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Course 21 · Lesson 4.4

Images and the Reformation: Lutheran, Reformed and Anglican approaches

10 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 21 outline

Module 1: The Theology of Worship

  1. What liturgy is: the word, the idea and the debate
  2. Worship in the Old and New Testaments
  3. Praying and believing: how worship shapes doctrine and doctrine shapes worship
  4. Word, sacrament and sign across the traditions

Module 2: How Christian Liturgy Developed

  1. The earliest descriptions: the Didache, Justin Martyr and the early church orders
  2. The liturgical families of East and West
  3. The Reformation and the revision of worship
  4. Liturgical renewal in the twentieth century

Module 3: The Christian Year: Calendars, Feasts and Fasts

  1. Sunday, the week and the hours of the day
  2. Easter, Holy Week and the dispute over the date
  3. Advent, Christmas and Epiphany
  4. Lent, the Orthodox fasting seasons and Protestant approaches to fasting
  5. Saints days and the second cycle of the calendar

Module 4: Sacred Space and Sacred Images

  1. From house church to basilica: the development of church buildings
  2. The meaning of church buildings: altar, table, orientation and the Orthodox and Gothic examples
  3. Icons and the Incarnation: John of Damascus and the Second Council of Nicaea
  4. Images and the Reformation: Lutheran, Reformed and Anglican approaches

Module 5: Material Signs: Incense, Water, Oil and Blessings

  1. Incense: Scripture, temple worship and its use in the churches
  2. Water: baptism, the renewal of baptismal vows and holy water
  3. Oil: anointing of the sick, chrismation, confirmation and ordination
  4. Blessings: what the church means when it blesses a person, a house or an object
  5. Sacraments and sacramentals: the Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant vocabulary

Module 6: Popular Piety and Devotional Practice

  1. What popular piety is, and why scholars take it seriously
  2. Pilgrimage, relics, medals and pious objects
  3. The rosary, the Stations of the Cross, litanies and akathists
  4. How the churches have regulated and corrected popular devotion

Module 7: Telling Tradition from Superstition

  1. What the theologians mean by superstition, and why the line is hard to draw
  2. A method: source, date, doctrine, authority and consequence
  3. Case studies: apocryphal legends, magical formulas and invented history
  4. Honesty and respect in judging other people’s devotion

All courses

Program / Course 21: Liturgical Theology / Lesson 4.4

What you will learn

  • Describe the sixteenth-century outbreaks of image-breaking and Luther’s reaction to them.
  • State the Reformed argument against images in worship and the Lutheran and Anglican alternatives.
  • Explain why traditions number the Ten Commandments differently and how this affects the question.
  • Summarize the Catholic response at the Council of Trent and what each tradition permits at home.

The big idea

The Reformation revived the old argument over images. Reformed Christians held that the Second Commandment forbids images in worship and that images lead to idolatry, and in many places they removed them. Luther opposed forced removal and allowed images as teaching aids that people were not to worship. Anglicans made a middle settlement which varied over time. The Catholic Church at Trent reaffirmed the use of images with a warning against abuse. The question was about Scripture, idolatry and authority, and not only about taste.

Key terms

Iconoclasm (Reformation)
The removal or destruction of images in churches, which happened in Zurich, Geneva, the Netherlands, Scotland and England at various times in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Idolatry
Giving to a created thing the worship or trust that belongs to God alone.
Second Commandment
In the Reformed numbering, the commandment against making graven images (Exodus 20:4-6). In the Lutheran and Catholic numbering it is part of the first.
Karlstadt
Andreas Karlstadt, a Wittenberg reformer who in 1521 and 1522 pressed for the removal of images, against Luther’s wishes.
Beeldenstorm
Dutch for the storm of images, the outbreak of church image-breaking in the Netherlands in 1566.
Book of Homilies
Sermons authorized by the Church of England to be read in parishes, including the Homily Against Peril of Idolatry.
Crucifix
A cross bearing an image of the body of Christ, as opposed to a plain cross.

