Idolaltry by Dr. Laurence Brown
APPENDIX 1 -- IDOLATRY
“It is a strange irony that those who reverence stones choose to live in glass ideologies.”
--present author
Idolatry -- every monotheist abhors the thought, and yet many commit the crime themselves. Few, in the modern day, fully grasp the issues, for the full understanding of idolatry has been buried beneath nearly 1,700 years of Church tradition.
The Second Commandment, in part, reads, “You shall not make for yourself a carved image -- any likeness
of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them nor serve them.” (Exodus 20:4-5; NKJV). Alternate translations employ slightly different, though significant, wording as follows: “You shall not bow down to them or
worship them.” (NRSV, NIV) The commandment not to make carved images speaks for itself, as does the subsequent decree not to make any likeness whatsoever. These directives should not demand much thought. However, it is the apparent nature of man to seek loopholes in laws, taxes and scripture. Consequently, there are those who consider the initial order not to make “carved images” or “any likeness of anything” conditional upon the following decree not to serve or worship the aforementioned images -- the argument being that if a person doesn’t worship the image, then it’s permissible to make one. But that’s not what the commandment says, and in any case, caution dictates that a person not even approach that which has been forbidden, for the one who trespasses can expect to be held accountable for damages.
For the sake of discussion, a person nonetheless may wish to consider what the words ‘serve’ and ‘worship’ really mean.
To begin with, amongst the definitions of the word ‘serve’ are, “To give the service and respect due to (a superior)”
[1] The question arises, “If placing such images in exalted positions (frequently literally upon pedestals), spending time and energy to dust, clean, beautify, and preserve are not acts of service and respect, then what are?”
Perhaps a person can concede the above, but claim that such services are not acts of worship. But how can a person be so sure? Etymology of the word ‘worship’ traces back to an object having a sense of worth, or worthiness, as follows:
“
Worship began life as a compound noun meaning virtually ‘worthiness.’ It was formed from the adjective
worth and the noun suffix –
ship ‘state, condition,’ and at first was used for ‘distinction, credit, dignity.’ This soon passed into ‘respect, reverence,’ but it was not used in specifically religious contexts until the 13th century. The verb dates from the 12th century.”
[2]
And,
“Worship: “In Anglo-Saxon, ‘weorð-scipe’ meant ‘worth-ship,’ in which ‘worth’ is to be understood in the sense of value or honor. Worship, therefore, originally meant the state of worth, the quality of being valuable or worthy.”
[3]
The point can be made that if such images are without value and completely devoid of respect and reverence, there should be no objection to interning them in a garbage dump or immersing them in the ripe sewage of a well-used septic tank. If a person stands in objection thereof, the fact that such images are respected and valued becomes evident.
Regardless of how a person views the subject, assigning the smallest degree of value to an object is to assign a degree of worthiness, or worship. A person need not bow down or pray to an image in order to qualify as worshipping it (i.e. assigning worth to it), although to do so certainly raises the offense by logarithmic degrees.
To cite a well-known historical practice, which has persisted to this day in certain countries, clergy, royalty and members of the social elite were frequently greeted as “Your worship.” In the minds of the people, such tribute did not normally indicate the impression of divinity, but rather worth and status at a distinctively lofty level. It was not the normal state of affairs to pray to such of the ‘elite,’ to fast for them, to pay charity at their command or make pilgrimage to their palaces. Rather, such men and women were venerated for their worth and position. So is that worship? According to word definitions, yes. And by their own words, and frequently by their own actions, men and women alike bore witness to the fact. Is this to imply that such commoners, whether knowingly or unknowingly, worshipped the clergy, royalty, and others of the social elite? Uh, yes. Yup, that’s about it. For who, by nature of wealth, high social status, appointment to royal office or position in the clergy, is closer to God than any other person of piety? Kings and rich men will not be able to purchase plots in paradise with their worldly wealth, and a poor individual of piety and God-fear may well surpass a priest or pope who preaches contrary to the commandments of God. If a person venerates another to the point of taking such a one for guidance in preference to the laws and guidance of revelation, that person worships (i.e. assigns worth to) the other in priority over Almighty God. If that is not a form of idolatry, it certainly constitutes blasphemy by other accounts.
