False Images Of God

The Second Commandment deals with several crucial questions about the nature of god and how it is appropriate to worship him: How do we perceive God? How do we explain Him to ourselves and to others? Idols are representations of false, nonexistent gods but is it permissible to use realistic paintings or other images that represent the true God? How can the image of God be used appropriately within the framework of worship? The Second Commandment dictates that in our worship, we must not reduce God to the level of a physical object or any type of inanimate or lifeless imagery. He is a living God, not a material object. According to doctrine the representation of God distorts and limits our perception of the true nature of God and these material

Human beings realistically reflect God. Jesus Christ was the image of his Father. God created man in his image to put mankind on the path towards becoming holy and more perfect like his creator. In order to achieve closeness to God, one must look towards humanity and the world not at false images of God. Furthermore, only God can reveal what he is truly like and it is presumptuous of men to think they can know what God looks like and make images of him. According to the mystics, the path to finding the nature of God is through the cloud of unknowing, the definition of God can be found in everything that he is not. God is not a material thing and cannot be limited by and contained by material things, God is metaphysical, eternal and

In the Early Christian period , representations of Jesus were considered heretical because they separated Jesus’s human nature from his divine nature; this gave substance to heretical beliefs that Jesus was only human and not a divine being as well. Those Christians who made images of the divine used the following arguments to support the liturgical use of icons. Firstly, they asserted that the second commandment had been repealed by the incarnation of Jesus, God made into visible matter. Therefore they were not depicting the intangible God but God as he revealed himself to us in the flesh. Moreover, Idols represented divinity without substance or reality, while icons depicted divine beings of flesh and blood such as Jesus, the holy mother, the