Part I: The First Commandment.

Part I: The First Commandment.

PART I: THE FIRST COMMANDMENT

§ 55. According to the description given in Exod. 20[:2–6], the First Commandment has four parts. First comes the preface: “I am Jehovah your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” [v. 2]. Second is the commandment itself: “You shall have no other gods before Me” [v. 3]. Third is the specific appendix: “You shall not make yourself a graven image nor any likeness that is of heaven above nor that is in the earth beneath nor that is in the water under the earth; you shall not worship them nor serve them” [vv. 4–5]. Fourth is the general promise and threat that pertain to the entire Law: “I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the sons to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Me, and showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments” [vv. 5–6].

The preface to the First Commandment: “I am the Lord your God.”

§ 56. We explained earlier in § 41 why we say that the words “I am the Lord your God,” etc., are the general preface. Yet we have no quarrel with those who claim that these words are part of the First Commandment because, as they say, it is set forth in two parts: the first is affirmative—whom we should acknowledge and worship as the true God—and the second is negative—that we should not give divine honor and worship to anyone else beside and except this true God. Considering it this way, God Himself would be using the example of the First Commandment to demonstrate that in explicating the other commandments one should teach the negative [commands] with the positives and the positives with the negatives.

Furthermore, the preface has three elements. First, the Lawgiver calls Himself “Jehovah,” which is the proper name for the true God; by this name He separates Himself from all other imagined deities and creatures. In its own place we showed that the word “Jehovah” comes from “being” [esse] and is attributed to the one and only true God (On the Nature of God [1610 Loci Theologici, locus 3], § 21).¹ This is because: (1) He exists of Himself and does not need anything for His preservation and support. (2) He gives being to all beings, is the essence of all essences, and hence has absolute rule over all things. (3) He gives being to His promises and actually fulfills them. Therefore when the true God here calls Himself “Jehovah,” He is commanding that He alone be acknowledged as the true God and that His Commandments be obeyed because He is His own master [αὐτoκράτωρ], because He is our Creator and Preserver, and because He actually fulfills the promises He has given to the obedient.

Second, He calls Himself our God: “I am Jehovah [‘your God’].” God is properly the God of those whom He embraces with particular love. Gen. 17:7: “I am your God and the God of your seed.” Ps. 33:12: “Blessed is the nation whose God is Jehovah, the people whom He has chosen as His heritage.” The explanation of this phrase is given in Lev. 26:12; Jer. 31:[1]; Matt. 22:32; and 2 Cor. 6:18. Therefore, because He is the God only of those who acknowledge Him as He reveals Himself to us in the Word, He orders us with these words to acknowledge and worship Him according to the revelation taught in His Word. In turn, because God with His particular love and grace embraces those whose God He declares He is, therefore with these words He is promising His grace to all who acknowledge Him correctly on the basis of His Word. With respect to His creation, conservation, and governance, God is “the God of all flesh” (Jer. 32:[27]); but with respect to His revelation and particular love, He is God only of the church. Furthermore, because this particular grace of God comes to us only in and through Christ, He is called, not unsuitably, in the plural with the singular suffix to denote the mystery of the Trinity and Unity in the divine nature. John 5:23: “He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father.” 1 John 2:23: “No one who denies the Son has the Father.” Therefore, in order that the true God may be our God, we must learn from the Word that the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father (John 14:11); and that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one [unum], that is, one true God (1 John 5:7); and that the grace of our heavenly Father comes to us through the Son as our Suppliant and Mediator, etc.

Finally, God reminds the Israelites of that recent great benefit of liberation from Egypt, which with unusual emphasis He calls “the house of slavery.” “I have overtly displayed My divine power, goodness, and majesty in this marvelous work. Therefore it is right for you to acknowledge Me as the true God and to serve Me alone.” However, note that this clause properly applies only to the Israelites who were in slavery in Egypt either themselves or by way of their ancestors. To us in the New Testament God has given a far greater benefit through His Son, who by His suffering and death has freed us from the rule of Satan. The physical liberation given to the Israelites was a type of this. Jer. 23:7: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when men will no longer say, ‘As the Lord lives who brought the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt.’ ”

The virtues commanded by the First Commandment.

§ 57. Chemnitz has vigorously explained the words of the First Commandment: “You shall have no other gods before Me” ([Loc.,] ch. De primo praecepto).² There he showed that new gods, foreign gods, later gods, false gods, and, in general, all idolatry—not only outer but also inner—is forbidden because the Lord adds clearly: “You shall have no other gods before Me,” before My face. But now, God searches the heart and innermost parts; His eyes are brighter than the sun and look upon our secrets when we erect idols in our hearts (Ezek. 14:7).

We can determine clearly which virtues are commanded in this First Commandment from the words “I am Jehovah your God” and from the antithesis, “You shall have no other gods before Me,”especially if we conjoin the explanation of the prophets and apostles: (1) If we must not have other gods but must have the one and only true God, then we surely must recognize Him correctly on the basis of His Word. Consequently, the first virtue of the First Commandment is the knowledge of God [Dei agnitio].³ Jer. 9:24: “I am the Lord, doing mercy and judgment. Let him who glories glory in this, that he knows and recognizes Me.”

(2) If God is our God and a strong and jealous God, then surely we must fear Him, and thus also the fear of God belongs to the First Commandment. Mal. 1:6: “If I am your Father, where is My honor? If I am a Lord, where is My fear?”

(3) If God is our God, that is, our God who not only created us and preserves us but also who draws us close to Himself by the particular benefits unique to the church, then surely we must love Him. Thus also the love of God [dilectio Dei] belongs to the First Commandment. Deut. 10:20–21: “You will fear the Lord your God and cling to Him. He is your God.”

(4) If God is our God, that is, our God who embraces us with particular grace, surely we must place the trust of our heart [fiducia cordis] upon Him. Therefore faith belongs to the First Commandment. Isa. 45:22: “Turn to Me and you will be saved, for I am God, and there is no other.”

(5) If God is our God, that is, our God who has made known His goodness in clear signs, surely we must hope in Him. Accordingly also hope belongs to the First Commandment. Ps. 7:1: “O Lord my God, in You do I hope.”

(6) From faith, hope, and love comes patience [patientia], which renders to God obedience in calamities with calmness of spirit. For if we truly believe that the cross is placed upon us by His fatherly purpose and that the help of God will shine upon us in the end, then why would we refuse to take up the yoke of the cross?

(7) From knowledge [agnitio] of the divine majesty and from the fear of God comes humility, which recognizes that all good things come from God, reverently submits itself to God, gives all glory to Him alone, and which, on the other hand, recognizes and deplores human weakness; neither does it strive after things greater than its own powers and vocation allow, but restrains itself within the limits of its vocation, and does not despise others but renders to others their proper position and honor, etc. 1 Pet. 5:6: “Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God.”

Furthermore, what God reveals as owed to Him in the First Commandment is especially of two kinds. Some things are appropriate only to God, so that if you pluck off even a little bit and give it to something created, you are transgressing this commandment at that very spot, for example: faith, the hope of salvation, the service of adoration, etc. Some things, though they are appropriate not only to God, should still be rendered to God uniquely and to the highest degree, such as love, obedience, fear, etc. Bernard (Song of Songs, sermon 83): “God demands that He be feared as a lord, honored as a father, and loved as a bridegroom.”

§ 58. At this point an extensive discussion about these virtues could be opened, namely, in regard to: (1) what each virtue includes, (2) what causes should urge us to each of them, (3) what promises are connected to each, and (4) by what examples the truth of the promises has been demonstrated. All of these examples can be sought out in rich supply from the sermons of the prophets, Christ, and the apostles. A diligent interpreter of Scripture should bring all of these to bear on this [commandment]. However, the plan we have established does not allow us to discuss it in this place. It is enough that we have pointed our finger at the sources.

For example, the love of God includes a consideration of God’s goodness and mercy, the remembrance of bodily and spiritual benefits, a consideration of the promises of the life to come, obedience due to God, etc. We should love God: (a) Because He is the greatest good. (b) Because He is the perfect [αὐτoτελές] good, the greatest beauty, the greatest treasure, the greatest wisdom. (c) Because He first loved us. (d) Because we become joined together with God through love. (e) Because the most direct road to a salutary and practical knowledge of God is love for Him. (f ) Because God alone can fulfill the desire of the soul. (g) Because God, loving and being loved, gives people blessedness. (h) Because God avows Himself to be our Bridegroom, etc. All these things should be illustrated with scriptural statements and examples, and whatever is in the sermons of the prophets, Christ, and the apostles about each of these virtues should be diligently noted down. Surely the wisdom contained in the Decalogue is so great that no one will ever be able to exhaust it in this life.

Sins against the First Commandment.

§ 59. Sins which conflict with the First Commandment are briefly comprised under the title of “other gods” and “idolatry.” “You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image. You shall not bow down to them nor serve them” [Exod. 20:3–5]. However, upon that brevity we must elaborate. We showed earlier (in § 45, part 5) on the basis of the immovable statements of Scripture that whenever the glory that is owed to God alone is given to anything either natural or artificial, it becomes “another god.” But now, the glory that is due to God alone is that we should fear and love Him above all things and place all the confidence of our heart in Him, that all good things come to us from Him, and that He alone saves and frees us. Therefore whatever created thing is feared and loved more than God becomes “another god.” Whenever trust and obedience are given to anything so that God’s commandment is broken, another god is thereby made. When we credit benefits we have received not to God but to created things, when we look for other saviors and liberators than the true God, we are making other gods for ourselves. Thus in 2 Cor. 4:4 Satan is called “the god of this world” because people of this world obey his suggestions more than they obey God’s commandments. In Phil. 3:19 the belly is called “the god” of false apostles because they are not seeking Christ’s glory but what is good for their bellies. Thus money is “another god” to the greedy man, for he places his trust in gold and says to gold: “You are my confidence” (cf. Job 31:24). He does not fear God, or else he would not violate God’s commandments by heaping up money. He does not trust in God, or else he would commit the care of his belly to Him.

The species of idolatry.

§ 60. Various species of idolatry can be established. Some idolatry is crass; some, subtle. The former includes stones, wood, or metal believed to have something of divinity. The latter is when one erects an idol within his heart to which he gives divine honor.

Others employ the following distinction. The first species of idolatry is when one gives divine worship to that which is not the true God, whether it be something natural—such as the sun or moon, etc.—or something made by the hand of man, such as graven images, etc. The second species occurs when one worships God, but not divinely, that is, when one worships God in a way different from how He commands in His Word that He be worshiped. Thus the children of Israel were idolaters when they built the golden calf and gave it the name of the true God. It was not that they were claiming that the calf was the eternal and divine essence that created all things; rather, they had remembered that the Egyptians had worshiped their gods with that kind of ritual and abounded in all good things, so they wished to honor also the true God, who had brought them out of Egypt, with this kind of worship. In this sense all self-chosen acts of worship are species of idolatry, for whoever worships the true God otherwise than God in His Word commands that He be worshiped prefers the thoughts of his own heart to the Word of God and thus to God Himself. Finally, as there are two species of idols—some interior, some exterior—so also there are two parts of religious worship. One is internal, by which one thinks in his heart that there is some divinity in idols and that they are owed some religious reverence. The other is external, where our thoughts are revealed by prostrating the body, kneeling, uncovering the head, etc.

Here one must observe that “idol” is a relative word. Its material is stone, wood, metal, and even God’s creation: sun, moon, stars, etc. In this respect gold and silver are called “the idols of the heathen” (Ps. 115:4). The form of an idol is a concept of the mind that attributes divine honor either to a creation of God or to an object of man’s handiwork. Because this notion or mental concept is utterly vain, therefore it says in this respect (1 Cor. 8:4): “An idol is nothing in the world,” that is, it is not a thing subsisting of itself. With regard to their end, the gods of the heathen are said to be “demons” (Ps. [106:37]); for whenever divine honor is given to idols, then it is not to the wood or the stone or the sun but to the devil that the honor of the worshiper is being given (Ps. [96:5]).

§ 61. Sins against the First Commandment also can be gathered from the antithesis of the virtues enumerated earlier. What fights against the true knowledge [agnitio] of God is: ignorance of the true God and of His will, whether innate or affected; false opinions about God’s essence and will, self-chosen acts of worship, doubts about God, denying the true God, idolatry, etc. What fights against the fear of God is: carnal security, the vain fear of men, etc. What fights against the love of God is: hatred of God, disobedience toward God, an inordinate love of self and of created things, hypocritical love, etc. What fights against faith is: unbelief, being of little faith, hypocritical faith, temporary faith, lack of trust [diffidentia], and tempting God—in which, trusting in one’s own wisdom, one departs from the Word and from obedience to God, etc. What fights against hope is: desperation, which denies to God the honor of His truth and mercy, and doubt over our liberation and final perseverance. What fights against patience is: impatience; murmuring against God in calamities, which denies God the honor of being wise and just; a restlessness of the heart that refuses to subject itself to God; a rashness that willingly brings evils upon itself. What fights against humility is: pride, which has various species; hypocritical humility; etc.

The appendix to the First Commandment.

§ 62. The appendix or specific part of the First Commandment deals with not making graven images for worship and thus expresses a particular species of “other gods.” The Israelites were living in the midst of heathen, and they had left Egypt just two months earlier. The Egyptians had the regular custom of expressing and worshiping God under the form of images, and, moreover, the Israelites had begun to conform themselves to the rituals of the Egyptians (Josh. 24:14). Therefore God wanted to forbid this species of idolatry in particular in the solemn promulgation of His Law.

However, the debate over images has greatly perturbed the church not only in previous centuries but also in our time. Some contend that this commandment forbids images simply. Others, on the contrary, still argue for the worship of images that was forbidden by that commandment. And still others take the middle road and prove that images are allowed for Christian people to have, but not to worship.

** Beza (Coll. Mompelg., p. 416): “I do not judge that images should be placed in holy places unless one takes very special care that they not give an occasion for idolatry.” (Therefore if one applies that special care, they can be set up in temples⁴ too.) Page 420: “The picture of the ‘Ancient of Days’ was not set forth in Daniel to be painted, though I do not deny that painting such a thing is not a sin but an adiaphoron.” Zacharias Ursinus (Explic. catech., part 4, p. 118): “Here God does not simply forbid the making or creating of images because He would be condemning the arts of painting, sculpting, molding, and weaving, which Scripture lists among the excellent gifts of God which are useful to human life (Exod. 31:3; 35:[31]; Sirach 38:28). He would even be condemning His own work of art. Furthermore, Solomon saw to it that lions were carved on his throne and that palms and cherubim were carved on the temple at God’s command.” Whitaker (Contra Rainold., ch. 11, p. 291): “It is not the painting but the worship that makes an idol. Paintings of Jupiter and Mars were not idols according to the accepted usage of the word unless people worshiped them. The same is also true if the images of the saints are transferred over to sacred worship. In this respect you” (Papists) “call them ‘holy images,’ which are nothing else but profane, wicked, abominable idols.” Vorstius (Caus. deserti Papatus, disp. 5, thesis 10): “Images of all created things, including invisible ones, certainly are lawful of themselves. They are not forbidden in the Word of God except by accident, that is, because of added idolatrous worship, as well as obscenity, shamefulness, or a similar form of worship. See Exodus 25, 31, and 35; Numbers 21; 1 Kings 6–7, where God Himself saw to it that cherubim and other images of this sort were fashioned. See also Exodus 20, Leviticus 26, and Isaiah 42, where such images are said to be forbidden only with respect to idolatry and a similar, prohibited abuse.” Vorstius again (in the coroll. of that disputation): “Images are harmful in temples if they are thought necessary or if the evident peril of idolatry arises or if they become a sure cause of offense to the weak or a similar abuse. But if none of these actually occurs, and there is no reasonable anxiety that they will occur, then we can have them or at least tolerate them no less in temples than in private homes, since they are, of themselves, adiaphora.” And a bit later: “In the matter of removing images, we must give special attention to two things: First, that the public authority of Christian magistrates or of the entire church approve, and nothing be done through the force or rebellion of the people nor as a result of the private will of a few people. Second, that, with the aid of the magistracy, the church itself be sufficiently instructed from the Word of God as to what it should think about the whole matter before anything is actually done. Thus the idols should be removed from people’s souls before they are removed from their eyes.” [Peter] Martyr (Loci, class. 2, ch. 5, § 10, on 1 Kings 7, f. 53): “According as Christ is man, He can be depicted or painted. This does not conflict with the nature of the thing, for He was truly man; nor with the art of painting, because art can make imitations of what is corporeal.” A little later: “I do not think the explanation of the Seventh Council should be approved. If it were true, it would be unlawful to depict any man, because the soul, which is spirit, cannot be depicted.” Ibid.: “It is sometimes permissible to paint angels, since they have revealed themselves to men. God’s commandment does not forbid this, unless they become signs to them to be worshiped religiously, as holy.” Hemmingius (commentary on John) praises those who place a statue of Christ crucified in a temple.⁵ Ludwig Crocius (Assert. Aug. Conf., p. 456): “We concede with Beza that pictures of divine revelations outside a case of offense and the peril of idolatry are indifferent matters.” Zwingli (De vera et falsa relig., last chapter, pp. 428–29, Zurich edition of 1525): “There is no one so foolish as to think that statues, images, and likenesses must be abolished where no worship is shown them. For is anyone moved by the cherubim, either due to mystery or adornment, both on the mercy seat and flying in their Phrygian workmanship on the arches? Or by the palms, lions, oxen, pomegranates, and ornamentation of that kind so artfully worked in the temple of Solomon? On the other hand, where these are worshiped, who is so heartless, not to say faithless, as to think this should be tolerated? But there must be a certain consideration of offense.” Calvin (Catech., [fol.] Eij): “One should not take these words to mean that every painting or sculpture is simply condemned. Rather, we are only forbidden to make images for the purpose of either looking for God or worshiping Him in them or, what is the same, that we worship them in honor of God or somehow misuse them for superstition and idolatry.” Benedictus Aretius (Probl. theol., last part, ch. De idolol., p. 210): “In temples we still at times even see pictures apart from religious devotion. For instance, outside our temple, in the large portico, there is an engraved last judgment as well as statues of the foolish virgins, and on the other side stand statues and paintings of the five wise virgins with their expressions carved exquisitely. No one attaches any religious devotion to these, but rather people admire them for their excellent art and genius.” **

Therefore, [because of the very great conflict in the church over images,] it will be worthwhile to look more carefully into the genuine meaning of this commandment. Here we deservedly commend the very erudite treatment of Schroeder (De imaginibus, published in 1606), who in great detail and accuracy has explained the entire controversy over images.

Whether images are simply forbidden.

§ 63. With regard to this appendix of the First Commandment, our position is that, insofar as morality is concerned [quatenus est moralis], the making of sculptures and images is not simply and absolutely forbidden but only in a certain respect, that is, with respect to worship. Idol-making [εἰδωλoπoιία] not image-making [εἰκoνoπoιία], as they say, is forbidden by this commandment because not every image is an idol but only becomes an idol when one begins to worship and adore it. The author of the books De imaginibus (bearing the name of Charlemagne, bk. 4, ch. 18): “We do not call the statues placed in our basilicas ‘idols,’ but lest they be called idols, we refuse to worship and adore them.”

Ursinus (Catech., p. 718) says that the distinction between image and idol is a poor one because εἴδωλoν [“idol”] etymologically is the same as “formula, species, image”; hence the distinction cannot stand that an image [simulacrum] signifies the image of something that truly exists while an idol [idolum] signifies the likeness of a fictitious thing.

We respond. We concede that etymologically εἴδωλoν is the same as imago in Latin. Nevertheless, according to its use in Scripture and in the church, nothing is an idol except that which is set forth to be worshiped. It can be the representation of something real or imagined. If the sun, moon, and stars are revered, if wood and stones are worshiped—they become idols. If a special way of worshiping God beyond the limits of His Word is invented, then likewise an idol is being erected in the heart.