The definition of idolatry does not require a stone statue, although idolatry reaches its pinnacle when people start to worship inanimate objects which can neither respond to their call nor help them. The definition of idolatry is as follows:
Idolatry: “…idolatry refers to the worship of gods other than the one, true God, and the use of images is characteristic of the life of the heathen.”
[4]
It is interesting to have a Catholic encyclopedia provide such a definition, which in the minds of many is self-condemning.
The unfortunate situation of the present age is one in which institutions of the established Church claim justification for their teachings on the basis of longevity of tradition rather than scriptural correctness. Rare is the person who discards seniority of religious practice in favor of the unfashionable analysis of that which scripture actually supports. Examples do exist, however. As recently as the 1500’s, the Nestorian Christians of the Malabar coast in India were presented with an image of the Virgin Mary for the first time. Largely sheltered from European influence, these Malabar coast Christians remained ignorant of the changes instituted by the various councils and synods of the European Churches until the establishment of sea routes for trade in the sixteenth century CE. Existing as an enclave of preserved Early Christian belief and practice, E. Gibbon noted:
“Their separation from the Western world had left them in ignorance of the improvements or corruptions of a thousand years; and their conformity with the faith and practice of the fifth century, would equally disappoint the prejudices of a Papist or a Protestant.”
[5]
So how did they respond when presented with an image of the Virgin Mary?
“…the title of mother of God was offensive to their ear, and they measured with scrupulous avarice the honours of the Virgin Mary, whom the superstition of the Latins had almost exalted to the rank of a goddess. When her image was first presented to the disciples of St. Thomas, they indignantly exclaimed, ‘We are Christians, not idolaters!’”
[6]
Their response invited condemnation as heretics by a Roman Catholic Church which had long before grown accustomed to statues and images, but the Nestorian Christians were not alone in their views, for,
“The primitive Christians were possessed with an unconquerable repugnance to the use and abuse of images, and this aversion may be ascribed to their descent from the Jews, and their enmity to the Greeks. The Mosaic law had severely proscribed all representations of the Deity; and that precept was firmly established in the principles and practice of the chosen people. The wit of the Christian apologists was pointed against the foolish idolaters, who bowed before the workmanship of their own hands, the images of brass and marble, which, had
they been endowed with sense and motion, should have started rather from the pedestal to adore the creative powers of the artist.”
[7]
In more simple and modern English,
“The primitive Christians had attacked image worship as the work of the devil and there had been wholesale destruction of every type of idol when Christianity had at last triumphed. But over the succeeding centuries, the images crept back, appearing under new names but, to the critical eye, with an identical role. It was the Christians of the East who first began to feel that much of the pagan religion that their forefathers had destroyed, at such cost in martyrs’ blood, was insensibly being restored.”
[8]
Religious art nonetheless received official approval at the Council of Nicaea, and the process of infiltration of idol worship into Catholic services was set into motion in the year 325 CE. E. Gibbon comments:
“At first the experiment was made with caution and scruple; and the venerable pictures were discreetly allowed to instruct the ignorant, to awaken the cold, and to gratify the prejudices of the heathen proselytes. By a slow though inevitable progression, the honours of the original were transferred to the copy; the devout Christian prayed before the image of a saint; and the Pagan rites of genuflexion, luminaries, and incense, again stole into the Catholic church.”
[9]
Given time,
“The worship of images had stolen into the church by insensible degrees, and each petty step was pleasing to the superstitious mind, as productive of comfort and innocent of sin. But in the beginning of the eighth century, in the full magnitude of the abuse, the more timorous Greeks were awakened by an apprehension, that, under the mask of Christianity, they had restored the religion of their fathers; they heard, with grief and impatience, the name of idolaters; the incessant charge of the Jews and Mahometans, who derived from the law and the Koran an immortal hatred to graven images and all relative worship.”
[10]
All those who took instruction from apostolic examples opposed pollution of the pure and simple worship conveyed and exemplified by the teacher Jesus. Hence, when Emperor Constantine’s sister, Constantina, requested a representation of Christ Jesus in the year 326, Eusebius of Nicomedia responded with the admonishment,
“What, and what kind of likeness of Christ is there? Such images are forbidden by the second commandment.”
