Iconoclast heresy

[All Becomes New]

Sounds like a game to me. You can do google searches as well as the next chap so you can get the evidence that you say you want without engaging if fruitless 'debates' on CF. Just get on with it and tell us that you failed to be convinced.

Part of the reason I am on this site is to learn from others. Sorry if that is wrong or whatever.

 

[jas3]

I think there is precedence for the Trinity before Nicea. If not, then Nicea was an accretion and should be rejected.

Of course there is, but that's a much looser standard than you're applying to icon veneration.

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

Part of the reason I am on this site is to learn from others. Sorry if that is wrong or whatever.

I do not believe that for a second!

CF is not an academic forum. It's just people chatting about their opinions. More often than not they toss around poorly remembered school theology and have fights about it. If you want something with credibility, then try an academic sources search.

 

[All Becomes New]

Of course there is, but that's a much looser standard than you're applying to icon veneration.

The difference in what is described in Nicea 1 and Nicea 2 is what the Bible says. I am aware of the arguments that Icons represent the hypostatic union, but I don't buy it since that is typology and not what can be deduced from scripture. It is not talked about in scripture and that is where the debate should ultimately be had for me as a Protestant. I don't see any convincing arguments that Icon Veneration was in the Bible which is why I am willing to look at the first 300 years of Chruch history for precedence of the view.

 

[All Becomes New]

I do not believe that for a second!

You are free to think whatever negative things about me that you want, but once again, you do so without knowing the facts. I have interacted with others on their forum here simply asking them questions to see what their PoV is. It is a practice I have been doing since I joined this forum. Most notably, I have several threads asking for the opinions of different Traditions' take on things of the EO and MJ forums.

 

[The Liturgist]

Part of the reason I am on this site is to learn from others. Sorry if that is wrong or whatever.

If you want to do that, that’s commendable, but you won’t be able to learn much if you engage in this raising-of-the-goal-posts approach to dialogue, where initially you want then proof, and then another, and then decide on another one entirely, since no one with knowledge of the areas you are discussing (in this thread you have interacted with several of the most learned and reputable members of CF.com) will want to engage in that.

 

[All Becomes New]

If you want to do that, that’s commendable, but you won’t be able to learn much if you engage in this raising-of-the-goal-posts approach to dialogue, where initially you want then proof, and then another, and then decide on another one entirely, since no one with knowledge of the areas you are discussing (in this thread you have interacted with several of the most learned and reputable members of CF.com) will want to engage in that.

And yet, I have yet to see a single quote. The whole idea of someone giving me a quote is so that I have something to search for in my Bible software program so I can look at the context.

And I have already explained multiple times why I am not moving the goal post. I am being honest about what would convince me. And if you want to know part of the answer (along with what I said before) why the evidence went up is because of a conversation I had with @ArmyMatt. So you have him to thank for the evidence going up.

 

[jas3]

The difference in what is described in Nicea 1 and Nicea 2 is what the Bible says. I am aware of the arguments that Icons represent the hypostatic union, but I don't buy it since that is typology and not what can be deduced from scripture. It is not talked about in scripture and that is where the debate should ultimately be had for me as a Protestant.

The Bible describes God commanding the creation of images for the Ark of the Covenant and a bronze serpent. The Ark, itself a kind of image representing the presence of God, was given far higher veneration than icons are. And sure, that's not a commandment to make icons of saints and venerate them like they are today, but neither does the New Testament describe the categorical distinction between the divine essence and persons, or the consubstantiality of the Holy Ghost and the Son. So even taking the biblical evidence into consideration, this is a double standard.

Also, why would you find evidence from within the first 3 centuries convincing about icons, but not about infant baptism? To put it another way, if you can read evidence from the Church Fathers within the first 3 centuries for infant baptism and reject it, why would you not be able to reject the same when it comes to icon veneration?

 

[JSRG]

The reason I said the third century or before is because almost all the NT was quoted by the ECF by then.

This claim, while repeated in various places, is actually a bit dubious.

