What It Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Always-Reforming Church

by Gavin Ortlund

In their criticism of cultic images, some of the early Christians almost sound as if they are anticipating the distinctions that would later be made at Nicaea II to justify them. In his attack on pagan use of images in the early fourth century, the apologist Arnobius deals with the objection that it is not the images that are worshiped, but what they represent: “What then? Without these, do the gods not know that they are worshipped? . . . What greater wrong, disgrace, hardship, can be inflicted than to acknowledge one god, and yet make supplication to something else—to hope for help from a deity, and pray to an image without feeling?”40 He proceeds to scorn the practice of relating to a deity through a physical object, comparing it to seeking a human opinion by asking “asses and pigs” what should be done.41 Again, it is difficult to fathom Arnobius arguing like this if he had been aware of the idea that “what is given to the image passes to the prototype,” which (as we will discuss) was a linchpin in later iconophile theology.