Commentaria in Deuteronomium
Hence, secondly, I prove the same from a like case: for Holy Scripture does no injury to God when by anthropopathy it attributes to God ears, nostrils, eyes, hands, feet and other members: nay, God has deigned to descend not only to human words and to the image of human imagination, but even to the human form itself, when the Word made flesh took on his figure. Why then may we not preserve and venerate by an image the memory of God made man? why again may not our mind, slow to heavenly things, ascend from a visible image to invisible things? for we do not try by an image to paint directly and perfectly the Godhead and his attributes, but only in some measure to shadow it forth, that we may set God before the mind and memory, and form some conception of him: for otherwise we could in no way conceive God. For, as Aristotle says, nothing is in the intellect which was not first in the sense and in the phantasy. For the intellect can conceive nothing without a phantasm; but a phantasm is the image of a thing seen or perceived by some other sense.
Calvin objects secondly, Isaias xl, 25, God speaking of images, or idols: “To whom,” he says, “have you made me like?” therefore God forbade an image of himself to be made.
I answer: The sense is as if to say: Why have you made idols, why false images, your God? why have you equalled them to me? why have you given them my incommunicable name? why have you attributed to them my power and riches? See Jeremias x, 6, and Wisdom xiv, 21. For from the fact that the Gentiles and Jews made images like, nay equal, to the true God, by this very fact they also made God like and equal to the images. For like, being a relative of comparison, is like to its like, and conversely. But this was a great injury and contempt of God, namely to equal him to statues of stone and brass, or even to the demons who were worshipped in them.
It is further asked here: granted that the image of God, and of any other things whatever, is not forbidden by the law of nature, is it not at least forbidden here to the Jews by positive law? Gabriel Vasquez affirms it, book II On Adoration, disputation 4, chapter ii and following: for he holds that this precept, like the fourth about keeping the sabbath, is partly natural and perpetual, namely so far as it commands the worship of one God and forbids the worship of other gods; partly ceremonial and temporary, given to the Jews alone, and now, Judaism being abolished, itself abolished, namely, Thou shalt not make an image of God, or of any other thing. Hence he explains this precept: “Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing,” etc., thus: as if to say, You shall not make, O Jews, any effigy, such namely as is made fit for adoration, that is, such as you carve or paint of itself so that it can conveniently be adored; for if you carve it not of itself, but for the sake of something else, namely to adorn something else, I do not forbid that. Hence the Cherubim of the ark are not here forbidden: because they were made not of themselves, but for covering and adorning the ark. So also Solomon in the temple carved and sculptured palms and other things, not of themselves, but for the ornament of the temple. If you say that Moses, by God’s command, made the effigy of the brazen serpent, and of itself, not to adorn something else; Vasquez answers that God there dispensed in this positive law of his. This opinion is favoured by Origen, Tertullian, Alexander of Hales, Albert, Bonaventure and others, whom Vasquez cites, chapters ii and iii.
But it is truer that here not all images are forbidden, but only superstitious and idolatrous ones, and therefore that this precept is in all respects natural, not positive nor ceremonial, as are also the rest of the Decalogue, except one, namely the fourth, which is about keeping the sabbath: so teach Damascene, Bede, St. Thomas, Burgensis, Cajetan, whom Vasquez cites, chapter ii, and recent writers everywhere with Francis Suarez, III part, Question LIV, section 2.
It is proved first by the same reasons which I brought a little before against Abulensis and against Calvin, and especially from the fact that the Septuagint call this graven thing an idol, and Scripture everywhere calls graven things strange gods. Hear Isaias, chapter xliv, 10: “Who hath formed a god, and cast a graven thing that is profitable for nothing?” where he calls a strange god or idol a graven thing; and verse 15, when he says: “He planted a pine-tree... and the rest thereof (of the pine) he made a god, and a graven thing for himself, and falleth down before it.”
