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Aniconic Worship and the Apologetic Tradition: A Note on Canon 36 of the Council of Elvira

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Robert Grigg
Robert Grigg
Affiliation:
Mr. Grigg is assistant professor of art inUniversity of California, Davis.
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Extract

It is well known that the spokesmen for the early Christian church were hostile to religious images.1 They regarded the Old Testament prohibition against images (Exodus 20:4, Deuteronomy 5:8) as binding upon Christians.2 But even though Christian apologists like Clement of Alexandria and Origen cited the authority of this prohibition,3 they defended the aniconic worship of Christians from pagan attack by borrowing heavily from pagan writers. The arguments they borrowed portrayed the cult of images as a ridiculously inappropriate form of worship, one that degraded the very gods it sought to honor by likening them to base material, shaped by mere craftsmen.4

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , December 1976 , pp. 428 - 433
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1976

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References

1. The indispensable studies of this hostility are Clerc, Charly, Les Théories relative au cults des images chez les auteurs grecs du IIe siècle après J.-C. (Paris, 1915), pp. 125–168Google Scholar; Koch, Hugo, Die altchristliche Bilderfrage nach den literarischen Quellen, Forschungen zur Religion und Literature des Alten und Neuen Testaments, no. 27 (Göttingen, 1917)Google Scholar; Elliger, Walter, Die Stellung der altea Christen zu den Bildern in den ersten vier Jahrhunderten, Studien über christliche Denkmäler, no. 20 (Leipzig, 1930)Google Scholar; Baynes, N. H., “Idolatry and the Early Church,” Byzantine Studies and Other Essays (London, 1955), pp. 116–143Google Scholar; Bevan, Edwyn, Holy Images (London, 1940), pp. 84–112Google Scholar; and Klauser, T., “Die Aeusserungen der alten Kirche zur Kunst,” Atti del VI congresso internazionale di archeologia cristiana, Ravenna 23–30 settembre 1962 (Rome, 1965), pp. 223–242.Google Scholar

2. Bevan, pp. 84 ff.

3. Clement of Alexandria, Protreptikos pros Hellenas 4.54Google Scholar; Origen, Contra Celsum 4.31Google Scholar; 7.64; also Tertullian, De idololatria 4Google Scholar; Athanasius, Contra gentes 45Google Scholar; and Maternus, FirmicusDe errore profanarum religionum 28.7.Google Scholar

4. Clerc, pp. 122f., 137ff.; Geffcken, J., “Der Bilderstreit des heidnischen Altertums,” Archiv für Religionswissenschaft 19 (1916–1919): 289, 292f., 299;Google Scholar Baynes, pp. 118f., 125, 140ff.; and Bevan, pp. 86f., 90, 94. Christian apologists occasionally acknowledged their use of pagan sources: Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 1.15Google Scholar; 5.4.14; idemProtreptikos 4.49; 6.71; Origen Contra Celsum 1.5; 7.62; Lactantius, Divinae institutiones 1.22.Google Scholar

5. Perhaps most striking in the First Apology 9.1–5 of Justin Martyr (Clerc, pp. 138ff.; Baynes, pp. 118ff.). But also see Clement of Alexandria, Protreptikos 4.44–47,Google Scholar which anticipates most of the arguments used by Arnobius, Adversus nationes 6.Google Scholar

6. For a discussion of the distinction between real reasons and rationalizations, see Berkhofer, Robert F. Jr, A Behavioral Approach to Historical Analysis (New York, 1969), pp. 107ff.Google Scholar

7. Most of the proposed dates for the Council of Elvira vary only by a few years: Duchesne, L., “Le Concile d'Elvira et les flamines chrétiennes,” Mélanges Renier (Paris, 1887), pp. 159–174Google Scholar; Bareille, G., “Elvire,” Dictionnaire de théologie catholique 4 (1910), cols. 2385f.Google Scholar; and de Clercq, Victor C., Ossius of Cordova, Catholic University of America Studies in Christian Antiquity, no. 13 (Washington, D.C., 1954), pp. 87–103,Google Scholar all prefer ca. 300. Dale, Alfred W., The Synod of Elvira and Christian Life in the Fourth Century (London, 1882), p. 44,Google Scholar and Koch, H., “Die Zeit des Konzils von Elvira,” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 17 (1916): 61–67,CrossRefGoogle Scholar prefer ca. 306. Vives, José and Diez, G. M., eds., Concilios visigóthicos e hispano-romanos, España cristiana, no. 1 (Barcelona, 1963), p. 1,Google Scholar simply date it ca. 300–306. The canons of the council are found in Mansi, Joannes D., Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio (1759, reprinted Paris, 1901) 2: 5ff.Google Scholar; and, most recently, Vives and Diéz, pp. 1ff.

