Zwingli on Images
The following is an excerpt from Zwingli’s Short Christian Instruction (1523)1
[7] CONCERNING IMAGES
Concerning images: it is reasonable for everyone to teach, as has been found, that images are forbidden by God—so that, after they have been instructed and strengthened, the unlearned and weak ones may soon accept what should be done with the images. For this purpose, the little book that recently came out, On the Abolition of Images, will serve well because it has much scriptural evidence. Whoever does not have this, let him read the following passages:
Exodus 20:23 (at the end on the silver idols); Exodus 34:12–17; Leviticus 19:4; Leviticus 26:1; Deuteronomy 4:3, 23–28; Deuteronomy 5:7–9; 1 Samuel 7:3–6; Numbers 25:4f.; Deuteronomy 7:5, 25f.; Deuteronomy 11:16f.; Deuteronomy 13:6–18; Deuteronomy 27:15; Joshua 24:23; Judges 10:6–16; Psalm 96:5; Psalm 115:4–8; Isaiah 42:17; Isaiah 44:9–20; Jeremiah 10:2–16; Jeremiah 13:10; Ezekiel 14; Ezekiel 6; Micah 1:5–7; Habakkuk 2:18f.; 2 Kings 18:4, 33–35; 2 Kings 10:15–30; 2 Kings 23:4–23; 2 Chronicles 31:1–7; 1 Corinthians 5:10f.; Acts 15:20, 29; 1 Corinthians 8:4f.; 1 Corinthians 10:19–21; 1 Corinthians 12:2; Galatians 5:1, 20; 1 Thessalonians 1:9; 1 Peter 4:3; 1 John 5:21.
Of the passages noted, some forbid images or idols, some ridicule them, and some teach how one should abolish them. At the same time, however, one is to proceed carefully so that evil does not result. For until Christian people are instructed rightly, that one should not pay the images any honor, one may still have patience until the weak are also able to follow—so that the matter may be brought to a conclusion with unanimity. Some passages praise those who have got rid of images.
Here some disagree in the following way: “This command concerns only Jews and not us Christians.” One should answer thus: the two parts, “You shall not have foreign gods” [Exodus 20:3] and “You shall have no image or likeness” [Exodus 20:4], are like a safeguard and explanation of the first commandment, “You shall trust in one God.” Look at Deuteronomy 5:6, where God says: “I am your Lord God, who has led you out of Egypt, etc.” Observe that this is the first commandment, wherein God has set himself forth as our God. Now he forbids the things which want to lead us away from him and says immediately thereafter, “You shall not have other gods after me or in my sight” [Deut. 5:7]. And that is a way through which the children of Israel were often led away—and we Christians the same. For whoever has sought help and confidence from a creature which the believer ought to seek only with God, has made a foreign god for himself. For that is forever one’s god in which one takes refuge. Hence, that is one thing that may draw us from God: foreign gods.
The other thing that may lead us away is images. For that reason, God forbids them first: “You shall make no carved image, nor likeness or copy of the things which are in heaven, on the earth or in the water” [Deut. 5:8]. See, one is simply not to make any. And if in some way we must have an image before us, as happened to Daniel and others in Daniel Chapter 3, then he says: “You shall give them no honor”—neither genuflecting, bowing nor reverencing (for that is what the word schahah means), “and render them no service either.” The Latin words also sufficiently point this out: “You shall not worship them; also show them no honor.” If one has them in a church then one has already given the images honor. And, if one says “I do not worship them; they teach and admonish me,” that is all a fable. God does not speak here of worship, which we want to understand: he is above that, for he knows well that no wise person worships an image. However, he forbids here all manifestations of honor, so that one may not bow, genuflect, kneel, light candles or burn incense before them. If one is not honoring them, then what are they doing on the altar? Indeed, one is honoring them no less than pagans do their images of idols when they have called them by the name of idols. We have done likewise. We name the pieces of wood with the names of the blessed. One piece of wood we name Our Lady and the Mother of God, the other we name St. Nicholas, etc. And those who do this cry that we want to destroy the honor of the saints, but when they call idols by saints’ names they are already dishonoring the saints.
