Religious images in Christian theology have a role within the liturgical and devotional life of adherents of certain Christian denominations. The use of religious images has often been a contentious issue in Christian history. Concern over idolatry is the driving force behind the various traditions of aniconism in Christianity.
In the early Church, Christians used the Ichthys (fish) symbol to identify Christian places of worship and Christian homes. The Synod of Elvira (306 AD - 312 AD) "prohibited the exhibition of images in churches". However, since the 3rd century AD, images have been used within Christian worship within parts of Christendom, although some ancient Churches, such as the Church of the East, have apparently long traditions of not using images. However, there is also both literary and archaeological evidence for the early presence of images in the Church of the East tradition.
Certain periods of Christian history have seen supporters of aniconism in Christianity, first with the movement of Byzantine Iconoclasm, in which Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Emperors Michael II, as well as Theophilos, "banned veneration of icons and actively persecuted supporters of icons." Later, during the Iconoclastic Fury, Calvinists removed statues and sacred art from churches that adopted the Reformed faith.
The Church Father John of Damascus argued for the exhibition of religious iconography (most notably in his work, “Three Treatises on the Divine Images”), that, “God's taking on human form sanctified the human image, noting that the humanity of Christ formed an image of God; therefore, artists could use human images to depict the incarnate Word as well as human saints." As such, religious imagery today, in the form of statues, is most identified with the Roman Catholic and Lutheran traditions. Two dimensional icons are used extensively, and are most often associated with parts of Eastern Christianity, although they are also used by Roman Catholics, Lutherans, and, increasingly, Anglicans. Since the 1800s, devotional art has become very common in Christian homes, both Protestant and Catholic, often including wall crosses, embroidered verses from the Christian Bible, as well as imagery of Jesus. In Western Christianity, it is common for believers to have a home altar, while dwelling places belonging to communicants of the Eastern Christian Churches often have an icon corner.
A cult image is a human-made object that is venerated or worshipped for the deity, person or spirit that it embodies or represents.Geoffrey W. Bromiley International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (Grand Rapids: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1982), vol. 2 p 794. It is also controversially and pejoratively used by some Protestants, particularly certain Anabaptist and Reformed Christians, to describe the Eastern Orthodox (and, to a lesser extent, Catholic) practice of worshipping God through the use of icons, a charge which these Christians reject. In a similarly controversial sense, it is also used by these Protestants to pejoratively describe various Catholic and Eastern Orthodox devotional practices, such the Catholic use of scapulars and the common veneration of statues and flat images of the Virgin Mary and other saints, which Catholics and Eastern Orthodox do not consider idolatry.
Jewish origins
Idolatry is prohibited by many verses in the Old Testament, but there is no one section that clearly defines idolatry. Rather there are a number of commandments on this subject spread through the books of the Hebrew Bible, some of which were written in different historical eras, in response to different issues. Idolatry in the Hebrew Bible is defined as the worship of idols (or images); the worship of polytheistic gods by use of idols (or images) and even the use of idols in the worship of Yahweh (God).
The Israelites used various images in connection with their worship, including carved cherubim on the Ark of the Covenant () which God instructed Moses to make, and the embroidered figures of cherubim on the curtain which separated the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle tent (). Similarly, the Nehushtan, which God commanded Moses to make and lift high to cure any Israelites who looked at it of snakebites, is God-ordained use of an image. However, as part of a later religious reform Hezekiah destroyed the Serpent, which the Hebrew people had been burning incense to ().
New Testament
Judaism's animosity towards what they perceived as idolatry was inherited by Jewish Christianity. Although Jesus discussed the Mosaic Law in the Sermon on the Mount, he does not speak of issues regarding the meaning of the commandment against idolatry. His teachings, however, uphold that worship should be directed to God alone (Matthew 4:10 which is itself a quote of Deuteronomy 6:13, see also Shema in Christianity, Great Commandment, and Ministry of Jesus).
The Pauline Epistles contain several admonitions to "flee from idolatry" (, , , , , , ) A major controversy among Early Christians concerned whether it was permissible to eat meat that had been offered in pagan worship. Paul of Tarsus, who agreed to the Apostolic Decree, also wrote that it was permitted to do so, as long as a blessing was pronounced over it, and provided that scandal was not caused by it. However, he said that the gods worshiped in idolatry were in his belief demons, and that any act of direct participation in their worship remained forbidden (1 Corinthians 10:14-22). See also the Law of Christ.
The New Testament also uses the term "idolatry" to refer to worship like passion for things such as wealth, as in Colossians 3:5, "Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed which is idolatry." Some Christian theologians see the absolutization of an idea as idolatrous.John MacQuarrie, Principles of Christian Theology (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1977), 145. Therefore, undue focus on particular features of Christianity to the exclusion of others would constitute idolatry.