The statement of almost all of it being quoted in the first three centuries is attributed to David Dalrymple. But it doesn't seem to be in any of his works. Instead, the whole claim seems to come from a secondhand source saying this is something David Dalrymple said to him. This is mentioned in a footnote of "Memoirs of the Lives of Robert Haldane of Airthrey, and of His Brother, James Alexander Haldane" in a footnote on pages 481-482. Essentially, a conversation came up about how much of the New Testament could be recovered from quotations of the first three centuries. Two months later, one of the people involved (Dalrymple) said he felt he had found the answer, and is quoted as saying:

"There have I been busy for those two months, searching for chapters, half chapters, and sentences of the New Testament and have marked down what I found, and where I have found it, so that any person may examine and see for himself. I have actually discovered the whole New Testament, except seven or eleven verses (I forgot which), which satisfies me that I could discover them also."

(I want to admit I was not the one who found the above linked references; it was someone else who looked into it. However, the material below is my own work)

The problem here is that this is secondhand testimony and vague at that, as we do not actually know which these verses are, and it even says he isn't sure how many (it's unclear to me whether the "I forgot which" is Dalrymple saying he forgot, or the writer reporting it saying he forgot which he said). This claim could still be true, but unless we have the testimony of someone who can show their work on the subject--or at least firsthand testimony of someone who did the work--the claim must be regarded as uncertain. Has there been anyone who can demonstrate that all but a few verses can be found in the first three centuries? I'm sure there must have been someone who made something where they included a note for each New Testament verse as to who quoted it.

In order to try to determine it, I tried to make use of this site:

Church Fathers Scripture Index

www.catholiccrossreference.online

This site is for looking up quotations of the church fathers of the Bible. You put in the verse, and it'll tell you the ones that quoted it. Now, it should be noted that this is only searching through the works found at CCEL and thus is missing any that weren't in those. However, I believe CCEL has pretty much all of the ones from the first three centuries (except Irenaeus's Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, because a copy was only discovered in 1905, and the Ante-Nicene Fathers series which has the translations was published before that), and it's later ones that it's missing... for example, none of Jerome's biblical commentaries are there. But they've gotten the first three century ones, so we can search. One other issue with it is that searches for footnotes, so a footnote mentioning a verse, even if it's not in reference to an actual quote, will still show up. It even triggers footnotes for introductory material that the editor included, and footnotes that say something like "see Matthew 2" even if only a small part of it is actually quoted mean any verse from Matthew 2 will find it. One also must in some cases confirm it isn't a spurious writing; for example, epistles attributed to Ignatius that are stated to be spurious even in the Ante-Nicene Fathers series will be triggered and it won't clearly label them as such.

The first one listed for Matthew 1:1 is a quote by Ignatius... however, this is from one of the spurious epistles (regrettably, the search does not clearly articulate this was in the "spurious" section). However, other writers from the first three centuries do refer to it, like Irenaeus, so we have a quote on this one. However, Matthew 1:2 through Matthew 1:11 is not included in any early church father writing. Matthew 1:12 turns up a reference, but not a direct quote, by Irenaeus ("For Joseph is shown to be the son of Joachim and Jechoniah, as also Matthew sets forth in his pedigree" which the footnote says refers to Matthew 1:12-16). I am not sure if a reference rather than a quote satisfies the requirement. Let's suppose it does. Moving forward, Matthew 1:17 and 1:18. 1:19 runs into a weird spot where we don't find quotes exactly from early church fathers, but we do see apocryphal writings like the Gospel of the Nativity of Mary as well as the Diatessaron (a combination of the Gospels into a single document) say these things. I'll be generous and count them. So with these generous counts, we do get the rest of Matthew 1.

