I’ve written an odd post for me this week. For those who have been following our website, you know we have been doing a series of articles on The Triune God . In preparing these articles, I try to find a picture that will illustrate the topic being covered. Well, I find a concept, then Jennifer, our web designer and my daughter, finds a better one. Her’s are always better. We would be a mess without her.
What has surprised and saddened me is what I found many times. In looking for pictures to illustrate attributes such as omnipotence or holiness, I would come across pictures of God the Father and God the Spirit. Many would say, what is the problem with that? We see many pictures representing Jesus. As we enter the Christmas season, we will see more depictions of the nativity than we can shake a stick at. Why is it not an issue to depict God the Son, but it is wrong to do the very same thing with the two other members of the Godhead?
In one word, incarnation. When the Son took on humanity and lived among us, He presented Himself in a physical form. Part of what His incarnation was doing was to represent God to us in a way we could relate to and gain a better understanding of God. Jesus was human, therefore, depicting Him as a man is quite acceptable. This is not true of God the Father or God the Spirit.
God has made Himself exceedingly explicit about using images to represent Him.
4 “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. 5 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, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments.
Exodus 20:4–6
The word for “image” (pesel in Hebrew) carries the idea of a carved or graven (as in the KJV) object and the concept of it being used as an idol. This is not about art, pictures, or statues. It is OK for your kids to have dolls and action figures. It’s Ok that you have a bobblehead of your favorite athlete. This passage is about making an image to represent God. This image could not be of any created being, “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 may say, “But I’m not bowing down to it.” “I have no intention of worshipping it.” This is certainly good, but it misses the point. Even if you were right and no one would worship the image, a question still remains. How could any image represent God? Can the transcendent, infinite, all-powerful, all-knowing, and loving God be limited to the image of a created being, even a man? Many times, God the Father is depicted as an elderly man with a long flowing beard. Is this the essence of God? Could this be part of the reason so many refer to God as the “old man upstairs”?
The second word of importance in our text is “likeness” (tmuna). It carries the idea of form or appearance. With the first word, “image,” the idea is that the likeness is the mental concept used to create or conceive of the kind of image to be used to represent God. We are not to make anything out of anything to represent our God. We shouldn’t even be conceiving of an idea of what would represent God. Why? Because everything in the universe falls short of God. Everything we could use would limit all that God is. Just as the unlimited God could not be limited to Solomon’s Temple. “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27).
From Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam on part of the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling to the various pictures symbolizing the Father as an elderly man or king, I fear we are breaking His commandment. While our intentions may be good, we are, in fact, putting the infinite God in a box of our own making.
As for the Holy Spirit, while all four of the Gospels do make mention of the Spirit at Jesus’ baptism “descending like a dove,” does this mean that God the Spirit should be represented as a dove? The answer is not as clear as in the case of God the Father. As with Jesus, the Spirit, in this one case at least, has taken on a physical form. Depicting the Spirit this way would be in keeping with the Biblical example. But caution must be exercised. We must not limit God the Spirit to that of a bird. We must always remember that God is a Trinity—Father, Son, and Spirit. All attributes of God belong fully and completely to all members. Father, Son, and Spirit are all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present, and holy, along with all His other attributes. We should not see the Son solely in His humanity nor the Spirit solely in this one-time appearance as a dove.
My admonition would be never to depict God the Father in any likeness. Don’t create a symbolic representation of Him. Don’t do it! For the Son, it seems quite acceptable to picture Him as a man, but be careful to understand that the picture is not His complete being. He is also fully God. Furthermore, the closer we get to what his human likeness would be as a first-century Jewish man from the Middle East, the better. He was not a white European, nor was he from Africa or the Far East. Let’s not make him into an image acceptable to us. Finally, the Spirit. Pray about it. Be sure to see Him as just as all-powerful, all-knowing, loving, and infinite as the Father and Son. Give Him the same reverence we give the Father and Son.
Until the next time we see you here at CultivatingFaith.org, God Bless! #CultivatingFaithOrg
Photo credit: Adoration of the Golden Calf https://www.britannica.com/topic/golden-calf#/media/1/237545/112870