It is my honor to contribute an essay in this special edition of Themelios paying tribute to the much beloved Don Carson and for his consequential work in curating the renaissance of scholarship in Biblical Theology in our time. Don’s insistence that attention be paid to the dominant themes that echo across the entirety of the biblical canon has proven to be an incredibly rich research project which has borne fruit in his edited series, New Studies in Biblical Theology. Don has not only proven to be one of the most respected exegetes in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries but also a first class scholar who has ranged so widely across all of the theological disciplines. It was Don’s Cambridge dissertation, published as Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility¹D. A. Carson, Divine Sovereignty and Human Responsibility: Biblical Perspectives in Tension (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1981). that opened my eyes as a young seminary faculty member nearly forty years ago to the possibility that the disciplines of theology and biblical studies could be allies rather than enemies. He insisted that readers of Scripture pay attention to the sacred deposit of the tradition of Reformed theology as they work their way across the full breadth of the canon. Toward that end, my goal in what follows is to trace the theologically significant categories of image and idol from the opening chapters of Genesis through the paradigm episode of idolatry in Exodus 32 all the way to the New Testament witness to Jesus as the perfect Image.

1. Creation in the Image of God

The biblical account of idolatry is rooted in the image-making dynamic that runs across the breadth of the canon. At the heart of this pattern is a “reflective” relationship rooted in the nature of worship. The imago dei (image of God) in the opening chapter of the Bible (Gen 1:26–27) refers to the theological stamp placed upon the original man and woman God created, along with their generations of their offspring. Idolatry, by contrast, is the practice that turns this imaging relationship theologically upside down. Instead of reflecting God as “images” of their creator, humans craft an idol and “reflect” it instead. In both instances, human identity is rooted in what they reflect and worship. The surprising end to this story in the NT is that the perfect Image of God (Jesus) enters into human history in visible form and restores the image in God’s people and breaks the power of the idols.

It is important to note that the language of the imago dei occurs only two other times in the book of Genesis (5:1 and 9:6), and from that point forward across the Old Testament the language of idolatry becomes prominent. Outside of Israel’s primeval history (Gen 1–11), the language of image occurs almost exclusively as a pejorative term, graven images (e.g., Exod 20:4, 2 Kgs 11:18; 2 Chr 23:17; Num 33:52; Amos 5:26; Ezek 7:20) and there are always negative overtones associated with the reflection of those graven images.

The Hebrew term for image (צֶלֶם) has the semantic range to include idols, having the substantive denotation of making visible what was not readily seen. Across the OT, when “image” is used negatively, it most often refers to Israel’s dalliances with foreign gods. Surrounded by nations where idol-making and idol-worship was common, Israel was called to be utterly unique. There were to be no material images of an invisible deity among the Israelites. In neighbouring cultures, carved statues abounded as the visible representations of invisible deities in whom the hopes of the nations resided. By contrast, in Israel there were to be no carved images, because God had already made a concrete image both visible and tangible to all who would look—namely, humankind.

The narrative of the Exodus from Egypt is followed quickly by the precarious journey into the Sinai wilderness. Israel did not know from where food or water would come, nor how they would navigate through the desert. They were met with a surprising series of displays of YHWH’s faithfulness to them. Geographical guidance was provided by a pillar of fire at night and a moving cloud by day. Water came from a rock. Bread descended from heaven. Quail mysteriously came from the skies. In spite of all of this, Israel could not quite accept that God would continue to provide for them.