§ 64. We add explicitly that, in this appendix of the First Commandment, image-making is not simply forbidden, that is, according as that appendix is moral. Chemnitz (Loci, ch. De imaginibus, p. 203) argues that the Jews were completely forbidden to place images and sculptures in the temple.⁶ He believes that this can be concluded from Josephus (bk. 18, ch. 5). But he adds explicitly that this was a ceremonial prohibition. Therefore even if one were to gain the point that the making of images was simply forbidden by this commandment, he still would not have won the argument that this prohibition also holds us Christians in the New Testament obligated, for the apostle declares (1 Cor. 8:4): “An idol is nothing” (provided that there is no thought of worship and adoration). Chemnitz says: “Just as circumcision, which was necessary in the Old Testament, is in the New nothing—that is, a matter of indifference (Gal. 5:6)—so also an idol is nothing. It is not something which can either sanctify or contaminate.”⁷ Those are Chemnitz’s words.

Arguments in favor of the negative side of the question.

§ 65. It is simplest and most in harmony with the words of the Law to say that in this commandment there is not an absolute prohibition of the making of images but only a prohibition of that by which images are made for worship, which they properly call “idolmaking.” This we confirm with the following proofs.

(I) A judgment about a species can be made on the basis of its genus. But now, the general part of the First Commandment [Exod. 20:3] requires that no one have other gods. Therefore this specific part, about not making graven images [Exod. 20:4], must also be understood in this way: that we must not through graven images make other gods, which happens by worship and adoration.

(II) Verse 5 follows immediately: “You shall not bow down to them nor worship them.” These words add a limitation to the earlier ones, namely, to what extent and for what purpose the making of graven images is forbidden. Although the words “You shall not bow down to them nor worship them” are separated from the preceding words by a silluq or soph pasuq,⁸ one cannot infer that they constitute a commandment separate from the earlier one. Otherwise we would have to establish new commandments as often as that punctuation mark occurs in Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5. Furthermore, there are numerous examples where the following verse contains a limitation and explanation of the preceding one, even when a soph pasuq divides the two. Deut. 4:15ff. also shows that this passage has the pointing rebia⁹ which sits in front of the soph pasuq of the last word of the preceding verse and shows that the statement about images is not yet finished and that we must await its clarification in the following verses. This is why the Septuagint translators combined these words within a single period, though in Hebrew they appear to be separated by a silluq: oὐ πoιήςεις ςεαυτῷ εἴδωλoν oὐδὲ παντὸς ὁμoίωμα, ὅσα ἐν τῷ oὐρανῷ ἄνω καὶ ὅσα ἐν τῇ γῇ κάτω καὶ ὅςα ἐν τoῖς ὕδαςιν ὑπoκάτω τῆς γῆς, oὐ πρoςκυνήςεις αὐτoῖς oὐδὲ μὴ λατρεὸσῃς αὐτoῖς [“You shall not make unto yourself an idol, nor a likeness of any thing that is in heaven above or that is in the earth beneath or that is in the waters under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor worship them,” Exod. 20:4–5 LXX].

(III) The general promise and threat tied [to this commandment] show that all the preceding words pertain to one commandment, namely, the First, about not having other gods. The jealousy of God refers to the fact that He cannot tolerate other gods, just as a jealous husband cannot endure a rival in his own home. So if the commandment about graven images is an appendix or part of the First Commandment, then one can clearly conclude that images are forbidden only to the extent that people make other gods from them.

(IV) In Exod. 20:23 is added: “You shall not make gods of silver to be with Me, nor shall you make for yourselves gods of gold.” Lev. 19:4: “Do not turn to idols nor make for yourselves molten gods; I am Jehovah your God.” Here it is apparant that the making of gold or silver images is forbidden only in this respect: that they not be gods, that is, that they not be set forth for idolatry.

(V) Lest any doubt remain, we cite the explanation of this commandment given in Lev. 26:1: “You shall not make for yourselves idols” (, “worthless gods”; some derive the Hebrew word from “vanity” or “foolishness”; others claim it is a saying like , “not God”), “and you shall not erect for yourselves a graven image and pillar [statua], and you shall not set up a painted stone in your land to bow down to it, for I am Jehovah your God.” What seems to have been divided in Exodus 20 by a soph pasuq here is tied together so that the words constitute one and the same sentence. In Exod. [20:4–5] we read: (“You shall not make yourself a graven image; you shall not bow down”). Here [Lev. 26:1] it is expressed: (“You shall not make for yourselves idols or an image, etc., to bow down to it”). This one passage ought to end this entire controversy, because it shows very clearly that the making of images is forbidden in a certain respect, namely, for worship and bowing down.

From this passage we also take the following argument. The making of graven images is forbidden in the same way that erecting pillars and setting up stones are forbidden. But now, not every erecting of pillars and stones is forbidden, only the idolatrous ones. Therefore not every making of images is forbidden, but only the idolatrous ones. The minor premise is confirmed by the examples of those who both before the promulgation of the Law and after it erected pillars and set up stones (Gen. 28:18; 31:45; 35:14; Josh. 24:[26]; 1 Sam. 7:12).

(VI) Finally, in Deut. 4:15[–19] this command is repeated:

Therefore beware for your souls very carefully (since you saw no image on the day when Jehovah spoke to you), lest you corrupt your ways and make a carved image for yourselves, or the image of any semblance, the likeness of male or female, the likeness of any animal that is on the earth, the likeness of any winged bird that flies through the sky, the likeness of anything that creeps on the ground, the likeness of any fish that is in the water under the earth. And do not lift up your eyes to the sky, seeing the sun and the moon, and bowing down and worshiping them, etc.

In addition to expressing clearly to what end the making of graven images is forbid-den—that we do not bow down to them—this passage also supplies twofold proof for our position. Either all the species of images enumerated here are simply forbidden or are only forbidden with respect to their purpose, namely, worship. If the first is true, then there should not be any image of man, bird, fish, or animal. Also, because the command is a general one, they cannot be allowed even in private homes, in medical books, on coins, or on insignias, which is absurd. If the second is true, then our position is successfully proved. Again, the making of graven images is forbidden in the same way as we are forbidden to lift our eyes to heaven and to look at the sun and the moon and the stars and all the host of heaven (for the judgment about equal things is the same [de paribus enim idem est judicium]). Yet certainly looking up at the sky and seeing the sun and the moon and the stars is forbidden only with respect to a faulty purpose, namely, idolatrous worship. Therefore only the idolatrous making of graven images is forbidden by God’s commandment.

§ 66. Now that these foundations for our interpretation have been drawn from the heart of the text, we can add to them the following points taken from other passages of Scripture and from the matter itself.

(1) Whatever God Himself has done and has ordered to be done is not morally forbidden in the Law. (The Law is the norm of the divine will and, indeed, is immovable. Therefore it cannot be said that God does or commands things that conflict with the norm of His Law.) But now, God Himself made images and commanded that images be made. On the mountain in Exod. 25:40 He shows Moses an image of the tabernacle. In Num. 21:[8] He orders a brazen serpent to be erected so that, when those who had been bitten by the fiery serpents would look at it, they would be healed. In Exod. 35:30[–35], Bezalel and Oholiab are filled with the Spirit of God, wisdom, intelligence, and knowledge in every craft to design and make artwork in gold and silver, etc. Here belong the prophetic visions of the Old and New Testaments.

(2) What nature itself does is not simply hateful to God. I am speaking here about nature as it was established, not as it has been corrupted by sin in man. In the definition of philosophers, nature is the ordinary power [potentia ordinaria] of God. Consequently, whatever nature, such as it is, does is not hateful to God. But now, the entire universe is filled with figures and images. The image that emanates from a body is received in water, in a mirror, etc. In the upper regions of the atmosphere various phenomena are formed, such as rainbows, meteors [trabes], conflicting hosts, crosses, sun dogs [parelii], moon dogs [paraselenae], etc. Socrates ([Hist. tripart.,] bk. 2, ch. 24) reports that the sign of the Savior appeared in the east when a meteor [columna] shaped like a cross was seen in the sky and stirred up great wonder in those who gazed at it. Hemmingius notes that the same image of Christ with a crown of thorns was seen in the sky in 1561. Fincelius testifies that similar signs were seen in 1549, 1554, 1559. Our knowledge comes through representations [species] which they call “intelligible” and which are nothing else but inner, spiritual, and nonmaterial images.

(3) Whatever God Himself instituted as part of Levitical worship is not forbidden by the moral Law; otherwise the moral and ceremonial laws would conflict with each other. But now, God Himself instituted that images were made in the tabernacle, such as the cherubim (Exod. 25:18), the pomegranates (Exod. 28:33), etc. Also relevant here are the various images in the temple of Solomon (1 Kings 6–7; 2 Chronicles 3–4). It is clear that those did not displease God at all from the fact that the glory of God miraculously filled that temple (1 Kings 8:11).

(4) Whatever was a free matter for the Israelites is not forbidden simply by any moral law. Yet the use of images was a free matter to the Israelites. This is apparent not only from the various images in the temple of Solomon but also especially from the account of Joshua 22. The Reubenites, Gadites, and the half-tribe of Mannaseh built an altar “at the frontier of the land of Canaan in the region about the Jordan” (v. 11). For that they were accused by the other tribes of Israelites as if they were transgressors of God’s Law (v. 16). But when they explained their reasons for having done that—that they did it not for an idolatrous act of worship but as a memorial (v. 27)—this was pleasing in the eyes of the children of Israel (v. 33). The ark of the Lord could tolerate with it the golden mice and the five gold tumors because they were not presented for idolatrous worship. But the idol of Dagon fell from the face of the ark since it was an idolatrous statue (1 Samuel 5–6). At the time of Solomon, God was able to endure the molded oxen in the temple, but He despised the bullocks in Bethel and Dan because they were set forth for idolatry [1 Kings 12:25–33]. Obviously these were not different in terms of their shapes but only in terms of their purpose. Regarding the shekel of the temple which the Israelites used, it is reported that on one side it had an image of Aaron’s rod and on the other a small holder of incense.

(5) Whatever the early church of the New Testament used with freedom is not forbidden by the voice of the moral Law because the moral Law binds Christians in the New Testament no less than it bound the Israelites in the Old Testament. Yet the use of images in the early church of the New Testament was considered a free matter. 1 Cor. 8:4: “An idol is nothing in the world.” The apostle is teaching that the eating of meat sacrificed to idols does not of itself contaminate a Christian because “an idol is nothing in the world” in such a way that those who do not consider it an idol can tolerate it without staining their conscience. If Christians can tolerate an idol in this way, then we, even more, can tolerate and even have images of the saints in our temples. In Acts 27–28 Paul travels on a ship of Alexandria whose figurehead was an image of Castor and Pollux [cf. Acts 28:11].

The objections of our opponents: First, that images were prohibited in the temple.

§ 67. (I) Ursinus (Catech., part 3, p. 718) makes the objection that his own opinion and that of his people is not that the Law of God simply prohibits likenesses, statues,¹⁰ and images to be made or had, but that it prohibits only those statues and images: (a) that are made for representing God or for worshiping Him; (b) that are placed in temples, at crossroads, or anywhere for the worship of God or for dangerous decoration. On the other hand, [they claim that] some were allowed: the likenesses of creatures which were outside the temple, away from the peril and appearance of idolatry, superstition, and offense; images for political use, that is, for historical or symbolic use or even for honorable decoration. Thus also the men of Kassel say ([Fabronius,] Antiq. fides Cattorum, p. 89): “In a private home one may have images of the apostles, but as soon as they are set up in a temple, you are practicing idolatry through them.”

We respond. (1) Because God is spirit and also His essence is invisible and infinite, He cannot be depicted in Himself [per se] nor as far as His essence is concerned. Because He is like no created thing, no image of any created thing should be depicted so as to represent God by it, especially since this has been forbidden by a clear commandment (Deut. 4:15). In this respect none of us contradicts Ursinus. But the axes, hatchets, handspikes, and mallets of our opponents who quarrel over images show that they claim that even pictures of the historical manifestations in which the Holy Three revealed Himself are forbidden. But they will never be able to prove this from the words of the Law of Moses. For this restriction is not added: “You will not make for yourself an image or a likeness by which to represent the manifestation of God or such things by which God revealed Himself.” Furthermore, this restriction cannot be proved from either the verses preceding or following. Rather, all images are forbidden in general in a certain respect and purpose, namely, that they not be adored and worshiped. Even if such an image were never painted or sculpted, and even if it were never set before man’s eyes, nevertheless whenever we hear those manifestations of God read where the Father revealed Himself in the form of the Ancient of Days (Dan. 7:13), the Son in the assumed flesh (1 Tim. 3:16), and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove (Matt. 3:16), and where He offered Himself to the eyes of man as if He wanted to be seen—when, I say, we hear those manifestations recited or read them in Scripture, then immediately our mind forms such images within itself. For intelligible representations [species intelligibiles] are nothing other than spiritual and internal images of things.

** Whatever things are piously described in words, and according to the tenor of that description are then impressed upon the mind as if on a mirror, and according to that concept of the mind are brought out for others that they, too, may perceive them—those things can also be painted with brush and paints and placed before people’s eyes no less piously, so that exactly the same likeness and not a different one is conceived by the mind, whether through the eyes in the case of a picture or through the ears by expressed words. To this we can apply Paul’s statement (Gal. 3:1): “before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified” (Dr. Mentzer, Disp. 2, contra Pierium., coroll. 2). **

Therefore a picture of those manifestations properly and of itself bears no immediate danger when they are depicted for the purpose of reminding and decoration and not for worshiping.

Rather, our opponents should look to see whether or not they themselves are erecting an idol in the hearts of their hearers (Ezek. 14:7) when they impress upon [their listeners] an image of God different from that which He Himself has manifested in His Word by teaching that He, by an absolute decree, has vowed eternal destruction for the majority of humanity; that He offers His Word to many whom He nevertheless does not seriously want to be converted; that there never was a time when He wanted to have mercy on all.

Furthermore, if the historical depiction of divine manifestations has simply been forbidden by the Law of God, by what right does [Peter] Martyr (commentary on 1 Kings 7; Loci comm., class. 2, ch. 5, § 10) concede that “Christ can be depicted as far as His human nature is concerned”? Yet he is contradicted by Beza with hostility when [Beza] publicly confesses (Coll. Mompelg., p. 418) that he “wholeheartedly detests the image of the Crucified [crucifixi].” Nevertheless he admits (Coll. Mompelg., p. 420) that depicting the manifestation of the Father in the form of the Ancient of Days is not a sin but an adiaphoron.

(2) Where is the restriction added that one may have images in his home but not in a temple? The words of the Law are general: “You shall not make any graven image nor any likeness.” And were not the cherubim and many other images in the temple by the very instruction of God? Even if the Jews were not allowed to bring any images into the temple at Jerusalem (which, from Josephus, bk. 18, ch. 15, they seem to have claimed), that [law] nevertheless, being ceremonial, would have become antiquated and would have been abrogated long ago in the New Testament. The nature [ratio] of the temples that we use is entirely ceremonial; therefore whatever is granted to us as Christians outside our temples is not forbidden inside our temples by a moral law. Solomon made cast oxen in the temple (1 Kings 7:25). Jeroboam erected his golden calves outside the temple, at Dan and Bethel (1 Kings 12:28–29). Nevertheless God approved Solomon’s cast oxen and condemned the golden calves of Jeroboam.

That it is not lawful to depict the manifestations of God.

§ 68. (II) Ursinus goes on and makes the objection (p. 720):

Indeed, God is permitted to reveal Himself in whatever way He wishes, but no created thing is allowed to represent God by a sign which God Himself has not ordered. Next, those representations [species] had the promise of God’s presence and audience, something we cannot say about the likenesses which imitate those manifestations. Finally, those representations are transitory; they remained only so long as God wanted to use them to reveal Himself. Therefore people could not take them over for idolatry. But statues and pictures which people make to represent the divine manifestations have not been ordained by God to serve as manifestations of God or even to represent those manifestations. Hence they are an object of and occasion for idolatry.

We respond. (1) Although God has not commanded us to depict those manifestations, He has not forbidden us to depict them. Therefore it is an adiaphoron and has been left to the realm of Christian liberty.

(2) We are not saying that God Himself or the very essence of God is represented [repraesentari] by those pictures, which cannot and should not happen. Thus in the Council of Elvira (canon 36) there is the correct prohibition “that that which is worshiped and adored should not be painted on walls.” However, those things in which God has revealed Himself and has displayed Himself to be seen (so to speak) are depicted.

(3) Although those representations had the testimony of a special presence of God for them, which a picture of those representations lacks, one cannot infer from this that expressing those manifestations is simply and absolutely forbidden. [Peter] Martyr has conceded that, as regards His human nature, Christ can be depicted. Undoubtedly, Martyr does not think that the personal indwelling of the Word is in such a picture, though he is necessarily forced to attribute this indwelling to the assumed flesh in which the Word manifested Himself.

(4) Adoration was not directed, nor should it be directed, to those representations in which God revealed Himself, but rather to God, who revealed Himself in them. (However, the exception is Christ’s assumed flesh. Since it is personally united with the Word, Christ as God and man is to be glorified with a single adoration.)

(5) Those historical pictures of and by themselves are not an object and occasion for idolatry, or else they would receive religious worship in our churches too; for what is proper¹¹ for anything of itself is proper always and in every [case].

On the basis of these points, an easy response to the objections of Ursinus can be given. His objections all depend on the assumption that images are forbidden simply and that they are of themselves a cause of idolatry.

Third, that the command about making images was specific.

§ 69. (III) Ursinus (p. 728) rises up against the foundations of our position set out above in this way: (1) “God’s command given to Moses about making the cherubim and the example of Solomon decorating God’s temple with various likenesses were specific.”

We respond. We are not saying that images are necessary in churches just as they were necessary for Moses, who received a particular command about them. What we are saying is that they can be allowed, and we draw this conclusion correctly from those testimonies; for God neither commands nor allows what the moral Law has simply forbidden.

Second, that those images could not easily have been used for idolatry.

(2) “Those images could not easily have been used for idolatry.” Others add: “The cherubim were in the Holy of Holies, and thus were out of people’s sight.”

We respond. Is it not true that the brazen serpent became an occasion for idolatry with the passage of time? 2 Kings 18:4: “Hezekiah broke into pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had burned incense to it.” Or were other images in the tabernacle of Moses and the temple of Solomon not forbidden to be in the sight of all the people? The purity and integrity of the Word are the only truly certain remedy for avoiding idolatry. So long as the purity of the Word stands, there will be no danger from images. When the integrity of the Word has fallen into ruin, there will be a headlong slide into idolatry even if no statues or images exist. The sun, moon, stars, and all the host of heaven have been an occasion for idolatry. Therefore they should strike down those creations of God from the heavens! Moreover, we are not defending those statues which easily give an occasion for idolatry; we only want our adversaries to concede that images are not simply and absolutely forbidden by divine Law.

Third, that the images of the Old Testament were types.

(3) “The images in the Old Testament were types, but now all types have been removed through the coming of Christ.”

We respond. To be sure, those images were part of the Levitical worship and therefore were necessary, which we do not claim about our historical images. Although images in the New Testament are not types of things to come, nevertheless they can be reminders of things past.

