by Wyatt Pruitt
“We hold to the Seven Ecumenical Councils as they are in conformity to Holy Scripture…”
-Declaration of Presbyterian Catholic Practice & Principles
The Second Council of Nicea is a hot-button issue for Reformed Christians. There is an ongoing debate within these circles on whether images are approved to be in the worship space, they are not approved at all, or somewhere inbetween. A local independent reformed church near me is tearing out their stained glass depiction of Christ on the basis of three reasons: Nestorianism, 2CV Violation, and Idolatry. This depiction of Christ has been tearing their parish apart for decades as it sits over the Lord’s Table. The Church published a ten page paper on why what they were doing was removing idols from the Lord’s temple. In this article I am going to explain how images of Christ in the worship space is not only an admissible thing, but should be encouraged in the churches. I will explain a theology of images of Christ that aligns with Reformed hermeneutics, the patristic sources, and most especially the Bible. I will first start with the scriptures.
The Second Commandment
You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or 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 or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. Exodus 20:4-6 ESV
According to the second commandment “You shall not make for yourself a carved image…[to] bow down to them or serve them.” The point of the second commandment is that you will not worship images. If you were to take the commandment word for word literally, without taking into account the qualification to not bow down, then we would not be able to have any images of anything whatsoever. This is because the text says that you are not to make images of anything that is in, “…heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” Another issue is, only five chapters later, God commands the Israelites to make the ark of the covenant with the carved image of something from heaven: the Cherubim.
And you shall make two cherubim of gold; of hammered work shall you make them, on the two ends of the mercy seat. Make one cherub on the one end, and one cherub on the other end. Of one piece with the mercy seat shall you make the cherubim on its two ends. The cherubim shall spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seat with their wings, their faces one to another; toward the mercy seat shall the faces of the cherubim be. -Exodus 25:18-20
God would be directly contradicting himself if he was to command that nothing of Heaven be depicted, and then turn right back around a few chapters later and tell the Israelites to worship Cherubim in the Tabernacle.
This then begs the question: Why would God ask Moses and the Israelites to violate the Second Commandment? It is because the second commandment does not ban the making of images to be used in the worship space. It bans the making of images to be worshiped and adored. Corporate worship itself is designed to reflect worship in heaven. God gives his reasons for having the Israelites depict Cherubim a few verses earlier when He says, “And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst. Exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle, and of all its furniture, so you shall make it” (Exodus 25:8-9) In the Old Covenant (and in dispensations before) God could not be depicted because he had not a form to be depicted. “Then the Lord spoke to you out of the midst of the fire. You heard the sound of words, but saw no form; there was only a voice” (Deut. 4:12). The goal of God is that He will come into full, intimate communion with His people. He will develop a deeper relationship with them, and this includes how he is depicted. Originally, God walked and talked with Adam and Eve in a real form.
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. -Genesis 3:8
Adam and Eve both experienced a real and visible form of God that they had a relationship with. In this moment they lost that relationship, and so they hid themselves from the image of God. This moves us to the New Testament. The fullness of God’s invisible image becomes present in bodily form.
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. – John 1:14
This flesh, this image, is not any image. God did not become a cow, a chicken, or a pig, rather He became Man, restoring Man’s image as a reflection of the image of God. Now that God has become Man, Man now fully represents God, and the fullness of that representation is Jesus Christ, since He is God. This is the point at which the modern reformed position and classical protestantism clash. The Reformed position traditionally says that images of Christ are Nestorianism since they can only depict the humanity of Christ and not His deity. This would be to separate the natures which the Council of Chalcedon Condemns.