Moreover, it is also wrong that the pictures teach us. We should be taught solely by the word of God. Instead, the idle priests, who should have taught us unceasingly, have painted the teachings on the walls for us. And we poor simple people have therewith been deprived of the teaching and have fallen to images, and have honored them. We have begun to seek from creatures what we should have sought only from God. And though they often should have taught us, they omitted teaching and held the Mass frequently instead. We simple ones have not understood the Mass, and also the majority of them also, until it has come to the point that by far the majority of Christian people have not known the essential point as to how a person is saved. Indeed, with their fables of the saints, some have pitiably turned us from the true word of God to the creature.
But if one objects that images are not forbidden in the New Testament, this also is wrong. For where one finds in the New Testament idolum or simulachrum, there one should read in German bilder (“images”) or glychnussen (“likenesses”). Let no one be mistaken that if he finds in the newly published New Testament in the designated passages the words abgot (“idol”) or froembde (“foreign gods”) it should always read “images” or “likenesses” instead. Idolen, semeion, says Hesychius, “is the Latin ‘simulachrum’;” in German: a bild (“image”) or glychnus (“likeness”). Now compare 1 John 5:21: “Dear Children, be on your guard against images!” and other passages and see, therefore, whether or not images are also forbidden in the New Testament. Acts Chapter 15 is advice by the Christians at Jerusalem that Christians should be on guard against the defilement caused by images.
Furthermore, if we say “The saints’ images show us what they have done and suffered so that we do likewise,” then one should ask us when our works are righteous. We must always say: if they are done in faith which is also love for God, then they are pleasing to God according to 1 Corinthians Chapter 13. One asks us further: on what basis have the saints done such? We will say: out of true faith. Now let someone show us where they have painted or copied this faith. We cannot show it save in their hearts. Therefore it must always follow that we also must learn that faith is necessary in our hearts if we want to do anything pleasing to God. This we cannot learn from walls but only from the gracious pulling of God out of his own word. See. We recognize here that the image leads only to external weakness and cannot make the heart faithful. We see externally what the saints have done, but images cannot give us the faith wherein all things must come to pass. If we now have pure and undefiled faith, see, we will ridicule ourselves for having had so ignorant and weak a faith that we imagined images admonish us—when, in fact, everything without faith is vain.
Here one makes another objection: “Then it is not fitting for one to paint a story on his house, or to have any kinds of pictures painted or carved. In the Old Testament we see two cherubim and woven or embroidered cloths with the cherubim and bronze serpents, and buttons, lilies and violets on the menorah and garlands on the ephod. Also in 1 Kings Chapter 6, Solomon let them make cherubim, palm trees and numbers of paintings in the temple that were so beautiful they appeared to grow out of the walls. Therefore it is without doubt also fitting for us to have such paintings or images.” I answer: it is certain that God has only forbidden all forms and images, lest one begin to honor anything or render honor to any creature in addition to him, as one can well understand in Deuteronomy Chapter 4. Therefore we may well note that such forms as flower patterns, lions’ heads, wings and the like that never can be taken as God and as aids are not forbidden. For Solomon would not have let such trees and flowers be made in the temple, nor would God have ordered the making of the menorah, if they had produced the danger of idolatry. However, with regard to the images and the paintings which we have in churches, it is evident that they have created the danger of idolatry. Therefore, one should not leave them there any longer—nor in your chamber, in the marketplace, or anywhere one shows any kind of honor. Especially are they intolerable in the churches, for everything we have there is holy to us. Where anyone would have them outside the church as a representation of historical events without instruction for veneration, they may be tolerated. But whenever one begins to bow before them and to give them honor, then they are to be tolerated nowhere on earth. For then they are, in short, either an aid to idolatry, or idolatry itself.
James T. Dennison Jr., Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation: 1523–1693 (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2008–2014), 31–35.