"The Creation of Adam", c 1511, by Michelangelo.
This post is part of my year long study of Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. To facilitate this course of study, I am following along with Princeton University's "A Year with the Institutes", which also includes an audio reading of the text.
Calvin's Institutes: 1.11.1
Calvin is of the very strong persuasion that any pictorial representation of God is strictly forbidden by God. Not sharing his staunch conviction, I am going to slow down during his argument, so that I might not miss something that God would have me understand of his will.
Calvin:
Meanwhile, since this brute stupidity gripped the whole world -to pant after visible figures of God, and thus to form gods of wood, stone, gold, silver, or other dead and corruptible matter- we must cling to this principle: God's glory is corrupted by an impious falsehood whenever any form is attached to him. Therefore in the law, after having claimed for himself alone the glory of deity, when he would teach what worship he approves or repudiates, God soon adds, "You shall not make for yourself a graven image, nor any likeness" [Ex. 20:4]. By these words he restrains our waywardness from trying to represent him by any visible image, and briefly enumerates all those forms by which superstition long ago began to turn his truth into falsehood."
Exodus 20:4-6 - 4 “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. 5 You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6 but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments."
Please continue on for my thoughts...
My reflections:
- I suppose that we need to keep in mind that Calvin was a contemporary of Michelangelo's fresco of the "Creation of Adam". Furthermore, we would be remiss in not missing the fact that Michelangelo's fresco adorns the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel of the Roman Catholics. Further still, the Roman's Catholics are why he is a refugee in Switzerland. The Roman Catholics, during this period, were systematically purging France, by death, of its Protestants.
- In this particular argument (Calvin has many more to follow) he pulls out of Exodus 20:4 that we are not to make for ourselves "...a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above...", but God goes on to say that this also applies to things of the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Using Calvin's logic, and not allowing this verse to be pulled out of context, isn't then a photograph of me holding a large bass (a likeness from the water under the earth), when I was 10 years old, a sin?
- Hasn't Calvin, in fact, gone too far here? Isn't God's instruction to us contained in the following verse, where he instructs us not to bow down to, or serve idols that we might create?
- Is God's glory corrupted by an impious falsehood whenever any form is attached to him? Hmmm...this is an altogether different question. I am going to pray about this one a great deal. My first impression is that Michelangelo was not trying to say, in his fresco, "this is what God looks like". Rather, I suspect Michelangelo was attempting to portray a significant event in history, to a general populous who had no reading skills, and would be completely lacking without some sort of representation of God.
- Did this representation of God, offend God? I don't know. I am going to pray about it. I know that I don't like pictures of myself, that I don't find flattering. Perhaps God is indeed offended when we attempt to fashion a likeness of his glory.
What are your thoughts on this subject?
