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Holy Images An Inquiry into Idolatry and Image-Worship in Ancient Paganism and in Christianity
First published in 1940, this title presents four of the Gifford Lectures in natural theology given by Edwyn Bevan in 1933: ‘An Inquiry into Idolatry and Image-Worship in Ancient Paganism and Christianity’. Reference is made throughout all four lectures not only to the conventional disputes in Western Christianity, but also to the attitudes of Hebrew, Pagan, Patristic, Muslim and Eastern thinkers towards the role of symbols and symbolism in worship. In this way, a subject of perennial fascination and importance is placed in a broad historical context, and innovative lines of enquiry are developed with clarity and insight. Holy Images offers an intriguing and easily accessible resource to students of theology, comparative religion, religious anthropology and philosophy.
184 pages, Hardcover
First published May 28, 2006
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January 14, 2025
…so far as idolatry appears, not only as foolish but as wicked—and from the religious side it has always been denounced as wicked—that can only be because the denunciation presupposes the real existence of a spiritual world, with which men, in worshipping the idol, are seeking to come into contact, and seeking in the wrong way.
The attack on idolatry in the Old Testament is on two lines according as it is pagan idolatry, the worship of false gods, or the worship of the true God, of Jehovah, by means of images, which is attacked. We must keep the two apart.
In regard to the worship of pagan gods, the Old Testament usually speaks as if there were no reality at all corresponding with them, as if they were mere air, vanity, false imagination.
…the Christians took much more seriously the pagan claim that the images were animated by spirits. Yes, the Christian writers say, there are spirits in the idols: the spirits are devils.
This Commandment indeed says nothing about the folly of treating an inanimate thing as alive. It speaks only of making a similitude—“the likeness of any form that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”
The symbol may be an indispensable help so long as you mount beyond it to the thing symbolized; but it is a snare so far as you are caught in it and prevented from rising. When Plato talks of the visible beauty as directing men to the intellectual beauty he is thinking of the symbol in regard to the former possibility; when Origen speaks of works of art as drawing "the eyes of the soul from God to earth" he is thinking of the symbol in regard to the latter possibility.
The pagans used the word daemon to mean an invisible being of air, inferior to the gods, who might be good as well as bad: the Christians used the word daemon —or its diminutive daimonion —to mean one of a class of beings all of whom were bad, and whereas with the pagans even a bad daemon was thought to be only morally imperfect, not evil through and through, with the Christians daimonia were pure evil, what we understand by the word devils.
“As the Philosopher [Aristotle] says, the movement of soul towards the image is of a double character. It implies, for one thing, a movement towards the image, in so far as the image is a thing (a particular object) itself; it implies also a movement towards the image in so far as it is representative of a reality other than itself. Between these two movements there is this difference: the first kind of movement directed to the image as a particular thing, is distinct from the movement towards the reality represented, whereas the second movement, directed to the image as the representation of a reality not itself, is identical with the movement directed to the reality. Thus one must say that to an image of Christ, in so far as it is itself a particular thing (let us say, a carved bit of wood or a painted board), no veneration at all is offered, because veneration is owed to a rational being alone. It remains that veneration is exhibited towards the image, only in so far as it is an image (of something else); and thus it follows that the veneration exhibited to an image of Christ and the veneration exhibited to Christ Himself is one and the same.” —Thomas Aquinas
The attack on idolatry in the Old Testament is on two lines according as it is pagan idolatry, the worship of false gods, or the worship of the true God, of Jehovah, by means of images, which is attacked. We must keep the two apart.
In regard to the worship of pagan gods, the Old Testament usually speaks as if there were no reality at all corresponding with them, as if they were mere air, vanity, false imagination.
…the Christians took much more seriously the pagan claim that the images were animated by spirits. Yes, the Christian writers say, there are spirits in the idols: the spirits are devils.
This Commandment indeed says nothing about the folly of treating an inanimate thing as alive. It speaks only of making a similitude—“the likeness of any form that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”
The symbol may be an indispensable help so long as you mount beyond it to the thing symbolized; but it is a snare so far as you are caught in it and prevented from rising. When Plato talks of the visible beauty as directing men to the intellectual beauty he is thinking of the symbol in regard to the former possibility; when Origen speaks of works of art as drawing "the eyes of the soul from God to earth" he is thinking of the symbol in regard to the latter possibility.
The pagans used the word daemon to mean an invisible being of air, inferior to the gods, who might be good as well as bad: the Christians used the word daemon —or its diminutive daimonion —to mean one of a class of beings all of whom were bad, and whereas with the pagans even a bad daemon was thought to be only morally imperfect, not evil through and through, with the Christians daimonia were pure evil, what we understand by the word devils.
“As the Philosopher [Aristotle] says, the movement of soul towards the image is of a double character. It implies, for one thing, a movement towards the image, in so far as the image is a thing (a particular object) itself; it implies also a movement towards the image in so far as it is representative of a reality other than itself. Between these two movements there is this difference: the first kind of movement directed to the image as a particular thing, is distinct from the movement towards the reality represented, whereas the second movement, directed to the image as the representation of a reality not itself, is identical with the movement directed to the reality. Thus one must say that to an image of Christ, in so far as it is itself a particular thing (let us say, a carved bit of wood or a painted board), no veneration at all is offered, because veneration is owed to a rational being alone. It remains that veneration is exhibited towards the image, only in so far as it is an image (of something else); and thus it follows that the veneration exhibited to an image of Christ and the veneration exhibited to Christ Himself is one and the same.” —Thomas Aquinas
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