[11]
The voice of Joseph Priestley should fairly be heard at this point, for he penned a short chapter on the subject which reads, in its entirety,
“Temples being now built in honour of particular saints, and especially the martyrs, it was natural to ornament them with paintings and sculptures representing the great exploits of such saints and martyrs; and this was a circumstance that made the Christian churches still more like the heathen temples, which were also adorned with statues and pictures; and this also would tend to draw the ignorant multitude to the new worship, making the transition the easier.
Paulinus, a convert from paganism, a person of senatorial rank, celebrated for his parts and learning, and who died afterwards bishop of Nola in Italy, distinguished himself in this way. He rebuilt, in a splendid manner, his own episcopal church, dedicated to Felix the martyr, and in the porticoes of it, he had painted the miracles of Moses and of Christ, together with the acts of Felix and of other martyrs, whose relics were deposited in it. This, he says, was done with a design to draw the rude multitude, habituated to the prophane rites of paganism, to a knowledge and good opinion of the Christian doctrine, by learning from those pictures what they were not capable of learning from books, of the lives and acts of Christian saints.
The custom of having pictures in churches being once begun (which was about the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century, and generally by converts from paganism) the more wealthy among the Christians seem to have vied with each other, who should build and ornament their churches in the most expensive manner, and nothing perhaps contributed more to it than the example of this Paulinus.
It appears from Chrysostom, that pictures and images were to be seen in the principal churches of his time, but this was in the East. In Italy, they were but rare in the beginning of the fifth century, and the bishop of that country, who had got his church painted, thought proper to make an apology for it, by saying that the people being amused with the pictures would have less time for regaling themselves. The origin of this custom was probably in Cappadocia, where Gregory Nyssenus was bishop, the same who commended Gregory Thaumaturgus for contriving to make the Christian festivals resemble the pagan ones.
Though many churches in this age were adorned with the images of saints and martyrs, there do not appear to have been many of Christ. These are said to have been introduced by the Cappodocians; and the first of these were only symbolical ones, being made in the form of a lamb. One of this kind Epiphanius found in the year 389, and he was so provoked at it, that he tore it. It was not till the council of Constantinople, called
In Trullo, held so late as the year 707, that pictures of Christ were ordered to be drawn in the form of men.”
[12]
A short nineteen years later, in the year 726, Leo III, also known as Leo the Isaurian, and best known as Leo the Iconoclast, began to destroy images within the rippling circle of his influence, beginning first in Constantinople. As T. Hodgkin notes,
“…it was the contact with Mohammedanism which opened the eyes of Leo and the men who stood round his throne, ecclesiastics as well as laymen, to the degrading and idolatrous superstitions that had crept into the Church and were overlaying the life of a religion which, at its proclamation the purest and most spiritual, was fast becoming one of the most superstitious and materialistic that the world had ever seen. Shrinking at first from any representation whatever of visible objects, then allowing herself the use of beautiful and pathetic emblems (such as the Good Shepherd), in the fourth century the Christian Church sought to instruct the converts whom her victory under Constantine was bringing to her in myriads, by representations on the walls of the churches of the chief event of Scripture history. From this the transition to specially reverenced pictures of Christ, the Virgin and the Saints, was natural and easy. The crowning absurdity and blasphemy, the representation of the Almighty Maker of the Universe as a bearded old man, floating in the sky, was not yet perpetrated, nor was to be dared till the human race had taken several steps downward into the darkness of the Middle Ages; but enough had been already done to show whither the Church was tending, and to give point to the sarcasm of the followers of the Prophet when they hurled the epithet ‘idolaters’ at the craven and servile populations of Egypt and Syria.”
[13]
The irony of the transition from Leo III, victor over the Muslims in Eastern Europe, to Leo the Iconoclast is unavoidable. On one hand Leo III defeated the advances of the Saracens, and on the other hand he personally adopted the holy project of cleansing the Christian religion of the adultery of idolatry – an objective common to both Leo and his cabinet, in addition to the Muslims he had suffered so severely to defeat. In any case, Pope Gregory II attempted to dampen Leo’s enthusiasm with the following council:
“Are you ignorant that the popes are the bond of union, the mediators of peace between the East and West? The eyes of the nations are fixed on our humility; and they revere, as a God upon earth, the apostle St. Peter, whose image you threaten to destroy…Abandon your rash and fatal enterprise; reflect, tremble, and repent. If you persist, we are innocent of the blood that will be spilt in the contest; may it fall on your own head.”
