Worship of Images / Icons (#2)

This is continuing our post on Worship of Images / Icons

Agobard of Lyons (779-840 AD)

The first commandment of the Decalogue is given by God, saying: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall not have strange gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, nor the likeness of anything that is in the heavens above, or that moves in the waters beneath the earth. You shall not adore them, and you shall not serve them. To these words the blessed Augustine briefly adds, saying (Homily on Exodus, chapter 1): “In the first commandment, any likeness of God made by human imagination is forbidden; not because God has no image, but because no image of Him ought to be worshipped, except that which is also what He is, and not even that in place of Him, but together with Him.” By saying this, blessed Augustine teaches us briefly how we ought also to understand the other commandments of this kind. For when it is distinctly said that the likeness of anything in heaven or on earth is not to be made, it is not only understood of the likenesses of strange gods, but also of heavenly creatures, or of those which the human mind may have contrived in honor of the Creator. On account of this, Moses also speaks openly to the people, saying: The Lord spoke to you from the midst of the fire. You heard the voice of His words, but you saw no form at all. And a little later: Therefore guard your souls carefully. You saw no likeness on the day the Lord spoke to you on Horeb from the midst of the fire; lest perchance, being deceived, you should make for yourselves a graven image, or the likeness of a male or a female, the likeness of any beasts that are upon the earth, or of birds that fly under the sky, or of creeping things that move on the earth, or of fishes that dwell beneath the earth in the waters; lest perchance, lifting your eyes to heaven, you see the sun and all the stars of heaven, and being deceived by error you adore them and serve them. In these words it must be especially noted that if the works of God’s hands are not to be adored and served, not even in honor of God, how much more are the works of human hands not to be adored and served, not even in honor of those whose likenesses they are said to be. — Agobard of Lyons, Book on the Images of the Saints, PL 104:199, 200 (820 AD)

…These things, taken from the fourth book of Ecclesiastical History, are included so that they may hold a place among the other authorities of divine law or of the holy Fathers. And since there is one shared opinion among all—that religious worship is owed to God alone—what remains for the faithful, except that, with souls cleansed from all profane servitude to images, we strive with all our strength, so that we may truly be able to say what is written: ‘For it was not the invention of wicked human art that led us into error, nor the shadow of a painting, a labor without fruit, nor the sculpted image adorned with various colors, whose appearance gives desire to the senseless and causes love for the likeness of a dead image without soul. Lovers of evil are those who place their hope in such things, and who make them, and who love them, and who worship them.’ And again: ‘No man can fashion God in the likeness of himself. For since he is mortal, with wicked hands you fashion a dead thing. For the man himself is better than the things he worships; for he at least has lived, even though mortal, while they never have.’ — Agobard of Lyons, Book on the Images of the Saints, chapter 18 PL 104:214 (820 AD)

Blessed Augustine, in Book X of The City of God, among other things, says: “We read that the deadly bites of serpents, as a most just punishment for sins, were healed when the bronze serpent was lifted up on a pole and looked upon, so that both aid might be given to the afflicted people, and death might be destroyed by death, as a symbol of the crucified death. But when the people later, having gone astray, began to worship this serpent as an idol, King Hezekiah, serving God with religious authority, broke it into pieces with great commendation for his piety.” The same Father, also in the first book On the Harmony of the Evangelists, which he wrote against the pagans, argues about those who claimed that the Lord Jesus Christ had written a book in letter form and had handed it over to Peter and Paul. He says: “For when they wanted to fabricate such a thing—that Christ had written to his disciples—they thought about to whom it could most easily be believed that he had written, namely to those who had adhered to him most intimately, to whom such a secret could fittingly be entrusted. And Peter and Paul came to their minds. I believe that they had seen them pictured together with him in many places, since the merits of Peter and Paul are more solemnly and famously commemorated at Rome, especially because of their shared day of martyrdom. And thus, they altogether deserved to go astray, who sought Christ and his apostles not in the holy scriptures but on painted walls.” These are the words of Saint Augustine. From this it is clearly gathered that if the bronze serpent, which God had commanded to be made, was later destroyed with great piety by the religious king Hezekiah because the wandering people began to worship it as an idol, then, much more religiously, the images of the saints (with the saints themselves also favoring this, who indignantly endure being worshiped in idolatrous fashion in contempt of divine religion) are to be completely broken down and reduced to dust—especially since God did not command them to be made, but human judgment devised them. — Agobard of Lyons, Book on the Images of the Saints, chapter 23 PL 104:218 (820 AD)

That God is worshiped more purely without images is also attested by Quintus Lucilius Balbus, a pagan philosopher, as the aforementioned doctor (Augustine) inserts him speaking in the fourth book of The City of God with these words: “Do you see, therefore, how from natural things well and usefully discovered, reason has been drawn to fictitious and fabricated gods? This has produced false opinions, tumultuous errors, and almost childish superstitions. For the forms of the gods, their ages, their clothing, and ornaments are known to us; their kinds, marriages, kinships, and everything has been brought down to the likeness of human weakness. Indeed, they are also portrayed as having disturbed emotions. We have also been told of the gods’ desires, sicknesses, and angers. And truly, as the stories say, the gods were not free from wars and battles—not only, as in Homer, when some gods supported one army and others the opposite side, but also when they waged their own wars against the Titans or the Giants. These things are told and believed most foolishly and are full of vanity and supreme frivolity. Behold, then, what those confess who defend the gods of the nations.” Then, when he says that these things belong to superstition, but religion—which he seems to define according to the Stoics—is something else, he continues: “For not only philosophers,” he says, “but even our ancestors separated superstition from religion. For those,” he says, “who spent entire days praying and sacrificing so that their children might survive them, were called superstitious.” Who does not understand that he is trying, while fearing the customs of the city, to praise the religion of the ancestors and to separate it from superstition, though he does not know how this can be done? For if those were called superstitious by the ancestors, who spent entire days praying and sacrificing, were not also those who established what he himself criticizes—namely, the images of the gods, distinguished by different ages and garments, the kinds, marriages, and kinships of the gods—equally guilty of superstition? When these things are blamed as superstitious, this blame implicates the ancestors, the founders and worshipers of such images.” And a little later: “The same sharp and learned author says that only those seemed to him to have perceived what God is, who believed that he is a spirit governing the world by motion and reason. And through this, even though he had not yet grasped what the truth holds (for the true God is not a spirit but also the maker and creator of spirit), still, if he could have been free from the prejudices of custom, he would have confessed and advised that one God be worshiped, governing the world by motion and reason, so that the only remaining question between him and us would be that he called God a spirit rather than the creator of spirit. He also says that the ancient Romans worshiped the gods for more than 170 years without images, and that if this had still remained, the gods would be observed more purely. As evidence of his opinion, he even points, among other things, to the Jewish people. And he does not hesitate to conclude the passage in this way, saying that those who first placed images of the gods among the people took away fear from their cities and added error, wisely thinking that the gods could easily be despised in the stupidity of their images.” — Agobard of Lyons, Book on the Images of the Saints, chapter 24 PL 104:219 (820 AD)