, much as
Protestant churches have three-dimensional nativity scenes at Christmas.
If one measured Protestants by the
same rule, then by using these "graven" images, they would be
practicing the "idolatry" of which they accuse Catholics. But
there’s no idolatry going on in these situations. God forbids the
worship of images as gods, but he doesn’t ban the making of images.
If he had, religious movies, videos, photographs, paintings, and all similar
things would be banned. But, as the case of the bronze serpent shows, God does
not even forbid the ritual use of religious images.
It is when people begin to adore a
statue as a god that the Lord becomes angry. Thus when people did start
to worship the bronze serpent as a snake-god (whom they named
"Nehushtan"), the righteous king Hezekiah had it destroyed (2 Kgs.
18:4).
What About Bowing?
Sometimes anti-Catholics cite
Deuteronomy 5:9, where God said concerning idols, "You shall not bow down
to them." Since many Catholics sometimes bow or kneel in front of statues
of Jesus and the saints, anti-Catholics confuse the legitimate veneration of a
sacred image with the sin of idolatry.
Though bowing can be used as a
posture in worship, not all bowing is worship. In
Hiding the Second Commandment?
Another charge sometimes made by
Protestants is that the Catholic Church "hides" the second
commandment. This is because in Catholic catechisms, the first commandment is
often listed as "You shall have no other gods before me" (Ex. 20:3),
and the second is listed as "You shall not take the name of the Lord in
vain." (Ex. 20:7). From this, it is argued that Catholics have deleted the
prohibition of idolatry to justify their use of religious statues. But this is
false. Catholics simply group the commandments differently from most
Protestants.
In Exodus 20:2–17, which
gives the Ten Commandments, there are actually fourteen imperative statements.
To arrive at Ten Commandments, some statements have to be grouped together, and
there is more than one way of doing this. Since, in the ancient world, polytheism
and idolatry were always united—idolatry being the outward expression of
polytheism—the historic Jewish numbering of the Ten Commandments has
always grouped together the imperatives "You shall have no other gods
before me" (Ex. 20:3) and "You shall not make for yourself a graven
image" (Ex. 20:4). The historic Catholic numbering follows the Jewish
numbering on this point, as does the historic Lutheran numbering. Martin Luther
recognized that the imperatives against polytheism and idolatry are two parts of
a single command.
To make memorization of the Ten
Commandments easier, Jews and Christians abbreviate the commandments so that
they can be remembered using a summary, ten-point formula. For example, Jews,
Catholics, and Protestants typically summarize the Sabbath commandment as,
"Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy," though the
commandment’s actual text takes four verses (Ex. 20:8–11).
When the prohibition of
polytheism/idolatry is summarized, Jews, Catholics, and Lutherans abbreviate it
as "You shall have no other gods before me." This is no attempt to
"hide" the idolatry prohibition (Jews and Lutherans don’t even
use statues of saints and angels). It is to make learning the Ten Commandments
easier.
The Catholic Church is not
dogmatic about how the Ten Commandments are to be numbered, however. The Catechism
of the Catholic Church says, "The division and numbering of the
Commandments have varied in the course of history. The present catechism
follows the division of the Commandments established by Augustine, which has
become traditional in the Catholic Church. It is also that of the Lutheran
confession. The Greek Fathers worked out a slightly different division, which
is found in the
The Form of God?
Some anti-Catholics appeal to
Deuteronomy 4:15–18 in their attack on religious statues: "[S]ince
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, the likeness of male or female, the
likeness of any beast that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird
that flies in the air, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the
likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth."
We’ve already shown that God
doesn’t prohibit the making of statues or images of various creatures for
religious purposes (cf. 1 Kgs. 6:29–32, 8:6–66; 2 Chr.
3:7–14). But what about statues or images that represent God? Many
Protestants would say that’s wrong because Deuteronomy 4 says the
Israelites did not see God under any form when he made the covenant with them,
therefore we should not make symbolic representations of God either. But does
Deuteronomy 4 forbid such representations?
The Answer Is No
Early in its history,
But later God did reveal
himself under visible forms, such as in Daniel 7:9: "As I looked, thrones
were placed and one that was Ancient of Days took his seat; his raiment was
white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool; his throne was fiery
flames, its wheels were burning fire." Protestants make depictions of the
Father under this form when they do illustrations of Old Testament prophecies.
The Holy Spirit revealed himself
under at least two visible forms—that of a dove, at the baptism of Jesus
(Matt. 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 3:22; John 1:32), and as tongues of fire, on the
day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1–4). Protestants use these images when drawing
or painting these biblical episodes and when they wear Holy Spirit lapel pins
or place dove emblems on their cars.
But, more important, in the
Incarnation of Christ his Son, God showed mankind an icon of himself. Paul
said, "He is the image (Greek: ikon) of the invisible God,
the firstborn of all creation." Christ is the tangible, divine
"icon" of the unseen, infinite God.
We read that when the magi were
"going into the house they saw the child with Mary his mother, and
they fell down and worshipped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered
him gifts, gold, frankincense, and myrrh" (Matt. 2:11). Though God did not
reveal a form for himself on
The bottom line is, when God made
the New Covenant with us, he did reveal himself under a visible form in
Jesus Christ. For that reason, we can make representations of God in
Christ. Even Protestants use all sorts of religious images: Pictures of Jesus
and other biblical persons appear on a myriad of Bibles, picture books,
T-shirts, jewelry, bumper stickers, greeting cards, compact discs, and manger
scenes. Christ is even symbolically represented through the Icthus or
"fish emblem."
Common sense tells us that, since
God has revealed himself in various images, most especially in the incarnate
Jesus Christ, it’s not wrong for us to use images of these forms to
deepen our knowledge and love of God. That’s why God revealed
himself in these visible forms, and that’s why statues and pictures are
made of them.
Idolatry Condemned by the Church
Since the days of the apostles,
the Catholic Church has consistently condemned the sin of idolatry. The early
Church Fathers warn against this sin, and Church councils also dealt with the
issue.
The Second Council of Nicaea
(787), which dealt largely with the question of the religious use of images and
icons, said, "[T]he one who redeemed us from the darkness of idolatrous
insanity, Christ our God, when he took for his bride his holy Catholic Church .
. . promised he would guard her and assured his holy disciples saying, ‘I
am with you every day until the consummation of this age.’ . . . To this
gracious offer some people paid no attention; being hoodwinked by the treacherous
foe they abandoned the true line of reasoning . . . and they failed to
distinguish the holy from the profane, asserting that the icons of our Lord and
of his saints were no different from the wooden images of satanic idols."
The Catechism of the Council of
Trent (1566) taught that idolatry is committed "by worshipping idols
and images as God, or believing that they possess any divinity or virtue
entitling them to our worship, by praying to, or reposing confidence in
them" (374).
"Idolatry is a perversion of
man’s innate religious sense. An idolater is someone who ‘transfers
his indestructible notion of God to anything other than God’" (CCC
2114).
The Church absolutely recognizes
and condemns the sin of idolatry. What anti-Catholics fail to recognize is the
distinction between thinking a piece of stone or plaster is a god and desiring
to visually remember Christ and the saints in heaven by making statues in their
honor. The making and use of religious statues is a thoroughly biblical
practice. Anyone who says otherwise doesn’t know his Bible.
[This section quoted from:
Catholic Answers, “Do Catholics Worship Statues?” (
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