8. Koch, , Bilderfrage, pp. 31–41,Google Scholar and Elliger, pp. 34–38, give good introductions to these problems.

9. Mansi 2:11.

10. von Harnack, Adolf, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten, 3rd ed. (1915) 2:321,Google Scholar cited in Koch, , Bilderfrage, p. 33Google Scholar; Leclercq, H., “Images (culte et querelle des),” Dictionnaire d'archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, vol. 7, pt. 1Google Scholar (Paris, 1926), col. 215; idem, Histoire des conciles d'après les documentes originaux, vol. 1, pt. 1 (Paris, 1907), p. 240,Google Scholar n. 4; also Dale, pp. 292ff.; and McKenna, Stephen, Paganism and Pagan Survivals in Spain up to the Fall of the Visigothic, Kingdom, The Catholic University of America Studies in Medieval History, n.s., no. 1 (Washington, D. C., 1938), p. 35.Google Scholar

11. As Koch, , Bilderfrage, pp. 33, 37Google Scholar; Elliger, pp. 36f.; and Bevan, p 115, clearly realized.

12. Koch, , Bilderfrage, p. 33,Google Scholar provides the alternative Latin construction.

13. The difference in the mood of the verb forms “colitur” and “adoratur,” which are indicative, and “depingatur,” which is subjunctive, is decisive evidence of the intention of the passage.

14. Koch, , Bilderfrage, p. 39Google Scholar; Elliger, p. 37; Lowrie, Walter, Art in the Early Church, 2nd ed. (New York, 1947), pp. 9f.Google Scholar; and Klauser, , “Aeusserungen,” pp. 228f.Google Scholar

15. Elliger, p. 37; Lowrie, p. 10.

16. De idololatria 4 (Migne, PL 1.665Google Scholar): “Propter hanc caussam, ad eradicandam scilicet materiam idololatriae, lex divina proclamat: Ne feceris idolum. Et conjungens, neque similitudinem eorum quae in coelo sunt, et quae in terra, et quae in mari.” However, Bevan, pp. 85f., believes that Tertullian is concerned merely with idols and that he does not necessarily interpret the biblical prohibition as directed against “the representation of a man which was not intended to be worshipped.” I think that Bevan is likely mistaken. The entire tenor of Tertullian's indictment of idolatry is that all fine distinctions between making an image and worshipping it are to be avoided. God prohibited all likenesses because there is nothing that human beings and demons are not capable of perverting into idols. Today, as Bevan, p. 46, notes, Christians normally interpret the Second Commandment as a prohibition against making images that one intends to worship. They view the prohibition against bowing down and serving idols (Exodus 20:5) as a qualification of the preceding ban against the making of likenesses. Cf. Klauser, p. 229.

17. Clement of Alexandria, Proptreptikos 4.54,Google Scholar ed. Butterworth, G. W., Clement of Alexandria, The Loeb Classical Library (1919, reprinted Cambridge, Mass., 1953), p. 140Google Scholar: “‘ou gar poiēseis,’ phēsin ho prophētēs, ‘pantos homoiōma, hosa en tō ouranō anō kai hosa en tē gē katō.’” Cf. Origen, Contra Celsum 7.64Google Scholar; Maternus, FirmicusDe errors 28.7.Google Scholar

18. Bevan, pp. 115f.

19. Adversus nationes 6, ed. Reiferacheid, A., Arnobii adversus nationes, libri 7, Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum (hereafter CSEL), no. 4 (1875, reprinted New York, 1968), pp. 214ff.Google Scholar

20. See n. 5 above.

21. How could one treat statues as gods when, on the one hand, thieves steal them from the temples with impunity and, on the other, swarms of mice nest in them? For these ironies, one has Lucian, Zeus elenchomenos 8Google Scholar; idem, Zeus tragoidos 32Google Scholar; idemTimon 4. Cf. Geffcken, , “Bilderstreit,” p. 291.Google Scholar Xenophanes and Antisthenes (cited by Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 5.14)Google Scholar, Heraclitus, (Fragment B5, ed. Diels, Hermann and Krauz, W., Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 7th ed. [Berlin, 1954], 1: 151f.Google Scholar), Plutarch, (De Iside et Osiride 71),Google Scholar and followers of Pythagoras (Plutarch, Life of Numa 8.13)Google Scholar—all had criticisms of the cult of images. In general, see Clerc, , Culte, pp. 89–123,Google Scholar especially pp. 111ff., concerning Plutarch; idem, , “Plutarch et le culte des images,” Revue de l'histoire des religions 70 (1914): 107–124Google Scholar; and Geffcken, pp. 286ff.

