On the Veneration of Saints, and Icons

The veneration of saints is an important part of both Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox piety.  There is a sense, of course, in which all Christians are saints, that is, God’s holy people (Rom 1:7, I Cor 1:2, II Cor 1:1, Eph 1:1, Phil 1:1, Col 1:2).  But both of these churches have officially recognized particular Christians throughout history as providing especially good examples of what it means to live a holy life, and have officially declared them to be “saints” in a special sense.  Catholic and Orthodox faithful both venerate these saints and pray for them to intercede on their behalf with God.

In addition to venerating saints, Catholic and Orthodox Christians engage in the practice of venerating icons.  An icon is an image of Jesus or a saint which is used to facilitate the worship of Jesus or the veneration of a saint.  Though this practice is more prevalent in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, it is also affirmed by the Roman Catholic Church, having been officially approved of by the Seventh Ecumenical Council at Nicea in 787, prior to the schism between the Eastern and Western churches.  

The typical Protestant attitude towards venerating saints and icons is to reject these practices as idolatrous.  But is this really the case?

The Veneration of Saints

The Catholic Church makes a sharp distinction between “worship,” which is to be given to God alone, and “veneration,” which is appropriate to give to Mary and the saints.  Most Protestants regard this as a distinction without a difference.  They suspect that the “veneration” which Catholics give to saints is really just worship with a different name, and is therefore the sin of idolatry.  

Before jumping to this conclusion, however, we should take a step back and ask, “What does it mean to venerate?”  To venerate means to regard with great respect or to revere.  If we really think about it, we will realize that all of us have people whom we revere or regard with great respect.  Thus, all of us have people whom we venerate.  For example, what do we do on Martin Luther King, Jr. day?  We venerate Martin Luther King, Jr.  

In our day to day lives, the idea of venerating other people, for example, by bowing down to them, is completely foreign to most of us.  This is because we live in an egalitarian, democratic society in which we are constantly told that everyone is equal.  For most of us, venerating and bowing down to someone is associated only with the worship of God, and so we jump to the conclusion that venerating and bowing down to someone must be worship.  

In the ancient world, in contrast, it was taken for granted that people occupied different positions of status and that one was supposed to venerate those of a higher status, for example, by bowing down to the king.  Most of us would regard this as an outmoded, oppressive way to structure society.  But the veneration of saints is actually a subversion of this system of oppression.  By venerating people based on the fact that they are humble, loving, and Christlike, rather than based on their social, political, or economic status, the Christian affirms a radically different way of valuing people and their accomplishments than the world does.  We can see a vestige of this way of thinking in the term reverend (“revered one”), which is still sometimes used to refer to pastors.

The modern idea that all people are equal is simply not true.  Some people are better than others.  And it is fitting that we should respect, revere, and venerate those who are better than we are.  There is nothing wrong with venerating the saints, and this practice can be valuable, as long as we look to them as examples to emulate rather than as a special class of people we should not even attempt to imitate.  Undoubtedly, there are times when the veneration of saints slides into idolatry.  But this distortion does not make the proper practice of venerating the saints illegitimate.  

Most Protestants reject the practice of Christians asking saints to intercede on their behalf with God.  They see it as a deeply problematic denial of the fact that Jesus is the “one mediator between God and mankind” (I Tim 2:5) through whom we can “boldly approach the throne of grace” (Heb 4:16).  However, belief that Jesus is the one sufficient mediator between God and humanity does not rule out asking others to intercede for us.  A number of times, the apostle Paul asks other Christians to pray for him (I Thess 5:25, II Thess 3:1, Col 4:3), and most Christians today ask other Christians to pray for them, without thinking that this somehow takes away from the unique and sufficient mediation of Christ.  There is not much difference between this and asking departed Christian saints to pray for us.  Belief in the intercession of the saints can become problematic, if it gives someone the impression that Jesus is distant and cannot be directly approached.  But, again, this distortion does not make the proper practice illegitimate.

Icons

Even more so than the veneration of saints, the veneration of icons strikes most Protestants as idolatrous.  God commanded His people never to make images of anything and bow down to them (Ex 20: 4-5).  Creating icons and venerating them seems to directly contradict this prohibition of idolatry.

God’s prohibition on the creation of images was not absolute, however.  God Himself commanded the Israelites to make images of cherubim on top of the Ark of the Covenant (Ex 25: 17-22), and His temple contained images of cherubim (I Kng 6:32-35).  God did allow the use of images to facilitate worship.  What God forbade was the creation and worship of idols: images which represented a deity and in which a deity was believed to dwell.  God did not want His people to worship any other gods, and He did not want them to try to portray Him using an image, since He has no physical form, and human beings are His “image” (Gen 1:27).  

In Jesus, though, God has taken a physical form.  So, after Jesus, we can legitimately depict an image of God as long as we are depicting Jesus.  This image can then help facilitate our worship.  In the Incarnation, God became a human being, with a physical body, showing that matter can be a medium for spiritual reality and the knowledge of God.  

Of course, we do not know what Jesus really looked like.  But it is practically impossible to worship Jesus without having some kind of mental image of Him.  There is really no significant difference between this and having a physical image of Him (In fact, Protestants frequently depict images of Jesus in art, and these images inevitably influence our mental image of Him).  Typically, icons are deliberately made in a flat, unrealistic style to emphasize the fact that one should not focus on the icon itself but use it as a “window” to spiritual reality.  

Undoubtedly, there are times when the veneration of icons slides into idolatry.  But this does not make their proper use illegitimate.  Many Christians have found icons of Jesus and the saints to be helpful aids in their acts of worship and veneration.  

Scripture does not require Christians to venerate saints or icons.  These practices are purely optional, and Protestants do not need to engage in them.  But Protestants Christians should not necessarily judge and condemn Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians who do engage in these practices as being idolatrous, false Christians.  

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