Have they eyes, and see not? Do we pray unto them, because through them we pray to God? This is the chief cause of this insane profanity, that the figure resembling the living person, which induces men to worship it, has more influence in the minds of these miserable persons, than the evident fact that it is not living, so that it ought to be despised by the living. — Augustine, Exposition of Psalm 115

As I have read through the early church’s rejection of using images in worship, I have been surprised to find that they seem to take issue with (or believe things contrary to) the claim that the honor given to an image passes through to its prototype. In my own thinking on the issue, I have more or less taken this principle for granted, but this attitude of the early church has led me to think more carefully about it, and in particular its limitations with respect to worship.

Images in terms of resemblance and reference

An image represents (or discloses) its prototype (or subject) by means of resemblance, sharing the relevant features with the prototype. Images may therefore be compared to words, which disclose the subject by means of description, rather than resemblance. Resemblance can work in different ways: a photo of a wife shares in the concrete appearance of the wife at a particular moment,  while a statue of someone could abstractly represent a feature of theirs such as strength or kindness. We might wonder how, in the abstract case, we know that the statue represents this person rather than someone else. Here we see another element of images: the less an image specifically resembles an individual, the more its reference must be a result of our shared understanding or convention. This is true of words as well: if I describe the historical events surrounding a person, such words have a more determinate reference than if I merely described their character with metaphors. The indeterminacy of a reference is “filled in” by shared understanding. At the extreme, an image can start as a bare reference, in which case it shares nothing with the prototype and is simply meant to stand in for them. In describing an altercation, for example, I could pick up the salt shaker saying, “this was me,” and the pepper shaker saying, “this was him,” and proceed to use these to illustrate what happened, thereby filling out the image as I use the shaker.

It is the resemblance and reference of an image which determine the limits of what can pass through it from and to the prototype. The reference determines the prototype—a photo of my wife will only disclose my wife, and I cannot compliment someone else through the photo. The resemblance determines the manner in which the reference occurs and therefore the bounds of what can pass through—a portrait of my wife cannot disclose what she sounded like, and I cannot compliment her cooking through her portrait. By contrast, if the photo included my wife and her friend then I could compliment her friend through it, and if the portrait was a photo of my wife’s cooking then I could at least compliment the presentation of the food.

Of course, a photo might bring to mind the events of the day it was taken even if it doesn’t represent them. Indeed, images can remind us, inspire us, be used in conversations to reference things, and all sorts of other things, but these are not what interest me here. The question at hand is the narrow claim that the honor given to the image passes through to the prototype. I am interested in the extent to which an image serves as the instrument by which or medium through which honor passes to the prototype. This is sometimes captured by the iconodule’s claim that icons are “windows” into heaven. It is in virtue of this, and not these other features of images, that iconodules think they can pray to images, worship through them, and so on.

Unilateral vs bilateral honor

So, then, let us consider a case in which an image does not mediate honor: if I compliment a picture of my wife, saying “you look lovely in that dress,” but my wife is not within earshot, then she does not receive the compliment. My affection for my wife passes through to her, as does attraction for her outfit. But insofar as the compliment needs to reach her, because I addressed it to her (“you look lovely…”) rather than thinking to myself (“that dress looks lovely”), I have not complimented her at all. Rather, what I’ve done is spoken to the photo itself, rather than my wife. The reason for this difference seems relatively clear. The first class of actions (attraction, affection, etc.) are what we could call unilateral, in that they only need me and my response to the features of my wife disclosed by the image. The second class of action, however, is bilateral, in that it needs my wife to be an active recipient of something which  arises from me on account of the image,  namely the compliment. The need for active reception is evident if we consider cases where someone intends to compliment another, but it is received as an insult. Just as communication requires both a speaker and a listener, where each is in their own way shaping the nature of that communication, so too does a compliment need a giver and a receiver who shape its final form. But since the image does not resemble my wife as a living person who is capable of receiving a compliment, it simply cannot mediate any bilateral action like this. Instead, I just end up speaking to the image itself—the compliment terminates in the image rather than passing through to its prototype, my wife.

Another common example is that of citizens honoring an emperor by bowing before his statue. Once again, the honor passes through the image insofar as it is unilateral, but terminates in the image insofar as it is bilateral. Civil obedience is an example of unilateral honor, and is something we do even in our own homes without the emperor needing to be aware of everything that happens. Subjugation of oneself as a public expression of the emperor’s superiority would perhaps be bilateral, but for the sake of those around rather than for the emperor’s benefit when he is not around. On the other hand, if we pleaded with the king’s statue or offered praises, neither of these would reach the king who could not hear or respond to things he cannot hear.