[14]
As stated in the preface to
Saint Joan, “The Churches must learn humility as well as teach it.”
[15] No doubt the person who claims humility, like the one who claims modesty, instantly stands disqualified (i.e. “Look at how humble and modest I am! Can’t you see I’m the most humble and modest person you’ve ever seen?”). More importantly, the pope who sanctions images while at the same time stating, “But for the statue of St. Peter himself, which all the kingdoms of the West esteem as a god on earth, the whole West would take a terrible revenge.”
[16] should perceive an asteroid-sized theological inconsistency. Exactly who should “reflect, tremble and repent” should be boldly obvious, especially in consideration of the issue being one which confronts the commandments of Almighty God. That Pope Gregory II and his followers were willing to spill blood in protection of their images testifies to the extraordinarily high value (that is to say the worth, the worthiness -- i.e. the
worship) they focused upon such religious art. And spill blood they did, to such an extent that the defeat of Leo’s army at Ravenna suffused the waters of the river Po with the blood of those slain. So badly were the waters of the river Po polluted that “…during six years, the public prejudice abstained from the fish of the river…”
[17]
When the Synod of Constantinople was called in 754 CE, the Roman Catholic Church boycotted due to non-conformity of the Greek Church with their decrees. Like a spoiled child who refuses to share toys unless everyone plays ‘their way,’ the Roman Catholics withdrew representation. Or, at least, that was the excuse they offered at the time. A more likely scenario, perhaps, was that the Roman Catholic Church recognized their impotent justifications for instituting practices in conflict with those of the apostolic fathers and the commandments of the Almighty God they claimed to worship. The 338 bishops of Europe and Anatolia in attendance at the Synod of Constantinople (the Seventh General Council) decreed as follows:
“After a serious deliberation of six months the three hundred and thirty-eight bishops pronounced and subscribed a unanimous decree that all visible symbols of Christ, except in the eucharist, were either blasphemous or heretical; that image worship was a corruption of Christianity and a renewal of Paganism; that all such monuments of idolatry should be broken or erased; and that those who should refuse to deliver the objects of their private superstition, were guilty of disobedience to the authority of the church and of the emperor.”
[18]
The fact that the eucharist was exempted from association with paganism is curious to those who note the rites and rituals of the ancient Persians and Egyptians – civilizations whose geographic and temporal proximity to the land and time of the ministry of Jesus and Paul cannot be ignored.
The Persians employed consecrated water and bread in the ancient cult of Mithras.
[19] T. W. Doane commented,
“It is in the ancient religion of Persia – the religion of Mithra, the Mediator, the Redeemer and Saviour – that we find the nearest resemblance to the sacrament of the Christians, and from which it was evidently borrowed. Those who were initiated into the mysteries of Mithra, or became
members, took the sacrament of bread and wine….
This food they called the Eucharist, of which no one was allowed to partake but the persons who believed that the things they taught were true, and who had been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sin. Tertullian, who flourished from 193 to 220 A. D., also speaks of the Mithraic devotees celebrating the Eucharist.
The Eucharist of the Lord and Saviour, as the Magi called Mithra, the second person in their Trinity, or their Eucharistic sacrifice, was always made exactly and in every respect the same as that of the orthodox Christians, for both sometimes used water instead of wine, or a mixture of the two.”
[20]
Osiris, the sun-god of ancient Egypt, was the most popular of the Pagan gods of ancient Egypt, and to little surprise. The cult of Osiris offered the same allure of an easy salvation as Paul’s concept of salvation through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, for it is stated regarding Osiris that, “The secret of that popularity was, that he had lived on earth as benefactor, died for man’s good, and lived again as friend and judge.”
[21] The birth of Osiris was celebrated with cradle and lights, his alleged resurrection was likewise celebrated annually, and his death commemorated by the eating of sacred bread, the consecration of which, through the sacred rites of the priests, was conceived to effect the transmutation of bread to the veritable flesh of Osiris.