However, we see that in the first chapter of Matthew we find 10 verses not quoted, even with being generous in what we accept as a quote. Because the Diatessaron would cover so much of the gospels I decided to skip over to Acts, and we indeed find no quote of Acts 1:2 until Augustine, the same with Acts 1:13. I want to again stress I am trying to be as generous as possible as to what constitutes a quote; some of the ones I counted as being quoted were just references rather than an actual quote or were in some kind of apocryphal work or were just included the Diatessaron, a compilation rather than being a real quotation. Oh, and if anyone is wondering, I did search for "Acts" and "Matt" in Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching (as it does mention when there are quotations) and the ones I mentioned did not turn up there either.

So here we have, being very generous with the definition of quotations, twelve verses already not found. And I didn't really bother to look through the rest of the gospels (including most of Matthew), the rest of Acts, any of the epistles, or Revelation, where I'm sure I could find more. The point here was merely to see if I could exceed 11, and I already did. So this claim of all but eleven--which was secondhand testimony--seems to be false, and yet this is the actual source for the much-repeated "almost all of the NT was quoted" in the first three centuries.

tlr;dr version: The claim that "almost all of the New Testament was quoted by the church fathers of the first three centuries" appears to date back to a secondhand anecdote of someone claiming they found all but seven or eleven verses of the New Testament in the first three centuries (without specifying what those quotations were). But even using a generous definition of quotations, I was able to find (in the first chapter of Matthew and the beginning of the first chapter of Acts) twelve verses not quoted in that period; as I had already gone beyond eleven, I stopped there. So this talking point doesn't seem accurate. We can clearly find a lot of verses quoted in the first three centuries, but not almost all.

 

[All Becomes New]

The Bible describes God commanding the creation of images for the Ark of the Covenant and a bronze serpent. The Ark, itself a kind of image representing the presence of God, was given far higher veneration than icons are. And sure, that's not a commandment to make icons of saints and venerate them like they are today, but neither does the New Testament describe the categorical distinction between the divine essence and persons, or the consubstantiality of the Holy Ghost and the Son. So even taking the biblical evidence into consideration, this is a double standard.

The problem is that both the bronze serpent and the Ark had no power in and of themselves. It is what they represented. In the case of the serpent, you must realize that this was later destroyed because the Israelites were worshiping it. In the case of the Ark, that represented where God's presence was supposed to be. And we no longer have any clue where the Ark is or what happened to it other than that it was probably melted down at some point. So unless you want to say that the spirit or whatever of the saint is in the image, I can't buy this as an explanation.

Also, why would you find evidence from within the first 3 centuries convincing about icons, but not about infant baptism? To put it another way, if you can read evidence from the Church Fathers within the first 3 centuries for infant baptism and reject it, why would you not be able to reject the same when it comes to icon veneration?

I care about what the earliest Church believed, as should all Christians. I said earlier there is evidence that infant baptism is a second-century accretion. We have an equivalent of a money trail with that.

 

[All Becomes New]

This claim, while repeated in various places, is actually a bit dubious.

The statement of almost all of it being quoted in the first three centuries is attributed to David Dalrymple. But it doesn't seem to be in any of his works. Instead, the whole claim seems to come from a secondhand source saying this is something David Dalrymple said to him. This is mentioned in a footnote of "Memoirs of the Lives of Robert Haldane of Airthrey, and of His Brother, James Alexander Haldane" in a footnote on pages 481-482. Essentially, a conversation came up about how much of the New Testament could be recovered from quotations of the first three centuries. Two months later, one of the people involved (Dalrymple) said he felt he had found the answer, and is quoted as saying:

"There have I been busy for those two months, searching for chapters, half chapters, and sentences of the New Testament and have marked down what I found, and where I have found it, so that any person may examine and see for himself. I have actually discovered the whole New Testament, except seven or eleven verses (I forgot which), which satisfies me that I could discover them also."

(I want to admit I was not the one who found the above linked references; it was someone else who looked into it. However, the material below is my own work)

The problem here is that this is secondhand testimony and vague at that, as we do not actually know which these verses are, and it even says he isn't sure how many (it's unclear to me whether the "I forgot which" is Dalrymple saying he forgot, or the writer reporting it saying he forgot which he said). This claim could still be true, but unless we have the testimony of someone who can show their work on the subject--or at least firsthand testimony of someone who did the work--the claim must be regarded as uncertain. Has there been anyone who can demonstrate that all but a few verses can be found in the first three centuries? I'm sure there must have been someone who made something where they included a note for each New Testament verse as to who quoted it.

