For Protestant readers

Icons and the second commandment

Is venerating an image of Christ or a saint forbidden by the commandment against graven images?

Dogmatic definition
Received Orthodox teaching

Primary evidence verified Content last reviewed 2026-09-04

What still needs checking (4)

Obtain the Heidelberg Catechism questions 96-98 and the Westminster Larger Catechism on the second commandment, so the Reformed objection is stated in its own confessional words rather than summarised.
Obtain the Thirty-Nine Articles and a Lutheran statement, since Lutheran and Anglican practice on images differs sharply from the Reformed and this page must not merge them.
Obtain an OCA or other official Orthodox catechetical statement on the veneration of icons, so this page carries a tier A or B route rather than resting on the conciliar text alone.
Obtain tier D scholarship on the iconoclast controversy, whose political dimension this page deliberately does not narrate.

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This is the one major disagreement where an ecumenical council addressed the objection head-on, in a text this archive holds in full. The council draws a distinction in Greek that English blurs, and most arguments about icons turn on whether that distinction is real.

What is held in common

Both hold that God alone is to be worshipped, that idolatry is a grave sin, and that no creature may be given what belongs to God. Neither Orthodox nor Protestant Christians think a painted board is divine. Both also accept that God became visible in Christ, which is the hinge the whole argument turns on. And in practice most Protestant churches use some visual representation — a cross, an illustrated Bible, a nativity scene — so the disagreement is rarely about whether images may exist at all.

The Orthodox position

The Orthodox position is that the Incarnation changed what may be depicted. The prohibition in Exodus stands against making an image of a God who had not been seen; when God took flesh and was seen, handled and eaten with, depicting him became possible without falsehood. An icon is a confession that the Incarnation really happened.

The Seventh Ecumenical Council settled the matter in 787, and it did not do so vaguely. It distinguished the reverence given to an image from the worship given to God alone, using two different Greek words, and it explained why honouring an image is not honouring the wood.

The conciliar text

The Decree of the Second Council of Nicaea, 787

and to these should be given due salutation and honourable reverence (ἀσπασμὸν καὶ τιμητικὴν προσκύνησιν), not indeed that true worship of faith (λατρείαν)

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. XIV — public domain

On this text. The definition keeps the Greek in Percival's edition, which is why it is quoted here rather than paraphrased: the two words are the whole point, and any English rendering has to choose between them.

The Decree of the Second Council of Nicaea, 787

For the honour which is paid to the image passes on to that which the image represents, and he who reveres the image reveres in it the subject represented.

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. XIV — public domain

On this text. The council's answer to the charge that reverence stops at the object. The principle is older than the council and is borrowed from fourth-century writing on the honour paid to an emperor's image.

Read the conciliar texts

The Second Council of Nicaea (787) — The council, its decree and its twenty-two canons, archived in full.
Icons and the Seventh Council — The lesson treatment, with the theology set out at more length.

Where the difference actually lies

The Reformed objection is not that Orthodox Christians consciously worship wood. It is that the second commandment forbids making images for religious use at all, that the distinction between reverence and worship cannot be maintained by ordinary people in practice whatever it means in theory, and that the commandment governs how God may be approached rather than only which God is approached.

The Orthodox reply is that the council anticipated exactly this, that the practice is older than the controversy, and that the Incarnation makes the depiction of Christ a confession rather than a violation. Where that leaves the argument is a real disagreement about whether a distinction can be both true and safely practised — and Lutheran and Anglican traditions, which kept images while rejecting other things, land somewhere else again.

Not yet stated here: the teaching of the Protestant confessions

The Reformed objection is a careful argument set out in catechisms, not a slogan, and paraphrasing it tends to make it sound cruder than it is. Lutheran and Anglican practice differs from Reformed practice substantially, so there is no single Protestant position to state even in principle.

To write this section, a maintainer must obtain and cite:

Heidelberg Catechism, questions 96-98, on the second commandment and images
Westminster Larger Catechism, on what the second commandment requires and forbids
The Thirty-Nine Articles, Article XXII, on the veneration of images and relics
A Lutheran statement, since Luther retained images against the iconoclasm of his own contemporaries

Why this is empty. A claim about what another Church teaches requires that Church's own authoritative text — tier E in the source policy. No such text has been obtained, so the claim is not made. This gap is the honest state of the evidence, not an oversight.

Misreadings on both sides

That the Seventh Council introduced icons. It did not. Icons were in use long before the controversy; the council was responding to an attempt to remove them, not authorising something new. Whatever one concludes, the practice is not an invention of 787.

That Orthodox Christians pray to icons. The council's own language is that the honour passes to the one represented. Someone who thinks the board answers prayer has misunderstood their own tradition, and the council says so more sharply than most critics do.

That Protestants are iconoclasts as a bloc. Lutheran churches kept images; Anglican practice varies enormously; the Reformed objection is the strong one. Treating them as one position misrepresents most Protestants.

That the iconoclast controversy was purely theological. It ran through imperial politics, military defeat and dynastic struggle for over a century. A history that presents it as a seminar on aesthetics is not describing what happened.

Sources for this page

Tier C The Seven Ecumenical Councils of the Undivided Church Henry R. Percival (ed.); Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (series eds.) The Decree of the Second Council of Nicaea (787) annotated edition of conciliar texts Archived in full; quoted here with its Greek terms intact. Source record (opens in a new tab)

Tiers are explained in the methodology. No page on this site has been reviewed or approved by any bishop, priest, synod or seminary.