“Given the penchant for organization displayed by the human mind, which is in its turn a reflection of how God made the world, it is impossible to leave one error without heading toward another one. It is not possible to leave an error forcefully without creating a situation in … [Read more...]

“The reason that the use of images in worship was not controversial in the first generations of the Church was because nobody was doing it. Centuries later, when they began to do it, the controversy came” (Papa Don’t Pope, p. 113). … [Read more...]

“The veneration of icons in a Christian synagogue in A.D. 57 would have gone over like a big pile of greasy bacon at their men’s prayer breakfast” (Papa Don’t Pope, p. 112). … [Read more...]

“In another instance, when the people had been told to ‘look to’ the bronze serpent, over time this looking became devotional looking, and Hezekiah had Nehustan destroyed. To which we should respond, good for old St. Hezekiah, patron saint of righteous iconoclasts” (Papa Don’t … [Read more...]

“The fact that God took on human flesh in the Incarnation (a miracle He was competent to perform) does not mean that we have the ability to recapture that miracle in any paltry representation of ours—whether done by shutter, brush, hammer and chisel, or an interpretive dance … [Read more...]

“We don’t know what Jesus looked like, thank God” (Papa Don’t Pope, p. 100). … [Read more...]

“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). … [Read more...]

“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 … [Read more...]

“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 … [Read more...]

“In biblical vocabulary, false gods are not the same thing as non-existent gods” (Papa Don’t Pope, p. 95). … [Read more...]