[22] If it all sounds familiar, it should -- James Bonwick comments, “As it is recognised that the bread after sacerdotal rites becomes mystically the body of Christ, so the men of the Nile declared their bread after sacerdotal rites became mystically the body of Isis or Osiris: in such manner they ate their god.”
[23] Furthermore, he records,
“The cakes of Isis were, like the cakes of Osiris, of a round shape. They were placed upon the altar. Gliddon writes that they were “identical in shape with the consecrated cake of the Roman and Eastern Churches.” Melville assures us, “The Egyptians marked this holy bread with St. Andrew’s Cross.” The
Presence bread was broken before being distributed by the priests to the people, and was supposed to become the flesh and blood of the Diety. The miracle was wrought by the hand of the officiating priest, who blessed the food.”
[24]
In like fashion, Buddhists in ancient times offered a sacrament of bread and wine, Hindus an eucharist of the juice (wine) of the Soma, or Haoma, plant, and the ancient Greeks a sacrament of bread and wine in tribute to Demeter (Ceres), the alleged goddess of corn (which was made into bread) and Dionysos (Bacchus), whom they conceived to be the god of wine, eating, as it were, the flesh and drinking the blood of their god or gods.
[25]
The religious parallels are so obvious as to demand explanation. A person can reasonably question how the mark of St. Andrew’s cross was placed on the bread when the cults of Isis and Osiris preceded St. Andrew’s birth by over 2,000 years. Similar suspicions of religious plagiarism are shaken awake when a person notices the striking similarity between the mysteries of Pauline christianity and those of the cults of Isis and Osiris – mysteries to include the virgin birth (Isis the virgin mother, Horus the child) and atoning sacrifice of Osiris, followed by resurrection and assumption of role as redeemer. Justin Martyr, the famous apologist, is reported to have found no other explanation than to claim that Satan copied the Christian ceremonies in order to deceive and mislead the remainder of mankind.
[26] However, making note of the time sequence, in which the above-mentioned eucharistic practices (not to mention the mysteries of faith) preceded those of the more modern Christian community by over 2,000 years, combined with the fact that copying something before it came into existence is a feat of no insignificant difficulty, T. W. Doane reasonably concludes,
“These facts show that the
Eucharist is another piece of Paganism adopted by the Christians. The story of Jesus and his disciples being at supper, where the Master did break bread, may be true, but the statement that he said, “Do this in remembrance of me,” – “this is my body,” and “this is my blood,” was undoubtedly invented to give authority to the
mystic ceremony, which had been borrowed from Paganism.”
[27]
Invented statements, in the Bible? Is that possible? How can a person consider the Bible to contain invented statements when all of the gospels record the words of Jesus at the Paschal meal? Well, all but one, that is. According to John 13:1, Jesus was arrested before the feast of the passover. So it’s John against the Synoptics. Or, to make the contest more even, it’s John against the ‘
quella’ – the hypothesized common source document of the Synoptics.
In any case, lest a person misunderstand, a symbolic interpretation of the Persian, Egyptian or Catholic sacramental rites is not to be tolerated. The Council of Trent, 1545-63 CE, established laws concerning the alleged transmutation of the eucharist, and these laws stand to this day in the Catholic Church. Not even the more modern Vatican II Council effected a change. In short, their judgement reads:
“Canon 1: If anyone denies that in the sacrament of the most Holy Eucharist are contained truly, really and substantially the body and blood together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and consequently the whole Christ, but says that He is in it only as in a sign, or figure or force, let him be anathema.”
[28]
In other words, anyone who considers the bread and wine of the Eucharist to be symbolic is to be anathema (cursed and excommunicated) and, given the historical precedent regarding those who were considered heretics, at risk of being burned at the stake. The above judgement is reinforced by the following:
“Canon 6: If anyone says that in the holy sacrament of the Eucharist, Christ, the only begotten Son of God, is not to be adored with the worship of
latria*, also outwardly manifested, and is consequently neither to be venerated with a special festive solemnity, nor to be solemnly borne about in procession according to the laudable and universal rite and custom of the holy Church, or is not to be set publicly before the people to be adored and that the adorers thereof are idolaters, let him be anathema.”
