A friend asked me about idolatry, and whether I thought it was appropriate to use things like the Jesus video for Connect 09. Here is my response -

Dear C,

I’ll throw down some quick thoughts on this now. It’s an interesting subject, as it’s one of the areas where the Reformation was split - the Lutheran perspective is very different to the Reformed perspective.

Essentially, the Lutherans saw the sin being in the actual worship of a physical object - that was idolatry. For the Reformed, it was the making of an image of God that was sinful, regardless of whether it was worshiped or not.

So Lutheran churches tended to have lots of stained glass windows still, lots of statues, drawings, images etc. Reformed churches have tended to be very plain and unadorned.

You can read Calvin’s thoughts here in Section 17 of The Institutes 2.8 - http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.iv.ix.html

You can read Luther’s thoughts here in paragraphs 1-48 of his Large Catechism - http://bookofconcord.org/largecatechism/3_tencommandments.html

The Anglican church has been closer to the Lutheran rather than Reformed thinking in this instance. That should be pretty plain - there are plenty of pictures of Christ in the stained glass windows of our church. If you go to St Andrew’s cathedral you’ll see statues around the place as well.

I tend to agree with the Lutheran position here. It seems to me that the sin is in the worship of the created object, not in making an object or image in the first place. So I feel quite comfortable with portrayals of Christ in movies. And I feel comfortable with something like 2 Ways to Live, which represents God as a crown, and also includes drawings of Jesus.

Hope this is of some help.

cheers,
Craig

Would be interested to hear everyone else’s thoughts…

Paul says that covetousness is idolatry. (Col 3:5)

Gordon Cheng - 13 March 2008 12:27 PM

Paul says that covetousness is idolatry. (Col 3:5)

Because you are effectively worshipping what you are coveting, I suppose…

Paul also calls a greedy person an idolater.

In the money driven society that we live in, where even Christians get in on the act of must having the latest ipod, mobile phone, car, lounge suit, holiday, seeing the latest movie or other a.b.c.d how do we decide what we buy or need doesn’t cause us to fall into the trap of idolatry?

Craig B, good questions. I have no good/short answers but am aware that greed is probably one of the application points that needs to come up regularly in teaching. (Teach self, then hopefully others too.)

Craig S, another twist to the issue: if we allow some images (trees, stars, ...) but disallow representations of Jesus, do we tend towards docetic heresy? That is, undermine his humanity.

Craig Bennett - 13 March 2008 01:33 PM

Paul also calls a greedy person an idolater.

In the money driven society that we live in, where even Christians get in on the act of must having the latest ipod, mobile phone, car, lounge suit, holiday, seeing the latest movie or other a.b.c.d how do we decide what we buy or need doesn’t cause us to fall into the trap of idolatry?

I just bought a (2nd hand) iPod...how else could I listen to all the wonderful sermon resources from around the ‘net.

:~p

I just bought the cheapest 500 gig hard drive I could find, so I can keep downloading sermons and listen to them. Impulse buying at the Post Office.

It’s not just things that can be the cause of idolatry - states of mind are also capable of becoming idolatrous.  The pursuit of happiness can become idolatrous when it is sought after as a be all and end all or at the expense of a relationship with God.