Another context in which the distinction between unilateral and bilateral actions comes up is in discussions about the nature of forgiveness: does forgiveness require repentance? If we think a victim can forgive merely as a fiat of their will, then we think that forgiveness is a unilateral action. By contrast, if we think, as I do, that forgiveness and repentance reciprocate and complete one another, then we think forgiveness is a bilateral action.

The bilateral nature of prayer and worship

So, “dead” images are incapable of mediating bilateral action. An image is dead precisely by virtue of not sharing in the life of its prototype, which is true of most images that we experience in our everyday lives. But not all images are dead: humanity bears the image of God, and Jesus is the fulfillment of this, the exact image of God. I’ll return to this point shortly, but first let me explain the problem for icons: icons are dead images, and yet actions like prayer and worship are bilateral in nature, requiring the cooperation between us and God. The result is that the honor we give to God by such actions cannot pass to him through any icon, but must terminate in that icon, which is idolatry.

Why think that prayer and worship are bilateral? Prayer seems to be obviously bilateral insofar as it is like a conversation between us and God—we ask things of him, thank him, plead with him, etc., and we believe that he hears our prayers and answers them (e.g., 1 Ki 8:28; 2 Chr 6:28–31; Neh 1:6; Job 22:27; Ps 6:9; Lam 3:43–45).  Likewise worship, at least  primarily, is understood as something which happens in the presence of the living God. Thus God has a place, the temple, where his people can come to worship him (Deut 12, Lev 17, Jer 26:2; Zech 14:17); sacrifices were understood as producing a pleasing aroma to him so that he could accept them (Lev 1); worship happens before God (Is 66:23; Ps 86:9, 95:6) and is directed to him on his footstool (Ps 99:5, 132:7); and people likewise worship before Jesus in the NT (Matt 2:2; John 9:38). Through the Holy Spirit we are now in Christ, and by being in him we have become the new temple of God (Eph 2:22). Thus, even though the temple no longer exists at a specific location, worship retains its bilateral nature, as an act we do in God’s presence that he may accept it and be pleased by it.

Thus we have the proposal in outline. While it is true that honor given to the image sometimes passes through to the prototype, this is limited by the nature of the image. If the image is dead, then it cannot mediate the honor of bilateral acts, such as prayer and worship, and any attempt to misuse them as such devolves into idolatry. Now, let me make some clarifications.

God’s presence

First, we may wonder whether being in God’s presence through the Holy Spirit somehow circumvents this argument. After all, returning to my earlier example, my wife would hear my compliment if she were in the same room as me, in which case perhaps the photo could mediate the compliment. Similarly, if God is always present to us, then perhaps icons could mediate our worship and prayers. But this misses the core of the issue, which is not about whether my wife hears my compliment, but whether the image can mediate the compliment to her. The image cannot mediate what it does not share with my wife (I cannot compliment my wife’s hat through the photo if she isn’t wearing one in the photo) and it does not share in the living personhood that is necessary for bilateral actions like the compliment. Thus, even if my wife were in earshot, she would just be hearing me speaking to a photo of her. Similarly, all we are doing with icons is praying to them in God’s presence.

The incarnation

Second, we may wonder whether Jesus’s incarnation affects anything in this argument. The incarnation took on an important role in the eighth century debates between iconoclasts and iconodules, and is still an important factor in some contemporary arguments about icons. Since the present argument is not about Christology but about the limitations of images in general, the incarnation is not directly relevant. Nevertheless it is still indirectly relevant insofar as any Christian account of images must be able to explain why it is appropriate to pray to and worship Jesus. In particular, the risk is that any such arguments proves too much, and ends up mistakenly saying that worship of Jesus is idolatry. This, then brings us back to the living images mentioned earlier.