[29]
In other words, those who refuse to adore, venerate, or glorify are to suffer the same fate as those who claim symbolic nature to the eucharist. Such Catholic laws remain in force to the present day, so there is little wonder that many Protestant divisions have cautiously sidestepped away from their Catholic cousins and adopted somewhat more critical views of the modern doctrines of transubstantiation and veneration of the Eucharist. The elimination of the eucharist from the services of many sects is particularly easy to understand considering that many people and cultures associate the eucharist with the totemistic practices of primitive cultures -- cultures which taught assimilation of the qualities of the ancestral totem through eating bread transmuted into flesh. Which group has the real sacred saltine remains the subject of ongoing debate.
To return to the subject at hand, the Roman Catholic Church responded to the Synod of Constantinople of 754 CE by calling a second Council of Nicaea in 787 CE, which reinstated approval of image worship on the basis that, “…the worship of images is agreeable to Scripture and reason, to the fathers and councils of the church…”
[30]
Whether a person agrees or not is subject to each individual’s view of history, understanding of scripture, reverence for the commandments of the Old Testament and, above all, fear of incurring the displeasure of Almighty God.
The religious communities which stood in objection to idol worship in Christianity were largely buried by the religiously ‘cleansing’ hands of a powerful and oppressive Catholic church, beginning with the slaughter of Unitarian Christians in the reign of Empress Theodora in the mid-800’s. Through her methods of mass-elimination, she gained the dubious distinction of being the one “…who restored the images to the Oriental church.”
[31] All subsequent efforts to eradicate images in the church met with the end result witnessed in the practices of the present day.
Of equal or greater concern than the taking of idols is the adoption of human focuses of worship. Priest worship surfaced in the early 13th century, in the form of the assumption of a human intermediary through which confession and absolution of sins could be channeled. Pope worship became manifest in the form of ritual kissing of the Pope’s foot or ring in combination with the creative doctrine of papal infallibility, as defined by Pope Pius IX at the first Vatican Counsel in 1869-1870. The worship of Mary and the title of ‘Mother of God’ was canonized considerably earlier, at the Council of Ephesus in 431 CE, with the practice of directing prayers to saints, angels, and the Virgin Mary officially sanctioned from the early seventh century. The famous prayer to the Virgin Mary,
Ave Marie (
Hail Mary), lagged slightly behind (to the tune of nearly a thousand years), having received official formulation in the reformed Breviary of Pope Pius V in 1568. However, from amongst the candidates for human focuses of worship, Christ Jesus stands out as the most worshipped mortal ever to have walked the Earth.
A powerful challenge to Trinitarian thought, initially attributed to Theophilus Lindsey (1723-1804 CE) and subsequently argued by Unitarian Christians worldwide, queries how those who worshipped Jesus would respond, were Christ Jesus to reappear and demand answers to the following questions:
a) Why did you address your devotions to me? Did I ever direct you to do it, or propose myself as an object of religious worship?
b) Did I not uniformly and to the last set you an example myself of praying to the Father, to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God? (John 20:17)
c) When my disciples requested me to teach them to pray (Luke 11:1-2), did I teach them to pray to myself or to any other person but the Father?
d) Did I ever call myself God, or tell you that I was the maker of the world and to be worshipped?
e) Solomon, after building the temple said, “Will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house which I have built.” (I Kings 8:27)
The above questions have all the more relevance, for that Christians expect that upon the return of Jesus, many of those who call themselves Christian will be denounced as disbelievers -- i.e. followers of teachings other than those of Jesus. And which teachings might be better candidates for being astray than those of men who prophesied in his name, cast out demons in his name, and performed many wonders in his name, but who, as described in Matthew 7:21-23, will be disowned by the very Christ Jesus they thought to serve? And that is the very point, isn’t it? For did Christ Jesus call to the servitude and worship of himself, or of One Greater than himself?
