Iconopoaic Puritanism

“We are quite rightly impressed by the iconoclastic dimensions of the Reformation, the pruning of the liturgies and the decimation of the saints’ days, the removal of statues, paintings and even stained glass from the churches. But such iconoclasm may be eclipsed by what we can call the iconopoaic energies of the Reformation, its creativity in producing new allegories and metaphors for the divine and the human which, by their novel connections and collocations, bedded together the hitherto incompatible and subverted one cosmos while paving the way for another . . . When your metaphors change, your world changes with them” (Matheson, pp. 6-7).