The two theologically significant examples of living images are (1) humanity being made in the image of God and (2) Jesus being the exact image of God. Regarding (1), there have been numerous proposals for what the image of God involves: the substantial view says that it consists in our rational nature, the social view says that it consists in our ability to commune with another and God, and the vocational view says that it consists in our role as God’s earthly vice-regents. Probably all of these are correct to some degree, and I will not defend any particular one over the others. Relevant for the present discussion is that every view fits with the general account of images given above: humanity represents God by resembling him, through rationality, sociality, and ruling over creation. We may ask: since humanity is made in the image of God and is living, does it follow that worship and prayer can be given to God through other humans? Aquinas, seemingly applying an unrestricted version of the mediation of images, says yes in principle but cautions against it on pragmatic grounds (ST III Q25 A3 ad3). According to the more restricted version defended here, the answer is no: a human is a personal and living image, but they do not share in the divine personhood to which we direct our worship or prayer.

This brings us to (2). Jesus is the exact image of God, in whom the fullness of God dwells bodily. Thus, we may pray to and worship God through his human nature because it shares his person with his divine nature—which is just a way of affirming the hypostatic union in the terms we have been discussing. What Jesus’s incarnation changes, then, is that in him we have an image of God through which we may pray to and worship. No dead image makes this possible, and neither did the living image of God in humanity before Christ. Importantly, it is not a consequence of the incarnation that dead images start being able to mediate prayer and worship to God. It is Jesus himself, not dead images of him, who mediates these. If we create a dead image of Jesus, it fails to mediate honors to him just as the photo of my wife fails to mediate honors to her. That is, precisely because it is dead it cannot mediate the honor of bilateral action.

“By man shall his blood be shed”

Third, we may wonder how what we just said about the image of God in humans relates to God’s words to Noah: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” (Gen 9:6) These words seem to indicate that dishonor to God’s image passes through to God himself, so why should we not likewise say that honor may equally pass through? But, of course, I have granted that unilateral honor can pass through an image under the right conditions, so there should be nothing to stop unilateral dishonor from likewise doing so. Generally speaking, we can show respect or disrespect to a person by how we treat things that reference or represent them in some way, including images. If someone were to vandalize the statue of an emperor, they would thereby be showing disrespect to the emperor, and conversely, when people take care of the statue, they thereby show respect for the person it is meant to honor. But these are unilateral actions, for the emperor does not need to participate in either this way of showing respect or disrespect.

Similarly with the image of God shared by all humanity: by killing another human we thereby disrespect God, the image of whom that human bears, but the mode of this disrespect is unilateral. It would be bilateral if we were insulting God as such (“to his face”), but in fact we are simply destroying that which in some sense resembles and represents him.

Veneration and worship

Finally, we should consider the ever-present distinction between veneration and worship. We may accept the conclusion that an image does not mediate worship or prayer, but wonder whether this implies that we worship or pray to the image, and thereby commit idolatry. Could it be that, instead of worshipping and praying to the image, we simply fail to do either at all? After all, the worshipper intends to pray to or worship God, and only venerate the image.

 The fundamental question is this: what happens when a bilateral action terminates in an image rather than passing through it? Consider the case where I try to compliment my wife through her photo. In some sense I fail to compliment at all, since there is no-one to receive the compliment. But there is a difference between this sort of failure and a mere absence of a compliment, as would happen if I simply looked at the photo without any attempt to compliment anyone. In trying to compliment my wife through the photo I end up speaking to the photo as though it were my wife. It’s not that I simply don’t give a compliment because no-one is there to hear—as if there were some fundamental conditionality baked into the action itself—but rather I give a compliment improperly or incompletely. It is one thing to perform an action, and another thing not to perform it. It is some third thing to fail in performing an action, to perform it incompletely or improperly. The same can be seen in the case of forgiveness—if forgiveness is bilateral, then the person who forgives without approaching the other for repentance is not simply not forgiving, but is forgiving improperly or incompletely.

Applying this to worship, the person intends to worship God through the image, but the image cannot transfer the worship. Thus, the person still worships, since this is what they engaged in, but the result is a kind of incomplete worship given to an image.

Conclusion

The purpose of this post was to clarify the inherent limitations of images with respect to their mediatorial role in worship, in an attempt to retrieve the theology of the early church prior to the iconoclastic controversy. While honor given to the image sometimes passes through to the prototype, this is limited by the nature of the image. If the image is dead, then it cannot mediate bilateral honor, such as prayer and worship, and any attempt to misuse them as such devolves into idolatry. Although this conclusion contradicts the position of Nicea II, its scope is otherwise relatively limited. In particular, it does not preclude the making of images, even of Christ, or the use of them for inspiration, didactics, remembrance, and all sorts of other purposes.