### Background Protestants across the ages have criticized and prohibited icons and worship of icons of Jesus: John Calvin, *Institutes of the Christian Religion*: > God’s glory is corrupted by an impious falsehood whenever any form is attached to Him R. Scott Clark: > To picture His manhood, when we cannot picture His Godhead, is a sin, because we make Him to be but half Christ; we separate what God has joined ### Incarnation Protestants also believe in the incarnation: that God took on a physical form of a man named Jesus, and that Jesus retains a physical form of a human man today and into eternity, see the *Westminster Shorter Catechism* as an example of this belief: > Christ, the Son of God, became man, by taking to himself a true body, and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the virgin Mary, and born of her, yet without sin ### Premises The premise of the question is as follows: Protestants believe **p1**. God (the son) took on physical form **p2**. Humans saw this physical form in the 1st Century CE **p3**. Some of those people worshiped Jesus while he was in the physical form Then reasonable logical inferences: **i1**. Those followers of Jesus continued to remember what Jesus physically looked like **i2**. When praying to Jesus, those people had a mental image of Jesus's face and prayed to that in their minds ### Question - Are any of the premises or inferences wrong according to Protestants? - Were the first followers of Jesus/Christians prohibited from making illustrations of Jesus? - Were the first Christians sinning when imagining Jesus's physical form when praying? - Why would putting an image of the incarnate Jesus to paper be a sin if people saw him and knew what he looked like? - Why would praying to an image of Jesus be wrong if praying to his physical form was not wrong?

Europe underwent major economic upheavals during the creation of Protestantism (cf. E. Michael Jones, *Barren Metal* or *Goy Guide to World History* ). Is this one reason why Protestants upheld iconoclasm ? Was it a sense of necessity or utilitarianism (that having a minimally decorated church is better than having no church at all) that inspired or justified their iconoclasm ? In other words: Was there an economic reason for Protestants' iconoclasm ?

Is there any archeological or written evidence for image veneration in the first few centuries especially in the ante Nicene period outside the Rome? *Related - https://christianity.stackexchange.com/q/91037/58919*

During the Reformation, Protestant reformers such as Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin promoted Iconoclasm among their followers. I have found information about Luther opposing it, but little about why. Why exactly did Luther oppose iconoclasm when other leaders supported it?  *Illustration in a deluxe Luther Bible showing God creating the world*  *The same illustration in a deluxe Luther Bible owned by Count Joachim , in which he erased the depiction of God because of his support of iconoclasm*

I'm kind of more-or-less asking this because CHRISTIANITY.SE IS GOING TO GET A REAL HAIRCUT soon, but I was thinking about Christian symbols and Jewish symbols and symbols that everyone agrees one and furthermore everyone feels comfortable _engraving_. Everyone's Bible's got this in it > [**Exodus 25:17-22 (NIV)**](http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%2025:17-22&version=NIV) > > 17 “Make an atonement cover of pure gold—two and a half cubits long and a cubit and a half wide. 18 And make two cherubim out of hammered gold at the ends of the cover. 19 Make one cherub on one end and the second cherub on the other; make the cherubim of one piece with the cover, at the two ends. 20 The cherubim are to have their wings spread upward, overshadowing the cover with them. The cherubim are to face each other, looking toward the cover. 21 Place the cover on top of the ark and put in the ark the tablets of the covenant law that I will give you. 22 There, above the cover between the two cherubim that are over the ark of the covenant law, I will meet with you and give you all my commands for the Israelites. And even the Jews who 5 seconds ago were prohibited from making graven images of God are commanded to make some sort of "cherubs". So, what would be the reason, if any, for a Christian group today to avoid angels? What's the most nuanced possible understanding of Exodus 25 that could justify an iconoclast who would even iconosmash the Ark of the Covenant

In the Orthodox and the Catholic Church icons and statues are permitted, and members of those churches look at such in much the same way they look at photographs of loved ones. We also talk to people depicted in certain icons, who we believe are in heaven, and we ask them to pray to God for us. (We ask the *people*, not the artistic renderings of those people.) Other churches that are opposed to icons and statues sometimes draw a comparison to idolatry. Usually this point makes reference to the commandment to not make idols: idols are a certain kind of image or likeness. So what's an idol, according to these churches? Presumably idols must include things like the Golden Calf. But they must exclude things like the cherubim mentioned in [Exodus 25:18-19](http://old.usccb.org/nab/bible/exodus/exodus25.htm) , since God would not command the construction of idols: > Make two cherubim of beaten gold for the two ends of the propitiatory, fastening them so that one cherub springs direct from each end. The question isn't "what practices of the Catholic Church involving images are disapproved of". The question is, these other churches must have some sort of definition of what counts as an idol. Is an idol something made of gold? Stone? Wood? Is it anything that depicts an animal, a human, or Jesus? Under what conditions do these churches consider something an idol?