On Icons and Idols

“The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him (Moses) there, and proclaimed the name, “The Lord”.  (Ex 34:5, NRSV)

There is something about the reverent awe with which Judaism treated the name of God that I find lacking in our world today.  A name so holy that God, and God only, can pronounce it.  There is a mystery surrounding God’s identity and being that remains wholly Other to us.  God is beyond the realm of our experience.  Our language is incapable of capturing God’s being.  We have no words or thoughts with the capacity to accurately speak about God.  What we are capable of is speaking to God.  God has gifted us with the ability to lift our voices in prayer, praise, and thanksgiving. 

Martin Buber speaks of this in “I and Thou”, a book that has shaped my life since my first reading of it many decades ago.  “The world as experience belongs to the basic word I-It.  The basic word I-You establishes the world of relation.”  (Buber p.56)

“Men have addressed their eternal You by many names.  When they sang of what they had thus named, they still meant You:  the first myths were hymns of praise.  Then the names entered into the It-language; men felt impelled more and more to think of and to talk about their eternal You as an It.  But all names of God remain hallowed—because they have been used not only to speak of God but also to speak to him.”  (Buber p. 123)

When we seek to speak about God our words, and the thoughts and symbols they convey, will function in one of two ways.  They may rightly function as icons, images that by their very nature are unreal, but which point beyond themselves to the reality of the Divine Mystery that is God.  Icons, for this reason, are traditionally painted in two dimensions, so as to avoid the appearance of reality.  They are windows through which one looks to the reality beyond that will always be clothed in mystery.

Our words and the thoughts and symbols they convey may also become idolatrous.  Here am I going to be very cautious.  Consider the Creeds of our Church, the Apostle’s Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed.  The Book of Concord, the Confessions of the Lutheran Church, speak of these creeds as the “Three Chief Symbols”.  The Orthodox Church refers to the Nicene Creed as the Icon/Symbol of our faith.  Used correctly as icons, these creeds and the doctrine of the Trinity they seek to definitively state, point beyond the words and the concepts that originate with us, to the mystery of God’s actual being that lies outside of our ability to experience, comprehend and grasp.

The Creeds become Idols when we worship the god that we have created with our own thoughts, concepts, and formulations.  This god, created by us, is an It, to use Buber’s terminology.  It is an idol.  This is the “Golden Calf” of the Christian Church.  The Israelites fabricated the calf at the foot of Mount Sinai.  It was a god they could see, while the Living God was hidden in mystery on the top of the mountain.  Likewise, the Christian Church, having encountered this Living God in the person of Jesus and in the Spirit present in the community, created an Idol.   We cannot define the essence and being of the eternal “You”, the Living God, with our finite words and concepts.  We can only point beyond to the mystery of God’s being that we encounter in relationship.  And yet, we have sought to define God’s very Being.

That the concept of the Trinity has become an idol for us is evident whenever we would differentiate between the god we worship, and the God that has chosen to enter into relationship with all creation, and specifically many peoples.  “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac (might we add, the God of Ishmael), and the God of Jacob.”  The Jews do not worship a Triune God, nor do the Moslems.  Yet both worship together with us the God “of Abraham”.  When our doctrinal statements trump God’s own self disclosure, then they have become idols.

As a Christian, my point here is not to deny the doctrine of the Trinity as defined in the Creeds and in Christian theology over the centuries.  What I do believe is that we have stated more than we are capable of, and in so doing, have created an idol.  I believe that when we moved from speaking to God, and speaking of the God who has encountered us in relationship, to speaking about God and seeking to define the very essence of God’s own being, then the object of our efforts ceased to be God at all.  God is always beyond our words and definitions.

However, when the symbols, when the scriptures themselves, point beyond themselves to the hidden God, the God clothed in mystery and divine glory, then once again it is the God of Abraham, Isaac, Ishmael, and Jacob we encounter.

It is not doctrinal clarity about the essence of God’s being that is needed.  That is beyond us.  We cannot capture God in this way.  What is needed in our world is a greater sense of reverent awe as we encounter the God so clothed in mystery.  And, as humans, would that we be filled with such humility that we might stand before this God, as Moses did, silently, recognizing that God, and God only, can pronounce “the Name”, and so disclose himself to us.

Confessions of a Confessional Lutheran

“I am a Jew, born in Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, educated strictly according to our ancestral law, being zealous for God, just as all of you are today^[1]”   [Acts 22:3, NRSV]

I could paraphrase this:  “I am a Confessional Lutheran, born in a pastor’s household, brought up in the Lutheran Churches, studied at the feet of Nestingen, educated strictly according to the Book of Concord, being committed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, just as all of you are.”  I could add to this that as Nestingen’s teaching assistant I tested my classmates on their memorization of the Small Catechism and the Augsburg Confession.  And for twenty three years now I have been preaching and teaching each on a regular basis.

Now for my confession:  As the years have gone by I have found that the traditional language of Law and Gospel, so firmly rooted in our tradition, mandated by our constitutions, and the very framework of the Confessions that define Lutheranism – no longer are persuasive to me.  My fundamental problem is that though we hold firm to Paul and Luther’s understandings that we are justified by faith, apart from works prescribed by the law, we have nevertheless retained a fundamentally legalistic world view.  Rather than come to a new understanding of the Gospel that has nothing to do with “the Law”, “the Law” remains fundamentally determinative for our relationship with God.  The Gospel has been added, yes.  It is seen as the cure demanded by the Law.  But the Law remains.

We have a “cure” for the condemnation that the Law exacts, and so we will continue to “wound with the Law” that we may “cure with the Gospel”.  What if that wasn’t what God ever intended?  What if the reason God sent Jesus was not to first beat us up, convicting us of our sins, so that then he could forgive us?  What if it was simply about a loving God reaching out to those that God loves, seeking nothing more, but also nothing less, than an intimate relationship with us all? 

If St. Augustine could begin his “Confessions” with the line “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you”, the thought of Intimacy with God is clearly not some new and novel thinking.  Loving intimacy is not a concept that can be defined legally.  If we read scripture from the standpoint of a theology of intimacy what we find is that this theme is clearly present throughout the biblical witness.  But if we develop our understanding of God’s relationship with the world as being defined by a quest for intimacy, we will end up with a much different world view than when we begin from the starting point of law and obedience.

Previously, I have written about my concerns that we no longer share a world view that centers on a cosmic battle between the forces of Good and Evil.  I also have shared that I do not believe that it is all about “playing by the rules”.  The polarity that I am suggesting truly reflects the world in which we live, is a polarity of “intimacy” versus “estrangement”.  It is purely for love that God has created us.  And the only thing God desires of us, is that we love even as God has first loved us.  This is not radical language.   It is at the very heart of the biblical witness.  But love and intimacy can never be defined by the Law.  Hence, I find myself compelled to reexamine our traditional teachings that presuppose the Law as the fundamental framework of our relationship to God.

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^[1] The Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. Nashville : Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1989, S. Ac 22:3