Of interest is the fact that praying to anyone other than the Father is an innovation distant from both the teachings and the time of the messenger Jesus, as below:
“Accordingly, the practice of praying to the Father only, was long universal in the Christian church: the short addresses to Christ, as those in the Litany, “
Lord have mercy upon us, Christ have mercy upon us,” being comparatively of late date. In the Clementine liturgy, the oldest that is extant, contained in the
Apostolical Constitutions, which were probably composed about the fourth century, there is no trace of any such thing. Origen, in a large treatise on the subject of prayer, urges very forcibly the propriety of praying to the Father only, and not to Christ; and as he gives no hint that the public forms of prayer had anything reprehensible in them in that respect, we are naturally led to conclude that, in his time, such petitions to Christ were unknown in the public assemblies of Christians. And such hold have early established customs on the minds of men, that, excepting the Moravians only, whose prayers are always addressed to Christ, the general practice of Trinitarians themselves is, to pray to the Father only.
Now on what principle could this early and universal practice have been founded? What is there in the doctrine of a Trinity consisting of three equal persons, to entitle the Father to that distinction, in preference to the Son or the Spirit?”
[32]
In the above quote, Priestley records an element of history which has become obscured in the fog of the last two centuries of Christian history, namely that up to and including the time of Priestley himself, being the late 1700’s, the “…general practice of Trinitarians themselves is, to pray to the Father only.” Those who might be drawn to conclude that the practice of praying to Christ Jesus dated from the period of origins, based on nothing beyond exposure to practices encountered in twentieth-century Christian sects, will find their conclusions flying wide of the center mark of truth. The fact that the only group which
did consistently direct their prayers to Christ Jesus, during the first 1,800 years of Christianity, is a little-known and poorly preserved Protestant group which took 15th century roots in Bohemia and Moravia, rather naturally prompts Priestley’s thought-provoking question. Why, indeed, if the three persons of the proposed Trinity are imagined coequal, should such a prejudice have prevailed for the first 1800 years of Christianity? Unless, that is, a greater lesson is to be learned from the consistency of early Christian devotions than is to be had from the inconsistencies of Trinitarian theology.
Just as Priestley headed a movement which blossomed into millions, if not billions, of votes in objection to the altered focus of Christian devotions, the Jewish perspective on the subject proves of interest. Orthodox Judaism, standing united against representative art of all forms and faithful to strict monotheism, condemns both the introduction of idols into Christian life and worship, as well as the detour of devotions from the one true Creator to the several chosen human elements of His creation (i.e. Jesus, Mary, the Holy Spirit, the multitude of ‘saints,’ etc.).
Although many of the practices of Orthodox Judaism have decayed through the Jewish reform movement and the creation of sects of various ideological differences, the permanence of the condemnation of representative art has largely remained within the various sects of Jewish orthodoxy. The Islamic religion, likewise suffering from the distracting deviencies of the many astray sects which litter the borders of the main body of Sunni Muslims, has nonetheless maintained the identity of a strictly iconoclastic faith, as described by Gibbon:
“The Mahometans have uniformly withstood the temptation of reducing the object of their faith and devotion to a level with the senses and imagination of man. “I believe in One God and Mahomet the apostle of God,” is the simple and invariable profession of Islam. The intellectual image of the Deity has never been degraded by any visible idol; the honours of the prophet have never transgressed the measure of human virtue; and his living precepts have restrained the gratitude of his disciples within the bounds of reason and religion.”
[33]
Similarly, the Orthodox Judaic and Sunni Islamic concepts of God do not stray into the assumption of partners in Godhead. Consequently, considering the dramatic difference between the religions of Islam and Christianity in this regard, Orthodox Jews consider the difference between Muslims and Trinitarian Christians to be the difference between monotheists and idolaters. The classic example of the open wine bottle in Jewish law emphasizes the point, for according to Jewish Law, should a Muslim touch an open bottle of wine belonging to a Jew, the wine can be sold, but not consumed. However, should the offending person be Christian, the wine is considered to have been rendered impure through the touch of an idolater, and can neither be consumed nor sold, but must be thrown away.
[1] Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. 1997. Tenth edition. Merriam-Webster Inc.
[2] Ayto, John. 1991.
Bloomsbury Dictionary of Word Origins. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Limited.
[3] New Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol 14, p. 1030.
[4] New Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol 7, p. 348.
[5] Gibbon, Edward, Esq. Vol. 5, Chapter XLVII, p. 263.
[6] Gibbon, Edward, Esq. Vol. 5, Chapter XLVII, p. 263.
[7] Gibbon, Edward, Esq. Vol. 5, Chapter XLIX, p. 359.
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