Secondly, Solomon, a most pious king, of himself, without the command of God, besides the Cherubim of the ark, made very great Cherubim, of ten cubits, which stretched their wings through the whole length of the Holy of Holies: and these statues stood by themselves, like the idols of the Gentiles, and therefore were made in a manner fit for adoration; in which Solomon did not sin, because he did not form them for adoration, that is, that they should be as idols: therefore by this precept only idols are forbidden, not images erected of themselves, or adorable, that is, such as could conveniently be adored by some impious person.
Thirdly, the very word “to thyself” signifies the same, when it says: “Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing,” namely one that may be to thee in place of God and an idol. The same is signified by what follows: “Thou shalt not adore them, nor serve them”; what are “them” but graven things and idols? for these alone are adored. So Cajetan.
Fourthly, otherwise the Jews could not have had astronomical spheres and globes: for these are of themselves likenesses and representations of the heavens and heavenly orbs, and can be adored, and are adorable, as are the sun, moon and heavens. Again, they could not have had at home the images of their grandfathers and forefathers, which yet among the Gentiles and the faithful has always been customary, and a great incentive to virtue. I confess, however, that the Jews, not out of obligation of this law, but out of devotion and religious usage, in order to keep further away from every appearance of idolatry and of violation of this law, scarcely used images of their own accord, as testify Josephus, Philo, Origen and others. Hence the Poet describes the Jews thus:
Who adore pure clouds, and the divinity of heaven.
Hence when Pilate and Petronius, governors of Judea, attempted to bring the images of Tiberius and Caligula into the temple, the Jews resisted unto death, as Josephus testifies, Antiquities XVIII, chapters iii and x.
Again, at that time it was forbidden to the Jews, not by positive but by natural law, to set before the whole people publicly in the temple or elsewhere an image of God, and that on account of the evident danger of idolatry. For many of the people, rude and prone to idols, would have worshipped it as a deity: but this danger was not in private wise men. For Moses, Isaias and others saw God in an assumed body, as in an image: why then could they not have depicted it?
You will say: In chapter iv, 15, it is said: “You saw no similitude in the day that the Lord spoke to you in Horeb from the midst of the fire, lest perhaps being deceived you might make you a graven similitude, or image of male or female,” as if to say: I appeared not to you in any form or image, that you might not make any like it: therefore he forbids absolutely every image in itself, and simply; granted that the end of the law was that they should not at length worship it and make an idol.
I answer: God here does not properly enact a precept of not making an image, but only relates that he appeared to the Hebrews on Sinai in no visible form, lest the Hebrews should fabricate an image and idol of him, which they themselves would worship and adore. For it would easily have happened that the gross Jews, seeing this image of God, male or female, would first have thought that God is such, namely male or female, and in worshipping him would have worshipped not the true God but a false one. For the true God is not male or female, and conversely a God male or female is not the true God, but false and feigned. Then gradually they would have fixed mind and sense on the image itself, and stuck there, thinking it to be their deity, not thinking that it is only the image of their deity. That the Gentiles and Jews were wont to do this, I said at the beginning of this paragraph. The substance, therefore, of the precept is: “You shall not make a graven thing, that is, an idol”; but the end of the precept is, “that you may not worship nor adore it.”
For to make or have an idol, as an idol, is a sin, although thou do not worship nor adore it. Two things, then, are forbidden by this precept: first, not to make nor to have a graven thing or idol, as an idol; second, not to adore nor worship it.
NOR THE LIKENESS OF ANY THING THAT IS IN HEAVEN ABOVE.—Here he explains the graven thing, as is plain from the Hebrew, namely that it is an idol, or likeness of a deity, which is in heaven, earth or waters.
OR THAT ABIDETH IN THE WATERS UNDER THE EARTH.—For the sea is not higher than the earth, as some mathematicians will have it, but lower and more depressed: hence Psalm xxiii, 2, it is said: “For he hath founded it upon the seas,” namely the globe of the earth; the earth therefore is higher than the sea.