Bysantium

The other day I went to the excellent Byzantium exhibition at the Royal Academy. http://www.royalacademy.org.uk/ There was some truly beautiful stuff on display, and the whole thing was very interesting. Certainly as well as enjoying some lovely works of arts I learnt much about the Eastern Empire, and the development of art, especially Christian art.

In particular the whole thing with icons made me think, about how we represent historical religious figures, how we use images in our worship, how figurative art is uniquely Christian within the Abrahamic religions. While on a purely visual level I enjoyed the pictures I did find it disturbing to find that the images themselves were acknowledged as having religious significance, indeed many were accredited with having miraculous powers. This seems to me to be an obvious case of setting up Idols, directly against the second commandment.

4 "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments." (Exodus 20:4-6 NIV)

Because God has no physical form, any Idol intended to resemble Him would be a sinful misrepresentation of Him. Since other gods are not to be worshiped (the first commandment!) making Idols of them would be equally sinful. Clearly then the veneration of images is just a big no no, but how about some of the wonderful Christian art that has been used to illustrate the Bible, Michelangelo's David, any number of "Madonna and Child" paintings and statues, pictures of Jesus, these are representations of God when He was in physical form, so can they in themselves be sinful - I think I am coming to the conclusion that it is the attitude of the viewer as much as that of the artist that is important in this. Therefore we should ensure that we only worship God, in all His glory, not any images, not crosses, not alters, not stained glass windows, not TV or bloggers. All these things and others can remind us of God's glory, like books they can help us, but they should not in themselves be worshiped.
Don't get me wrong I love art in all (well most) of it's many forms, and I would deplore the idea of anything like the destruction of religious art that followed the reformation in England, I just found the the whole Iconoclast / Iconaclist thing rather challenging.
All bit heavy for a rainy Monday morning, but if you have been - thank you for reading and please do comment.
Paul