According to the Larger Westminster Confession, the second commandment rules out even the creation of mental images of God.
What does this mean for children’s Bible storybooks, a television series like “The Chosen,” the sixth century Sinai Pantocrator, or Grünewald’s tortuous Isenheim Altarpiece, all of which present our eyes and imaginations with images of Jesus.
The commandment against “graven images” forbids the human tendency to project or manufacture or imagine gods or objects of worship other than the Living God.
This is not what has happened in the carpenter from Nazareth. He is not made but begotten.
This is not what has happened in the carpenter from Nazareth. He is not made but begotten.
*God has acted* and there’s a perfect image of God in the humanity of Jesus, whose flesh is stamped with the divine substance, so that when we see the Son we see the Father, whose image we likewise bear.
Indeed, God is not a flower or a mountain or an geometric equation or a projected personality like Isis or Apollo or a clay statue or a beautiful painting or the gods we manufacture to bless our violence, underwrite our greed, and energize our desires.
No. God is in Jesus moving, respirating clay.
As an ordinary human, Jesus can be seen and described and imagined and drawn and sculpted and contemplated.
Yet as with every thought or depiction of any human person their mystery is greater than their representation.
As an ordinary human, Jesus can be seen and described and imagined and drawn and sculpted and contemplated.
Yet as with every thought or depiction of any human person their mystery is greater than their representation.
How much more so in Christ for here not a god but the God is infinitely present and available to us even as he is infinitely hidden.
Thanks to @kweh for posing the question.
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