In order to try to determine it, I tried to make use of this site:

Church Fathers Scripture Index

www.catholiccrossreference.online

This site is for looking up quotations of the church fathers of the Bible. You put in the verse, and it'll tell you the ones that quoted it. Now, it should be noted that this is only searching through the works found at CCEL and thus is missing any that weren't in those. However, I believe CCEL has pretty much all of the ones from the first three centuries (except Irenaeus's Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, because a copy was only discovered in 1905, and the Ante-Nicene Fathers series), and it's later ones that it's missing... for example, none of Jerome's biblical commentaries are there. But they've gotten the first three century ones, so we can search. One other issue with it is that searches for footnotes, so a footnote mentioning a verse, even if it's not in reference to an actual quote, will still show up. It even triggers footnotes for introductory material that the editor included, and footnotes that say something like "see Matthew 2" even if only a small part of it is actually quoted mean any verse from Matthew 2 will find it. One also must in some cases confirm it isn't a spurious writing; for example, epistles attributed to Ignatius that are stated to be spurious even in the Ante-Nicene Fathers series will be triggered and it won't clearly label them as such.

The first one listed for Matthew 1:1 is a quote by Ignatius... however, this is from one of the spurious epistles (regrettably, the search does not clearly articulate this was in the "spurious" section). However, other writers from the first three centuries do refer to it, like Irenaeus, o we have a quote on this one. However, Matthew 1:2 through Matthew 1:11 is included in any early church father writing. Matthew 1:12 turns up a reference, but not a direct quote, by Irenaeus ("For Joseph is shown to be the son of Joachim and Jechoniah, as also Matthew sets forth in his pedigree" which the footnote says refers to Matthew 1:12-16). I am not sure if a reference rather than a quote satisfies the requirement. Let's suppose it does. Moving forward, Matthew 1:17 and 1:18. 1:19 runs into a weird spot where we don't find quotes exactly from early church fathers, but we do see apocryphal writings like the Gospel of the Nativity of Mary as well as the Diatessaron (a combination of the Gospels into a single document) say these things. I'll be generous and count them. So with these generous counts, we do get the rest of Matthew 1.

However, we see that in the first chapter of Matthew we find 10 verses not quoted, even with being generous in what we accept as a quote. Because the Diatessaron would cover so much of the gospels I decided to skip over to Acts, and we indeed find no quote of Acts 1:2 until Augustine, the same with Acts 1:13. I want to again stress I am trying to be as generous as possible as to what constitutes a quote; some of the ones I counted as being quoted were just references rather than an actual quote or were in some kind of apocryphal work or were just included the Diatessaron, a compilation rather than being a real quotation. Oh, and if anyone is wondering, I did search for "Acts" and "Matt" in Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching (as it does mention when there are quotations) and the ones I mentioned did not turn up there either.

So here we have, being very generous with the definition of quotations, twelve verses already not found. And I didn't really bother to look through the rest of the gospels (including most of Matthew), the rest of Acts, any of the epistles, or Revelation, where I'm sure I could find more. The point here was merely to see if I could exceed 11, and I already did. So this claim of all but eleven--which was secondhand testimony--seems to be false, and yet this is the actual source for the much-repeated "almost all of the NT was quoted" in the first three centuries.

tlr;dr version: The claim that "almost all of the New Testament was quoted by the church fathers of the first three centuries" appears to date back to a secondhand anecdote of someone claiming they found all but seven or eleven verses of the New Testament in the first three centuries (without specifying what those quotations were). But even using a generous definition of quotations, I was able to find (in the first chapter of Matthew and the beginning of the first chapter of Acts) twelve verses not quoted in that period; as I had already gone beyond eleven, I stopped there. So this talking point doesn't seem accurate. We can clearly find a lot of verses quoted in the first three centuries, but not almost all.