§ 70. Therefore it should remain firmly established that the Law of God does not simply and absolutely prohibit all making of images, and thus not every use of images is forbidden. Would that the 338 fathers of the Seventh Council of Constantinople under Constantine Copronymus in AD 753 (or, as others wish it, AD 755) had considered this more carefully when they condemned not only the worship of images but even the images themselves and forbade them to be made. The words of the decree read as follows: “Anyone who from this day dares to make for himself an image or to worship one in church or to set one up in a private dwelling or to keep one secretly, he is to be deposed if he is a bishop or deacon; on the other hand, if he is a hermit or a layman, let him be stricken with an anathema and be subjected to the imperial laws as one who has broken the divine decrees and does not observe dogmas.” In the previous century there was one who resolved to imitate their example, Andreas Carlstadt (about whom Philipp [Melanchthon], in a letter to Frid. Myconius prefixed to the book De eucharist., writes that he was “a savage man, devoid of talent, learning, and common sense, whose manifest signs of impiety have become evident,” etc.). In 1522 he again started an iconoclastic war in Wittenberg while Luther was hiding in his Patmos; he was not afraid to tear down the images out of the temples with his iron fist. (See also Sleidanus, Hist., bk. 3; and Luther, Jena German [1563], vol. 2, fols. 68ff.)¹²

** Quirinus Reuter (Aphor. theol., Heidelberg, 1601, part 3, thesis 39): “Has a full century not been enough for those diligent” (Lutheran) “pastors to eradicate these thorns? In fact, let [images] be put out of sight that the memory of them might be erased from the minds [of the people]. Therefore let the stone of stumbling be removed once for all rather than always having to warn wayfarers about the danger of falling.” **

It is no secret how many uproars iconoclasm stirred up in previous years in France, Belgium, and even in some places in Germany.

Ursinus (Catech., p. 726) points out that there are two things to be carefully observed in the abolition of images and statues: (1) That teaching about the true worship of God precede the abolition of idols. He says, “Let the doctrine come first, and idols will fall on their own.” (2) “Statues should not be removed by private citizens but by public author-ity—either of the magistrates or of the people, provided that they have public authority—and in places where the church has authority to act [imperium].” But he himself should have seen whether this has everywhere and always been carefully observed by the people of his faith. Beza (Colloq. Mompelg., f. 398) is forced to admit that things of this sort were done with some zeal in France when uproars and civil wars occurred, but not according to knowledge, because they went too far.

§ 71. Before we set forth our position about images, we need to make a distinction among images.

** Some images are licit; others are illicit. The illicit ones are either indecent or super stitious. The indecent are either unchaste, such as those of Venus and Bacchus; or lying, such as those of Christopher and Catherine. Of licit images, some are symbolic; others, historical. The latter are either political, such as paintings and carvings for ornamentation and for remembrance, wherever we see them; or sacred, taken from the accounts of Holy Writ, such as types and apparitions. (Backmeister) **

(1) Some are idolatrous. (2) Some are indecent and obscene. Ambrosius Catharinus writes: “In the greatest temples and chapels of Italy, I have come across pictures of such immorality that whatever nature hides for shame can be contemplated not to arouse devotion but to arouse the passion of his dead flesh.” (3) Some are superstitious and fanciful. (4) Some are of types. (5) Some are historical. (6) Some were created for ornamentation. We say that idolatrous and indecent pictures or statues should be abolished through the political administration. Neither should superstitious and fanciful images be tolerated in church buildings unless perhaps we wish to see in them a witness of the idol-madness of earlier times; to this end they could be kept in private. Images of types are characteristic of the Old Testament. Christian liberty does not repudiate historical images nor those which were created as decoration. However, here we would have people observe the following theorems:

(I) As it is required elsewhere, Christian prudence is especially required here, lest we give offense to the weak by an untimely use of adiaphora. Yet we must not yield even for a moment to those who slip in to test our Christian freedom (Gal. 2:4). The apostle bids the Corinthians not to provoke God concerning idolatry by their knowledge (1 Cor. 10:22). However, at the same time he declares that “an idol is nothing” (1 Cor. 8:4).

(II) Chemnitz writes with gravity (Loci, part 2, p. 105): “In the case of images we should beware all opportunities for idolatry which can arise from them. Experience of all times of the Old and New Testaments shows that images and statues have provided the opportunities and seedbeds for idolatry, and that corruptions of the divine Word have invariably arisen from the indifferent use of images in the course of time.”¹³

(III) An excessive amount of expensive images is something to be avoided, lest what Bernard complains of happens (Apolog. ad Guilelmum abbatem, col. 1134): “The church shines magnificently on its walls but is lacking with regard to its poor; she clothes her stones with gold but leaves her sons naked; and she gladdens the eyes of the wealthy at the expense of the needy.”

(IV) One must be very careful that no part of divine worship is thought to consist in [images] or that we think that they bring a sort of holiness to a place; nor should one imagine that God has bound Himself to images so that He hears better and is more effective there than elsewhere.

(V) The use of images should be considered among the bodily exercises which Paul says are useful to some degree (1 Tim. 4:8). As Chemnitz writes ([Loci,] De imag., ch. 2, p. 108): “For God has given the Scripture to be the means for instruction, for admonition, and for arousing devotion. Silent images should in no wise be compared to this means.”¹⁴

(VI) Historical paintings and sculptures are to be deemed more appropriate than those massive statues and colossi.

** The use of images is twofold: licit and illicit. The use is illicit, or superstitious, when images are connected to ungodliness, and this happens in two ways: (a) Formally, when there is some ungodliness in the actual picture or image, for example, one that expresses the nature and essence of God. (b) Finally, when an image is set forth for adoration so that it is worshiped or God is worshiped in it. The licit use of images is also twofold: political or ecclesiastical. The political, or symbolic, use is that use which reminds us about the thing that is represented by that likeness for political purposes, such as the etching of the emperor on a coin. Christ approves this use in Matthew 22. The ecclesiastical use is typical or historical. The typical use flourished in the Old Testament and now has ceased. An example of this was the brazen serpent, etc. The historical use occurs when images are used as a memorial for historical deeds or as decoration. **

§ 72. Provided that these and similar conditions are met, the use of images is permissible and indifferent. When we defend this use against iconoclasts, our concern is not so much for the images as it is for Christian freedom. You see, because no moral law forbids having images, surely urging their abolition as necessary takes Christian freedom captive. Although some statues and images surviving from the papacy once were idolatrous, it does not follow that it is simply necessary for them to be removed, because once the idolatry has been removed, they can freely be retained as reminders or decorations. The sun, moon, and stars once were the material for the heathens’ idolatry; nevertheless they are and remain good creations of God. Our adversaries cite God’s command fiercely (Deut. 7:25): “The graven images of the Canaanites you must burn with fire.” But this was a particular command, as was also the one in v. 24 where they are ordered to slaughter the Canaanites. In Acts 17:23 Paul certainly did not destroy the altar of the Athenians that was inscribed “to the unknown god,” nor did he tear down the sails of the ship whose figurehead was an image of Castor and Pollux (Acts 28:[11]). It is quite in vain when some people urge the words of the Law (Lev. 26:1): “You shall not bow down in their presence [coram],” and try to argue that not only must we not worship images but not even worship in their presence. In fact, because we should worship everywhere (1 Tim. 2:8), it would also follow that we should not tolerate images in private buildings, lest by chance we worship in their presence and thus violate God’s command. “To worship before [coram] images” is a phrase of Scripture meaning that prayer is addressed to images, or that, along with giving them a face, we are also giving them a heart or thinking that prayers poured out before images are heard more clearly than in another place; but this is foreign both to us and to our churches. Paul was carried on a ship whose figurehead was Castor and Pollux (Acts 28:11). Can we really suppose that Paul did not pray aboard that ship? What of the fact that 1 Cor. 8:4 allows Christians (provided that it does not offend the weak) to eat food sacrificed to idols, food that was consumed in the very temples of the heathen, which were most specifically referred to idols? Much less will it be forbidden to worship in places where images of Christ and of the saints are kept, yet in such a way that prayer is by no means directed to the images themselves.

The reasons why we defend the use of images.

§ 73. As we have mentioned, the primary reason why we defend the use of images is Christian freedom. Several secondary reasons are added, seeing that their helpfulness in temples¹⁵ is not to be dismissed: (1) in reminding; (2) in stirring up affection; (3) in decorating, etc., as Schroeder has shown in detail (treatise De imaginib., q. 1, theses 86ff.). Gregory of Nyssa (on Song of Songs): “Not infrequently have I seen the account of the Passion, nor is it without tears that I have gone through a scripture of this sort.” Gregory (bk. 9, Letter 9 ad Serenum):

We certainly do praise you for forbidding the adoration of the images of saints, but we censure you for having destroyed them. Tell me, brother, when has it ever been heard that a priest did what you did? After all, it is one thing to adore a painting; it is another to learn what one should adore through the story a painting depicts. You see, a painting offers to the simple what Scripture provides for its readers, because the ignorant see in the very picture what they ought to be following. Those who do not know their letters read pictures.

Cyril (Contra Julianum, bk. 6), after listing the benefits given to us by Christ on the cross, adds: “The salutary tree makes us remember all these things and encourages us to ponder how, just as One died and rose again for all, so the living no longer live unto themselves.” Basil (Sermon in s. 40 martyres): “Flowers in the church entice me to watch. I contemplate the bravery of the martyrs, I consider the rewards of their crowns, and I am kindled as with fire with a desire to imitate them.” The Scholastics say that images are for instructing the uneducated people, for reminding the memory, and for stirring up meditation and devotion. Consequently, the early church used them freely, not merely in private buildings but also in temples. (Schroeder also treats this in detail in theses 77ff.) Augustine (De consens. evang., bk. 1, ch. 10) mentions that “in many places everywhere painted likenesses of Christ are found between Peter and Paul.” Eusebius reports the same thing (Hist., bk. 7, ch. 14). Tertullian (De pudicit.) mentions “pictures on eucharistic chalices of Christ carrying the lost sheep back on His shoulders.” In regard to the image of Meletius, Chrysostom says (Oration in Melet.): “They have painted it on rings, cups, walls, and everywhere.” All the fathers speak of the image of the cross. The Supplementum of Nauclerus reports that the basilica of St. Sophia in Constantinople under the Christian emperors was decorated with pictures of the entire account of the Lord’s Passion. In 1509, when the Turks converted it into a Mohammadan mosque, they plastered over all those paintings. However, in a great earthquake, all that plaster was knocked off so that the account of the Passion once again was clearly revealed.

Nevertheless the Papists extend the use of images farther than setting them up as books for the laity. Guilelmus Peraldus, a Frenchman and a well-known member of the Order of Preachers in the thirteenth century, writes in the book he calls Summa virtutum et vitiorum (vol. 1, ch. 3): “As the Scriptures are the literature of the clergy, so paintings and sculpture are the literature of the laity.” Laelius Zecchius, in his book on cases of conscience (vol. 2, ch. 90, art. 18, p. 609): “It is useful for the Scriptures to be placed in churches to foster and increase a love for God and the saints, to preserve the faith, because images are considered as books for those who do not know letters. Because of those images, such people are drawn to a knowledge, remembrance, and imitation of divine things.” François Feuardentius (in his book of homilies, p. 16): “From contemplating images the unsophisticated and unlettered easily and quickly learn those divine works and miracles which they scarcely or never could understand from the sacred books.”

We are forbidden to worship images.

§ 74. Thus far we have shown that the appendix to the First Commandment about not making graven images by no means simply abrogates every use of images, especially in the New Testament. Rather, it forbids a certain species of idolatry which is committed through images. So it is lawful to have images, but not to worship them, for Exod. 20:4 clearly forbids the adoration and worship of graven images. The discussion here does not concern civil reverence [civili cultu] or an external show of giving honor, such as how [our] temples and their vessels and equipment are usually considered and treated “decently” [1 Cor. 14:40]. Rather, it concerns religious worship [cultu religioso] which pertains to the First Tablet of the Decalogue and is practiced by adoration, showing reverence, greeting, sacrificing, etc.

Chemnitz (Exam. Conc. Trid., part 4, ch. De imag.)¹⁶ eruditely shows that the worship of images is so forbidden by the word of the holy Law that no loophole is left for escaping or eluding it: (1) It enumerates graven and molten images, the setting up of pillars [statua], the erection of stones, and, using the general word , any likeness or image which expresses or represents a figure with any effigy in any way out of any material. (2) The things of which a likeness or image is forbidden to be made and used for worship are listed in such a way that again there is no open loophole for an exception, for it says “of those things which are in the heavens above or on the earth below or which are under the waters beneath the earth” [Exod. 20:4]. In heaven are God, the angels, the spirits of the blessed; beneath the earth are the demons; on earth are animals and people; under the waters, fish, etc. (3) In two words every kind of worship of religious objects is forbidden: “You shall neither bow down to them nor worship them” [v. 5]. The first verb, which indicates bending the body, includes every external gesture and ritual of worship while the second verb entails the inner affections and devotions of worship. (4) Scripture adds this explanation: it is called the “worship of other gods” even if that worship of images is refered to a prototype—whether to the things signified through the images or to God Himself. Oh, that such religious worship of images which is contrary to God’s clear prohibition had not been accepted into the church and would not still be tolerated therein! However, we see that what usually happens to farmers has happened on this issue. Basil uses this analogy (Letter 41): “When they work to correct the bent branch of a sapling, they mistakenly bend it too far in the other direction.” Even so, the debates of the previous centuries against the iconoclasts strayed finally into idol worship.

Proponents of the worship of images.

§ 75. In 788 (or 787, according to some), Empress Irene convoked the [Second] Council of Nicaea after she, following the advice of the Roman pontiff’s legates, exiled those who the year before had attacked the worship of images in the [Seventh] Council of Constantinople, and [she] protected herself with her army. Approximately 350 bishops, abbots, and monks gathered there according to Paul the Deacon (Rer. Roman., bk. 23) and Sigebertus (Chron.), who cites the letters of Pope Adrian to Patriarch Tarasius of Constantinople. These letters exhort Tarasius to go ahead and worship and adore venerable images, first, of the human figure of the Christ of God, who is ours and became incarnate like us, for us, and through us; second, of the true Virgin, the mother of God; and, finally, of all His saints. All the fathers of that council testified that they approved of Adrian’s opinion. This second Synod of Nicaea is called by the Greeks “the Seventh Ecumenical Council.”

A little later, however, in 794, Charlemagne called a synod at Frankfurt because of the heresy of Felix (that Christ is the adopted Son of God according to His human nature). In that synod, Pope Adrian sought to have the proceedings of the Synod of Nicaea confirmed, but the fathers of this synod (of Frankfurt) refused to do so without proper scrutiny. So they set up an inquiry and compared the decrees of both councils—of the former [council] which, under Constantine Copyronomus, had totally condemned and rejected images so that neither making nor having them was allowed, as well as of the latter [council] which under the Empress Irene had insisted that images should not only be had but even be adored and worshiped. Those fathers then put forward and accepted a middle position, that it is not of itself [per se] ungodly or unlawful to have images in temples and private places, but that worshiping them and venerating them is foreign to the Christian faith and congruent with heathen superstition. Therefore they censured the decrees of Pope Adrian and of the Greeks regarding the worship of images. In this council, bishops, priests, abbots, and monks gathered from France, Italy, and Germany (Aventinus, Annal., bk. 4; Regino, bk. 2; Blondus, bk. 1, decade 2).

However, this moderation did not meet with the approval of the Roman popes. Therefore in the Council of Trent they confirmed the proceedings of the Second Council of Nicaea and passed the following decree:

This holy synod orders that likenesses of Christ, of the virgin mother of God, and of the other saints be kept and retained especially in temples, and they should receive due honor and veneration not because we believe that there is some divinity or power in them for which we are to worship them; nor because they should be asked for something; nor because trust should be put in images, as was once done by the heathen who placed their hope in idols—but because the honor that is shown to them is transferred to the prototypes that they represent, so that through the images which we kiss and before which we bare our heads and prostrate ourselves we worship Christ and venerate the saints of whom the images bear resemblance. This has been sanctioned by the decrees of the councils against opponents of images, especially [the decrees] of the Second Council of Nicaea.

The arguments against the religious worship of images.

§ 76. Against the Papists we use this argument: All idolatry conflicts with the First Commandment. The religious worship of images in the Papist churches is idolatry. Therefore the religious worship of images in the Papist churches conflicts with the First Commandment. We proved the truth of the major premise earlier [§ 60]. Our opponents sternly deny the minor premise and try to remove every suspicion of idolatry from themselves. Pistorius (Hodeg., p. 292): “The catholic” (i.e., Roman) “church has never made idols out of images nor ever attributed any divinity to them; on the contrary, she has drawn her children back from idolatry with great care.” Of course, this means what Bellarmine teaches (De imag. sanct., bk. 2, ch. 5) [where he says] that there must be a distinction between image and idol in this way:

An image is a true likeness of a thing, as when we paint a person or a horse, etc. An idol is a false likeness which represents that which actually does not exist, as when the heathen erected statues of Venus or Minerva. These signs were idols because they represented deities of the feminine gender, deities which do not and cannot exist. Therefore they were not representing reality but were false images, since that which does not exist cannot be represented.

From this he concludes that images of Christ and of the saints are not idols, and thus no idolatry is committed through the worship of those images. What value this distinction has we shall explain later [§ 84] after we have first confirmed our argument.

Whether or not idolatry is committed through the worship of images.

§ 77. Therefore we confirm the minor premise of our syllogism: (1) From the disputations of the Papists on the worship of images. (2) From the actual practice employed in their churches.

The Council of Trent decreed that images of Christ, of blessed Mary, and of the saints should be kept and retained in their churches, and that due honor and veneration be given to them. However, the council did not define what is such honor and veneration which is due to images (for the addition “through the images which we kiss and before which we bare our heads and prostrate ourselves we worship Christ and venerate the saints of whom the images bear resemblance” is still ambiguous). Therefore one must seek a more detailed clarification of this worship (1) from the proceedings of the [Second] Council of Nicaea, (2) from the Scholastics, and (3) from the writings of the Papists.

The fathers of Trent appeal to the decrees of the Second Council of Nicaea and claim that they stand on its opinion. Therefore it is right for us to learn what they teach about the worship of images from the decrees of that synod. They say that one should worship and adore images, but they add that this should not be understood as referring to worship¹⁷ but to a sort of reverent adoration. How do they explain this? Theodosius (Act. 1) says: “I greet and venerate the image of Mary so that her aid, protection, and intercession may help me, a sinner, night and day. I invoke it as one that has such power from Christ. Furthermore, I also venerate the images of the saints—not as gods, but rather I show the affection and desire of my mind that I have for them and implore them all with my whole spirit to intercede to God on my behalf,” etc. Act. 2 cites this spurious statement of Basil: “I embrace the virgin mother of God, the saints, the prophets, the apostles, and martyrs, who make supplications to God on my behalf, so that through their mediation God may have mercy on me and freely bestow upon me the forgiveness of my sins. For this reason I both honor the histories of those images and openly adore them.” Therefore the synod teaches that images should be adored for this reason: that through the mediation of the saints to whom the images belong, God may have mercy on us and grant us the remission of our sins. The proceedings of that synod also list various miracles, such as how painted images spoke, cured the sick, avenged those who held them in contempt, kept candles from going out, etc. The letter of Adrian says: “The Israelites were saved from pestilence by looking upon the brazen serpent; heaven forbid that, contemplating and venerating the images of Christ and of the saints, we doubt that we are saved.” In the same letter he commends the opinion of Patriarch Tarasius of Constantinople and orders him to go ahead and worship and adore venerable images of Christ, the virgin mother of God, and the saints. The reader should look at the proceedings of this council, which are described at length in the volumes of the councils, to elucidate the nature of the opinions and worship of images which the Council of Trent tries to establish and foist upon God’s church when it appeals to the Seventh Council.

§ 78. The disputations of the Scholastics about the worship of images are varied. Robertus Holcottus (lecture 53 on Wisdom) admits: “The fact that people prostrate themselves before idols has a great affinity with idolatry.” Therefore he warns us to be careful “that people not be taught to worship God before stones and wood.” Durandus (Sent., 3, dist. 9, q. 2) and Biel (In canonem missae, lect. 49) openly say that “images should not be adored with worship [adoratione latriae], whether they are considered in themselves according as they are wood, stone, or metal or according to the nature of sign and image.”