Background

Images had been part of church life in the West for a thousand years. The Reformers charged that they had become objects of trust and a distraction from the word of God. In 1521 and 1522 Andreas Karlstadt in Wittenberg urged that images be removed, and a crowd cleared some churches. Luther, who had been in hiding at the Wartburg, returned and preached eight sermons in March 1522, the Invocavit sermons, urging patience and persuasion, and not force.

Elsewhere removal went further. In Zurich the city council ordered images removed in 1524. In Geneva images were removed in 1535 and 1536. The Dutch beeldenstorm of 1566 saw mobs strip many churches. In England the process came in stages from the 1530s and the 1640s, and some of the work was done by ordinary people and some by authorities.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The Lutheran position

Luther held that images are indifferent matters, neither commanded nor forbidden, as long as they are not worshiped. He argued that the Old Testament prohibition was against making images to worship as gods, and that Scripture itself uses pictures, as in the bronze serpent and the cherubim. He kept crucifixes and altar paintings in Lutheran churches, and promoted illustrated Bibles. Lutherans number the commandments so that the prohibition of images is part of the first commandment, and the second is the commandment on the name of God. Many Lutheran churches still have altarpieces and crucifixes.

Step 2: The Reformed position

Reformed theologians numbered the commandments differently, making the prohibition of images the second. Calvin in the Institutes, book 1, chapter 11, argued that God cannot be represented by any image and that to try is to falsify him. He also argued that images of saints in churches had become a cause of superstition, and that the church should teach through the word, which God has given. The Heidelberg Catechism, questions 96 to 98, says that believers may not make an image of God or worship God in any other way than he has commanded. Question 98 rejects the claim that images may be tolerated as books for the laity, with the reason that God wishes his people to be taught by the living preaching of his word. Reformed churches often removed images from sanctuaries, though they differed on whether art was to be allowed elsewhere.

Step 3: The Anglican settlement

The Church of England moved in stages. Under Edward VI images were removed from many churches. Elizabeth I kept a crucifix in her own chapel and her Injunctions allowed some memorials. The Book of Homilies, published in 1563, contained a long homily against the peril of idolatry, which argued against images in churches. Article 22 of the Thirty-Nine Articles rejects the worshiping and adoration of images and relics as a vain thing. Later centuries saw wide variety: plain Puritan-style churches, richly decorated Anglo-Catholic ones and many in between. Parliament authorized the destruction of images during the Civil War, and in the 1640s William Dowsing, a commissioner, recorded the removal of images in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire.

Step 4: The Catholic response

In its twenty-fifth session in 1563 the Council of Trent decreed that images of Christ, the Virgin and the saints are to be kept in churches and given due honor and veneration, because the honor shown them is referred to the prototype. It said that no divinity or virtue is in the images, and that bishops should remove abuses and teach the people that images are instructive. The council repeated the teaching of Nicaea II. Catholic art of the following centuries, in the Baroque, often used images to teach and to move the faithful, which Protestants criticized.

Step 5: Images at home and in private

Catholic, Orthodox and many Anglican and Lutheran Christians keep a crucifix, an icon or a statue at home, while remaining free of any teaching that it has power of its own. Reformed and some free-church Christians hold that images of Christ should not be used in devotion. Each person’s conscience, guided by their church, should decide. A private person cannot declare an image holy or miraculous, which in the traditions that make such judgments belongs to church authority. A student without a settled tradition should read both arguments with care, and not choose by mere preference.

  1. Does this tradition read the Second Commandment as covering all images or only images made for worship?
  2. How does it number the commandments?
  3. Does it allow images in churches, in homes or nowhere?
  4. What does it fear: idolatry, superstition, or something else?
  5. What does it say images can do, if anything?
  6. What is the strongest point on the other side?

