6 comments

1. How can the reading of Scripture (For example, Revelation 1) describing the appearance of the ascended Christ not produce mental images?

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2. Thank you Dr. Clark, but I fear that the argument you offer is question-begging. Having read your article and listened to previous material of yours on this topic, it seems you haven’t dealt with three important issues:

   1. In the comments of a previous podcast, I cited Francis Turretin as a Reformed Divine who thought that mental images of God and Christ were inevitable but could be innocuous (https://heidelblog.net/2024/02/heidelminicast-qa-on-mental-images-of-christ-and-whether-the-family-is-sacred-or-secular/). You replied that you suspected something about my understanding of the quote was wrong, but you repeated in this podcast that you doubted any major Reformed figure departed from the consensus. Have you discovered any new evidence to justify your continued doubts (it could be a good research project)?

   2. The Reformed Divines you cite claim that God reveals Himself to the soul in a spiritual manner “much more devoid of the physical than can be expressed,” in such a way that using mental images is an idolatrous perversion. However, this flies in the face of a Aristotelian-Thomistic psychology, which notes that it is literally impossible to think of anything, even Angels or the Trinity, without resorting to mental images (see Aquinas Summa Theologiae I.88.1-3). If I say the name “Jesus,” you literally cannot think about that name without some sensible phantasm coming into your mind (it could be a man, or the letters J-E-S-U-S on a printed Bible, but it will be something). How can the consensus position be true when it goes against this natural principle of our psychology?

   3. If it is really a sin to imagine an image when thinking about God, then it is impossible to think about God righteously apart from the beatific vision. Moreover, the Gospels would be seeming to lead us into temptation when they describe Christ walking on the water, breaking bread, weeping etc. I cannot meaningfully think about these things without turning to some sense image in my mind. Simply asserting, “Yes you can, it’s just hard because your heart’s an idol-factory” does not make it so–it simply ignores the Aristotelian-Thomistic position out of hand (a position I’m guessing Turretin embraced). This kind of piety seems to discourage thinking about Jesus. Even if you say we are not supposed to imagine the scenes in the Gospels for their aesthetic value, but meditate upon their doctrinal content, that assumes (illegitimately, I think) that we even can think of abstract doctrines without sense images. But numbers, philosophical ideas, and other abstractions have to be abstracted from particular, sensible substances (if Aristotle’s theory was right). How can Christian piety survive with such a rigid standard?

   I hope I am not sounding obnoxious or disrespectful–I speak because I have a sensitive conscience and this issue has bothered me before. I don’t want to reject the Law of God, but I cannot for the life of me see how this makes sense given certain natural law principles about our nature. Perhaps I am missing something. Any answer you could provide would be appreciated.

   Blessings

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   • Cole,

     I’ve been both ill, traveling, and very busy.

     2. I’ve looked at Turretin, who says,

     XI. From a mental image to a sculptured or painted image, the consequence does not hold good. The former is of necessity, since I cannot perceive anything without some species or idea of it formed in the mind. Now this image is always conjoined with the spirit of discernment by which we so separate the true from the false that there is no danger of idolatry. But the latter is a work of mere judgment and will, expressly prohibited by God and always attended with great danger of idolatry. Hence it is falsely asserted that it is no less a sin to present images of certain things to the mind or to commit them to writing and exhibit them to be read, than to present them to the view when painted. For there is a wide difference between these things.

     Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 11.10.11, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., trans. George Musgrave Giger, vol. 2 (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992–1997), 65.

     If we pay close attention to the opening phrase, it’s not clear to me that he’s speaking of images of God. In the previous section (10) he was. That’s explicit. The specific question Turretin seems to be addressing in section 11, however, is the process of moving from a mental image (ab imagine mentali) to (ad) a sculpted image (imaginem scultptam) or a picture (vel pictam). In general, it is true that one must have mental image in order to made a visible image Turretin was quite clear that visible images of God are forbidden, ergo, it seems unlikely that he was here sanctioning mental images of God.

     2. The Christian use of Aristotle has always been ministerial not magisterial. Where Aristotle is wrong, we dissent or where his method leads to error, we dissent. When I was ordained I did now swear any vow to uphold Aristotle. Nevertheless, regarded created things, what Aristotle said is true. God is not a creature. Jesus is God the Son incarnate and his deity may not be imaged. His humanity though true and consubstantial with ours is not subject to our imaginations. Any depiction, even mental only, of his humanity is utterly subjective and not actually Jesus whom neither you nor I have ever seen.

     3. As I said in the article and in the podcast, if we stop looking at images (idols) we are less apt to make mental images. I didn’t say that it was easy but the Reformed weren’t stupid.

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     • Thank you sir,
       I’m sorry for your illness and hope you are better. Thank you for clarifying, and I appreciate your elaboration.

       I will say:

       1. Perhaps that’s right, but then I’m not sure why he would say “Now this image is always conjoined with the spirit of discernment by which we so separate the true from the false that there is no danger of idolatry.” Why mention “idolatry” if he’s just talking about moving from mental image to carved image in general? I think your conclusion that he wouldn’t likely affirm mental images of God if he proscribes graven images begs the question at issue—he seems to be saying that mental images do not involve one in the same dangers as physical images, and those dangers are dangers to idolatry. But graven images only lead to idolatry insofar as we misuse them to represent God.

       2. Agreed that Aristotle is not infallible, but what is the argument that his principle is inapplicable to God? His being the Creator doesn’t prevent me from accurately describing Him with words (which are ectypal, creaturely things that don’t exhaust who He is and can be misleading if not taken analogically). Why in principle could this not extend to the “mental words” or images I form in order to understand (the church fathers link Christ’s being Word and Image together)?

       3. I don’t believe the Reformed were stupid, but that’s not to say they may not have made mistakes because of different philosophical commitments. Atheist scientists claim that the world came from nothing, but they don’t mean “nothing” the way careful philosophers define it. I wonder if something similar is at work with the Reformed insistence on “images.” It seems psychologically naive to claim that one can in principle think of God without any sense impressions. Perhaps the only thing they meant was you can’t imagine something you think of as God’s appearance—as though imagining printed text or uttered syllables is more virtuous than imagining fathers, Kings, or white figures on thrones. What was the content of the thoughts of Reformed people when they thought about God I wonder?

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       • Cole,

         1. Turretin is discussing one thing and you are discussing another. There’s a formal but not substantial connection between your case and his question and answer.

         2. I don’t understand the Reformed to have come to such profound conclusions (e.g., what is idolatry) on the basis of philosophy. Turretin was explicit that philosophy was ministerial. They used Aristotle’s categories to help explain what they understood Scripture to teach.

         3. I’m not prepared to say that all the Reformed churches were wrong. They might be but your case that they were all wrong hangs by a very slender thread indeed.

         You may not mean to accuse the Reformed of being stupid but, again, effectively, that’s what you’re doing when you accuse them of being psychologically naive. I am impressed again by recent reading of Luther and Melanchthon, for another project, of how much we have yet to learn from them and how far ahead of us they were. E.g., had the NPP advocates read them on what “works of the law” are in Paul they might have realized how ignorant they (the NPP) were of the Christian tradition and the sophistication of the Reformation reading of Paul.

         Further, aren’t you failing to distinguish the creature from the Creator, which is fundamental to Reformed theology? It’s one thing to think of a pencil. It’s quite another to image God. On this see Anselm’s Reply to Guanilo.

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3. Please help me here. Were there not angels depicted in the Temple? How do we separate this from the 2nd Commandment?

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