However, others disapprove of their moderation. Thomas ([ST,] part 3, q. 25, art. 3), Alexander of Hales ([Summa,] part 3, q. 3, memb. 3, art. 3), Bonaventure (Sentent., 3, dist. 9, art. 1, q. 2), Albertus, Richardus, Capreolus, Marsilius, Almainus, and many others claim ([in their Sent.,] same dist.) “that we owe the same honor to the image and the exemplar, and accordingly images of the Holy Trinity, of Christ, and of the cross should be adored with worship [cultu latriae].” Thomas uses the following argument:

We give worship [cultum latriae] to Him in whom we place our hope for salvation; but now, we place the hope of our salvation in the cross of Christ. For the church sings: “Hail, O cross, our only hope in this Passiontide; increase the righteousness of the devout and give them pardon for their guilt.”¹⁸ Therefore the cross of Christ is to be adored with worship. Furthermore, the Philosopher says that the same activity happens to the image as to the thing of which it is an image. Furthermore, the amount of adoration of something is the reason or excellence for which it is adored; but now, the reason for adoring an image is none other than the excellence of its exemplar. Therefore the exact same reverence is owed to the image as to the exemplar.

Bonaventure says: “Because the image of Christ was introduced to represent Him who was crucified for us and does not present itself to us for its own sake but for His, therefore all the reverence that is offered to it is offered to Christ. Consequently, worship should be presented to the image of Christ.”

They say that high veneration [cultus hyperduliae] is owed to the image of Mary and veneration [cultus duliae] is owed to the images of the other saints. Henricus (Quodlibet. 10, q. 6) teaches the same as the others but adds that no image should be adored with worship since an image of Christ is not of Him as God but of Him as man.

§ 79. It remains for us to inquire into what the more recent Papist writers claim about this subject. Cajetan (In Thomam, part 3, q. 25, art. 3) accepts and defends the same opinion: that the same reverence is owed to an image as to its exemplar.

** Catharinus (De imaginibus): “There is a debate even among Catholics over the worship and veneration of images themselves, whether, in addition to the aforementioned advantages and spiritual comforts which are taken from images, they may also be sculpted or painted for the purpose of being adored and some worship being given to them. For there are some who deny this and cry out that this is idolatry. They do not seem to be moved by useless arguments, nor [are they moved] without the authority of the fathers or even of the Scriptures.” Gregorius de Valentia ([Comm.,] vol. 4, disp. 1, q. 24, point 2, p. 467): “Images should be venerated in such a way that they themselves properly in some way of their own become the object of veneration, though not of themselves [per se] according as they consist of such a material and such a shape, but with regard to something else [per aliud], namely, by reason of their prototype. In this way, images are to be honored with the same honor as their prototype, and so images of Christ as man should be venerated with worship with regard to something else [per aliud].” Azorius (Instit., bk. 9, ch. 6, arts. 3 and 6): “It is an unchanging opinion of theologians that an image is to be honored and worshiped with the same honor and worship as that is worshiped of which it is an image. This is the opinion not only of Thomas alone but is accepted by the common consent of theologians.” For the approval of this opinion he cites the Council of Trent, whose voice Bellarmine says “is the voice of the catholic church which all Catholics follow as their teacher” (De just., bk. 1, ch. 12). **

Gregorius de Valentia ([Comm.,] vol. 3, disp. 6, q. 11, point 6) says:

It is certainly true that we generally affirm that the prototype itself and its image are honored with the same kind of dutiful honor, with the same emotion of the heart, that is, with the same intent of arousing high esteem. You see, to honor an image is to intend to arouse high esteem for its prototype in the presence of the image as a substitute for the prototype according to its representation. Therefore the same act of worship applies to both but in different respects. Gaining for itself a high estimation according to itself pertains to the prototype, but what pertains to the image is gaining an estimation of this kind for its prototype before itself and in itself as in a substitute, just as if the prototype were present as is the image itself, etc.

Lest anyone conclude from this that only the prototype is honored in this way and not the image, he adds:

Someone perhaps will say that, if venerating an image is venerating its prototype, then honor certainly is not given to the image, and it is not true to say that the image itself is honored but only the prototype is honored in its presence. We respond. It does not at all follow from this that the image itself is not also truly venerated (for it also is truly venerated with the same honor in its own way, namely, relatively). Instead, the only thing that follows from this is what we taught before, namely, that we do not honor an image in the same way as we do the prototype itself—on which alone we fix our mind and to whose excellence and dignity we testify by our veneration. Nevertheless the image is truly honored in its own way, namely, in the same way that the things themselves want to be honored, which are honored only with regard to something else.

He later explains this with the example of a royal legate who is honored in place of the king. Then he concludes: “Therefore not only do the heretics err who attack the veneration of images, but also they speak less circumspectly who, though they approve of the church’s custom of venerating images, nevertheless deny that they are being honored in the literal sense [proprie].” Again: “Images should be venerated with the honor owed their prototypes in the unique way that they should be venerated, namely, according as they are images. Consequently, images of Christ should be worshiped [coli debent latria].” Here he also appeals to the basic argument of Thomas that one and the same activity applies to the image and to the thing of which it is an image. Costerus (Enchirid., chs. 438–39): “No one else is honored in the image but the prototype itself. From this it follows clearly that every honor owed to the prototype can also be shown to the image.” Costerus’s Enchiridion has the approval of the faculty at Cologne, Trier, and of the Jesuits at Mainz.

§ 80. Some wish to appear more moderate. Alphonsus de Castro, in his study of the word imago [“image”], follows Durandus, saying that in no wise is an image to be worshiped in itself, but only the original should be worshiped in the presence of the image. Martinus Peresius (De traditionibus, treatise De imag.), Catharinus (treatise De imag.), and Sander (De imag., bk. 2, last chapter) claim that images themselves should be venerated properly in themselves, but with a lesser honor than the actual exemplar, and thus no image should be adored with worship [cultu latriae]. Bellarmine (De imag. sanctorum, bk. 2, chs. 21ff.) forms several propositions with which he explains his own opinion about the worship of images. The sum of them is that the worship owed to images properly and of itself is an imperfect worship which analogically and reductively pertains to the species of the worship that is owed to the exemplar. We shall discuss this matter in greater detail a little later [§ 89].

The practice of the papacy in the worship of images.

§ 81. Let us direct our attention to the practice, as to what sort of honor and worship is shown to images in Papist churches. Schroeder (De imagin., q. 2, theses 115ff.) sums it up in these main points: (1) Papists honor their images in their dedication. In the Pontificale, there are certain and prescribed formulae of benedictions with which they consecrate images. They bless the wood of the cross with these words: “We ask You, everlasting God, that You would bless this wood of the cross so that heartfelt penitence and the forgiveness of sins would be granted to all who bend their knees and implore Your majesty here.” Also: “May that wood of the cross be sanctified so that all who here pray and bow their heads before this cross for God’s sake may find healing of body and soul.” Again: “May You bless this wood of the cross that it may become a salutary remedy for humankind, a firm aid for the good works of faith, the redemption of souls, and a protection against the savage darts of our enemies.” An image of blessed Mary is consecrated with these words: “O God, sanctify this likeness of the blessed Virgin that she may bring assistance of salutary aid to Your faithful people, that thunder and lightning may be driven away more quickly if they become harmful and too strong, that the floods of rains or tumults of civil wars or the destruction brought on by unbelievers may be repressed at her presence.” In the blessing of the image of St. John, it says: “May this image cause a holy expulsion of demons, the advocacy of angels, the protection of the faithful; and may its intercession have great sway in this place.”

(2) [Papists honor their images] by giving them the name of their prototype. In the Sacrar. cerem. eccles. Rom. (bk. 1, tit. 7), in the consecration of the little wax image that they call “the Lamb of God,” they pray that “these unspotted lambs may receive the same power against all the devil’s wiles and the deceit of the wicked spirit by which the innocent Lamb, His Son, Jesus Christ, who was sacrificed on the altar of the cross, freed our flesh from the power of the devil.” Pope Urban V sent five little images of this kind to the eastern emperor and added these verses:

Balsam, pure wax, and a tide of chrism

Compose this Lamb, this great gift I make to you.

As if born from a spring and hallowed through

Mystic ritual, it turns away lightning from above.

It crushes every evil, every sin, and strangles them

As the blood of Christ. It protects the pregnant

And at the same time gives life to the infant.

It gives gifts to the worthy and douses fire’s power.

Beautifully carried over the waves, it rescues therefrom.

Here not only the name of Christ, its prototype, but also His benefits are attributed to the little image and, in fact, to the image of an image, so to speak, because such wax figures are not the likeness of Christ Himself but of a lamb in whose likeness Christ is depicted.

(3) [They honor their images] by attaching to them the singular presence of deity. To be sure, the fathers of Trent denied the belief that there is some divinity in images; and yet at the same time they approve pilgrimages—and sometimes quite long pilgrimages—to some image, they approve vows about making pilgrimages to certain statues of the saints, and they approve of giving indulgences to those who pray before the image of the cross or of Mary. Bellarmine says (De imagin., bk. 2, ch. 18): “People visit one image more frequently than another for various reasons: first, because God works miracles through one and not through another; second, because certain images were made by holy men and gain a particular devotion because of the artist; third, because certain ones stir up people to devotion more.” Polydorus Vergilius (De rer. invent., bk. 6, ch. 13): “Very many are quite unlearned and stupid. They worship images of stone, wood, marble, or bronze, or images painted on their walls or daubed with different colors, not as figures but as if those images actually had a mind. They put more trust in them than in Christ or other deities to which they have been consecrated.”

(4) [The Papists honor their images] by expecting from them the bestowal of certain benefits. Gregorius de Valentia ([Comm.,] disputat. 6, q. 11, point 6) says, “God is in the habit of bestowing astonishing benefits in some famous places to people who venerate certain images.” Sylvius (Comment., bk. 2): “In the church of St. Maria Prunetana in the environs of Florence is a statue of the Virgin which people venerate with remarkable religious devotion as the giver of rain and fair weather when necessity demands.”

** Lucius Marincus Siculus, historian of Charles V (De reb. Hispanicis): “In the city of Burgos we worshiped an image of the crucified Savior, which they say was made by Nicodemus. They told us that many sick people who had invoked its divine power [numen] had been healed.” **

(5) [They honor them] by decorating them with garlands and crowns, (6) by clothing them in robes, (7) by carrying them around to avert a destructive plague and to avert harm of their crops. (See Bonifinius, Rer. Hungar., bk. 5, decade 1; Baronius, Martyr. Roman., decade 1; Sleidanus, Hist., bk. 9, p. 250.) (8) [They honor them] by setting them up in high places, (9) by setting up altars to them, (10) by building altars and shrines for them, (11) by placing priests in charge of them, (12) by setting up holy days for them, (13) by singing, (14) by holding feasts [in their honor], (15) by kissing them, (16) by supplicating them, (17) by speaking to them, (18) by imploring them. According to Thomas ([ST,] part 3, q. 25, art. 3), the church sings about the wood of the cross: “Hail, O cross, our only hope in this Passiontide; increase righteousness for the devout, and grant pardon to the guilty.”¹⁹ Before Veronica (as they call it) they recite this prayer:

Hail, thou holy face imprinted on the cloth.

Cleanse us from every stain of vices and

Unite us with the communion of the blessed.

Lead us to our home, O happy figure.

Lead us to see the pure face of Christ.

Be for us, we pray, our steadfast help,

Sweet comforter, and consolation

That no hostile, harmful danger may

Come upon us, but that we may enjoy

Rest. Let us all say, “Amen.”

(19) [They honor their images] by sacrificing to them, for they also burn incense before many images, as is clear from their practice and the Roman missal [Missale Romanum] under the heading De ritu serv. in celeb. missa. (20) [They honor them] by burning candles, (21) by making vows to them, (22) by swearing vows to them. All of these are very well-known from their practice.

Whether idolatry is committed through the worship of images.

§ 82. On the basis of all this we deduce the following argument: all worship in which the honor due to God alone is transferred to that which is outside of God is idolatry. Through the worship of images in Papist temples the honor due to God alone is transferred to that which is outside of God. Therefore idolatry is committed through the worship of images in Papist temples. Bellarmine objects (De imagin., bk. 2, ch. 13): “The worship of images is idolatrous when the images are considered deities or when through images those who are considered deities, which do not really exist, are worshiped.” [He also says] that no other species of idolatry is forbidden in those statements of Scripture in Exodus 20, Deuteronomy 5, Romans 1, etc. He distinguishes between an image and an idol (ch. 5). The former he defines as a true likeness of a thing, but the latter as a false likeness, that is, it represents that which actually does not exist. From this he concludes that images of Christ and of the saints are not idols and, as a consequence, idolatry is not committed by worshiping them. Gregorius de Valentia ([Comm.,] disp. 6, q. 2, de idololatr. 1) defines idolatry as being worship by which divine honor is given to something created as to God. He explains this definition as follows (point 3): “A man gives divine honors to a creature as to God when he bestows divine worship on it in such a way that, to the extent that he is able, he wishes to give it such esteem as in fact befits the majesty of God alone.” From this he concludes (point 6) that (Roman) Catholics are not idolaters because they honor images in such a way that they certainly do not give a created thing divine honor as to God. Although they venerate images both of Christ and the saints and employ divine honor in their worship of the images of Christ and even of the cross, yet they do not give that honor to the images themselves as to our God and Lord. Pistorius (Hodeg., p. 303): “The first falsehood is that Papists worship wood and stone and make idols out of them, since the” (Roman) “Catholic Church has never made idols out of images nor has it attributed to them any divinity.” (Page 292.)

§ 83. Of course, it is a species of idolatry—and a rather crass one at that—when images made by human hands are considered gods and are worshiped as gods with divine honors. However, from this it still cannot be deduced that no other species of idolatry is forbidden and condemned by the First Commandment. The First Commandment orders us to venerate and worship the one true God, give divine honors and religious worship to Him alone, serve Him according to the direction of the Word, and, on the other hand, not to have other gods and neither to adore nor to worship graven images. From this [we draw] the obvious conclusion that it, too, is a species of idolatry whenever the honor and worship owed to God is transferred to that which is outside of God and whenever the true God is not worshiped divinely, that is, in the way in which He commanded in His Word that He be worshiped. In a true invocation these two things must be connected: both the object, namely, the true God, one in essence, three in persons; and the way and method of invoking, namely, according to what the Word prescribes, that is, with true faith in Christ and in spirit and in truth. Otherwise we are forced to hear: “You worship what you do not know” (John 4:22). So also the reverse conclusion [is true]: idolatry is committed both in the object and in the manner of worship. Hence not only are they idolaters who consider statues and trees as true deities, but also those who want to worship the true God in statues and through statues, who worship God according to the inventions of their hearts but not according to the direction of His Word (as Mentzer writes learnedly, Disp. Anti-Pistor. 7, thesis 36).

The difference between an image and an idol.

§ 84. Therefore to whatever thing divine honor is given, if it is not the true God, that thing becomes an idol, whether it be natural or artificial, and, accordingly, by such religious worship of this thing which is not the true God idolatry is committed. From this one can perceive how worthless is Bellarmine’s distinction between an image and an idol, as if an image were the true likeness of a thing but an idol were a false likeness. (I) You see, in this way, if the sun, moon, and stars were worshiped, they would not be idols (since they are not a false likeness of anything), and, as a consequence, those who worshiped the host of heaven would not be idolaters. Yet the Israelites who honored the queen of heaven by burning incense and pouring out libations are said (in the Vulgate version) to have “sacrificed to idols” (Jer. 44:23). The likenesses of reptiles and animals which the Israelites worshiped are called “idols” (Ezek. 8:10). In general, on the basis of the First Commandment, people are condemned on the charge of idolatry when they “lift their eyes to heaven, see the sun, moon, and stars and all the host of heaven, and bow down before them and worship them” (Deut. 4:19). Considering this, Epiphanius (Compend. verae doctrinae) writes more correctly about the Persians that “even though they detest idols” (likenesses made by men’s hands), “yet they worship as idols fire, the moon, and the sun.” Again, a father who, in his bitter grief over the premature death of his son, now begins to worship him as a god using an image already made before the child’s death would not be an idolater since such an image is a genuine likeness; but Wisdom 14:15 declares the very opposite.

(II) In this way, historical images that do not express exactly their prototype would straightaway become idols. However, very few painters depict the apostles with the same likeness that they had when they were alive; so all these [artists] would become idol-makers. Furthermore, the image of the large Christopher is painted, but he never existed; certainly that would be an idol according to Bellarmine’s definition, even if it were merely depicted in temples as an admonition.

(III) Moreover, how many idols would there be in the very churches of the Papists according to this definition of Bellarmine? The knight George trampling the dragon, the horned Moses, and many other images are not genuine likenesses, for no such George trampling the dragon nor horned Moses has ever existed.

(IV) Wherever there is idolatry, there are also idols by the nature of related things.²⁰ And yet Aelius Lampridius, who worshiped images of Christ and Abraham along with the rest of the idols, was an idolater, according to Bellarmine (De imag., bk. 2, ch. 11). In general, by his definition anyone is an idolater who gives worship [cultum latriae] to images of Christ in and of themselves (De imag., bk. 2, ch. 24). Therefore images of Christ are sometimes idols. How can one in any sense of the truth say that he who honors the image of Peter with worship [cultu λατρείας] is not really committing idolatry, even according to the Papists, even if that image were a genuine likeness of Peter?

(V) The words “idol,” “image,” and “likeness” are very often used without distinction not only among secular authors but also in Holy Scripture and among the ecclesiastical writers, and even among the Papists themselves. In 2 Kings 11:18 the people under Jehoiada smashed all the “images” of Baal. (See also Isa. 44:13; Ezek. 7:20; 16:17; 23:14; Amos 5:26; Tertullian, Apol., ch. 12; Cyprian, Ad Demet.; Athanasius, Contra gentes; Chrysostom, vol. 1, Homily 87; etc.) Those who call the idols of the heathen “images”—such as Cajetan, Fonseca, Pererius, Onuphrius, Peresius, [Gregorius] de Valentia, and even Bellarmine himself—do not observe that distinction everywhere. [Gregorius] de Valentia (De idolol., bk. 3, ch. 8, § Quod autem): “The Greek word ‘idol’ means ‘image’ or ‘likeness.’ ” Ibid.: “Blessed Peter signifies that there is a lawful worship of likenesses and idols.” Bellarmine (De imag., bk. 2, ch. 7): “Surely not every image is forbidden in the Decalogue; rather, only that is an image which can be called an idol, which is had in God’s place or which represents as God that which is not God.” Same book (ch. 24): “To give worship [cultus latriae] to an image for its own sake, that is idolatry,” etc. Here belongs the comment of Erasmus (on 1 Corinthians 8, p. 355): “Surely Ambrose knows no distinction between ‘idol’ and ‘likeness,’ nor do I see any.”

(VI) Therefore the distinction Bellarmine establishes between an idol and an image is useless and inept. On the other hand, the distinction we established earlier is always true: that an idol is everything to which divine worship is given, though it is not God, whether it be an image made by man’s hands or a natural thing or an inner imagination of the heart; however, an image is that which is formed for remembrance or decoration, but not that it be worshiped.

§ 85. [Gregorius de] Valentia’s appendix should not be valued as worth even one penny when he declares the following to be the genuine definition of idolatry: to pay divine honor to a created thing as to God. (1) For this is the same as if someone tried to define adultery as “copulation with someone who is not his spouse as with his spouse”; thus [the woman] who has sex with him is not an adulteress if he does not consider her his wife, but only she [is an adultress] who prostitutes herself to another as to a spouse.

(2) When divine honor is shown to a creature, by that very act that creature is moved into God’s place and is considered as God, seeing as it is not divine honor unless it is owed to God. Thus when such honor is offered, divinity itself is actually being attributed—or at least (by immovable consequence) is understood to be attributed—for there is no relation outside its own foundation.²¹

(3) If a man is not an idolater unless he gives divine honor to a created thing as to God, then the Israelites who worshiped God in calves and the heathen who worshiped Him in likenesses are not idolaters; nor could the early doctors of the church have accused the Arians and Nestorians of idolatry, for they had proposed nothing less than to give divine honor to Christ as to God—which we shall discuss in greater detail later [§ 86 (3)]. How truly insignificant was this handful of idolaters according to this definition of [Gregorius de] Valentia! Surely, very few idolaters have reached that stage of madness where they actually believe that their statues are deities.