Examples

Luther’s reply to Karlstadt

Luther said in his Invocavit sermons that the word, not force, should persuade the people. He said that images are neither good nor evil in themselves, and he did not wish to compel the weak. He is known for saying that the word did everything, and that he did nothing but preach.

A Dutch church

After 1566 many Dutch churches were left with whitewashed walls and plain glass. Paintings from the later Dutch period show these bare interiors, with the pulpit at the center. They show what the Reformed churches thought a church should be.

A Lutheran altarpiece

A Lutheran church in Germany still has a painted altarpiece of the Last Supper, with the figure of Luther among the disciples in some cases. The picture teaches, and is not prayed to.

Different perspectives

Lutheran

Images are adiaphora, to be kept for teaching and decoration, provided they are not worshiped. The order of the commandments does not make the prohibition of images a separate commandment.

Reformed

God may not be represented by an image, and images in worship lead to idolatry. The Word is the means by which God teaches. Reformed churches are often plain for this reason.

Anglican

The Church of England rejects the worship of images but allows images as teaching aids. Practice has varied from plain to ornate. Anglicans of all kinds claim the Elizabethan settlement as their own.

Catholic

Images of Christ and the saints are lawful and useful, with honor passing to the prototype. Trent asked bishops to prevent superstition and unseemly images while defending the practice.

Orthodox

The Reformation controversy was understood in the light of Nicaea II. Orthodox writers hold that the Reformed argument repeats that of the iconoclasts and that Lutheran and Anglican positions are closer to Orthodoxy but incomplete.

Why it matters

The argument over images is also an argument about how to read Scripture, how to treat tradition and how to teach ordinary believers. Seeing how Luther, Calvin, the Church of England and Trent each reasoned lets a student understand why some churches are bare and others are full of images, and why the difference is not simply a matter of taste.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: All Protestants rejected images.

Correction: Lutherans kept them, Anglicans kept some, and Reformed churches removed most from worship. The positions are different.

Misunderstanding: Luther approved of the image-breaking at Wittenberg.

Correction: He opposed it and preached against it in 1522, arguing for persuasion and not force.

Misunderstanding: Catholics have never been told to be cautious about images.

Correction: Trent told bishops to remove abuses, to teach that no divinity is in images and to avoid anything unseemly or false.

Misunderstanding: The commandments are numbered the same in all traditions.

Correction: Lutherans and Catholics join the prohibition of images to the first commandment and divide the last into two. Reformed and Orthodox traditions make images the second commandment. This affects how people speak of the question.

Knowledge check

How did Luther respond to Karlstadt?

In the Invocavit sermons of 1522 he argued for persuasion and not force, held that images are neither commanded nor forbidden and that they may be kept if not worshiped, and he kept crucifixes and altarpieces in Lutheran churches.

What does the Heidelberg Catechism say about images?

Questions 96 to 98 teach that God may not be represented and that worship must follow his command. It rejects the view that images may be allowed as books for the laity and says that God wishes his people to be taught by the preaching of the word.

What did Trent decree about images?

In 1563 it taught that images of Christ, Mary and the saints are to be kept in churches and given due honor, which refers to the prototype, with no divinity in them, and it told bishops to remove abuses and superstition.

Why do traditions number the commandments differently?

Different traditions divide the text of Exodus 20 in different ways. Catholic and Lutheran use one combined first commandment and divide the last, while Reformed and others make the prohibition of images the second. The differing numbers affect how the matter is discussed.

Think it through

  1. Is a plain church more faithful to Scripture, or only plainer?
  2. What is the difference between teaching with pictures and trusting them?
  3. How should a church handle the weak in faith who lean on images?
  4. How would you respond to someone who says the Reformers simply destroyed art?

Independent assignment

A comparison of three catechisms

In your own notebook, write 400 to 600 words. Read what the Heidelberg Catechism, the Catholic Catechism and Luther’s Small Catechism say about the commandments on images and idolatry. State how each numbers the commandments, what each prohibits and what each allows. Do not send this to anyone.

Further study