The New Testament does contain the rudiments of an argument which provides a basis for religious images or icons. Jesus was visible, and orthodox Christian doctrine maintains that Jesus is YHWH incarnate. In the Gospel of John, Jesus stated that because his disciples had seen him, they had seen God the Father (Gospel of John 14:7-9). Paul of Tarsus referred to Jesus as the "image of the invisible God" (Colossians 1:15). Theologians such as John of Damascus argued that the connection between Jesus' incarnation and the use of images is so strong that to reject or prohibit the use of images is tantamount to denying the Incarnation of Jesus.
Early Christianity grew in a society where religious images, usually in the form of statues, both large ones in temples and small ones such as lares and penates in the home, were a prominent feature of traditional pagan religions, such as traditional Ancient Roman religion, Ancient Greek religion and other forms of Eastern paganism. Many writings by Church Fathers contain strong denunciations of these practices, which seem to have included outright idol-worship. Statues on secular buildings, however, could serve as expression of secular power in various periods of Christianity, without implications of idol-worship.Péter Bokody, "Idolatry or Power: St. Francis in Front of the Sultan," In Promoting the Saints: Cults and Their Contexts from Late Antiquity until the Early Modern Period, ed. Ottó Gecser and others (Budapest: CEU Press, 2010), 69-81. https://www.academia.edu/1787059/Idolatry_or_Power_St._Francis_in_Front_of_the_Sultan
The use of icons and symbols in Christian worship
Periods of aniconism have characterized various points of Christian history; early Christianity was largely aniconic, with Church Fathers Tertullian and Clement of Alexandria regarding the Ten Commandments to be binding on Christians. Early Christian apologists argued that God was beyond representation "and insisted that material things, unlike divine beings, were subject to disintegration, rust and decay." Marcus Minucius Felix stated that Christians lacked images "because Christians believe in and worship an invisible God." Aniconism was notable during the controversy of the Byzantine iconoclasm of the eighth century, and in the 16th century, when Calvinism rejected all images in churches, and this practice continues today in conservative Reformed (Calvinist) churches, as well as in Anabaptist Christianity. The Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church defend the use of sacred images in churches, shrines, and homes.
Early Christian art that existed used symbolic and allegorical images, primarily. In the Catacombs of Rome, Jesus was represented indirectly by pictogram symbols such as the Ichthys (fish), peacock, Lamb of God, or an anchor (the Labarum or Chi-Rho was a later development). Later, personified symbols were used, including Jonah, whose three days in the belly of the whale pre-figured the interval between Christ's death and Resurrection, Daniel in the lion's den, or Orpheus charming the animals.
The image of "The Good Shepherd", a beardless youth in pastoral scenes collecting sheep, was the most common of these images, and was probably not understood as a portrait of the historical Jesus. The depiction of Jesus already from the 3rd century included images very similar to what became the traditional image of Jesus, with a longish face and long straight hair. As the Church increased in size and popularity, the need to educate illiterate converts led to the use of pictures which portrayed biblical stories, along with images of saints, angels, prophets, and the Cross (though only portrayed in a bejewelled, glorified state).
After the end of persecution, and the adoption of Christianity by Constantine, large churches were built and from the start decorated with elaborate images of Jesus and saints in mosaic. Small carved reliefs were also found on sarcophagi like the Sarcophagus of Junius Bassus. However large monumental sculpture of religious subjects was not produced, and in Byzantine art and Eastern Orthodox art it is avoided to the current day. It only reappeared in Carolingian art, among peoples who had no memory of pagan religious statues.
Paintings of Old Testament scenes are found in Jewish catacombs of the same period, and the heavily painted walls of Dura Europos Synagogue in Syria. Catholic and Orthodox historians affirm, on the basis of these archeological finds in the Catacombs, that the veneration of icons and relics had begun well before Constantine I.
Christian use of relics also dates to the catacombs, when Christians found themselves praying in the presence of the bodies of martyrs, sometimes using their tombs as altars for sharing the Eucharist, which was, and in Catholicism, Lutheranism and Eastern Orthodoxy is, the central act of Christian worship. Many stories of the earliest martyrs end with an account of how Christians would gather up the martyr's remains, to the extent possible, in order to retain the martyr's relics. This is shown in the written record of the martyrdom of Saint Polycarp, a personal disciple of Saint John the Apostle.
Significant periods of iconoclasm (deliberate destruction of icons) have occurred in the history of the Church, the first major outbreak being the Byzantine iconoclasm (730–787), motivated by a strictly literal interpretation of the second commandment and interaction with Muslims who have a very strict teachings against the creation of images. Iconoclasm was officially condemned by the Western and Eastern Churches at the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 AD (the Western Church was not represented, but approved the decrees later).