(4) In addition, [Gregorius de] Valentia himself does not everywhere observe this part of his own definition. He argues (De idolol., disp. 6, q. 2, point 3) about outward idolatry which, he teaches, is committed when veneration does not stem from the inner faithlessness by which a created thing is thought to be God nor from an explicit and direct will to bestow divine honor on the created thing, and he concludes that one sins more through this exterior idolatry than through an inner idolatry which springs from ignorance ([ibid.,] point 2).

The definition of idolatry.

§ 86. Now that this foreign patch has been removed, the full and complete definition of idolatry is that it is worship by which the honor owed to God alone is transferred to what is outside of God. (For everything is outside of God that either is not God in essence or is not united to God in the hypostatic union, as the assumed human nature is united to the Word and accordingly is to be adored with worship [λατρείας cultu] the same as the Word, according to the definition of the Council of Ephesus, anath. 8, cont. Nest.).

Schroeder proves this definition (treatise De imag., q. 2, theses 28ff.): (1) From the end and aim of the First Commandment, which requires not only that we religiously worship God as the one and only true God but also that we not religiously worship anything else beside Him or outside of the true God.

(2) From the genuine and proper form [formale] of an idol, which consists in being something worshiped with divine honor though it is not God. Furthermore, it is clear that the proper form of an idol consists in this. This is clear from the fact that something that was not an idol becomes an idol when people begin to give it religious worship and, on the other hand, that which was an idol ceases to be an idol when people quit giving it religious worship. As long as the brazen serpent was not being worshiped, it was not an idol; but when the people began burning incense before it, it turned into an idol. As a result, King Hezekiah destroyed it (2 Kings 18:4). The sun, moon, and all the host of heaven were idols when the Israelites began to sacrifice to them (2 Kings 23:5); but they no longer are idols to us but good creations of God.

(3) From examples of those who are accused of idolatry on the charge of having attributed worship that is due to God to what is outside God.²² Deut. 17:3 says that those who bow down to the sun, moon, and all the host of heaven are worshiping other gods. Ezek. 8:[10] says that the Israelites were idolaters because they worshiped likenesses of reptiles and animals. Rom. 1:23 prosecutes the heathen for being guilty of idolatry because they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the corruptible likeness of man and of birds and four-footed beasts and reptiles. Carpocrates is accused of idolatry by Irenaeus ([Advers. haeres.,] bk. 1, ch. 24, p. 81), by Epiphanius (Haer. 29), and by Augustine (Ad Quodvultdeum, haer. 7) because he worshiped images of Christ and of Paul, which he had, and sacrificed to them. The angel-worshipers [Ἀγγελoλάτραι] were accused of idolatry at the Council of Laodicea (canon 35). Athanasius (Contra Arian., orat. 1, at the Council of Nicaea, ch. 11, art. 6) ascribes idolatry to the Arians for showing divine worship to the Son of God, whom they said was not true God. The Nestorians were called “man-worshipers” [anthropolatrae] by the Council of Ephesus (Letter ad Theodos. et Valent. Impp.), Cyril (De recta fide ad Regin.), and Justinian ([Codex,] constit. 6, ch. De summ. Trinitat. et fide cathol.), and they were called “idolaters” by the Second Council of Nicaea (Act. 7) for wanting to worship the flesh of Christ, which they nevertheless denied subsisted within the hypostasis of the Word. The Christianocategori are called idolaters by Damascenus (De haeres., toward the end) and by Bellarmine (De imag., bk. 2, ch. 11) because they ordered divine honors for images and would have Christians accused as worshipers of idols.

(4) From descriptions of idolatry which [the following] authors provide. Tertullian (De idolol., ch. 1): “Idolatry defrauds God, denies Him His honors, and gives them to others so that it also joins insult to fraud.” Ambrose (on Ephesians 5): “Idolatry usurps the giving of honor to God and gives it to a created thing.” Gregory Nazianzen (Orat. εἰς γενέθλ.) calls idolatry “the transfer of adoration from the Creator to the creature.” Augustine (De Trinit., bk. 1, ch. 6): “They are called idolaters who give images the service that is owed to God.” Bede (on Luke 4): “They are called idolaters who devote to idols the vows, prayers, and sacrifices that are owed to the one God.” Gerson (Reg. moral., tit. de superbia, letter M): “Idolatry is the showing of divine honor to something created really or interpretatively or attributively in a way other than what can be proper for it.” Thomas ([ST,] 2.2., q. 44, art. 1): “Idolatry is the superstition by which divine worship is shown to a created thing.” Catech. Trident. (explanation of the First Commandment): “When Moses wished to turn the people away from idolatry, he said, ‘You did not see any likeness on that day when the Lord spoke to you on Horeb in the midst of the fire’ [Deut. 4:12]. The all-wise lawgiver spoke this way that they might not be misled by some error and fashion an image of His divinity and give the honor due to God to a created thing.” From these statements, we draw the following definition of idolatry: it is the error by which one attributes to a created thing the honor owed to God.

Self-chosen acts of worship are a species of idolatry.

§ 87. It is part of the divine honor and worship owed to God alone to follow His prescription in the form and manner of worshiping Him: Deut. 12:8, 32: “You shall not act, everyone doing whatever is right in his own eyes, but everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it.” Matt. 15:9: “In vain do they worship Me, teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.” Isa. 1:12: “Who has required this of your hands?” etc. Therefore self-chosen acts of worship [ἐθελoθρηςκεῖαι] which people invent in their own hearts and pursue in their divine worship constitute a certain species of idolatry. Num. 15:39–41: “Remember all the commandments of Jehovah to do them, not to look after your own heart and your own eyes, which you fornicate after. So shall you remember and do all My commandments and be holy to your God. I am Jehovah your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God. I am Jehovah your God.” (It was quite common for the prophets to include idolatry under the heading of spiritual fornication and adultery. Therefore when self-chosen acts of worship are here called “fornication,” surely they are counted as idolatry, as the repetition of the words of the First Commandment shows: “I am Jehovah your God”). Deut. 12:30–31: “Take heed that you not imitate the nations, after they have been destroyed before you, and that you do not inquire about their ceremonies” (Hebrew: gods), “saying, ‘Just as these nations worshiped their gods, I, too, will worship.’ You shall not do so to your God.” In this passage it is very clear that “other gods” are established when the true God is worshiped or is thought to be worshiped with the foreign worship rites of the heathen beyond and outside the Word. 1 Sam. 15:22–23: “Is the will of Jehovah in burnt offerings and sacrifices and not rather in obeying the voice of Jehovah? For rebellion is the sin of divination, and transgressing is iniquity and Theraphim.” (“Theraphim” is known to mean likenesses to which divine worship is offered, Gen. 31:19; Judg. 17:5. Therefore those who follow the thoughts of their own hearts in divine worship erect an idol.)

The following lines of reasoning prove this. (I) He who does not fear and love God above all things sins against the First Commandment. Whoever establishes worship outside of and beyond the Word neither fears nor loves God above all things, seeing as he prefers the thoughts of his own heart to God’s Word. Therefore whoever establishes worship outside of and beyond the Word sins against the First Commandment and, as a consequence, commits idolatry; for all sins against the First Commandment are included under the general category of idolatry.

(II) Whoever does not acknowledge that God is the wisest sins against the First Commandment. (For in the First Commandment we are commanded to acknowledge God as He is. But now, God is the wisest.) Whoever establishes a worship outside of and beyond the Word does not acknowledge that God is the wisest because he prefers the thoughts of his own heart to divine wisdom. Therefore whoever establishes self-chosen worship sins against the First Commandment and, as a consequence, commits idolatry.

(III) Whoever transfers to another the glory due to God alone sins against the First Commandment and commits idolatry. Whoever establishes self-chosen acts of worship transfers to another the glory due to God (since it is the glory of God alone that He is the one and only Lawgiver—εἷς ὁ νoμoθέτης, James 4:12—to whom alone it belongs to prescribe the norm and form of His worship). Therefore whoever establishes self-chosen acts of worship sins against the First Commandment and commits adultery. Jerome (on Jeremiah 10): “Everything we have said about idols can be applied to all dogmas which are contrary to the truth. For they themselves” (the authors and propagators of such dogmas) “promise great things and fashion an image of false worship out of their own heart. They boast of grand things, and, in order to deceive all the simple, they hamper the discernment of the inexperienced with their golden sentences, so to speak, and oratory glistening with the sheen of silver,” etc. “Their worship is characteristic of the heathen and of those who do not know God,” etc. Also (on Micah 5): “The unhappy human condition, filled with folly and error, knows that dogmas have been established from its own understanding and is not unaware that it has fashioned an idol and adores the work of its own hands in place of God.”

** Augustine (Quaest. super Josuam, q. 29, on the words “remove the foreign gods from your midst”) says: “The holy prophet Joshua saw that there were thoughts in their hearts about God alien to God, and [he] warned them to remove such thoughts. After all, whoever thinks that God is such as He really is not is surely carrying a false and foreign God in his thoughts.” Again (De vera relig., ch. 38) he shows that “erroneous notions and one’s own fancies [φαντάσματα] are the ‘worship of images.’” **

§ 88. On the basis of all this, the real and genuine nature of idolatry, its full and complete definition, and the various species of idolatry can be discerned. It remains to be proved that idolatry is being committed through the worship of images in Papist churches. We confirm this with the following proofs. (I) Whoever confers divine honor upon a thing which is not God commits idolatry. The Papists confer divine honor on images, though they are not God. Therefore through their honoring of images the Papists commit idolatry. The major premise is obvious from what we have said already. We confirm the minor premise in this way: Adoration is worship owed to God alone. The honor of adoration is conferred upon images in Papist churches. Therefore worship owed to God alone is given to images. The truth of the minor premise is evident from the fact that Thomas, Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, Albert, and many other Scholastics argue that the same honor is due to both the image and the exemplar and that, accordingly, images of the Holy Trinity, of Christ, and of the cross should be adored with worship [cultu latriae]. Their opinion is followed by Cajetan, Gregorius de Valentia, and Costerus, as we have seen in §§ 77–78. Robertus Holcottus and Gerson acknowledge that this can be called idolatry. (The former of them writes, on Wisdom, lect. 158: “Worship [latria] is an honor owed to God alone, but no image is God. Therefore such honor is owed to no image.” And the latter concludes, on the Magnificat, part 3, treatise 8: “Only the divine and greatest Being is to be honored with worship [latria]. The faithful know this, as do all philosophers. But the wood of the cross, even the one on which the Lord was hanged, has no divinity.”) Bellarmine acknowledges the same thing, writing as follows (De imagin., bk. 2, ch. 24):

An image of itself and properly should not be adored with the same service [cultus] as the exemplar. Hence no image in and of itself is God whether considered with respect to its material, its shape and stylings, or its relation. Therefore worship [cultus latriae] is not owed to any image of itself and properly. Someone might say that worship [latria] is proper for God when it is shown for its own sake but not on account of something else. On the contrary, for it is of the true essence of true worship that it be offered for its own sake since worship is called the highest service that is owed to the true God as the first Origin [principium] of all things. But these things involve a contradiction: offering the highest service to the first Origin and [offering it] on account of something else. For if [it is given] to the first Origin, it is not for the sake of something else. And if [it is given] for the sake of something else, it is not [given] to the first Origin. Therefore either the service of worship is offered to an image for its own sake, and this is true idolatry, or it is not offered for its own sake, and then it is not the service of true worship, etc.

Those are Bellarmine’s words, with which he contradicts most Scholastics and, in fact, even people of his own order, Gregorius de Valentia and Costerus.

Bellarmine’s opinion on the worship of images.

§ 89. With what kind of service does Bellarmine think images should be honored? He writes (De imag., bk. 2, ch. 20) that there are three opinions about the kind of service owed to images. “First, that an image should not in any way be served [colenda] in itself, but rather the exemplar should be served in the presence of the image.” Alexander of Hales seems to have thought the same ([Summa,] part 3, q. 3, final article), as well as Durandus (Sent., bk. 3, dist. 9, q. 2) and Alphonsus de Castro (on the word imago). He could have added to this Vasquez, a man of his own Society, who says (De adorat., bk. 2, disp. 2, ch. 3): “It is superstitious and foolish to worship images of themselves without having any consideration for the exemplar.” [Bellarmine’s] second opinion is that “the same honor is owed to the image as to the exemplar. Therefore the image of Christ should be adored with the service of worship [cultu latriae]; that of the blessed Mary, with the service of high veneration [cultu hyperduliae]; and those of the other saints, with the service of veneration [cultu duliae²³ ].” This is the opinion of Thomas, Bonaventure, Marsilius, Cajetan, etc. “The third opinion occupies the middle position and belongs to those who say that the very images should be honored of themselves and properly, but with a lesser honor than that of the exemplar itself, and, consequently, that no image should be adored with the service of worship.” This is the opinion of Peresius (De tradition., treatise De imag.), Catharinus, Sander, etc.

In order to reconcile these opinions, [Bellarmine] forms the following propositions:

(1) The images of Christ and of the saints should be venerated not only accidentally or in the improper sense but also in themselves and properly, so that they themselves are the terminus of veneration as they are considered in themselves and not only as they stand in the place of the exemplar. (2) Regarding the way of speaking, especially in preaching to the people, one should not say that any images should be adored with worship [latria] but, on the contrary, that they should not be adored that way. (3) When it comes to the heart of the matter, it can be admitted that images can be worshiped in the improper sense or through accident with the same kind of service with which one serves the original itself. (4) An image in itself and properly should not be adored with the same service [cultus] as the original, and thus no image should be honored with worship [latria] properly and of itself. (5) The service which in itself and properly is owed to images is a kind of imperfect service, which analogically and reductively relates to that species of service which is owed to the original.

Bellarmine certainly intended to paint his image worship with these colors in order to make a more graceful retreat. Thus we deservedly ask him: (1) Why would he part ways with Thomas, to whom he is bound with an oath?

(2) In fact, why would he part ways with Gregorius de Valentia and Costerus, men of his own order?

(3) Why would he deny the obvious practice that shows how divine honors are given to images (about which we spoke in § 80)?

(4) Why would he part ways with the Council of Trent, which said (session 25) that to worship His image is to worship Christ Himself? From this [Gregorius] de Valentia concludes that, since when honoring the prototype the honor that befits its excellence is used, therefore images should be honored with the same honor of the prototype, but in their own way—the way they should be honored, namely, according as they are images. Therefore images of Christ should be given worship [latria].

(5) Why would he say that one should not tell the people that images should be adored with the service of worship when he concedes that, “when it comes to the heart of the matter, it can be admited that images may be worshiped in the improper sense or through accident”? Christ wanted His teaching to be preached to every creature through His disciples (Mark 16:15). “The truth fears nothing except to be hidden” (Tertullian, Adv. Valent., p. 383). Here it would have been right for someone to cry out with Augustine (De civ. Dei, bk. 4, ch. 27): “That is a fine religion! The weak man, who needs to be freed, flees there for refuge, and, when he seeks the truth by which to be delivered, it is believed that what benefits him is to be deceived!”

(6) Why would he assert that it should be said that images should not be adored with worship [cultu latriae], but then concede that they are to be given worship improperly speaking? He himself explains what “improperly honored” means in this way (De imag., bk. 2, ch. 2): “One is said to honor improperly when something is honored in place of the king, as when an envoy is honored in place of the king with the honor which is proper to kings.” Therefore just as an envoy is truly honored when the honor of the king is conferred upon him, even though it happens improperly, so also, according to Bellarmine’s hypothesis, it should be said that images are truly adored with worship when the honor of the prototype is conferred upon them, though this happens improperly.

(7) What finally would that analogical service [cultus] be that is owed to images? He explains this as follows (ch. 25): “Just as an image stands in relation to its exemplar, so also the service of an image stands in relation to the service of the exemplar. However, the image is the very exemplar analogically and in a certain respect, for a painted man is a man in a certain respect and analogically. Therefore the image, too, is owed the service that is owed to the exemplar itself, but a service that is imperfect and analogical.”

We respond. A painted man and a real man do not correspond to the analogical category, but rather the equivocal category. Aristotle ([Categoriae,] ἐν πρoκατηγoρ., ch. De homonymis): “Homonyms are that which have only a common name. One according to its name is a word of substance; the other, a living being, both a man and what has been written.” I conclude that, just as an image stands in relation to its exemplar, so also the worship [cultus] of an image stands in relation to the worship of its exemplar. And yet an image is the actual exemplar equivocally, not analogically, much less synonymously. Therefore also the worship of an image is equivocal worship.

(8) How can one, without fear of the peril of idolatry, possibly explain that analogical and reductive worship to simpler people, who take greater pains in the worship of images than even their teachers? How often does anyone who venerates images think about [and distinguish between] worship, high veneration, veneration, or that lower kind of service, whether in a certain respect analogically and reductively it is worship, high veneration, or veneration?

(9) Would he claim that such analogical worship owed to the images of the Holy Trinity, Christ, and the cross is in some way divine or not? If the former, it would then follow that part of the divine honor is transferred to images, for analogy clearly requires this, because it consists of a participation between that which is related analogically and that to which it is related. If the latter, then God is not worshiped through the worship of images because only divine honor befits God.

The objections of our adversaries.

§ 90. What if someone says that the Papists indeed do bow down before images, but that there is nothing idolatrous about this because “adoration” in general denotes honor, even human honor; because adoration is not being applied to the images themselves; and, finally, because all this is a matter of stirring up hearts to God? This is the way Pistorius argues (Hodeg., ch. De imag., p. 295). Mentzer²⁴ responds to him thoroughly (Antipist., disp. 7, theses 47ff):

(1) The Second Council of Nicaea also attributed at least an honorary adoration to images, but we saw how he explains that in § 76.

(2) Actual practice shows that such adoration of images is not civil but religious, seeing as they serve them by sacrificing, vowing, taking oaths, etc., though Bellarmine (De cultu sanctor., bk. 3, ch. 9) does recognize that “a vow is a religious action owed to God alone, as are also oath-taking and sacrifice.

(3) According to the word of God’s Law, we are expressly forbidden to bow down to a graven image and worship [colere] it. Therefore whoever bows down to an image to thereby outwardly offer the inner worship of his heart sins against God’s commandment.

(4) The civil adoration given to kings and those in high positions can have no place here because images are not regarded as belonging to civil things but to the sacred and religious. But now, in religious matters the bending of the knee is a mark of religious worship (1 Kings 19:[18]; Rom. 11:4).

(5) Additionally, there is a great difference. [It is one thing] when outward, civil reverence is shown to rational men, which at times in the Old Testament is called “adoration”; there are examples of this in Scripture. However, it is another thing to offer this to inanimate statues, and there is neither a command nor an example of this in Scripture. In fact, because God’s Law forbids both the adoration and worship [cultus] of images, it forbids, on the one hand, the inner worship of the spirit and, on the other hand, the external, honorary adoration of images.

(6) Bellarmine (De imag., bk. 2, ch. 24) and Gregorius de Valentia (treatise De adoratione Christi, point 2) clearly disapprove of the opinion of those who say that an image should by no means be worshiped [colendam] of itself, but only the exemplar should be worshiped in the presence of its image, and that instead images only move us to honor the prototype alone.

(7) Most of the Scholastics offer exactly the same worship to the image as is owed to the original.

The second argument by which we prove that idolatry is committed through the worship of images.

§ 91. This concludes our discussion on the first argument, by which we wanted to prove that the Papists commit idolatry through the worship of images.

Let this be the second argument: Whenever God is worshiped through the worship of images, idolatry is committed. The Papists want to worship God through the worship of images. Therefore they commit idolatry through their worship of images. They quite willingly concede the minor premise. The truth of the major premise is proved both by the manifest command of God by which He forbade people to worship Him through idols and by the examples of all those who have been accused of idolatry because they wanted to worship God through images.

