Idolatry

"[Idolatry] consists not merely in erecting an image and worshiping it, but rather in the heart, which stands gaping at something else, and seeks help and consolation from creatures, saints, or devils, and neither cares for God, nor looks to Him for so much good as to believe that He is willing to help, neither believes that whatever good it experiences comes from God."

"The heathen really make their self-invented notions and dreams of God and idol. Ultimately, they put their trust in that which is nothing. So it is with all idolatry. For it happens not merely by erecting an image and worshipping it, but rather it happens in the heart. For the heart seeks help and consolation from creatures, saints, or devils. It neither cares for God, nor looks to Him for anything better than to believe that He is willing to help."

"Superstition, idolatry, and hypocrisy have ample wages, but truth goes a-begging."

"It is distinctly said in the Law that everything which idolaters consider as service to their gods, and a means of approaching them, is rejected and despised by God... Thus all precepts cautioning against idolatry, or against that which is connected therewith, leads to it, or is related to it, are evidently useful."

"The custom which was in those days general among all men, and the general mode of worship in which the Israelites were brought up, consisted in sacrificing animals in those temples which contained certain images to bow down to those images, and to burn incense before them; religious and ascetic persons were in those days the persons that were devoted to the service in the temples erected to the stars... It was in accordance with the wisdom and plan of God, as displayed in the whole Creation, that He did not command us to give up and to discontinue all these manners of service, for to obey such a commandment it would have been contrary to the nature of man, who generally cleaves to that to which he is used... By this Divine plan it was effected that the traces of idolatry were blotted out, and the truly great principle of our faith, the existence and Unity of God, was firmly established; this result was thus obtained without deterring or confusing the minds of the people by the abolition of the service to which they were accustomed and which alone was familiar to them."

"After a long time the great and awful Name was forgotten and the people, men, women and children, only recognized an image of wood or stone and the temple of wood or stone which they had been brought up from infancy to serve by bowing down. ... Abraham ... knew that all were mistaken and that what caused them to err was worship of the images which drove the Truth out of their minds."

"I am alone in my monotonous country, While all those around me live in the idolatry Of a mirror reflecting in its depths serene Herodiade, whose gaze is diamond keen ... O final enchantment! yes, I sense it, I am alone."

"The idol depends on the gaze that it satisfies, since if the gaze did not desire to satisfy itself in the idol, the idol would have no dignity for it."

"The gaze strains itself to see the divine, to see it by taking it up into the field of the gazeable. The more powerfully the aim is deployed, the longer it sustains itself, the richer, more extensive and more sumptuous will appear the idol on which it will stop its gaze. ... In this stop, the gaze ceases to overshoot and transpierce itself, hence it ceases to transpierce visible things, in order to pause in the splendor of one of them."

"Der Staat lügt in allen Zungen der Guten und Bösen; und was er auch redet, er lügt – und was er auch hat, gestohlen hat er's. Falsch ist alles an ihm; mit gestohlenen Zähnen beißt er, der Bissige. Falsch sind selbst seine Eingeweide. Sprachverwirrung des Guten und Bösen: dieses Zeichen gebe ich euch als Zeichen des Staates. Wahrlich, den Willen zum Tode deutet dieses Zeichen! Wahrlich, es winkt den Predigern des Todes!"

"Watch them clamber, these swift monkeys! They clamber over one another and thus drag one another into the mud and the depth. They all want to get to the throne: that is their madness — as if happiness sat on the throne. Often, mud sits on the throne — and often the throne also on mud. Mad they all appear to me, clambering monkeys and overardent. Foul smells their idol, the cold monster: foul, they smell to me altogether, these idolators."

"There are more idols than realities in the world: that is my "evil eye" for this world, which is also my "evil ear.""

"All that philosophers have handled for millennia, were conceptual mummies; there was nothing real to life from their hands. They kill, they fill out that these gentlemen term, idolaters, when they worship — they are all dangerous when they worship."

