September 27, 2015
by J. Barkley Rosser, Jr.
“Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
“Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.â€
“Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.â€
Holy Bible, King James Version, Exodus 20: 3-5 (First three of the Ten Commandments)
“God does not forgive idolatry, but He forgives lesser offenses for whomever He wills. Anyone who sets up idols beside God, has forged a horrendous offense.â€
Sacred Qur’an, Surah 4, Verse 48
(List of objects identified as being possible idols in different parts of the Qur’an include 1. calf, statues 2. other gods 3. Jesus 4. Jinns 5. children 6. humans 7 intercessors 8. Satan 9. property 10. dead prophets, messengers, saints 11. God’s servants 12. ego 13. religious sources other than God’s words 14. religious leaders and scholars 15. creating sects 16. dividing believers)
“Verily the most grievously tormented people amongs the denizens of Hell on the Day of Resurrection would the painters of pictures.â€
Sahih Muslim (Hadith, alleged quotations of Prophet Muhammed), vol. 3, no. 5271, (p. 1161), on authority of Abu Mu’awiya.
Note that nowhere in either the Qur’an or the Hadith is making an image of the Prophet Muhammed specifically forbidden, and in the Qur’an the Prophet never called for the punishment of painters.
So today we have headlines about radical Islamists engaging in attacks and destruction of objects based on the ban on idolatry. In January, 12 people were killed at the offices of the French satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo by people protesting alleged disrespectful cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed. Last month (August) saw the destruction of the nearly 2,000 year old Temple of Bel at Palmyra, Syria, by members of Da’esh, ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State. They also killed 83 former Director of Antiquities there, Khalid al-Assad, who refused to reveal to them locations of hidden objects on the site. In March 2000, the Taliban in Afghanistan destroyed the world’s two largest statues of the Buddha at Bamiyan, which had been made in the 6th century.
Also last month a conservative Hindu assassinated M.M. Kalburgi, a 77-year old former university vice chancellor, who had criticized them for worshipping idols and had defended a man who urinated on some sacred sculptures. The question of iconoclasm is very much a serious issue of the moment, with people losing their lives over it.
What is iconoclasm? “Clasm†comes from a Greek word (klastes) meaning “to break.†So, an iconoclast is one who “breaks icons.†But what is an icon? It comes from a Greek word (pronounced “econ†more or less) meaning “the face of God.†Saint Veronica, who reportedly wiped the face of Jesus (icon) on his way to the Cross, supposedly captured an image of his face on her veil, a true image of the face of God, with several of these supposed veils being relics of the Church in the Middle Ages, and her name, with “Vera†meaning “true†means “the true face of God.†Traditionally in Orthodox Christianity icons took the form of an image of the upper party of the Madonna holding the Infant Jesus. Not only would these icons (and other images with Jesus in them) be in the churches, but even now it is common in Greece and Russia and some other nations for Orthodox believers to have a “sacred corner†(or “red corner†in Russia, where the red in Red Square predated the Bolshevik Revolution) in their homes where a classic icon of the Madonna and Child will be displayed. Those who oppose displaying such images, especially in churches and other public places and seek to destroy those that are so displayed, are iconoclasts, although this word has now come to mean someone who “challenges cherished beliefs or venerated institutions on the grounds that they are erroneous or pernicious,†an attitude many UUs might find appealing. People who like icons are known as “iconodules†or “iconolaters†or “iconophiles.â€
Needless to say, traditional Judaism and Islam have held strongly iconoclastic views based on the passages quoted above, although the Shia tradition more tolerant of images than the Sunni, as the tradition of Persian miniature painting shows. Within Christianity there has been ongoing debate and controversies from time to time, often involving violence and people being killed on one side or the other, much as we are seeing today. Initially images and icons were allowed in the early Church, with the idea that the Coming of Jesus wiped clean this rule against the making of “graven images.†However, when he legalized Christianity in the 4th century, the Emperor Constantine forbade icons and images more generally, although without imposing any strict enforcement of this. The view changed in the 6th century with the most powerful of the Byzantine emperors, Justinian I (“the Greatâ€), who had famous mosaic images of himself and his empress, Theodora, as well as of Jesus as Pantocrater, made and displayed in the San Vitale Church in Ravenna, Italy, where they remain today. After this, the making and use of images and icons spread widely throughout the Christian world.
