Part 1: Church art and idolatry
I'm wondering if you've ever thought about things from the point of view of the golden calf in Exodus. He had a rough trot.
You see, when Aaron made the calf of gold in Exodus 32 and told the people to worship it, the poor old calf couldn't protest that it wasn't the right thing to do. Later on, when Aaron was quizzed by an angry Moses about what happened, Aaron claimed that he had simply thrown the gold into the fire and "" out came this calf' (Ex 32:24). Extraordinary! Amazing!
Well, if Moses hadn't already ground the calf to dust in fury and if the calf happened to be standing close and heard those words, then, once again, the poor old thing wouldn't have been able to protest. He wouldn't have been able to say: "Now hang on, that's bull dust.'
You see, idols and statues have got it tough. They're constantly being attributed with all sorts of motives and powers. In fact, apart from bird poo, it's the major occupational hazard they face.
Why? Because they're dumb. That's right, they're dumb.
Now, I'm not being rude. Dumb is just the dictionary definition of someone or something that can't speak. And idols and statutes can't speak for themselves. They're dumb " mute" they don't express opinions" they don't use words (see Isaiah 44). Which is why, next time you want to say something clear and profound you're more likely to send a letter or use a phone than send a statue or point to an image. Otherwise people could get the wrong idea.
Which leads me to a tension that's existed in churches and Christian gatherings for a long time. It's the tension between those in favour of using the visual arts to communicate and those who aren't. In church history the iconoclasts were those who rejected religious images in church and were prepared to destroy them, whilst the iconophiles were those who saw images as a way to move people towards God.
The tension goes way back in the Bible. The tower of Babel demonstrated our willingness to overthrow God with an icon or symbol of great human authority, power and unity (Gen. 11). Later Jacob's journey to faith and trust in God included encouraging his wife Rachel to put away the "household gods' that she had stolen from her father (cf Gen. 31:34, 35:2). However, the really big incident that shapes and defines our fears with the visual arts is the one already mentioned: the golden calf episode of Exodus 32.
It's a riveting story full of rich irony and strange juxtaposition. Picture Moses up on Mount Sinai with all the grandeur and awe that that story holds, while down below, the people he leads are doing the most bizarre and evil thing. Fully aware that the great and powerful Yahweh is meeting with Moses they nevertheless turn away to idolatry of the most blatant and despicable kind. Of course, contrary to his lie about how they got the calf, Aaron actually made the golden calf quite carefully with an engraving tool.
The sad irony is that God actually wanted his people to be creative in the visual arts. At the very time the people are making and worshipping the golden calf, God is telling Moses that he wants artistic endeavour. In chapter 31 we're told that Yahweh has already purposefully filled Bezalel, son of Uri, with the Spirit of God"
" with ability and intelligence, with knowledge and all craftsmanship, (4) to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, (5) in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, to work in every craft.
Bezalel, along with Oholiab and a whole team of artisans were gifted by God to provide temple furnishings according to the prescription of God.
The shocking calf episode highlights the seductiveness of images and objects for the human heart and their uselessness in helping us. We humans have a love affair with them and the Bible tells us that we need to watch ourselves.
For example Moses told the Israelites:
" the LORD spoke to you out of the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of words, but saw no form; there was only a voice. (Dt 4:12)
It is disastrous if we attempt to know God in any way other than through his precious revealed word. Later in Deuteronomy 4:15-16 Moses warns the Israelites:
"Therefore watch yourselves very carefully. Since you saw no form on the day that the LORD spoke to you at Horeb out of the midst of the fire, (16) beware lest you act corruptly by making a carved image for yourselves,
Moses goes on to briefly survey and include all of creation as subject matter for potential idolatry. It was at Horeb that the Golden Calf episode happened and so Moses' warning is salutary. Yet despite this, when the Kingdom divides after Solomon's death, Jeroboam repeats the abomination. Afraid that the people will return to the leadership of Rehoboam in Jerusalem, he makes two golden calves and says to the people:
" Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt." (29) And he set one in Bethel, and the other he put in Dan. 1Kings 12:28-29
It stretches credulity that the people were willing to accept the ridiculous notion that poorly made dumb idols had rescued their ancestors from Egypt. Yet that's the condition of the human heart. Romans 1 warns us that it's our natural bent to love and worship the creation rather than the Creator. Is it any wonder that people have been cautious down through the ages!
In summary there are two key reasons to be cautious about the use of objects and images.
Firstly, objects and images are imprecise. This is because they carry no intrinsic explanation with them. Consequently the ideas and associations they provoke in the mind will differ from person to person. This makes them potentially unreliable. We should never expect them to work alone in carrying the essence of our message.
Secondly, objects and images are seductive. Our God has told us to walk by faith and not by sight (2Cor 5:7). Yet, as we've seen, we want to touch and see something to help us believe. Our lack of faith wants something tangible, something concrete. The shape, lustre and texture of objects, the power of an arresting image can hold us captive and bewitch us.