The manifest command of God is in Deut. 4:15–16: “Watch out for your souls very carefully (for you saw no image on the day that Jehovah spoke to you from the midst of the flame), lest you corrupt your ways and make a graven image for yourselves, or an image of any figure,” etc. The Lawgiver forbids the people from making for themselves a graven image or an image of not just anything, but of that in which they might represent and worship God. For the reason is then given: there was no likeness of God seen in that solemn publication of the Law because He did not want any likeness of Himself to be made. Now, if the making of a likeness of God was forbidden, then surely worshiping God in a likeness or image was also forbidden.

Bellarmine (De imag., bk. 2, ch. 8) writes: “It is not as sure in the church whether images of God or of the Holy Trinity may be made as it is that images of Christ and of the saints may be made.” Nevertheless he concludes: “It is permissible to paint an image of God the Father in the form of an old man since the angels are incorporeal and are depicted in the Old Testament and since God is envisioned with a corporeal form when parts of the body are attributed to Him.” However, all this does not yet prove that an image of God Himself should or can be painted. You see, when those bodily sights in which God has represented Himself are depicted, then it is not God Himself who is being depicted but rather that in which God has manifested Himself. Bellarmine himself acknowledges this to some extent and thus admits ([ibid.,] third argument, coll. 956): “It is not without peril that the unlearned people are shown pictures of this kind, in which God is given physical parts of the body.” He argues (coll. 956) that one can depict something in three ways:

(1) To express the perfect likeness of the form and nature of the thing itself. If anyone were to try to depict God in this way, he would be making a true idol. (2) To display an historical account to the eyes. For example, if someone wanted to depict the expulsion of Adam from Paradise,²⁵ he should depict God walking in the form of a man, etc. Now, whoever would depict Him thus would certainly not be trying to represent the nature of God but would only be wanting to present to the eyes through a picture what otherwise he would present to the ears by reading Scripture. (3) To explain the nature of a thing, not through an immediate and proper likeness but through analogy or metaphoric and mystical characteristics, such as when, outside of actual history, God the Father is depicted in human form, Christ in the form of a sheep, etc. Here one should note that images of this sort should not be multiplied, nor should it be tolerated when painters dare to shape a likeness of the Trinity from their own imagination, as when they paint one man with three faces or one man with two heads and a dove between them. Things such as that are called “monsters.” They are more offensive because of their deformity than they are helpful because of their similarity.

All this is from Bellarmine, who later concludes: “In the Scriptures only images of God of the first kind are forbidden.” Although those historical pictures in which divine appearances are expressed do not meet with our complete disapproval, nevertheless we claim that there is a prohibition against depicting a likeness or erecting a statue beyond history which represents God either immediately or analogically. [This is] because of manifest statements of Scripture: Deut. 4:15[–16]: “You saw no form; therefore watch yourself, lest, deceived, you make any likeness for yourself.” Isa. 40:18: “To whom will you liken God, or what likeness will you place with Him?” Isa. 46:5: “To whom will you liken Me and make Me equal, and compare Me, that I may be similar?” Acts 17:29: “We ought not think that the Godhead is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man.” Also, the matter itself clearly shows that no such likeness can be crafted or painted to represent God as one in essence and three in persons, not immediately nor analogically. Consequently, the ancients write clearly that it is impious to create any image of God. Clement of Alexandria (Strom., bk. 1) declares: “According to Moses’ teaching, God is not represented by any likeness of man nor by anything else.” Tertullian (De cor. mil.): “It is not meet that the image of the living God should become the image of a dead idol.” Origen (Cont. Cels., bk. 7, toward the end) says that “no likeness of God should be made.” The same thing is repeated by Eusebius (De praeparat. evang., bk. 1, ch. 6), Athanasius (Orat. contra gentes), Jerome (on Isaiah 40), Augustine (De fide et symb., ch. 7), Theodoret (on Deuteronomy, q. 1), Damascenus (Orth. fid., bk. 4, ch. 17), the [Seventh] Council of Constantinople as reported in the acts of the [Second] Council of Nicaea (Act. 6), and Nicephorus (Histor. eccles., bk. 8, ch. 53). Polydorus Vergilius imitates their opinion as he writes (De rer. invent., bk. 2, ch. 23): “Because God is present everywhere, nothing from the beginning since man was created seems more foolish than to depict His likeness.” Now, if it is impious to create a likeness of God, how much less pious will it be to worship [colere] a likeness of God. Augustine says (Letter 119 ad Januar.): “The First Commandment forbids anyone to worship any likeness of God except [that which is] one and the same along with Him, which is Christ.” Ambrose (Letter 31 ad Valent.): “God does not want to be worshiped in stones.” Abulensis (on Deuteronomy 4): “God has forbidden us not only to worship any likeness but even to worship Him in a likeness.” From that he gathers this inference: “In images that designate God purely—that is, as the Trinity—two inconsistencies can follow: first, idolatry, for we are forbidden to worship an image; second, error and heresy, that is, attributing corporeity to God.” Peresius (De traditionibus, part 3, treatise De imag.) followed Augustine and declared: “God’s First Commandment prohibits us from worshiping a likeness of God in the figments of man’s imagination, not because God has no image but because no image of Him should be worshiped except that which is what He is.” Vasquez (De adorat., bk. 2, disp. 4, ch. 2): “It is clearly deduced from Deuteronomy 4 that it was impermissible for the true God to be venerated in any image.”

Examples of idolaters: First, calf-worshipers.

§ 92. There are examples that testify to the fact that those who wanted to worship God through the worship of images were accused of idolatry. (I) The “calf-worshipers” in Egypt thought they could worship God through a calf they had cast. Their very serious punishment, described in Exodus 32, testifies that they were idolaters.

** See Luther’s preface prefixed to the German translation of the prophets.²⁶ **

Bellarmine objects (De imag., bk. 2, ch. 13): “The Israelites thought that God Almighty was that calf, because in Egypt they had seen a calf held in highest honor. As a result they are also said to have ‘forgotten God, their Savior’ (Ps. 106:21), and to have ‘changed the glory of God into the likeness of an ox’ (v. 20).”

We respond. It is quite clear from the text that they themselves established the worship of that calf in honor of the true God. In Exod. 32:4 Aaron says, “These are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” But they knew that they had not been led out of Egypt by that calf which had been made only a few hours earlier, but by the true God. In v. 5 Aaron builds an altar for the calf and “made proclamation and said, ‘Tomorrow shall be a feast of the Lord ()).’ ” Here it is apparent that the feast is dedicated to God Himself. They had seen the Egyptians worshiping their god through an ox or calf called Apis (whom they consecrated to Serapis, according to Augustine, De civ. Dei, bk. 18, ch. 5; Cicero, De natur. deorum; Macrobius, Saturnal., bk. 1, ch. 21; Herodotus; Diodorus Siculus; Plutarch; etc.); therefore with these rituals and in that statue they, too, wanted to worship the true God, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. Johannes Ferus (on Acts 7): “The Jews venerated the true God in the calf that Aaron fashioned. This is clear from his words: ‘These are your gods,’ etc. However, they sinned because they made an idol contrary to the First Commandment of God.” Moreover, the clearness of the text forces Bellarmine to write (coll. 984): “It is quite probable to say that the Jews thought that they were worshiping the true God in the idol. However, they sinned very seriously in this, because they sacrificed to the idol and believed that divine power was in that idol, and also because they imagined that God was corporeal and like that idol. From this it followed that they thought they were worshiping the true God but actually were worshiping only a creation of their own imagination.”

Those are Bellarmine’s words. We are right to demand that he prove that the Israelites believed that there was a divine power in that statue of the calf and that they claimed that God was corporeal. If he concludes this from the fact that they sacrificed to the calf, we surely will be able to conclude in the same way that the Papists also claim that there is some divine power in their images (though the Council of Trent resists this in vain) because they worship them with incense, prayers, vows, etc. They are said to have forgotten their God not because they simply did not remember the God of their fathers, who had brought them up out of Egypt, but because they were forgetting His Commandments, especially the one that forbade them to fashion an image for the worship of God. Whoever forgets the Commandments of God forgets God Himself. Whoever worships the true God in a way other than He commands in His Word does not worship the true God, but an idol of his heart. They are said to have changed His (their God’s) glory into the likeness of an ox eating grass, not because they claimed that God was like that in His essence—even if this entered the mind of some, it was never so for Aaron—but because they gave divine honors to that calf and thus transferred to it the glory owed to the true God. Moreover, even though they wanted to worship the true God in this way, the Holy Spirit declares that they changed the true God into the likeness of a calf. Indeed, this situation is not a matter of the affections or the intent of the worshipers but of the mind and declaration of God. Jer. 2:27 says of the Israelites that they said to a tree, “You are my father,” and to a stone, “You gave me birth.” And yet the kings, princes, priests, and prophets of the Israelites (whom Jeremiah in the same place accuses of idolatry) were not so insane as to claim that those statues of wood and stone were their creators—otherwise they would have been out of their minds—but, because they wanted to worship God their Creator through the worship of those statues, it is rightly said of them that they changed the honor of their Creator into the likeness of a statue of wood or of stone.

Second, Micah.

§ 93. (II) Micah, along with his mother, committed idolatry by worshiping God through likenesses (Judges 17). Both parts of this assertion are quite clear from the text. In v. 3 his mother says, “I consecrate that silver” (from which the likeness was made) “to the Lord” (Jehovah) “that my son may take it from my hand and make” (from it) “a graven image and a molten image.” In v. 5, when the silversmith had made a graven image and a molten image, it was erected in Micah’s house. He had a chapel in his house, and he put the statue in it. With the rest of the money, he made an ephod, that is, a priest’s garment which the Old Testament priests would wear in the performance of their sacred acts. “He filled the hand of one of his sons and made him his priest.” Later (v. 10), when he had consecrated into the priesthood the Levite who had come to him from afar, he said, “Now I know that Jehovah will prosper me because I have gotten a Levite as a priest,” for he knew that priests were to be selected only from the tribe of Levi. In Judg. 18:31, the Danites are said to have raised up Micah’s graven image which he had made “as long as the house of God was at Shiloh.” From this it is very clear that Micah and his mother had undertaken all of this in honor of the true God, for they believed that they were going to worship the true God in the worship of that statue and were going to please Him. Nonetheless they are accused of idolatry, for that likeness was called [one of the] “Teraphim” (Judg. 18:18, 24).

Here belongs what is mentioned in Judg. 8:27 about Gideon, how from the golden earrings of the spoils he made an ephod and put it into his own city, in Ophrah. Although Gideon did this to honor and worship the true God—for he expressly says (v. 23): “Jehovah will rule over you”—yet all of Israel is said to have fornicated after it, that is, to have committed idolatry, obviously because they wanted to worship the true God otherwise than He had commanded in His Word. Augustine (QQ., bk. 7, q. 41):

It is not unreasonable to ask how Scripture calls this a fornication of the people who worshiped and venerated it since it was not an idol—that is, an image of a false and alien god—but an ephod, that is, one of the sacred objects of the tabernacle which had to do with the priest’s vestment. It was because it is impious to make any likeness outside the tabernacle of God where the things that God had commanded Israel to make for Him resided. Therefore Scripture continues and says, “It became a snare to Gideon and to his family” [v. 27]; that is, he departed from God, whom he had offended, because this, too, was a kind of idol in a sense: worshiping in God’s place anything made by the hand outside of the tabernacle of God. For those things that were ordered to be made in the tabernacle were related to the worship of God rather than considered to be worshiped in God’s place or as a likeness of God, even though the word “ephod,” by the figure of speech which signifies the whole from a part, can mean all the things that Gideon set up in his city as likenesses of God’s tabernacle to worship God.

Third, the Israelites.

§ 94. (III) The Israelites “served the Baals and the Ashtaroth” (Judg. 2:13). They even called God Himself “Baal”; that is, they wanted to worship the true God through the worship of Baal. Hosea 2:16–17: “And in that day, says the Lord, you will call Me ‘My Husband’ and no longer will you call Me ‘Baal,’ for I shall remove the name of Baal from your mouth,” etc. Nevertheless it says that they committed evil in the eyes of Jehovah by serving Baal. Thus Jeroboam (1 Kings 12:28) made two golden calves, one of which he placed in Dan, the other in Bethel, and said, “Behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.” Jeroboam did not intend to lead the people away from the true God of Israel or to convince them that those golden calves were truly gods; instead, he set up those likenesses for worship of the true God. He was afraid, you see, that the children of Israel would go up to Jerusalem to make their sacrifices in the house of God and would then fall back to Rehoboam. Therefore he told the people that the true God, who had brought their fathers up out of the land of Egypt, could be served just as well before those golden calves as in Jerusalem at the Holy of Holies, above which were the cherubim. Nonetheless this was idolatry (1 Kings 14:9).

Here belongs what is mentioned about Jehu (2 Kings 10:25[–29]) and how he butchered the servants of Baal, smashed his statue to pieces, and also destroyed the house of Baal. Yet he did not turn aside from the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who made Israel sin, nor did he abandon the golden calves in Dan and Bethel, whose worshipers he calls “the servants of the Jehovah” (v. 23), no doubt because he believed they were worshiping the true God through the worship of those calves. In 2 Kings 18:22, the Rabshakeh responded to the legates of Hezekiah: “But if you say to me, ‘We trust in Jehovah our God,’ is it not He whose high places and altars Hezekiah has removed, saying to Judah and to Jerusalem, ‘You shall bow down before this altar in Jerusalem’?” Therefore the report that the Israelites wanted to worship the true God through those altars and high places spread even to the Gentiles. Bellarmine (loc. cit.) judges that the opinion of Abulensis and Cajetan on Judges 7 is not improbable. They say that there were two kinds of idols among the Hebrews: one without the name of a certain god, as was the idol of Micah (Judges 17) and perhaps the golden calf that Aaron made (Exodus 32) and that Jeroboam rebuilt ([1] Kings 12); the other with a certain name, such as Baal, Moloch, Ashtaroth, etc. As far as the first kind is concerned, [they say] that one may admit that the Jews thought they were worshiping the true God in an idol.

** Gregorius de Valentia (De idolol., bk. 2, ch. 6) thinks that a kind of worship of images was permitted, which he tries to prove from 1 Pet. 4:3, where the ancient translator renders ἀθεμίτoις εἰδωλoλατρείαις as “the unlawful worship of idols” [illicitos simulacrorum cultus]. From that he concludes: “Therefore some worship of idols was lawful, just as when we hear of the unjust slaying of a person, we understand that at times a person can be slain.” We respond. (1) This epithet ἀθεμίτoις more correctly means the “abominable” [nefarios] rather than the “unlawful” worship of idols, as Erasmus has translated it. (2) Epithets are not always used to distinguish and distribute but also to amplify, as when we say “an abominable disgrace,” “unchaste adultery.” (3) In the epithet in Judges 11, they are called “impious sinners,” but no one concludes from this that some sinners are pious insofar as they remain such. **

The Gentiles.

§ 95. (IV) Through the honor that they gave to images, the Gentiles tried to worship the true God, of whom they had some awareness which they learned from the book of nature. Bellarmine (De imag., bk. 2, ch. 13) stubbornly denies this and sets out to prove that the Gentiles regarded their idols as gods or, at least, that they worshiped created things in idols in place of the true God.

We respond. Certainly, there were some people stupid and mindless enough to claim that those idols truly were gods, but most of them, especially the more sophisticated, intended to worship the true God in and through those images, not believing, however, that those images themselves were gods. Augustine (explanation of Psalm 113, conc. 3): “Let no one say, when his idols have been mocked: ‘I do not worship this visible thing but the deity which resides there invisibly’; for Scripture condemns those deities in another psalm, that ‘the gods of the heathen are demons’ [Ps. 95:5 Vg].²⁷ They imagine that they belong to a more sophisticated religion and say, ‘I worship neither image nor demon, but through a physical image I gaze upon a sign of that thing which I must worship.’” St. Chrysostom (Orat. 12, De prima Dei notitia) and Maximus Tyrius (Sermon 38) claimed that “God Almighty, first and greatest, the Creator and Preserver of all things, of Himself was worshiped in idols made of gold, silver, and ivory.” Surius (vol. 5, fol. 881) reports that Julian the Apostate tried to entice Artemius, leader of Syria and a martyr, into idolatry and defended the idolatry of the heathen in this way: “It is not as if they worship their images as gods. Hardly! Indeed, the more rural and simpleminded people accept the situation in that way, but those who are bound by a desire for knowledge and who carefully investigate the subject of their gods know to whom they give honor and to whom their adoration of divine images passes.” Peresius (De tradit., part 5) concludes on the basis of Acts 17: “There have been many idols which merely represented God as a benefactor, nor did everything that the Gentiles worshiped signify a false god. For at Athens there was an altar erected ‘to the unknown god,’ namely, to the God who had created the world and all that is therein.” Fonseca (marginal note in the commentary of Cajetan on Deuteronomy 4): “Formerly, many of the heathen in most of their statues worshiped God, His virtues, and that which was signified but not the sign, so that some images were considered as consecrated to the true God; and others, to false gods.” Johannes Ferus (on Acts 17): “Although the Gentiles established idols for themselves, their intent was still to give worship to the true God.” The Catech. Trid. (explanation of the First Commandment): “The apostle famously said that they had changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of birds, four-legged creatures, and serpents, for they used to worship all these as God when they placed images of these before Him.”

** In Jer. [2:11] God testifies that the nations “have never changed their gods.” But now, it is clear that the heathen repeatedly and with variety changed the images and statues of their gods, and thus they generally erected many images to one god, to Jupiter or Mars, for instance. Therefore the heathen had and worshiped images not as gods but as “signs of the gods,” as Cicero says. This is so certain that, when the ancient teachers wrote against the idolatry of the Gentiles, they intentionally insisted on refuting this objection of theirs. (See Lactantius, Inst.; Arnobius, Contra gentes, bks. 6–7; Clement of Alexandria, Stromat.; Athanasius, Contra idola; and Augustine, on Psalm 113.) Arnobius writes: “But they” (the heathen idolaters) “say: ‘We do not state that bronze statues or materials of gold or silver or other things of which our signs are made are gods and religious deities of themselves. Rather, we worship and venerate in them those gods whom dedication places in sacred objects and causes to dwell in man-made likenesses.’” Arnobius responds: “This is just as absurd as if you were to think that the statues and likenesses are gods.” However: (1) The Jews and heathen usually identified those statues with the word “gods.” We respond. It is a typical metonymy to give a sign the name of the thing signified, just as our adversaries themselves impose on their images the name of the prototype and, as in Holy Scripture, statues of oxen, lions, and cherubim are called oxen, lions, and cherubim. (2) Idolaters are said to worship other gods and to forget the true God (Deuteronomy 32; Psalm 106). We respond. Through religious worship they create false gods out of images and forget God when they do not worship Him according to His Word. **

The third argument against the worship of images.

§ 96. Finally, we use this argument against the religious worship of images. All self-chosen worship is opposed to the First Commandment. The religious worship of images is self-chosen worship. Therefore the religious worship of images is opposed to the First Commandment. We gave our confirmation of the major premise earlier [§ 87]. The minor premise is clear from the fact that the religious worship of images lacks the command, promise, and application of Holy Scripture. In a letter to Emperors Constantine and Irene (which is found in the proceedings of the Second Council of Nicaea), Adrian I argues laboriously not that God ordered any image or creature to be worshiped religiously, but that God approves of worship which one undertakes of his own will. In the same place is cited a statement of a Bishop Stephan of Bozra: “Whoever praises the images of the saints does not err since every work done in the name of God is holy and good.” Thomas (Sent., 3, dist. 9, q. 1, art. 2, resp. to 3) and Marsilius (Sent., 3, q. 8, art. 2, dub. 2, resp. to 5) admit that the worship of images cannot be proven from Scripture.

Statements of Scripture cited to establish the worship of images: First, the cherubim and bronze serpent.

§ 97. Bellarmine objects (De imag., bk. 2, ch. 12) that the worship of images does not lack the witness of Scripture, since three kinds of testimonies are present there. The first are those [passages] which speak expressly about images, namely, Exodus 25, about the cherubim of the mercy seat, and Numbers 21, about the bronze serpent. For the statues of the cherubim which were above the ark were necessarily adored by those who adored the ark. Also, the bronze serpent could not help but be honored because God had placed it on a high place to bring health to the suffering when they looked upon it.