2. Turning the Story Upside Down

The landmark OT text regarding idolatry, Exodus 32, records the golden calf incident. It is a paradigmatic text that echoes across the OT. Running from Exodus 32:1 to 33:6, the account of the golden calf is carefully crafted in the book of Exodus. It is framed by an initial ascent up the mountain, followed by descent, then concluding with another ascent and final descent. At the outset, Israel crafted a molten image of a cow likely modelled upon the agrarian idols of Egypt, where Israel had recently come. In the cloud on top of the Mount, YHWH told Moses that the Israelites were “your people whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt” (Exod 32:7, emphasis mine). Moses bristled at this and responded in verse 11, “Why are you angry at this people whom you have brought out of Egypt” (emphasis mine). The central question of this exchange was “to whom do the people belong?” This is the question of identity at the heart of the story of idol-making in Exodus 32. YHWH’s covenantal ownership of Israel was threatened by Israel’s attempt to grant ownership rights to the idols. And significantly, Israel’s security was threatened in this change of ownership. Their purpose and significance became as fragile as the calf that could be made one day and smelted out of existence the next. From this point forward in Israel’s history, acts of rebellion were characterized by appeal to the calf’s attributes—a stiff neck, a hard heart, ears that cannot hear, and eyes that cannot see.

The canonical echo of the Sinai episode reinforces its enduring significance for Israel’s future relationship to YHWH. In Moses’s song recorded in Deuteronomy 32, there is a strong interplay between the idols made by the people and the people themselves. The idols are “no gods,” and the people became, as a result of their idols, “no people.” In Numbers 33, YHWH issued a warning regarding the gods/idols Israel would confront on the other side of the Jordan when they attempted to possess the promised land. The “rebellion in the desert” served as the reminder of Israel’s fragile status. In 2 Kings 11:18 and the parallel account in 2 Chronicles 23:17, the images/idols of Baal were destroyed with the recognition that they were powerless competitors to YHWH, though they were powerful competitors for Israel’s loyalties. Nehemiah’s recounting of redemptive history at the rebuilding of the temple called to mind both God’s great act of deliverance from Egypt and Israel’s “great sin of the molten calf” (Neh 9). The hymnody of Israel likewise connected the great act of God’s redemption in the exodus and the contrasting act of Israel’s infidelity:

At Horeb they made a calf and worshiped an idol cast from metal. They exchanged their Glory for an image of a bull, which eats grass. They forgot the God who saved them, who had done great things in Egypt. (Ps 106:19–21)

Israel’s prophets often referred to Israel’s hard-heartedness, their stiff-necks, their having ears but not hearing and eyes but not seeing (e.g., 2 Chr 30:8; 36:13; Neh 9:16–17; Job 41:24; Isa 6:9; 32:3; 44:18; Jer 5:21; 7:26; 17:23; Ezek 3:7; 12:2; Ps 95:8; 115:5–6; Zech 7:11). Thus, the people were becoming as spiritually inanimate as the idols they worshipped. The idols looked like living persons but were not able to talk or to walk (Jer 10:5). Idols without life could not give what they did not have and therefore would never be life-giving.

The prophet Isaiah offered the clearest and richest denunciation of idolatry in the period of the monarchy. The second half of Isaiah opens with four spiralling poems, each in turn having to do with the confrontation between YHWH and the gods of the nations. In Isaiah 40, the idol maker was portrayed as god-like in his creative abilities. But unlike God, the idol maker grew faint, and his strength wore out. He became hungry and thirsty as all humans do. God not only does not grow weary or faint, but in the familiar refrain of Isaiah 40:31, “those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not be faint.” Isaiah’s argument became satirical. Imagine the irony. The idol maker cut down trees to make his idols. He used some of the wood for cooking, some of it for heating, and the rest of it to make his idols/gods, as if the scraps of wood were worthy objects of worship. The satire unveiled the genuine irrationality of idolatry. The idol maker ventured to make his own idol as the means to create and control his own significance and safety. In Isaiah 44 the idols were said to be “empty/nothing” (תֹּהוּ, 44:9) hearkening back to the formlessness and void (תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ) of the earth in Genesis 1:2. The emptiness of the idol, however, belied the arrogance of the project. The idol maker supposed that they were creating a deity. The rhetorical question Isaiah appeared to be asking was, “who indeed is the person who could possibly make their own god?” In other words, what sense does it make to say that the god who made us is made by us?