People often speak of feeling closer to God in majestic European Cathedrals. Yet, there is only one way to come close to God and that's through Jesus Christ. This requires no cathedral or image of Jesus but simply acceptance of His word in our hearts.
So, is there no role for the visual arts in church? There certainly is. But before I highlight some positives, let's take a brief tour back through some church history to see what's gone before. After all, the old maxim still applies. We should learn the lessons of history lest we repeat its mistakes.
If we travel back to the sixth century we meet the energetic and influential Pope Gregory the Great of Rome, after whom the Gregorian chant is named. Here is his solution to the problem of illiteracy amongst the masses:
“Painting can do for the illiterate what writing does for those who can read”
Gregory failed to grasp the first key reason highlighted above and his plan was ill conceived. His focus should have been on teaching people to read the scriptures or at least making sure they had access to hearing them read. Instead, illustration of bible events developed but in a controlled formularized style with the aim of teaching about the life of Jesus.
Now this might, at first glance, seem alright, but remember our first problem, images are imprecise, so the message of the Bible is easily confused or distorted. This is compounded when wrong theology becomes enshrined in a venerated or celebrated artistic object or space. This, of course, is the second problem with objects and images: they're seductive.
Much later on, the painter Giottto di Bondone, father of the Italian Renaissance, would in 1305, complete a fresco cycle, or series of scenes from the life of Christ that would surround the interiors of Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, Northern Italy. This chapel was Giotto's attempt to achieve Gregory's goal of teaching the masses with the stories of the Bible. It would come to form the template and standard that all later church art in the Catholic tradition would aspire to.
Returning to Gregory and his edict, it wasn't long before portable images known as icons began to be used by people as sacred items. These "icons' were said to be holy and endowed with special properties. Amongst some Christian groups it was believed that particular works could produce miracles especially if touched.
In the Byzantine East, this was justified by saying that if God had come down in the physical body of Christ, then why could he not also reveal himself in visible images through which we worship God.
Which is the same kind of logic that says if God can write on the wall to King Belshazzar in Daniel's time, then he can write to us in the Sydney Morning Herald, and moreover" he has! And why not tea leaves? And who are you to say that he hasn't?
This approach fundamentally misunderstood the purpose and uniqueness of Christ's incarnation. It was not Christ's physical form that drew people to him. Rather, it was His words. So in John 6 many disciples who were face to face with Jesus chose to reject him " not on the basis of his appearance, but because they simply couldn't accept his words. Moreover, God sent only one son for us to "look' to in order to be saved. Not many "images' or "forms'.
Ironically, the only thing we know for certain about the appearance of Jesus is Isaiah's promise in chapter 53:2 that his appearance wouldn't in any way attract us:
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
and no beauty that we should desire him.
Certainly Pope Gregory let a genie out of a bottle that the Catholic and Orthodox churches have struggled with ever since. But things will get a lot worse before they ever start to get better.
Here's the appalling conclusion of the Ecumenical "Seventh council of Nicaea' in AD 787 as they tried to regulate image worship.
‘The honour paid to the image passes to the original and he that adores an image adores it in the person depicted therein’.
It's hard to see how this provided any "regulation'. On the contrary, it opened the floodgates of idolatry and superstition. The technical provision was that people were forbidden from "worshipping' an image but allowed to "venerate' that which the image pointed to. Apart from being a worthless distinction, it would have almost certainly been lost on the common man.
Superstition reigned. There were instances where it was thought that in some particularly powerful images - Christ himself was actually dwelling there.
All of this brought the artist centre stage in the practice of religion. He wielded enormous power as he took on the responsibility of aiding people in their worship of Christ. The great challenge for the artist in the Medieval period was how to represent Christ. Should he be portrayed as the transcendent and divine Son of God (think long faces with halos above the head), or as the earthly and immanent Son of Man depicted with gritty realism (should we see any pain on Jesus' face?). Of course, the undercurrents in the question were the debates over Jesus' divinity and humanity and the trinity.
The artistic transition through this period was definitely a movement from depicting Jesus as heavenly through to real and earthly. It reached perhaps its lowest most earthly point with Mantegna's "Dead Christ' painted around 1490. In this painting we have a dead Jesus laid out on the slab in the tomb while the artist paints without any sense of reverence for Christ but rather out of sheer humanistic curiosity in the human form and the technical challenge of depicting the human figure in a foreshortened way. For Mantegna there was no interest in resurrection. Jesus is just a man and he is dead.
This brief tour from the beginning of the Middle Ages up to the Renaissance shows us that the lesson of the golden calf and the wise prohibitions of our God were not necessarily taken up by the New Testament church. On the contrary, God's people still need to keep their heads when it comes to the visual arts. We need to be just as watchful as ever.
So what role is there for the visual arts in church meetings and church life? Really, there is a very rich one.
Part two of "Golden opportunities: The visual arts in church life' will look practically at how the visual arts fits in congregational life.
Malcolm Williams is Director of the Fellowship for Evangelism in the Visual Arts.