We respond. (1) The Israelites adored neither the ark nor the cherubim but the true God, who had promised to be present in that ark in a special way. It is a very ancient custom to worship [adorare] while facing the east, but the east itself is not being worshiped simultaneously. The Magi worshiped the infant Christ lying in a manger, but they did not worship the manger itself simultaneously. Those who were singing “Hosanna” to Christ while He was riding upon the ass were able to worship Him without worshiping the ass. We worship God before the altar and before the baptismal font, but we still are not worshiping altars and baptismal fonts.

(2) The people were able to look at the bronze serpent without any religious worship, and they should not have honored it religiously. The former [is true] because it is not neccesary that people give religious worship to that which has been placed up high and which provides health; otherwise we would have to worship also the sun, moon, and other stars of the sky. The latter [is true] because Moses himself put up the serpent, not that it be honored and adored but that the people look upon it as a type of Christ, who would go to the cross one day at His own time and grant salvation to those who would look upon Him with the eyes of faith (John 3:14). Lyra reports from Rabbi Salomon that the serpent itself did not have the power to cure, but those who looked upon the serpent knew that their affliction had been justly imposed by God, and, seeking mercy from Him, they were thus healed. In fact, when the serpent had begun to be worshiped religiously with sacrifices, it was torn down and burned by King Hezekiah (2 Kings 18[:4]; 2 Chronicles 29).

Second, Psalm 99[:5]: “Worship His footstool.”

§ 98. In the second place Bellarmine cites those testimonies that teach that creatures should be honored religiously only because of their relation to God. Ps. 99[:5]: “Worship His footstool.” Matt. 5[:35]: “Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by earth, for it is His footstool.” Here oaths by heaven and earth are forbidden without due circumstances, lest we insult creations of this kind according as they have a relation to God.

We respond. (1) The Hebrew words of the psalm read: (“Worship at His footstool, for He is holy”). Some take “footstool” here to mean what Matt. 5:35 and Acts 7:49 name, but more accurately it means here the ark of the covenant, because Ps. 99:1 says that God is “enthroned upon the cherubim,” which were placed above the mercy seat of the ark. This is elsewhere called “God’s footstool” (1 Chron. 28:2; Isa. 60:13; Lam. 2:1). Furthermore, because the Hebrew words can be translated in both ways—“worship His footstool” and “worship at His footstool”—some favor the former translation while others favor the latter. Bellarmine follows the former, but it is clear that the latter should be preferred. This is clear from the following facts: Nowhere does it say that God sanctioned the worship of the ark of the covenant; rather, He commanded that He be worshiped at the ark of the covenant since He was present in the tabernacle in a special way. Holy men did not actually worship the very ark of the covenant but worshiped God at the ark. In 1 Chron. 13:6, David and all the men of Israel went up to the hill “Kiriath-jearim, which belongs to Judah, to bring up from there the ark of the Lord God who sits above the cherubim” where His name was invoked.

Furthermore, this same psalm has a similar way of speaking (Ps. 99:9): (πρoσκυνεῖτε εἰς ὄρoς ἅγιoν αὐτoῦ, “Worship on the mountain of His holiness”). Ps. 132:7 says: (πρoςκυνήςoμεν εἰς τὸν τόπoν, oὗ ἔςτηςαν oἱ πόδες αὐτoῦ, “We shall worship in the place where His feet have stood”). Because Augustine was not so knowledgeable of Hebrew and did not see how the foot stool of God could be worshiped, he refers all this to the flesh of Christ:

In my uncertainty I turn to Christ. Because I look for Him here, I discover how His footstool can be worshiped [adoretur] without ungodliness, for He takes up earth from earth, because His flesh is of the earth and He received the earth from the flesh of Mary, and because in His very flesh He walked here and gave His very flesh to us to eat for our salvation. Now, no one eats that flesh without having first worshiped it. That is how such a Footstool of God is worshiped, and not only do we not sin by worshiping it, but we sin by not worshiping it, etc.

(2) Christ’s statement about oaths was opposed to the corrupt teachings of the Pharisees, who believed that a promise could be broken with impunity when given through an oath in which the name of God was not expressly used but rather other formulae referring to God, though obliquely and indirectly (as Christ Himself explains in Matt. 23:16); [they also believed] that such formulae for swearing in which the very name of God is not expressly used can be used freely and without sin against the Second Commandment, in casual conversation and in all situations. However, Christ shows (Matt. 23:16[–22]) that when created things are mentioned in oath formulas, then the sanctity and invocation of the oath is not directed to creation nor does it subsist there, but refers obliquely, indirectly, or mediately to God Himself alone. For in a magnificent way He has revealed His presence, glory, power, and working in His creatures, as Chemnitz explains (Harm., ch. 51, p. 363). However, from this it does not yet follow that one can also swear through images or transfer a part of religious worship to them, for the glory, power, and majesty of God are not manifest in images in the same way as they are visible in His creation. Moreover, St. Jerome claims that Christ here condemns formulas of swearing oaths by creatures as ungodly. Some people also argue that such formulae should not be called “oaths” as much as “calling upon a witness,” since the obligation of an oath is an honor and worship owed to God alone.

Third, creatures are called sacred.

§ 99. Bellarmine cites the third kind of testimonies from those passages of Scripture which teach that created things are called sacred because of their relation to sacred or holy things. Exod. 3[:5]: “The place where you are standing is holy ground,” that is, because of the presence of the Angel. In Exodus 12 the day of the Passover is called holy and venerable because of its significance and because it was dedicated to divine worship. In Exod. 28[:2] the robes of the priests are called holy for the same reason. In 2 Tim. 3[:15] the Scriptures are called “Holy Writ” because they are signs of holy things. We have become accustomed to revere not only the written words [literas] but also the spoken words themselves, especially the name of Jesus; we stand to hear the Gospel and bare our heads, etc. However, the images of Christ and of the saints have also been established to signify and represent holy things; should it not then be permitted to honor them?

We respond. There is a great deal of diversity in these examples; hence one cannot draw from them the conclusion Bellarmine has set out to draw. In Exod. 3:5, the place where Moses was standing is called holy both because of the revelation of God and because of the preaching of the Word. You see, even though Augustine (treatise 3 on John) claims that a created angel appeared to Moses, he also more rightly thinks (De Trinitat., bk. 2, ch. 13) that the angel can be understood to be the Son of God. This is clear not only from vv. 4 and 6ff., but also from Deut. 33:16: “Let the blessing of Him who appeared in the bush come upon the head of Joseph.” Eusebius makes the same claim (Hist., bk. 1, ch. 2). The day of the Passover and the vestments of the priests are called holy [sanctae] for the same reason that the tabernacle is called “the sanctuary,” namely, because they were consecrated to divine service. The Scriptures are called sacred because they are θεόπνευςτoι (“inspired by the Holy Spirit”), because they deal with holy things, and because the Holy Spirit sanctifies people through piously meditating on them. However, Bellarmine must still prove that images are called holy in any of these ways, for they have not been consecrated for divine service by the voice and institution of God Himself. Yet even if they are called sacred, one still cannot yet succeed in proving from this that they should be honored with the worship of religious adoration; rather, an external or ceremonial honor befits them on account of this, such as churches and their vessels or appointments decently [εὐςχημόνως, cf. 1 Cor. 14:40] are given. We give honor to the name of Jesus and bend the knee at it just as the apostle prescribes (Phil. 2:10), not because we claim that there is a secret power in the very sound of the word or in the shape of the letters, but that we may confess that we believe in Christ, the God-man, our one and only Savior, to whom, risen from the dead and elevated to the right hand of the Father, the highest honor of obedience and adoration is owed.

[Arguments] from the councils and fathers.

§ 100. As for the statements of the councils and fathers which Bellarmine cites in his second and third places, consult Chemnitz in his Examen Concil. Trid. It is well-known that the fathers of the Council of Frankfurt, whom Charlemagne assembled in great number from France, Italy, and Germany in 794, took the middle road. They claimed, along with the Second Council of Nicaea against the [Seventh] Council of Constantinople, that it was lawful to have images. On the other hand, it declared with the [Seventh] Council of Constantinople against the Second Council of Nicaea that it was not lawful to worship images. (On this subject we have the testimony of Ado Viennensis, Chron., an. 795; Abbas Urspergensis, [Chron.], an. 793; Hincmar of Reims, Cont. Episc. Laudunensem; Aventinus, Annal. Boiorum, bk. 4; Antoninus, bk. 4, ch. 85; Regino, bk. 2; Schaffnaburgensis; Sigebertus; Eginhardus, Vita Caroli M., in Erphordiensis, ch. 69; Blondus, Decad., bks. 1–2; Mutius; and Charlemagne, De imag., bk. 9). Alanus Copus impudently declares (Dial. 4–5) that all those writers lied or that their books were corrupted. Although Bellarmine desires his opinion to be true, he still suspects that it is false (De imag., bk. 2, ch. 14). Instead, he looks for another refuge, namely, that the Roman pope did not agree with the decrees of this council. And yet the norm of councils is not the opinion of the Roman pontiff but the authority of the Scriptures. To see how turbulent the Second Council of Nicaea was and by what arguments it developed the worship of images, investigate the proceedings of that council.

The fathers define idolatry absolutely as divine honor being given to a created thing. They forbid any likeness of God to be fashioned; they prohibit the worship of images; and they count those who act contrary to this among the heretics. (Regarding this, see Irenaeus, Adv. haeres., bk. 1, ch. 24; Epiphanius, vol. 2, bk. 1, Haeres. 23; Augustine, De haeres. ad Quodvultdeum, heresy 7; and Theodoret, Haeret. fab., bk. 1). Minucius Felix (Octavius [ch. 29]) says, “We neither worship nor wish for the cross.” Ambrose (Sermon de obitu Theodosii) writes: “Helen found the Lord’s cross. She worshiped the King, surely not the wood, because this is an error of the heathen. Rather, she worshiped Him who hung on the wood.” Gregory ([Letter] ad Serenum Massiliensem episcopum, bk. 9, Letter 9, which is found in [Ius canonicum,] De consecrat., dist. 3, c. Perlatum) writes: “We have received the report that you, enraged by ill-advised zeal, have smashed the images of the saints under the so-called excuse that they should not be worshiped. Now certainly we praise you for having forbidden their worship, but we rebuke your destruction of them. Tell us, brother, when did you ever hear of a priest who did what you did? After all, it is one thing to worship a picture but another to learn what to worship through the history that the picture portrays.” Moreover, Erasmus does not hesitate to declare (Symb. catech., 6, p. 207): “Up until the time of Jerome there were men of good religion who did not want any image painted, sculpted, or woven in their temples, not even of Christ, because of the Anthropomorphites. Little by little, however, the use of images crept into the temples,” etc.

[Arguments] from miracles.

§ 101. Bellarmine takes his fourth argument from the miracles which have been performed through the images of Christ and of the saints. However, since it is obvious that not everything through which miracles are perfomed should be worshiped (not to mention that most of those miracles performed by statues are fictitious—something that Gregorius de Valentia concedes about some instances, Cont. Heerbrand.), Bellarmine tries to prove that miracles done through images were performed so as to sanction the worship of images. He says: “Why, I ask, did heavenly fire strike the statue of Julian except to avenge the damage done to the statue of Christ? Why did blood come forth from the statue pierced by the Jews (as we read in Athanasius, De passione imaginis Domini) except to show that it was honoring what the Jews were insulting? Why are benefits granted through images only to those who honor and worship images?”

We respond. (1) Historians attribute miracles and messages to the idols of the heathen in the same way, but who in the world would worship them for this reason? Valerius Maximus (Memorab., bk. 1, ch. 2): “Apollo was a keen avenger of his own deity [numen]. When the Romans were besieging Carthage, he removed his golden garments and made sure that the sacriligous hands would be found cut off among his fragments.” Chapter 8: “It is well-known that the female statue of Fortuna spoke not only once but twice,” etc. (See more in the same place and also in Augustine, De civ. Dei, bk. 4, ch. 19.)

(2) Miracles without the Word prove nothing; they are like seals torn off their letters.

(3) With regard to the bronze statue erected by the woman with the issue of blood, Eusebius nowhere says that the Christians honored it with religious worship. In fact, it was not brought into the oratories of Christians for three hundred years. Finally, however, at the time of Julian the Apostate, its fragments, shattered by Julian, were put in a temple and stored, according to Sozomen (bk. 5, ch. 20). Nicephorus (Hist., bk. 10, ch. 30) adds that Christians placed that statue in an honored place in the sacristy [diaconicum] of the church and honored it with fitting worship [cultus]. But in [saying] this, he, as usual, is attaching the superstitions of later times to the ancient accounts. In the early church, at least, they did not use that statue for worship. This is clear from the fact that Nicephorus mentions in the same place: “Because of the long passage of time, people had forgotten whose form the statue represented and why it had been placed there. Because it had stood under the open sky, its body had degraded, and the rains from above brought filth with them which so stuck to the statue that the letters on it were unclear.”

(4) Many circumstances prove that that book De passione imaginis is not a work of Athanasius, so much so that Bellarmine himself does not dare to attribute it to Athanasius (De imag., bk. 2, ch. 10). Nannius Lovaniensis does not disguise the fact that it is spurious. But whatever there might be about miracles performed through images, one can by no means prove that therefore they should be worshiped. After all, who at the time of the apostles ever worshiped the shadow of St. Peter or the sweatband or girdle of St. Paul? On the contrary, the apostles themselves clearly forbade anyone to give them the divine worship of adoration (Acts 10:26; 14:15).

[Arguments] from reason.

§ 102. Bellarmine’s fifth argument is as follows: “Man is worthy of veneration because he is the image of God. Therefore images of Christ and the saints are worthy of veneration.”

We respond. The honor given to man with respect to his office or his gifts is a kind of civil reverence and belongs to the Second Tablet of the Law. But the honor which Bellarmine wants to give to images is religious worship. Clement of Rome (Recogn., bk. 5) clearly overturns this argument since he responds thus to the heathen who were faulting Christians for having a religion without images: “If you really wanted to worship the image of God and benefit man, you would worship the true image of God in man. Therefore if you truly want to honor an image, we disclose to you what is true so that you may benefit man, who was made according to the image of God. These things pertain to the honor of the image of God to such a degree that whoever has not done them is believed to have insulted the divine image. What honor of God is it, then, to run about through stone and wood forms, and for empty and dead figures to be venerated as deities while scorning man, who is truly the image of God?” Those are Clement’s words.

We, too, overturn the argument in this way. If images of God and Christ are to be worshiped and adored, then surely the living [images] rather than dead ones, which men manufacture out of gold, silver, and stone, should be worshiped and adored. But now, no one has claimed that God the Father should be worshiped and adored in a living man; or Christ, His Son, in a living Christian; or the Holy Spirit in a living dove. Accordingly, it is much less fitting for us to adore and worship God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in dead, senseless, mute images. Augustine (De civ. Dei, bk. 8, ch. 16): “Religious worship, which ought to be given from the mind, is by no means owed to that thing which is inferior to the mind.” Baronius writes ([Annal.,] year 814, sect. 38, from Theodore the Studite): “The honor of an image, either natural or artificial, returns to its prototype.” Therefore if an artificial image is worshiped religiously, certainly also a natural one should be worshiped religiously.

§ 103. Bellarmine’s sixth argument: “The image of a king is worthy of a civil honor. Therefore images of Christ and of the saints are worthy of the honor of religious worship.”

We respond. (1) One must make decisions about the worship of God on the basis of His revealed Word, not from the custom of the time nor our own reasonings.

(2) The likeness and image of God is far better modeled in a godly man than in any painted or sculpted image, and yet godly people should not be honored with religious worship.

(3) Shall we not then argue in this way? Ministers of the church are “God’s ambassadors” (2 Cor. 5:20). But now, the ambassador of a king at times is honored with the honor proper to a king, as Bellarmine argues (De imagin., bk. 2, ch. 20, dist. 3), to which kind of honor he compares the worship owed to images (ch. 23). Therefore do we not owe the honor proper to God also to God’s ambassadors?

(4) If anyone does not disgrace the likeness of a prince, he has given it sufficient honor; so also it is enough for the honor of images if they are not treated discourteously.

(5) The best way of worshiping the image of God is set forth for us in Holy Writ, and it consists of this: that we do good to the needy members of Christ, reverently acknowledge the gifts of God in others, and “outdo one another in showing honor” [Rom. 12:10].

§ 104. Seventh: “An image is susceptible to injury and insult. Therefore it is also susceptible to honor and worship.”

We respond. To be sure, an image is susceptible to both civil and religious honor, but God’s Law prohibits us from giving it the latter. Gen. 9:6 forbids the shedding of human blood, arguing that man is made in the image of God. If the living image of God is susceptible to insult, therefore is it also susceptible to religious worship?

The eighth argument: “We justly curse and destroy the idols of the heathen, which happens only due to their signification, because they are images of false gods. Contrariwise, therefore, images of Christ and of the saints are worthy of honor because they signify truly good things.”

We respond. The idols of the heathen are destroyed not so much due to their signification but due to their being worshiped. Remove their idolatrous worship and they can be kept for remembrance, just as it is written that Emperor Constantine and Bishop Theophilus preserved statues of some of the heathen idols to be witnesses of heathen idol-madness (Eusebius, Vita Const., bk. 3, ch. 52; Socrates, Hist., bk. 5, ch. 16). Images of Christ and of the saints can be retained and treated respectfully, but not worshiped contrary to God’s command.

Ninth: “The image-fighters were wicked people; those who defended images were saintly people.” His tenth: “The image-fighters received a miserable death; those who defended images were gifted with happiness.”

We respond. We disapprove of the rashness of image-fighters and iconoclasts, but at the same time we severely disapprove of the superstition of image-worshipers. But even the saints were not immune to every error, nor can we best judge who the saints are from their external happiness.

The statement of Cassander about images.

§ 105. We shall conclude this discussion about the worship of images after first mentioning that some Papist writers themselves disapprove of it. On this subject Cassander writes as follows (Consult. ad impp. Ferdin. et Maximil., locus De imag.):

As far as concerns the images of the saints, it is sure that at the beginning of the preaching of the Gospel there was no using images, particularly in the churches, as is clear from Clement and Arnobius. Furthermore, Origen makes clear how much the fathers at the beginning of the church abhorred every veneration of images when he says (Adversus Celsum, bk. 1): “It is impossible for anyone who knows God to be a suppliant to statues, nor is it merely foolishness if someone offers prayers to images,” (etc.). “But we also do not honor likenesses, lest at times we fall into that belief that we also attribute some divinity to them.”

Cassander adds:

At that time the reasoning, which some are in the habit of alleging, did not prevail, which says that those honors are not being given to likenesses but to those whose appearance they represent; for this pretext was usually given by the pagans as well, as we find in Arnobius. They say: “We do not think that the materials of bronze, gold, silver, and so forth, from which signs are made, are of themselves gods and religious deities. Rather, we worship and venerate them in these materials because dedication makes them sacred.” Also, in Lactantius they say, “We do not revere the likenesses themselves but those of whose images they were made and to whose names they have been consecrated.” However, even the wisest of the pagans noticed that this worship which is given to God through images is inappropriate and not suitable enough for God, but was invented by superstitious people. In fact, Augustine reports that Varro said that the ancient Romans worshiped their gods for 170 years without an image. “If this custom still endured” (says Varro), “the gods would be honored more piously.” As a witness to his opinion he used, among others, also the Jewish people. Clement relates the same thing, that Christians were forbidden from practicing the deceitful art (painting). He also calls it a wicked, albeit beautiful, craft, which later flourished; [and] error grew. He also quotes the prophecy which says, “The situation here will be unfortunate when they put their trust in statues.” So also the famous Council of Elvira in 320 decreed: “There should not be any paintings in the church, lest anything be worshiped that is painted on the walls.” After these men, Gerson wisely gave his warning (Declaration. defectuum ecclesiasticorum): “Judge if such a variety of images and paintings is proper in our churches and if many of the simple at times are not turned to idolatry.” The more sensible Scholastics are not pleased with Thomas’s opinion, for he thinks that an image should be worshiped with the same adoration as the very thing signified by the image is worshiped. Then, too, Gabriel Biel reports the more sensible opinion of those who say that an image should not be adored—not as it is considered in itself, in that it is made of wood or stone or metal, nor as it is considered according to the manner of sign and image—because, in either case, it is a senseless, created thing to which the adoration of worship [latria] should not be given. Therefore

(Cassander continues)

the later and more sensible Scholastics rightly censure Thomas’s opinion as unsafe and dangerous since he asserts that the cross of Christ is to be adored with worship, that is, with the same adoration with which Christ Himself should be adored. Johannes Picus Mirandulanus discusses this (concl. 3): “Neither the cross of Christ nor its image should be adored with the adoration of worship, not even in the way that Thomas proposes.” He mentions as disagreeing with Thomas Durandus, Henricus de Gandavo, Johannes Guarranus, Robertus Holcottus, Petrus de Aquila, Franciscus Mayronis, etc.