Thanks. I will get back to my source about this and see what he says.

 

[jas3]

The problem is that both the bronze serpent and the Ark had no power in and of themselves.

Neither do icons.

So unless you want to say that the spirit or whatever of the saint is in the image, I can't buy this as an explanation.

It doesn't have to correspond exactly to icons for it to be evidence of a pious use of images.

I care about what the earliest Church believed, as should all Christians. I said earlier there is evidence that infant baptism is a second-century accretion. We have an equivalent of a money trail with that.

That doesn't answer why you would find it convincing, though. You believe you've identified an accretion in the second century, so the third century should be just as suspect if not moreso.

 

[All Becomes New]

It doesn't have to correspond exactly to icons for it to be evidence of a pious use of images.

I am not against "pious use of images." I am against praying through the icon as if it is a window into heaven.

That doesn't answer why you would find it convincing, though. You believe you've identified an accretion in the second century, so the third century should be just as suspect if not moreso.

Not all things are even. Some things develop quickly and other things slower. We must go based on a case-by-case basis.

 

[jas3]

I am not against "pious use of images." I am against praying through the icon as if it is a window into heaven.

To use more academic terminology, these are instances of cultic use of images, which is the category under which iconodulia falls.

 

[abacabb3]

To his credit, Dr. Ortlund is one of the best Protestant apologists on Youtube, but he's not an expert on iconography. He admits as much in his videos where he says he's not familiar with the iconographic traditions in the Oriental Orthodox and Church of the East communions. And like many academics, he tends to take an overly skeptical view of early Christian writings (and he absolutely holds a double standard when demanding proof for doctrines like icon veneration or the assumption of Mary versus his own rejection of baptismal regeneration or first-millennium ecclesiology).

Indeed, this film deconstructs his whole apologetic and shows that the 1st had a vibrant artistic culture:

 

[jas3]

Indeed, this film deconstructs his whole apologetic and shows that the 1st had a vibrant artistic culture:

Dr. Ortlund's argument, to his credit, is not that the art didn't exist, but that it wasn't used for a religious purpose beyond art. But this documentary provides evidence for the cultic use of images specifically to address his skepticism.

My guess is that Gavin would respond to the documentary by arguing that the neutral mentions of iconography aren't neutral but should be read as hostile. That still doesn't get around the problems for his position of the prevalence of Christian and Jewish iconography, and I've found his approach to those to be similar to what we've seen in this thread where one can make the standard of proof for religious use of images to be arbitrarily high to ensure one can never be convinced against iconoclasm. He would also likely cite the "overwhelming scholarly consensus," which makes for good rhetoric but isn't actually an argument.

Now that I think about it, he does actually, in a way, argue that iconography didn't exist by citing Eusebius in one of his letters where he questions who had even heard of a portrait of one of the Apostles, if I remember correctly. In the absence of any other evidence, such a statement might be compelling, but as the documentary shows, we do have examples of iconography predating that letter, so Eusebius may have been speaking hyperbolically. Whatever the case, it can't be argued that he iconography didn't exist.

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

From what I gathered, forms of Arianism brought people back to old covenant type thinking, which began the persecution of people that desired to have Christian Art within the Parish's for the sake of teaching and visualization. Because Islam is a form of Arianism, it continues to hold to that concept of the Arian Heresies pulling people back into old covenant thinking.

Is this a fair summary, or is there more to it? Also, what is the final stance of the Mother Church on all of this, when considered today?

Nearly every attempt to "go back to the Bible [only]" leads to Pharisaic reasoning on almost everything. The Arians were part of the "back to the Bible" movement. They eschewed many traditions, preferring their own interpretations of biblical passages over the apostolic traditions of interpretation that the Catholic Church of their day espoused. This is a lesson we can learn from. The Holy Scriptures are complex, and it takes good knowledge of culture, history, and ancient languages to interpret them well. However, whenever people jump onto the "back to the Bible" train, they invariably abandon traditional interpretations and create new ones of their own.