Treatise against Those Who Make Images

1A discourse of Saint Epiphanius against those who make a practice of producing images according to an idolatrous custom, in likeness of Christ and of the Mother of God and of the martyrs, and further of angels and prophets.

They whitewashed the wall and impressed images on it with varied colors.

Because, they say, we make images of the saints as a memorial and for their honor.

Falsely named.

But how did bones and sinews fitted together become visible to him in the painting of the archangel? It would take his own wit to say.

Those who think they honor the apostles in this way should learn that instead of honoring them, they dishonor them all the more.

For Paul, insulting the falsely named priest, declared him to be a whitewashed wall.

2John says, "We know that when he appears, we shall be like him" (1 John 3:2), and Paul proclaimed that the saints are "conformed to the Son of God" (Romans 8:29). So how can you wish to see the saints, who are destined to shine in glory, in inglorious, dead, and voiceless matter, when the Lord says of them, "They will be like the angels of God" (Matthew 22:30)? And how can you paint angels, who are spirits and always alive, painting them in dead things and worship them, when the prophet says, "He who makes his angels spirits and his ministers a flaming fire" (Psalm 103:4 LXX, 104:4 Hebrew)? I say that they themselves do not wish to be worshipped. "See that you do not do it; I am a fellow servant with you and your brothers who hold the testimony of Jesus. Worship God," he says (Revelation 19:10). But the apostles did not wish to be worshipped either.

3When the apostles were sent out to preach the gospel, they did not want to be worshipped themselves, but only Christ who sent them. The one who received authority from him to bind and loose on earth and in heaven said to Cornelius, "I am a human being of like nature with you," and he taught that he himself was not to be worshipped, but only Christ the Savior.

As for the angels, the fathers who gathered at Laodicea—for they certainly assembled because of just such a matter—say: "If anyone abandons the church of God and invokes angels, let him be anathema, because he has abandoned our Lord Jesus Christ and has fallen into idolatry."

4How can anyone claim to paint the incomprehensible, the inexpressible, the inconceivable, the one who cannot be encompassed or depicted—the one Moses could not even gaze upon? Some say, "Since he became a perfect human being from Mary the ever-virgin, that is why we make him as a human being." And did he become incarnate for this reason—so that you could paint with your hands the incomprehensible one through whom all things were made? Then is he not like the Father, and does he not give life to the dead? Where did he command you, when he came to earth, to make something like him and to worship it and gaze upon it? This command is from the evil one, so that you would despise God. For God abolishes these things in all the Old and New Testaments, saying precisely: "You shall worship the Lord your God, and him alone shall you serve" (Deuteronomy 6:13).