“We don’t know what Jesus looked like, thank God” (Papa Don’t Pope, p. 100).
On Painting the Hypostatic Union
“To pick up a brush with a claim you can reproduce what happened is to deny what happened” (Papa Don’t Pope, pp. 99-100).
Identifying Where the Problem Is
“Those who object to portraits of Jesus should not have various Christological heresies assigned to them. It is as if a ham-fisted painter tried a portrait of my best friend, and I complained the painting had no soul. The painter could not reply that I was saying my friend had no soul. But we are …
In An Especially Pernicious Form
“We know this because when Paul discusses the golden calf incident, he calls this worship of YHWH idolatry . . . (1 Cor. 10:7-8). So the apostle Paul condemns a certain form of YHWH worship as idolatry. What? Because of the presence of the calf, not because of the absence of an invocation of YHWH. …
Receiving Worship is also Idolatry
“In biblical vocabulary, false gods are not the same thing as non-existent gods” (Papa Don’t Pope, p. 95).
Tricksy Idols
“The heart is deceitfully wicked, and is fully up to the challenge, for one example, of fashioning even iconoclasm into an idol. When that happens the idol leers from his intellectual shelf in the temple of reason, as much as if to say, ‘Get me now.’” (Papa Don’t Pope, p. 94).
Striving Idols
“For my purposes here, I am understanding idolatry as placing a created thing where only the uncreated God should be. This clearly happens whenever images are used in prayer, but images need not be involved. Idolatry is more subtle than that” (Papa Don’t Pope, p. 94).
For Obvious Reasons
“The boundaries of true authority matter to the submissive heart” (Papa Don’t Pope, p. 87).
You Still Have to Decide
“Yes, there are many voices claiming to understand Scripture, and yes, they contradict. But to throw up my hands and step to the right three paces, take down another book, and undertake the interpretation of something else (far more inchoate and difficult) does not solve the problem at all. If I can’t read and understand …
Centralized Schism
“John the Baptist didn’t have a cushy office set-up at the Temple. He preached in the wilderness, but this did not make him the schismatic separatist. They were all back in Jerusalem” (Papa Don’t Pope, p. 69).