Not too long after this attitudes spread that invested icons with divine power, with claims of some bleeding, and them being carried into battles in front of armies. As strongly iconoclastic Islam began to challenge Christianity in the 7th and 8th centuries both religiously and militarily and politically in the eastern Mediterranean, there came to be a backlash after 726 under Byzantine Emperor Leo III after Muslim Arab armies besieged Constantinople and a great earthquake in the Aegean caused massive damage from tsunamis. He identified these ills as coming from “idolatry,†and he banned images in churches in public places, replacing an icon over the main gate of Constantinople with a cross with no Jesus figure on it (It was only in Germany in the 11th century that images of Jesus first began to be placed on crosses, something now common in Roman Catholic churches, but not in Protestant ones). His edict brought about great conflict, with non-Greek people to the east near the Muslim territories supporting while those in Greece and further west did not, with this presaging the later Schism of 1054 between the Catholic and Orthodox branches of Christianity. Leo’s iconoclasm remained official doctrine in the east while rejected in the west until 787 when it was relaxed, only to be followed by another round of such Byzantine imperial iconoclasm ordered by Emperor Leo V in 814, which lasted until 842, when this stopped, and icons and images were allowed throughout the Christian world.
Arguably the height of iconophilia came in Rome at the Vatican in the Renaissance, with Borgia, Medici, and Farnese popes paying Michelangelo Buonarotti to make his famous statue of the Piéta, only to be followed painting an image of God the Father on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel bringing Adam to life, as well as his Last Judgment on the wall of the chapel. These activities were financed by the sale of indulgences, which triggered the Protestant Reformation, with iconoclasm reemerging among various branches of Protestantism, especially Calvinists and Baptists and other sects that emphasized simplicity, who identified such fabulous images and the expenses involved in producing them as representing pride, corruption and ostentatious idolatry. In Holland in 1566, during the Beeldeston, Calvinist Puritans removed and smashed images from churches. The split showed up even within Protestantism during the English Civil War, when the Puritan-dominated Parliament banned images in churches in 1641, leading to a several year period during which many images and artworks in British churches were destroyed, including stained glass windows and brass images of deceased persons on their graves.
This brings us down to today, and our denomination, given that Unitarianism in particular came out of Puritan Congregationalism in the United States, and indeed has long had a tradition of not displaying images of Jesus or other erstwhile divine figures, with architectural forms for many churches that avoid using crosses or other hints of Christian or other religious symbols, although this tradition has certainly been relaxed somewhat in more recent years. Thus, when I was attending the Waynesboro (VA) Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in the early 1980s there was a great argument within the congregation over whether or not to accept and hang a glass artwork from the wife of one of the regular visiting ministers there (Joseph Schneiders, the last person to be ordained as a Universalist minister in 1960). It was finally decided to accept this small image and it was hung, but some members of the congregation left the Fellowship over this decision.
I also note that more recently in Dayton (VA) the Friends, or Quakers, nearly removed the stained glass windows from the church they now use that had formerly been a Methodist church. It is my understanding that this was also a hotly contested debate within the congregation, with the windows being left as is.
Quite aside from the issue of whether or not people are actually worshipping these images or icons as divine objects, the real meaning of “idolatry,†related issues here often involve matters of power and wealth. Certainly this was part of the Protestant objection to images in the Catholic Church, the impression of the power and wealth of the great families from whom the popes came who commissioned those great works of art, which most of us are probably grateful that they did so. But this can cut two ways, especially when a national leader imposes iconoclasm on the dominant religion of his society, as did Emperor Leo III. This becomes an assertion of state power over religion, even especially if this is done partly in the name of reducing the power of the religion.
Probably one can see this conflict dating to what may have been the earliest of such controversies, when Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten, invented monotheism, long associated with stricter iconoclasm, declaring that Aten was the only one true god, who resided in the rays of the sun, its energy. This became a seizure of power by himself against the priests of the many gods who were worshipped in ancient Egypt, most importantly the sun-god, Amun Ra, who not only had holy statues that were to be worshipped, but whom the Pharaoh himself was supposed to be the human embodiment of. For Akhenaten, all these images in all these temples were blasphemies against the one true god, Aten. But, after he died and was followed by his weak son, Tutankhamun (who was originally named Tutankhaten), the priests and followers of the multiple old gods reasserted their power, and the temples of Aten were destroyed, and the Pharaoh again became the idolatrous embodiment of Amun-Ra.