“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.” (ESV - entire text)
In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman makes an interesting suggestion regarding the Second Commandment. Worshipping and serving God required abstract thinking by the Israelites. He does not exist in bodily form nor can he be properly comprehended through any physical analogies. People who record their experiences in and communicate through images, statues and the like will probably struggle with the idea of a universal, spiritual God. This is why God reveals himself through the Word, which is conducive to abstract thought.
Comments
I should note that Catholics and Lutherans list this as a part of the First Commandment. This puts more focus on the intended or actual use of the images than the actual creation of the images. This is also the commandment with the least agreement among different Christian groups over its interpretation.
Posted by: CJ Costello on Sunday, September 11, 2005
i find this odd. after all, words, in their squiggly form, are just a very special kind of images. furthermore, i am not sure that it is appropriate to lump images with statues. to me, images are of such an incredibly broad range, from the sublime and abstract (e.g. words), to the concrete and explicit (e.g. a photograph).
why would explicitness detract a person from god? all that we experience, whether they are abstract (words), or real (the majesty of nature), could they not both bring us closer to god? (full disclosure: i am agnostic.)
Posted by: jaime on Monday, September 12, 2005
I think you are reading a modern, academic understanding of images into this. If you look at the text of the commandment, it is talking about images that attempt to mirror reality - like a statue for example. I don't think they (the Israelites) would have used the Hebrew word for images to describe words.
If we limit our understanding of images in the post to just concrete images, then it is easier to understand what Postman is saying. It is hard (impossible?) to have a philosophical discussion using photographs and statues. It would also be difficult to comprehend an abstract god. Most of the gods of that time where represented in human or animal form and had corresponding limitations - one would be god of plains and another god of hills and so on. They were understood as sort of super-human rather than transcendental.
As another way to understand Postman's point, consider mathematics. It is only when students move beyond concrete numbers to abstract symbols that they are able to understand higher level math.
Posted by: CJ Costello on Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Augustine deals with this issue extensively in his confessions. He said his focus on the physical, on corporeal images, made it difficult for him to understand and accept God as abstract.
Posted by: CJ Costello on Thursday, September 15, 2005