# Images of Christ



## heartoflesh (Jul 25, 2005)

In the article Christ, Art and the Second Commandment Ken Gentry makes the following statement:



> Our Westminster Standards´ Larger Catechism answer to Question 109 states: "œThe sins forbidden in the second commandment are . . . the making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature whatsoever; all worshipping of it, or God in it or by it...."
> 
> This Catechetical answer is theologically accurate, I believe. But I sense that many Reformed Christians misunderstand the theological implications of it when they deny all artistic representations of Christ.
> 
> ...



Is Gentry splitting hairs here? Making a strawman? What's going on?


----------



## Me Died Blue (Jul 25, 2005)

Simply put, _he_ is the one misunderstanding the intended meaning of the divines in the catechism. For one thing, he singles out the phrase "any representation of God," I think without doing justice to the elaboration that follows in "any of the three persons...in any kind of image or likeness," which would logically include "Christ...in the image or likeness of a human body."

But even more than that, his error lies in the way He is approaching Christ's two natures and their relationship to each other, saying that images of Christ's human nature do not necessarily depict His divine nature. Paul Manata used a similar argument awhile back, but repudiated it largely based on Acts 20:28.


----------

