I even had a friend who, whenever visiting his Grandmother, would place Post-It notes over the face of Jesus in the copy of The Last Supper she had on display in her house.

I was thoroughly iconoclastic, both disposing of images of Christ that were in my possession and going so far as to use a Sharpie to black out any depictions of our Lord on the covers of the books I owned. If you’re familiar with my personal history you know that there was a time when I was avidly against images of Christ. This is part of why the Church has enjoyed the use of images both privately and publicly in her places of worship. They serve as signs pointing away from themselves to something greater. As you read “coffee shop” earlier, I’d wager a certain thought came to your mind perhaps of a coffee shop that you frequent. Consider even these words that I am writing. It is an inescapable fact of our existence. In this case, it brings to my mind the existence of Radford Coffee Company, and the wonderful coffee and people that frequent there. What does this image do? It does what all images do. “You see that the single purpose of this is that one should not worship, or offer the veneration of worship, to creation instead of the Creator, but only to the One who fashioned all.As I look up from my cup of coffee, I see the logo of the coffee shop I’m visiting painted on the wall. “The fourth kind is that whereby the images seen by the prophets were worshipped and also the images of things to come (for it was through a vision of images that they saw God), as Aaron’s rod 132 was an image of the mystery of the Virgin, and also the jar 133 and the table 134 and when Jacob bowed in veneration over the head of his staff, 135 it was a figure of the Savior.” ( ) I do not depict the invisible divinity, but I depict God made visible in the flesh.” ( ) Therefore I am emboldened to depict the invisible God, not as invisible, but as he became visible for our sake, by participation in flesh and blood. “For the nature of the flesh did not become divinity, but as the Word became flesh immutably, remaining what it was, so also the flesh became the Word without losing what it was, being rather made equal to the Word hypostatically. “The Son is a living, natural and undeviating image of the Father, bearing in himself the whole Father, equal to him in every respect, differing only in being caused.” ( )

I do not venerate matter, I venerate the fashioner of matter, who became matter for my sake and accepted to dwell in matter and through matter worked my salvation, and I will not cease from reverencing matter, through which my salvation was worked.” ( ) “Of old, God the incorporeal and formless was never depicted, but now that God has been seen in the flesh and has associated with human kind, I depict what I have seen of God.

Logos Research Subscription for Schools.

Three treatises on the divine images