Similarly, a person can kneel before a king without worshipping him as a god. In Japan, people show respect by bowing in greeting (the equivalent of the Western handshake). Though bowing can be used as a posture in worship, not all bowing is worship. Sometimes anti-Catholics cite Deuteronomy 5:9, where God said concerning idols, “You shall not bow down to them.” Since many Catholics sometimes bow or kneel in front of statues of Jesus and the saints, anti-Catholics confuse the legitimate veneration of a sacred image with the sin of idolatry. Thus, when people did start to worship the bronze serpent as a snake-god (whom they named “Nehushtan”), the righteous king Hezekiah had it destroyed (2 Kgs. It is when people begin to adore a statue as a god that the Lord becomes angry. God forbids the worship of images as gods, but he doesn’t ban the making of images. But there’s no idolatry going on in these situations. If one measured Protestants by the same rule, then by using these “graven” images, they would be practicing the “idolatry” of which they accuse Catholics. Catholics also use statues to commemorate certain people and events, much as Protestant churches have three-dimensional nativity scenes at Christmas. Many Protestants have pictures of Jesus and other Bible pictures in Sunday school for teaching children. In the early Church they were especially useful for the instruction of the illiterate. Catholics also use statues as teaching tools. Just as it helps to remember one’s mother by looking at her photograph, so it helps to recall the example of the saints by looking at pictures of them. One had to look at the bronze statue of the serpent to be healed, which shows that statues could be used ritually, not merely as religious decorations.Ĭatholics use statues, paintings, and other artistic devices to recall the person or thing depicted. So Moses made a bronze serpent, and set it on a pole and if a serpent bit any man, he would look at the bronze serpent and live” (Num. Similarly Ezekiel 41:17–18 describes graven (carved) images in the idealized temple he was shown in a vision, for he writes, “On the walls round about in the inner room and the nave were carved likenesses of cherubim.” The Religious Uses of Imagesĭuring a plague of serpents sent to punish the Israelites during the exodus, God told Moses to “make a fiery serpent, and set it on a pole and every one who is bitten, when he sees it shall live. David’s plan for the temple included statues of angels. All this he made clear by the writing of the hand of the Lord concerning it all” (1 Chr. 25:18–20).ĭavid gave Solomon the plan “for the altar of incense made of refined gold, and its weight also his plan for the golden chariot of the cherubim that spread their wings and covered the ark of the covenant of the Lord. The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be” (Ex. Make one cherub on the one end, and one cherub on the other end of one piece of the mercy seat shall you make the cherubim on its two ends. For example: “And you shall make two cherubim of gold of hammered work shall you make them, on the two ends of the mercy seat. People who oppose religious statuary forget about the many passages where the Lord commands the making of statues. Instead, he actually commanded their use in religious contexts! God forbade the worship of statues, but he did not forbid the religious use of statues. Yet if people were to “search the scriptures” (John 5:39), they would find the opposite is true. But calling Catholics idolaters because they have images of Christ and the saints is based on misunderstanding or ignorance of what the Bible says about the purpose and uses (both good and bad) of statues.Īnti-Catholic writer Loraine Boettner, in his book Roman Catholicism, makes the blanket statement, “God has forbidden the use of images in worship” (281). It is right to warn people against the sin of idolatry when they are committing it. Because Catholics have statues in their churches, goes the accusation, they are violating God’s commandment: “You shall not make for yourself a graven image or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow down to them or serve them” (Ex. “Catholics worship statues!” People still make this ridiculous claim.
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