…One and the Same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten; acknowledged in Two Natures unconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably; the difference of the Natures being in no way removed because of the Union, but rather the properties of each Nature being preserved, and (both) concurring into One Person and One Hypostasis… – Council of Chalcedon
Images of Christ are not Nestorian. This is because they do depict the Divine Nature. Then that brings up the next point. If images of Christ depict the divine nature, then how can they not be idolatry since the divine nature cannot be depicted? The divine nature is depicted not in His essence but in His person. In making an image of Christ, you are not making an image of the human nature of Christ, but the Person of Christ. The Person of Christ is the perfect image of God. To say that Christ cannot be drawn in an image is to say that Christ is not God. Since the argument would be that Christ is only depicted in His human nature. It is also to say that Christ is not material. All human beings are able to be depicted just like every other material object. These depictions can be abstract but still represent the person (think of a caricature artist or a video game avatar). All images of Christ are abstract images that represent the idea of the messiah. Every iconoclast is able to identify which images are Christ and which ones are not. This is because they truly do represent Christ. They are not Christ. In the same way I keep a picture of my wife or my children in my wallet, those images are not my wife or my children. In the same way that AI is able to make video recreations of individuals that look hyper realistic, those images are not the people. Going back to Exodus, those images of the Cherubim are identifiable as Cherubim, although none of the Israelites of the day had seen Cherubim, they knew they were representations of Cherubim and not real Cherubim. In the New Testament we are given vivid imagery of what Christ looks like.
And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light.” Matt 17:2
See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.- Luke 24:39
Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.’” – John 20:27
And in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.
– Rev 19:11-16
Who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. – Philippians 2:6-8
The logical conclusion of strict Iconoclasts is that when one reads these passages they cannot imagine them. This would be idolatry according to classic reformed theology. How does one not imagine a man riding on a horse with his hair white, and glory shining forth from Him? If God did not want us to imagine an image of Christ, then Christ would not be depicted this way. In fact, God would have never become man. This imagery is used intentionally. God has empathized with our humanity and given us a means by which we may imagine God which is His image: Humanity.
Now that we have looked at the biblical arguments for images we must look to see how this conforms to reformed orthodoxy. Believe it or not the iconoclast position is debated in reformed theology. There are basically three positions, open iconodulia, reserved iconodulia, and iconoclasm. Iconodulia says images are approved for the worship space, reserved iconodulia says that images are approved only for personal use, and iconoclasm says that images are not approved of at all and are sinful. There is more nuance here but these are the basic positions. Huldrych Zwingli himself held the reserved icondodulia position. He says,
No one is forbidden from having a portrait of the humanity of Christ…Everyone who now has the image of Christ in his house should take care that he not make it into an idol; for… no pictures become idols faster than those of Christ. – Zwingli, An Answer to Valentin Compar
Zwingli was known as one of the most extreme iconoclasts, tearing down images in all of the churches, and he still allowed images in the home.
If we are to move forward in orthodoxy towards unity in the church, we must wrestle with this idea of the Icon of Christ. So from here I would like to wrestle with the Seventh Ecumenical Council in the Reformed Context. The definition of the council states,
…we decree with full precision and care that, like the figure of the honoured and life-giving cross, the revered and holy images, whether painted or made of mosaic or of other suitable material, are to be exposed in the holy churches of God, on sacred instruments and vestments, on walls and panels, in houses and by public ways, these are the images of our Lord, God and saviour, Jesus Christ, and of our Lady without blemish, the holy God-bearer, and of the revered angels and of any of the saintly holy men. The more frequently they are seen in representational art, the more are those who see them drawn to remember and long for those who serve as models, and to pay these images the tribute of salutation and respectful veneration. Certainly this is not the full adoration {latria} in accordance with our faith, which is properly paid only to the divine nature, but it resembles that given to the figure of the honoured and life-giving cross, and also to the holy books of the gospels and to other sacred cult objects. Further, people are drawn to honour these images with the offering of incense and lights, as was piously established by ancient custom. Indeed, the honour paid to an image traverses it, reaching the model, and he who venerates the image, venerates the person represented in that image. So it is that the teaching of our holy fathers is strengthened, namely, the tradition of the catholic church which has received the gospel from one end of the earth to the other….