3. Turning the Upside Down Story Right Side Up

In the NT the imago dei is most directly connected to Christ (2 Cor 4:4; Col 1:15). Jesus is the “exact representation” and that by which the invisible God has become visible (cf. Heb 1:5; John 1:18). Christ is the perfect image who suffers in our place and for our redemption (Eph 5:25–26). As a consequence, human identity was most clearly seen in Christ, the one in whom, through whom, and for whom humankind was made (1 Cor 8:6; Col 1:16). The apostles claim that the visibility of Christ as the image of God (εἰκὼν τοῦ θεοῦ) is precisely what inverts the corrupted order of idolatry. In Christ, the Creator entered into creation and was thereby recreating the cosmic order after his image.

The idols represented the inversion of the original theological order of representation and reflection. The idols depicted an exchange of the glory of God for the foolishness of this world (Rom 1:23). The practices of idolatry assumed that the gods were beings adequately represented by objects of gold or silver and that could be shaped and moulded by their worshippers (Acts 17:29). These practices pervaded the Graeco-Roman world and were difficult for newly converted Christians to repudiate in their entirety. The religious customs associated with the temple cults were often considered normative for all citizens of the empire. Rejecting those customs entailed dissonance with imperial rule and inevitably put Christians at risk. The opposite danger was just as real as well. Showing any kind of loyalty to the idols would be viewed as unfaithfulness to Christ and thereby put one’s place in the covenant at risk (1 Cor 10:14; 1 John 5:21).

In Jesus’s interaction with the Pharisees, there is one prominent place where idolatry is implicitly mentioned. In Mark 12 (parr. Matt 22:15–22 and Luke 20:19–26), the Pharisees asked Jesus whether Jews should pay taxes to Caesar. The question implicitly asks whether the image (εἰκών) of Caesar on the coins used to pay taxes constituted idolatry. The coin requested by Jesus did in fact portray the emperor as the Pontifex Maximus (High Priest) of the Roman religion. In his response to the query of the Pharisees, Jesus understood the challenge of coins but resisted the assumptions behind the questions. Treating another human as God was wrong. But the question was what practices constituted treating another human as God. Did paying taxes to Caesar entail treating him as God? Jesus reasoned that the emperor could be recognized as important to the well-being of the empire without also attributing to him divine powers. In this sense Jesus was demythologizing the emerging emperor cult—Caesar was not God—while also granting the emperor his right to collect taxes for the well-being of the people. This became the pattern for Paul in dealing with food offered to idols. If the idols were treated as divine, then Christians should abstain from the food offered to them. But if the idols were treated as simply blocks of gold or silver, then eating food offered to them was permissible.

The “emperor cult” became more aggressive after Jesus’s death, extremely so under Domitian (emperor from AD 81–96), demanding a test of loyalty from all Roman citizens because of the imperial claim to deity. This would have been quite different under Augustus and Tiberius, the emperors in Jesus’s time, where there appeared to have been no such test. Relinquishing the coin to the tax collectors by Jesus amounted to no more than an affirmation that Caesar possessed some form of civil authority. Undoubtedly, had Jesus been confronted with a claim about the alleged deity of the emperor, he would have steadfastly denied it. Towards the end of the first century, Christians faced this precise situation. As the book of Revelation manifests, martyrdom was the cost of refusing the emperor’s test of loyalty and denying his claim to deity.

It is somewhat surprising to find that greed is included as an idolatry-related vice in the NT. There appears to be no particular concrete relation of greed to the temple cults of the Graeco-Roman world, and yet Paul denounced greed as idolatrous in Colossians 3:5 and Ephesians 5:5. No other vices in the NT are listed in such straightforward connection to the larger theological umbrella of idolatry. Why greed? The initial clue might come from the reminder that idolatry is fundamentally defective worship. It is rooted in the desire to replace God as the proper object of worship with an alternative. There were any number of alternative objects of worship which the Scriptures confront. The yearning or longing for these alternative objects of worship could well be covered under the umbrella term of greed. If we remember the ten commandments in Exodus 20 or Deuteronomy 5, the first four commands centered on the proper worship of YHWH, while the final set of commandments warned against the desire for that which is not properly yours—effectively marking the distinction between the rightful longing for God and the unrighteous longing for alternative objects to satisfy the human heart. If greed is the longing for ultimate satisfaction elsewhere than God, it would render the human heart idolatrous. Money might well be one object commonly associated with greed (Matt 6:24; Luke 16:14), but longing for ultimate satisfaction could well come from other creaturely realities like power or sex or reputation.

