By Garry J. Moes

When I was a senior in journalism school at Michigan State University in the mid-1960s, there was a controversy in the state of Michigan over whether Amish schools (typically limited to grades 1-8) should be required to hire only state certified teachers. I received a grant from The Reader’s Digest to visit an Amish colony in southern Michigan and write an in-depth article about their views on the subject. Of course, I wanted to get some photographs to accompany the article, but I ran afoul of Amish religious belief that the Second Commandment of the Decalogue forbids making graven images — and photographs were considered graven images.

 

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. (Exodus 20:4-6, KJV)

 

Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me, And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments. (Deuteronomy 5:8-10, KJV)

 

Since I am not of the Amish persuasion, I clandestinely took photos anyway, but was caught and faced upraised fists.

 

I am, however, of the Presbyterian and Reformed persuasion of Protestant Christianity, and therefore I have been confronted with the interpretation of the Second Commandment found in Reformed catechisms. The Westminster Larger Catechism, for example, goes into great detail concerning what is forbidden in this commandment:

 

Q. 109. What are the sins forbidden in the second commandment?

A. The sins forbidden in the second commandment are, all devising, counselling, commanding, using, and anywise approving, any religious worship not instituted by God himself; tolerating a false religion; the making any representation of God, of all, or of any of the three Persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature whatsoever; all worshiping of it, or God in it or by it; the making of any representation of feigned deities, and all worship of them, or service belonging to them; all superstitious devices, corrupting the worship of God, adding to it, or taking from it, whether invented and taken up of ourselves, or received by tradition from others, though under the title of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or any other pretence whatsoever; simony; sacrilege; all neglect, contempt, hindering, and opposing the worship and ordinances which God hath appointed.

 

The Westminster Shorter Catechism being — well, shorter and more succinct, seems to come more directly to the point:

 

Q. 51. What is forbidden in the second commandment?

A. The second commandment forbiddeth the worshipping of God by images, or any other way not appointed in his Word.

 

The Heidelberg Catechism, says this:

 

Q. What is God’s will for us in the second commandment?

A. That we in no way make any image of God nor worship him in any other way than has been commanded in God’s Word.

 

Q. May we then not make any image at all?

A. God can not and may not be visibly portrayed in any way. Although creatures may be portrayed, yet God forbids making or having such images if one’s intention is to worship them or to serve God through them.

 

Although if read carefully, most of these catechisms seem to specify that the making of images for the purpose of worshiping God is forbidden, many in the Reformed and Presbyterian tradition have interpreted the first part of the Second Commandment as a stand-alone commandment forbidding the making of images of any person of the Trinity, period. That is, all artistic efforts, from the Sistine Chapel ceiling to little kids’ Sunday School papers, flat-out forbid making any depiction of God or any Person of the Trinity. This interpretation seems to focus entirely and almost exclusively on the phrase in the Westminster Larger Catechism saying that the Second Commandment forbids “the making any representation of God, of all, or of any of the three Persons.”

 

This interpretation goes so far as to even forbid the making of any mental image of God, which has always seemed to me to be a particularly difficult stricture. For example, if someone tells me not to think about a zebra, the very first thing that comes to mind is a zebra. The Bible is rife with verbal descriptions of God, and any or all of these descriptions come to mind when one thinks about God. Furthermore, we must remember that one of the persons of the Trinity clearly had a physical form, namely the incarnate Jesus. Those who laid eyes upon this Man as he walked the earth would have had a hard time obeying this “no-mental-image” restriction. The Holy Spirit, we are told in Scripture, also made visible representations of Himself on more than one occasion: a Dove at Jesus’s baptism and Flames of Fire at Pentecost.

 

Furthermore, the interpretive notion that the Second Commandment forbids — as a stand-alone restriction — the sheer making of any images flies in the face of the fact that God Himself ordered the making of images, as found in His orders concerning the construction of the Tabernacle and its furnishings and curtains and the robes of the high priest.

 

At the most sacred place of all, in fact, namely the Ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies, God commanded the sculpting the likeness of two heavenly beings, the Cherubim on cover of the Ark, the mercy seat where God’s own likeness as a cloud of glory could be seen.

 

This very fact alone should make it clear that it is not the mere making of an image that is forbidden. It is the making of an image for the purpose of worshiping that image as the true God that is forbidden.

 

Actually, a careful reading of the full text of the commandment on this subject goes well beyond the making of images of the Deity. The commandment itself covers all images of all things in creation — on earth, the heavens, the seas, everywhere. If that is a stand-alone prohibition, the Amish may have it right. Although, the second answer from the Heidelberg Catechism cited above argues against the Amish interpretation, as the catechism allows images other than any of the Divine Persons. Even here, it must be noted, that one's intentions in the making of images is the key point: God forbids making or having such images if one’s intention is to worship them or to serve God through them.

 

No, again, "making" is not a stand-alone restriction. There is a fundamental connection between the making and the worshiping. Many printings of the King James Version seem to make this connection by putting a colon between the making and the worshiping language, suggesting that there is a vital relationship between them. That is not an absolute proof, of course, because the original Hebrew doesn’t have this same punctuation. (I once asked a Hebrew scholar why the colon was there in the KJV. He said he didn’t know.) But it indicates that at one time, it was the belief of translators that there was an essential connection between the two parts of the commandment. And a careful reading of the full texts of the catechisms seems to reflect this understanding as well, notwithstanding most of the traditional interpretations of the Reformed catechisms.

 

Instructive for the interpretation of the Second Commandment is what we find in Deuteronomy 4, just before the second rendering of the Ten Commandments is given in Chapter 5. Here is what verses 15-20 say:

 

15 You saw no form of any kind the day the Lord spoke to you at Horeb out of the fire. Therefore watch yourselves very carefully, 16 so that you do not become corrupt and make for yourselves an idol, an image of any shape, whether formed like a man or a woman, 17 or like any animal on earth or any bird that flies in the air, 18 or like any creature that moves along the ground or any fish in the waters below. 19 And when you look up to the sky and see the sun, the moon and the stars—all the heavenly array—do not be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping things the Lord your God has apportioned to all the nations under heaven. 20 But as for you, the Lord took you and brought you out of the iron-smelting furnace, out of Egypt, to be the people of his inheritance, as you now are.

 

Here we again see that there is to be no worshiping of an image of anything—from underwater creatures to the bodies in space—since the people of Israel had not seen any “form” of the God who appeared on Sinai in cloud and thunder and lightning. The specific command is not to make “idols” and to “be enticed into bowing down to them and worshiping things the Lord your God has appointed to all the nations under heaven.” An idol, by definition, is an image made for the purpose of worshiping that image as though it were God or a god. The people are reminded pointedly not to do what they may have been doing in Egypt, where almost all of the things listed here were worshiped.

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In our modern world, however, we are prone to giving our devotion to all sorts of material and immaterial things that are not the true God, from the myriad symbols of wealth to various ideologies to our favorite celebrities, including those on "American Idol."

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Idolatry is ever with us.

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