The council firmly defends that the images of Christ are not to be worshiped but to be venerated. An analogy for my American friends: when you go to any sports game, before anything must commence, you will stand for the flag and put your hand on your heart. This is veneration. Are you worshipping the flag? No. Are you worshiping what it represents? No. So then it is the same with images of Christ. That is what the Second Council of Nicea is saying. If you offer up prayer in front of the icons (in the context of the custom of the ancient church with incense and candles) you are not worshiping the image itself but are giving honor to the person by which it represents. Am I saying that we should receive the Second Council of Nicea without taking into context our current understanding of worship, or our own hearts, or most importantly, scripture itself? No, of course not. But what I am saying is that we must receive the Second Council of Nicea with the understanding of how it clarifies the two natures of Christ and the Person of Christ. Within the liturgical context of reformed worship there is honor given to Pastors, within the vestments, to the Holy Bible, to the building itself. These liturgical actions are not worship but ceremony. Worship itself has a very specific definition within reformed orthodoxy. There is a difference between worship and ceremony. Worship is how God has commanded that he be adored. Ceremony is the practical rites and actions that are needed by custom in a given community handed down by tradition.
…there are some circumstances concerning the worship of God, and government of the Church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed. – Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF)1.6
These circumstances are the place of worship, the art, the customs of the Church. All of this is determined, not by scripture but by tradition. For example, your church may distribute communion by individual cups and tiny crackers. This is not how Jesus Christ instituted the supper. They would have been reclining on the floor around a table and distributing either an unleavened or leavened piece of bread with a whole cup of wine after they had eaten the passover meal. So there is obviously a difference in ceremony but the substance is the same. Jesus said to take bread and to take wine, bless it, give thanks, and to distribute it. These four things were commanded for worship, the others things added thereto for convenience and/or reverence are ceremony. These things, generally, have been determined by the church catholic, and this includes images of Christ in the sanctuary as didactic and devotional aids for the laity. The WCF fences worship like this:
But the acceptable way of worshipping the true God is instituted by himself, and so limited to his own revealed will, that he may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, or the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representations or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scripture.
This is not talking about ceremonies added to worship, what this is talking about is that we cannot say we are worshipping God through images. This is idolatry. We cannot say we are worshipping God through anything not ordained by him. But the making of images and putting them in the church are of ceremony and not of worship as depicted in the Old Covenant and in the New Testament apocalypse. The issue of images has been determined by the Catholic church. We cannot worship them but we may make artful representations of the person of Christ for the use of didactic aid and reverence. According to the WCF:
It belongeth to synods and councils, ministerially, to determine controversies of faith, and cases of conscience; to set down rules and directions for the better ordering of the public worship of God, and government of his Church; to receive complaints in cases of maladministration, and authoritatively to determine the same: which decrees and determinations, if consonant to the Word of God, are to be received with reverence and submission, not only for their agreement with the Word, but also for the power whereby they are made, as being an ordinance of God, appointed thereunto in his Word.
– WCF 31.3
Since the Seventh Ecumenical Council has determined that images are of good use and are to be honored in the Churches, and the WCF has said that it belongs to councils to determine matters of faith and public worship, and that there is a good biblical defence for the use of images, then we are obliged to humbly submit to this council as if “…being an ordinance of God, appointed thereunto in his Word”
Works Cited
Bullinger, Heinrich. The Second Helvetic Confession. 1566. In Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation, edited by James T. Dennison Jr., vol. 2, Reformation Heritage Books, 2008.
Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Translated by Henry Beveridge, Hendrickson Publishers, 2008.
Council of Chalcedon. Definition of the Faith (451 AD). In Creeds of Christendom, edited by Philip Schaff, vol. 2, Harper & Row, 1877.
“Declaration of Presbyterian Catholic Practice & Principles.” Reformed Evangelical Catholic Press, 2025.
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Crossway Bibles, 2016.
The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers. Series 2, Vol. 14. Translated and edited by Henry Percival. The Seven Ecumenical Councils, Eerdmans, 1956.
Westminster Assembly. The Westminster Confession of Faith. 1646. Reprinted by Banner of Truth Trust, 2009.
Zwingli, Huldrych. An Answer to Valentin Compar. 1525. Quoted in Charles Garside Jr., “Zwingli and the Arts,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. 29, 1966, pp. 150–172.
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