A great and terrible theological exchange takes place in the practice of idolatry according to Paul’s argument in Romans 1. The glory of God is exchanged for images of every sort of creature: men and birds and land animals and even reptiles. This description of the tragic exchange at the center of idolatry is a Pauline way of providing a big picture of human corruption. The apostle issues the familiar canonical claim that there is no comparison between the Creator and the creature, and yet humans have persuaded themselves into thinking that other created things will satisfy their deepest longings.

There are important contrasts throughout Paul’s argument in Romans 1 illuminating the emotional power of idolatry. Hoping to hold down the truth, humans were held down by unrighteousness (1:18). That which can plainly be seen was exchanged for darkness (1:20–21). Though they knew God, they did not know God (1:21). Claiming to be wise, they became fools (1:22). The glory of God was exchanged for but a dim image. The shadow was embraced rather than the reality (1:23). Refusing to honour God, they dishonoured themselves (1:24). Truth was exchanged for a lie (1:25). In each of these, there was a turning upside down or inside out of the created order.

In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul pursues another familiar line of argument against idolatry. He turns his attention to Isaiah 44, where idols are neither alive nor do they represent gods who are alive. The non-living idols represent non-existent gods. Paul admonished the Corinthians to flee from idolatry because the gods represented did not actually exist. In this light they surely could not provide any grounds for hope in the face of adversity.

Following Paul’s account of the theological exchange of image and idol, Luke records Stephen’s speech in Acts 7, reminding the Jewish ruling court that Israel’s long history of idolatry was embedded in Israel’s habits. Stephen cites Amos 5 as evidence from Israel’s own history of the pattern of idolatry. He infers from the Golden Calf episode that all future idolatry (that the prophets later condemned) had its origin~~s~~ in the wilderness. Even the worship of Moloch and Rephan by the northern kingdom of Israel, which Amos had cited, were linked to the pattern that began with Israel’s worship of the Golden Calf in the Sinai wilderness.

Likewise in Acts 17, Paul confronts the common religious idolatry of the Graeco-Roman world at Athens, a city filled with idols, likely more pervasive than in other cities of comparable size in the Graeco-Roman world. Its long and distinguished history had in part been tied to the heritage of temples and statues dedicated to a variety of emperors and gods. The Athenian idols were considered a sign of its cultural significance. Paul’s critique of idolatry in Athens hinges on whether it makes sense to suppose that the Creator of the world can be fashioned out of gold or silver. It was God who created humankind, not the reverse. God is not an image that can be formed from the imagination or creativity of human artists. Paul claims that it would be illogical to suppose that humans can find their safety and significance by creating a god who gave them meaning in the first place.

The imago dei attains a unique status in the person of Jesus Christ, both in his perfect humanity and also in his perfect obedience to the Father even to the point of death on the cross. It is not an abstract metaphysical claim, but primarily a confession about salvation. The claim that Jesus is the “image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15) is the means to establish that God is renewing/restoring/ redeeming his people into his image. As the perfect image of God, Jesus is “reconciling to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col 1:20). In Christ, God has become visible.

Image and Idolatry remain theologically important concepts for contemporary Christians. The enduring presence of the imago dei pushes us to recognize that the only genuine answer to our deepest longings for security and significance are to be found in the God who created us and brought redemption to us in Christ. By contrast, idolatry provides the pungent reminder that we are all prone to find security and significance in places other than the God who created and redeems us. We no longer bring carved statues into worship, but powerful present realities such as money, sex, and power often subvert our deepest longings for God and thereby blunt the force of the imago dei in each of us as it beckons us to worship the Triune God. Often our deep anxieties related to jobs, families, reputations, or retirement are accompanied by attempts to suppress those anxieties with idols. It is when we turn good things into God-things by attempting to create safety and significance on our own terms that we enter into the land of idolatry. Surely we must recognize the idols of our own making are no match for the Living God of the universe.

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