A little while ago I made my way through St. John of Damascus’ Three Treatises on the Divine Images for a course on worship I was in. Having spent 6 years in a tradition that off-handedly dismisses any possible value images might have in worship, I found his articulation of a more eastern position quite refreshing. At one point he says,
“I do not venerate matter, I venerate the fashioner of matter, who became matter for my sake and accepted to dwell in matter and through matter worked my salvation, and I will not cease from reverencing matter, through which my salvation was worked. I do not reverence it as God—far from it; how can that which has come to be from nothing be God?—if the body of God has become God unchangeably through the hypostatic union, what gives anointing remains, and what was by nature flesh animated with a rational and intellectual soul is formed, it is not uncreated. Therefore I reverence the rest of matter and hold in respect that through which my salvation came, because it is filled with divine energy and grace….Is not the gold and silver matter, out of which crosses and tablets and bowls are fashioned? And…is not the body and blood of my Lord matter? Either do away with reverence and veneration for all these or submit to the tradition of the Church and allow the veneration of images of God…” (29-30).
Images are extremely common in our culture of mass entertainment and ubiquitous billboards. In many respects within our culture, images are adopted so that they may be associated with ideas or products that their own meaning wouldn’t normally involve. For instance, until Hooters came along, owls were free of their bondage to great buffalo wings (among other things). Prior to Budweiser, a frog would never have made me thirst for beer. As a child, if it weren’t for Bambi and his friends, I would never have craved MacDonald’s cheeseburgers. In these instances, the image is meant to direct one’s imagination down a path of false associations or, worse, to inhibit one’s own evaluative ability in relation to the idea or product at hand. But in each of these cases, images are used to restrict, not advance, one’s own imaginative process.
In a culture like contemporary America, it comes as no surprise that the Church is apprehensive about the use of images in worship. But it’s helpful to recognize that, traditionally, the Church has not sought to use images in order to propagate false ideas or to inhibit one’s imagination and understanding. Rather, with the recognition that there is too much meaning in the Christian faith for words alone to carry, the Church has turned to the use of images in order more fully to communicate the complexity and particularity of meaning with which she’s been entrusted.
In order to responsibly communicate the message that has been entrusted to us, we could use more care in our assessment of traditionally-grounded arguments, such as those for the use of images in worship. As the Church formed by God’s free grace, we must remember that the rejection of abuse does not include the rejection of proper use. Just because, as an average American, images have often played a restrictive role in my comprehension of the world around me, I am not free to disregard centuries of many cultural voices that attest otherwise. John of Damascus, for instance, makes a compelling case for the use of images in worship. Facing arguments similar to those made by Protestants today, he seeks to controvert any misunderstanding of his intentions in the use of images in worship. For John of Damascus, images are not in themselves worthy of worship; rather their connection to God and accurate representation of him invest them with their significance. John of Damascus recognizes that in Christ’s Incarnation he redeemed all of created matter. In this way, the boundary between Creator and creature has been bridged by the Creator himself. We were never meant to build a road to Heaven; rather, he had always intended to come to us.
It often seems that the Protestant, Presbyterian concern regarding images revolves around the fear that we may try to access God through unapproved means. Yet, John of Damascus here argues that in the Incarnation, God approved of created matter as a way of communicating who he is. In fact, he has always done this. Was not the tabernacle an image? The temple? Were not the twelve river stones on the bank of the Jordan an image? All of these were meant to indicate a reality that surpassed their own. While Jesus is that surpassing reality Incarnate, does that mean that only one generation of God’s people, those who were present with him on earth, were permitted to visually participate in worshiping Jesus as God? Likewise, Jim Forest notes that “Christ the Word is also Christ the Image: Logos and Ikon….And today we meet him not only with our ears but also with our eyes” (Beholding the Glory, 84).
Perhaps we have become so convinced by propositions regarding body-soul dualism that we forget the inherent value of embodiedness. Perhaps we are so historically distant from the events of Christ’s life that we have forgotten the monumental significance of God becoming man and dwelling among us on the very same earth on which we now live. If so, then John of Damascus perhaps indicts us all too clearly:
“Seeing, I venerate what I see, not as God, but as an honorable image of those worthy of honor. You, perhaps, are exalted and immaterial and have come to transcend the body and as fleshless, so to speak, you spit with contempt on everything visible, but I, since I am a human being and wear a body, I long to have communion in a bodily way with what is holy and see it” (43).
As the people of God seeking to live out the story advanced by Jesus in his earthly ministry, we are beholden to use all the means God has provided to us in order to communicate the truth. While images might not be considered a means of grace in our tradition, we cannot repudiate their significance in shaping our religious imagination. Whether in their absence or in their presence, they are already representing volumes of meaning. While there are still many questions to be asked regarding the use of images in worship, we must start with this one: Do we agree with what images are presently communicating, either in their presence or absence, in our worship?