Finally, Cassander concludes:

However, it does not seem enough for the people to be recalled from those errors by stipulations and admonitions unless it be accomplished in common by the concern of both princes and bishops, in order that the opportunity for errors of this sort be removed with as little disturbance as possible. For as long as statues decorated with silk, gold, and precious stones are set up in temples and on altars, we should not hope for an end to superstition. Furthermore, the people must be entreated to honor [ad cultum] the genuine image of God, that is, man; such honor [cultus] consists of supporting the needy, who represent to us not only the image of God but also the stead and person of Christ. In judging, Christ is not going to say, as that great emperor says in his books: “Whatever you have done to one of these images, you have done to Me,” but “Whatever you have done for one of the least of these,” etc.

He writes about the Council of Frankfurt as follows:

Although there were bitter arguments and great disturbances among the Greeks over images, and they were disagreed among themselves as some ordered images to be broken and destroyed while others commanded them to be worshiped and adored, the Roman Church completely condemned their destruction, and yet felt that their use, already long accepted in the entire Roman Church and almost throughout the world, should be retained. The Gallic and German churches followed this custom of the Roman Church, which disapproves equally of the destruction and worship [of images], and protected it diligently for some years. They did this to such a degree that, after several decrees about images had been published in the Council of Nicaea under Constantine and Irene and a copy of it had been brought to Frankfurt and read carefully by order of Charles [the Great] to the German council, the great consensus of [those] fathers denounced and condemned that Greek council to the extent that it decreed that images should be worshiped. (This council [of Frankfurt] was held against a certain Felix, bishop of Urgell, who declared that Christ was the adopted Son [of God] with regard to His human nature; it was called by order of Charles and crowded with bishops from Germany, Gaul, Aquitania, and Italy.) Papal legates also attended this council [of Frankfurt], which [condemned the Greek council’s decree] as something which was opposed not only to Holy Scripture and the ancient tradition of the fathers but also to the custom of the Roman Church. This condemnation was even included in the proceedings and chief points of that Council of Frankfurt. Regarding this subject four books were written under the name of Charles himself. Bishop Hincmar of Reims mentions them, and there are copies of them extent in the Vatican Library as well as in several places in France. These books carefully refute the argumentation of the Eastern Christians and fiercely defend the position of the Roman Church as it was up to that time. This position is summarized briefly in Gregory’s letter to Bishop Serenus of Marseilles, which Charles includes in his writings (bk. 2, ch. 23). The printed summary [argumentum] is as follows: “Blessed Gregory, high priest of Rome, forbids both the breaking and the worshiping of images.” Charles expressed this moderated opinion on the use of images briefly and neatly (Adv. synod. Graec., bk. 4, ch. 9): “Nothing is lost if images are not had; no prerogative is gained if they are had, though their rejection does imply a careless levity while their worship indelibly imprints blame.” Later, however, though the Roman popes gradually yielded to the Greeks in this case, the Gallic and German churches remained steadfast and constant for several centuries in this position and moderation that they had first received from the Roman church and which was approved by the Council of Frankfurt. This is clear from French authors, including the learned Bishop Jonas of Orleans, etc.

Again Cassander:

It is so clear that it does not have to be explained in many words: the worship of images and likenesses has grown excessively—or, rather, the people have indulged in superstition too much—with the result that nothing seems left for our people to do [to attain the same] highest degree of adoration as the heathen gave to the likenesses and images which they made and adorned. Therefore prudent men in the catholic church have long since felt that some limit must be set against this and the superstition must be counteracted. Among these was Guilelmus Durandus, bishop of Meaux (De modo concilii generalis celebrandi).

All of this has been from Cassander. Cornelius Agrippa (De vanit. scient., ch. 57): “The degree to which idolatry is nourished through images among the uneducated populace is unspeakable. When the heathen were converted to the religion of Christ, they brought in to our church their likenesses and many vain ceremonies, none of which existed at all among the first, true Christians.” Johann Caspar Rutland (Loc. comm. theol., tit. 14, De imag.):

Christians have images of Christ, of the blessed Virgin, and of the saints as a memorial to admonish us; for whenever we look upon an image of Christ crucified or risen, immediately His saving death and glorious resurrection are recalled to our memory, etc. But if an image were somewhere where uneducated people might come up to adore it and ask it for help, the magistrate should remove it from that place, etc. Also, preachers should instruct the uneducated and superstitious populace not to think that there is any divinity in images and, therefore, that they should not give them special worship and honor in their great superstition. To be sure, the use of images is free in itself, provided that one refrain from abuse and superstition. Such abuse and superstition have been preserved among the common crowd up until now in regard to statues of Christ and of the saints. Preachers should correct and amend this superstition, but the use of images should still not be removed completely from temples, etc.

The general promise and threat added to the First Commandment.

§ 106. This concludes our discussion about the third part of the First Commandment—that is, about the specific appendix concerned with images. The fourth part remains, which is the general promise and threat belonging to the whole Law. It is given in the following words (Exod. 20:5–6): “For I, the Lord” (Jehovah) “your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me, and doing mercy to thousands of those who love Me and keep My Commandments.” We assert that this promise and threat is general and should be wholly applied to all the commandments of the Decalogue, as the plural (“My Commandments”) used here clearly shows. Just as the First Commandment is, so to speak, the commandment of commandments, the source and head of all the rest, the force of which spreads to and permeates all the others, so also the promise and threat added to this First Commandment is general and should be brought to bear upon all the commandments of the Decalogue. The repetition of these words in Exod. 34:6–7 also confirms this very point clearly.

The five reasons set forth in it that stir people to obedience.

§ 107. Furthermore, these words set forth very effective reasons by which God wanted to encourage us to show obedience to His mandates, for they contain threats of His very serious revenge prepared for the disobedient and the promise of unique beneficence which the obedient should expect. To say it more plainly, five reasons are here set forth which stir us to obedience.

In the first place, Jehovah calls Himself our God not only by right of creation but also with respect to the other benefits, especially by reason of the covenant which He has made with us. We spoke about this in greater detail earlier (§ [56]).

Then He calls Himself a strong God. The word properly means “powerful” and through antonomasia is attributed specifically speaking [κατ’ ἐξαίρετoν γόλoν] to God, whose power is infinite and extends to and over all creatures, and on whose power all things in heaven and on earth do depend regardless of the power, strength, or ability with which they have been equipped. Because of these gifts which they have received from Him, all things are obligated to offer Him obedience and worship. Therefore with this word God shows that He does not lack the strength to punish the disobedient and to do good to the obedient.

Third, He calls Himself (“jealous”). The word means “to have a zeal which comes simultaneously from wrath and favor,” that is, when one fears that something is being attributed to another which he does not share with anyone. It is properly used of a husband who, because of his genuine love for his wife, cannot suffer her to transfer to another the conjugal faith, which she owes to him alone. Therefore God is showing that He cannot bear spiritual adultery, which transfers to created things or to fictitious deities the honor, worship, love, and faithfulness owed to Him, but will be a most fierce avenger of His own honor. Origen comments on this passage: “He who participates in a lawful marriage cannot bear his wife’s sins but is kindled with zeal to preserve the chastity of marriage. Thus God does not suffer the soul that is spiritually united with Him to sin, nor can He bear the fact that it plays with adulterers. You see, if He sees it defiling the laws of marriage, He gives it a bill of divorce (Isa. 50:1). Furthermore, His is a strange kind of goodness that He accepts it when it returns and repents with its whole heart, even after committing adultery (Jer. 3:1).”

Fourth,²⁸ God threatens to visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children of the third and fourth generation of those who hate Him. Therefore He is showing that He is not like the false gods of the Gentiles, who can do neither good nor bad, but that He seriously punishes not only those who resist Him and act unjustly but also their descendants to the third and fourth generation. Exactly what “the third and fourth generation” expresses is told as follows by some who have followed Augustine (on Deuteronomy, q. 42): “The number seven, which is the result of combining three and four, is the number of perfection, so that in this way it denotes the perfect hatred of God against sinners.” Lyranus (on Exodus 20) provides this explanation, that “wicked people see their children to that many generations, and thus teach them by their bad examples, or their children imitate what they see in their fathers.”

Finally, God promises that He will show mercy to thousands of those who love Him and keep His Commandments. He had threatened punishment up to only the third and fourth generations, but He extends His mercy to the thousandth [generation] to show that He is more inclined to mercy than to vengeance. In this way He attracts us to love Him and voluntarily to obey His Commandments. The love of God, with which He embraces us, reveals itself through His unspeakable eagerness to do good to us. Our love by which we embrace God shows itself through our eagerness to obey. Christ says (John 14:23): “If anyone loves Me, He will keep My word.” Verse 15: “If you love Me, keep My commandments.” The proof of love is the exhibition of its work. The true, God-pleasing keeping of the divine Commandments should proceed from a true and sincere love. Again, true love for God is not idle but is active in keeping His divine Commandments. God does not approve of the arbitrary acts of worship which hypocrites allege proceed from some kind of love; rather, this passage establishes God’s Commandments as the object of our love. However, this passage does not attribute perfect fulfillment of the Commandments to those who love God, but the keeping of them, nor does it declare that the Lord rewards their obedience on the basis of merit, but out of His grace; this point clearly overthrows the merit of our own works.

The explanation of the passage in Exodus 34.

§ 108. This goodness and justice of God is described in greater detail with the words changed slightly in Exod. 34:6–7; for the Lord revealed His glory to Moses, passed before Him, and proclaimed: “Jehovah, Jehovah, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means absolve, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” The power of God is expressed by the word , but His goodness is expressed by seven words. He is called: (1) (“merciful”). The word comes from the affection that is from the uterus or from the bowels, as in Luke 1:78 the “bowels of mercy” are attributed to God. You see, it denotes that internal and truly serious affection of mercy which a parent feels toward his children from his innermost organs. Therefore God is showing that He is strongly moved by our evil deeds, that His heart is turned within Him because of us, etc. (Hosea 11:8.).

(2) (“clement, ready to be gracious”). Therefore He is showing that He is quick and ready to confer upon us benefits of every kind out of His steadfast love, just as a constant spring flows with continuous waters.

(3) (“long of noses,” that is, “slow to anger and revenge,” μακρόθυμoς). Therefore He is showing that He does not become angry quickly because of our sins and does not avenge them immediately, but with His slowness to anger He invites us to repentance (Rom. 2:4, etc.).

(4) (“much in kindness”). The word properly means that burning affection [στoρλήν], that feeling of devotion and love, which parents feel for their children and, in turn, children for their parents. It sometimes also denotes goodness and kindness. Therefore God is showing that He is “rich in mercy” (Eph. 2:4).

(5) (“rich in truth, in keeping promises”), for what God promises from His grace He gives from His truth and in good faith.

(6) He keeps (“mercy”) for many thousands, He does not become weary of doing good but rewards the devotion of parents in a long series of their descendants.

(7) He forgives (“iniquity”—this term very often denotes original sin), (“transgression, prevarication”—this term usually denotes sins of ignorance and weakness), (“and sin, transgression”—this term signifies sins of malice, transgressions committed willfully without shame). Therefore God is showing that He forgives sins of every kind, even the most serious, namely, for those who truly repent.

The righteousness of God against impenitent sinners is expressed by two clauses: (1) , which is [rendered] “absolving, He will not absolve” (Pagninus); “not making” (the guilty) “guiltless” (Münster); “before whom no one is innocent” (Luther); “sparing, He shall not spare” (the Targum), referring, of course, to the stubborn and impenitent. Therefore God is showing that He will punish the disobedient with His just judgment, and not them alone but also their descendants.

(2) He then adds: “visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generation,” about which we have spoken earlier [§§ 106–7].

From this passage the Jews draw thirteen properties or epithets for God (about which see Münster, on Exodus 34; Zanchi, De natura Dei, bk. 1, ch. 18; and our earlier disputation On the Nature of God [1610 Loci Theologici, locus 3], § 139).

In what way jealousy is attributed to God.

§ 109. (I) Here the question arises: In what way is jealousy attributed to God? Julian the Apostate used to say, “A jealous and envious man is worthy of censure.” Who, then, will praise God for His jealousy?

We respond. When human emotions are attributed to God through anthropopathy, they must first be cleansed of all vices and defects; then that which is left and is purest and soundest alone should be assigned to God. Jealousy is an emotion that is virtuous and praiseworthy of itself; it is the emotion by which a husband is enraged with his adulterous wife because she has violated her marriage promise [fides]. It is in this way that God calls Himself jealous, because out of His sincere love for us He is unable to endure it when we, through spiritual adultery, give to other gods the honor and worship due only to Him. This jealousy stems from love and righteousness, and instead of being unseemly for God, it much rather distinguishes Him from the false gods of the heathen. Heathen gods lack indignation and permit their worshipers to worship any other gods alongside them, just as lions prostitute their mates to the lust of other lions. But the Lord our God is jealous; He forbids anyone to have other gods before Him, and, if they are had, He becomes very angry and punishes severely. If some vice occasionally occurs in the human emotion of jealousy, let it first be cleansed, and then let that most ardent love be left to God by which a husband without any vice becomes angry with an adulterous wife. The Gloss. ordin. (from Origen, on Exodus 20):

Every married woman is either under her husband and subject to the rules of her husband, or she is a whore and uses her freedom to sin. The man who goes in to a prostitute knows that he has gone in to one who lies down and open for all; therefore he cannot become angry with the others. The man who practices a legitimate marriage does not permit his wife to sin but is full of jealousy to preserve the chastity of his mar riage so that he can become a legitimate father. Thus every soul is either prostituted to demons and has many lovers to go in to it—sometimes the spirit of fornication, some times the spirit of greed, and after these come the spirit of pride and many others—but one spirit does not envy another nor is it moved to jealousy, but they invite each other to take turns. However, if that soul has been joined to a lawful Husband—that is, to Christ—even if it once was a sinner, He no longer suffers it to sin.

How a son will not bear the iniquity of his father.

§ 110. (II) The question arises: How does God’s justice and especially the prophet’s statement in Ezek. 18:20 coincide with God here threatening to visit the iniquities of the fathers upon their children to the third and fourth generation?

We respond. (1) Jerome and Origen philosophize allegorically about the grades of sins in man:

When the devil persuades us to sin, we receive his seed. When we commit what he persuades us to do, he begets us, for we are born as his children through sin. Because we hardly ever sin without assistance, however, we also join others to us in our work of wickedness. Therefore everyone begotten from the devil produces offspring, one after another, so to speak, according to the order of persuasion, etc.

However, the words of the Law are clear and must not be changed into allegories.

(2) Some make a distinction between divine judgment and civil judgments: in the former, they concede that children are punished because of the sins of their parents; but in the latter case, they deny such punishment. However, it is clear that the prophet Ezekiel is speaking about the judgment of God, before whom he says that children do not bear the iniquity of their parents. Moreover, even in civil judgments children are punished on the charge of high treason ([Corpus Iuris Civilis,] l. 5, C. ad l. Jul. majest.).²⁹ The equity of this law is discussed by Wesenbecius (Paratit. l. of this law), Scipio Gentilis (treatise De jurisd., bk. 3, ch. 4), Duarenus (Comm., on this law), Gomez (Variar. resol., bk. 3, chs. 2, 15), etc.

(3) There are some who make a distinction between the time of the slavery in Egypt—before the promulgation of the Law, when God did not punish the idolatry of His people—and the time of their dwelling in the land of Canaan after the promulgation of the Law, when, after such a solemn renewal of the covenant, their miraculous deliverance, the declaration of God’s majesty, etc., God did punish the idolatry of His people even upon their descendants.

However, because the warning is general and concerns people of all times and places, the simple response is a twofold distinction: (a) Some children follow the example of their parents and walk in their evil footsteps; on the other hand, some are converted to the Lord and turn to [producing] good fruit. The children of the first kind are discussed in Exodus, where there is carefully added: “God will avenge the iniquity of the parents on their children” [Exod. 20:5], that is, on those who hate Him according to the example of their parents. The children of the second kind are discussed in Ezekiel, where it adds ([18:]14): “Suppose a” (wicked) “man fathers a son who, though he sees all the sins that his father has done, yet does not do likewise”—(v. 17): “he shall not die for his father’s iniquity, but he will surely live.” Hence the rabbinic scholar Aben Ezra (commentary on Exodus 20) writes that this passage is to be understood as referring to children who are followers of their wicked parents. (b) Some punishments are eternal while others are temporal. Children are not subjected to eternal punishments because of the sins of their parents, if they have been converted to God from their whole heart. However, sometimes even godly children are subjected to temporal calamities because of the sins of their parents (Augustine, on Joshua, q. 8; Contra adv. legis et prophet., bk. 1, ch. 16). At the same time, however, those calamities are not properly called “punishments,” but “fatherly chastenings” imposed upon them by God for the benefits of the godly who themselves are not completely innocent. You see, one must note that this divine warning must not be understood as if God precisely and permanently punishes just so many generations of the wicked when, in fact, sometimes a cessation occurs as God remits His anger because of the repentance of their descendants. In this way God spared Josiah and allowed him to die in peace and not to see the evils of subsequent times which would come because of the idolatry and wickedness of his grandfather Manasseh. After the death of Josiah, God’s vengeance against subsequent generations returned so much so that He did not spare even the children of Josiah because they kept walking in the footsteps of their great-grandfather (2 Kings 22[–25]; see more in our treatise On the Nature of God ([1610 Loci Theologici, locus 3], § 157).

Whether all sin has stemmed from a hatred for God.

§ 111. (III) The question arises: Is all sin, regardless of its kind or magnitude, correctly said to have stemmed from a hatred for God?

We respond. Scotus notes (Sent., 2, dist. 37):

“Turning away from the ultimate end” can be understood in two ways: formally and according to power [virtualiter]. [It is] formally when, in turning away, one has the ultimate end as his object, positively or privatively: positively, when the will does not want that end by positive action, and this unwillingness properly is to hate God; privatively, when it does not want the ultimate end when it should want it, and such wanting is to omit the commandment “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart” [Deut. 6:5]. [It is] according to power [virtualiter] when one turns away from something necessary to attain the ultimate end. This turning away according to power [virtualis] is common to every mortal sin.

Those are Scotus’s words.

A simpler response is found in the actual expression “to hate,” for one is said to hate not only when he knowingly and consciously undergoes the emotion of hatred against someone but also when he neglects that person’s commandments and will, and thus is shown to hate him from what follows. Prov. 13:24: “He who spares the rod hates his son,” since he spoils him through excessive indulgence, and thus is shown not truly to love him but to hate him. Luke 14:26: “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his own father and mother, he cannot be My disciple”—not because he should show hostile hatred toward his parents but because he must lay aside and subordinate the commands of his parents that are contrary to serving Christ. Thus there must be a distinction here between the cause and the action of a sin. The action of a sin does not always include hatred for God actually and formally, but causally it does contain it in itself, seeing as all sin includes a neglect of God’s Commandments.

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