22. Clerc, , Culte, p. 122.Google Scholar

23. Adversus nationes 6.1 (Reiferscheid, p. 214).

24. Ibid. 6.8 (Reiferscheid, p. 220): “si enim certum est apud uos deos esse, quos remini atque in summis caeli regionibus degere, quae causa, quae ratio est, ut simulacra ista fingantur a nobis, cum habeatis res certas, quibus preces possitis effundere et auxilium rebus in exigentibus postulare?”

25. Ibid. 6.13 (Reiferscheid, p. 224): “quis est enim qui ignoret Athenienses illos Hermas Alcibiadii ad corporis similtudinem fabricatos? quis Praxitelen nescit, Posidippi ai relegat, ad formam Cratinae meretricis, quam infelix perdite diligebat, os Veneris Cnidiae sollertiarum coegisse certamine?” The same two examples are related by Clement of Alexandria, Protreptikos 4.47.Google Scholar

26. Adversus nationes 6.14.16 (Reiferscheid, pp. 226, 228f.). Cf. Clement of Alexandria, Protreptikos 4.46,Google Scholar on defilement by swallows and thieves.

27. Divinae institutiones 2.2, ed. Brandt, S., Opera Omnia, CSEL, no. 19, pt. 1 (1890, reprinted New York, 1965), p. 101:Google Scholar “quid inter se tam contrarium quam statuarium dospicere, statuam adorare et eum ne in conuictum quidem admittere qui tibi deos faciat?” And ibid. 2.4 (Brandt, p. 108): “adorant ergo mortalia aut a mortalibus facta: frangi enim cremari perire possunt. nam et tectis uetustate labentibus saepe comminui solent et consumpta incendio dilabuntur in cinerem et plerumque, nisi sua illis magnitudo subuernerit aut custodia diligens saepserit, in praedam furibus cedunt.”

28. Ibid. 2.2.17.

29. Ibid. 2.18; cf. Koch, , Bilderfrage, p. 28.Google Scholar

30. Tertullian, De idololatria 4.Google Scholar

31. Chadwick, Henry, The Early Church, The Pelican History of the Church, no. 1 (Baltimore, 1967), p. 76.Google Scholar

32. Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 1.15Google Scholar (Migne, , PG 8.777)Google Scholar.

33. Ibid. 5.5 (Migne, , PG 9.49)Google Scholar: “hōs mē tois aisthētois prosanechōmen, epi de ta noēta metiōmen; … kai tēn noētēn ousian di' hulēs sebazesthai, atimazein estin autēn di'aisthēseōs.”

34. De fide orthodoxa 4.16, tr. Mango, Cyril, The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312–1453, Sources and Documents in the History of Art Series (Englewood Cliffs, N. J., 1972), p. 170.Google Scholar The Greek text is available in Migne, , PG 94.1158ff.Google Scholar

35. Clercq, , Ossius, pp. 69ff.Google Scholar, reviews the grounds for this identification. Tn addition to these, one should note that Calcidius uses the phrase “non sine divino instinctu” (quoted in Clercq, p. 70), which is strikingly like the phrase inscribed on the arch of Constantine in Rome, “instinctu divinitatis,” and the vague references to the deity in some of the panegyrics dedicated to Constantine. For these see Anastos, M., “The Edict of Milan (313),” Mélanges Venance Grumel: Revue des études byzantines 25 (1967):38ff.Google Scholar If Calcidius were a friend and subordinate of Ossius, then he would likely have had ample exposure to such language, since Ossius was one of Constantine's most important advisers for Christian affairs. Unfortunately, this connection is open to challenge, as Waszink, J. H., ed., Timaeus, a Calcidio translatus Commentarioque instructus (London Leyden, 1962), pp. ix–xvii,Google Scholar shows: the late medieval manuscripts that identify the Osius, to whom Calcidius refers, as the bishop of Cordova do not appear to reflect an ancient Spanish tradition, which might be given credence; and Isidorus of Seville, who likely would have mentioned this connection, had he known of it, says nothing at all about Calcidius.

36. Clercq, pp. 148ff.

37. I examine the evidence for this conclusion in a study to be published in Viator 8 (1977)Google Scholar. Eusebius, Tricennial Oration (Triakontaeterikos) 9.5–11,Google Scholar contrasts Constantine's use of the “saving sign” with the use of “lifeless statues.” Christians apparently felt that this was an important contrast. The passage is repeated almost word for word in the Vita Constantini 2.16; also see Vita 4.21.