"Sociology has up to the present almost always seen only one aspect of the historical State. It has only seen the State as the guardian of peace and justice. Indeed it is commonly assumed that peace and justice did not exist until the State came into being. This is a great error; the community which preceded the State defended its territory and the lives and property of its members to the utmost, and was exceedingly energetic in maintaining internal equality of rights. The State merely took over from the community these two tasks, which must be carried out if any kind of society is to exist at all. This misconception cherished by previous sociology is the cause of its idolatry of the State, taking the form of State-worship. Peace and justice are great benefits to society, and consequently it is assumed, that the State, which is regarded not merely as the guardian of peace and justice, but as the only possible means by which they can be created, must be the greatest of all benefits. In reality however the State is nothing but one community living as a parasite upon another."

"If God should turn away from himself as the Source of infinite joy, he would cease to be God. He would deny the infinite worth of his own glory. He would imply that there is something more valuable outside himself. He would commit idolatry ... Where will we find a Rock of integrity in the universe when the heart of God has ceased to value supremely the supremely valuable?"

"The unity of God is a doctrine on which the greatest stress is laid in the whole system of revelation. To guard this most important article was the principal object of the Jewish religion; and, notwithstanding the proneness of the Jews to idolatry, at length it fully answered its purpose in reclaiming them, and in impressing the minds of many persons of other nations in favour of the same fundamental truth."

"As the greatest things often take their rise from the smallest beginnings, so the worst things sometimes proceed from good intentions. This was certainly the case with respect to the origin of Christian Idolatry. All the early heresies arose from men who wished well to the gospel, and who meant to recommend it to the Heathens, and especially to philosophers among them, whose prejudices they found great difficulty in conquering."

"The reason why I entered into a religious order is this: first, the great misery of the world, the wickedness of men, the rapes, the adulteries, the thefts, the pride, the idolatry, the vile curses, for the world has come to such a state that one can no longer find anyone who does good; so much so that many times every day I would sing this verse with tears in my eyes: Alas, flee from cruel lands, flee from the shores of the greedy. I did this because I could not stand the great wickedness of the blind people of Italy, especially when I saw that virtue had been completely cast down and vice raised up."

"Most often people think of idols as man-created statues that are worshipped as though they were G-d. This is a very narrow perspective of idolatry. The real meaning of idol worship is stated in the Book of Psalms, and it is the worship of maaseh bnai adam, objects and ideas that are of our own creation. When we create an object or an idea and endow it with transcendental qualities, we become idol worshippers."

"The art of government is the organization of idolatry."

"Revenge is the naked idol of the worship of a semi-barbarous age."

"Tacitus says, that the Jews held God to be something eternal and supreme, neither subject to change nor to decay; therefore, they permit no statues in their cities or their temples. The universal Being can only be described or defined by negatives which deny his subjection to the laws of all inferior existences. Where indefiniteness ends, idolatry and anthropomorphism begin."

"Fame, power, and gold, are loved for their own sakes — are worshipped with a blind, habitual idolatry. The pageantry of empire, and the fame of irresistible might, are contemplated by the possessor with unmeaning complacency, without a retrospect to the properties which first made him consider them of value. It is from the cultivation of the most contemptible properties of human nature that discord and torpor and indifference, by which the moral universe is disordered, essentially depend. So long as these are the ties by which human society is connected, let it not be admitted that they are fragile."

"Whosoever recognizes idols has denied the entire Torah; and whosoever denies idols has recognized the entire Torah."

"Instantly you should awaken, walk in the right way, keep aloof from all abomination and idolatry, forsake false prophets, preachers and priests; and seek the true teachers, sacraments and divine service; for a true, sincere, Christian faith cannot be idle; but it changes, renews, purifies, sanctifies and justifies more and more; it makes joyous and glad, for by faith it knows that hell, devil, sin and death, are conquered through Christ, and that grace, mercy, and redemption from sin and eternal life, are acquired through him."

"Wherever public worship has been established and regularly aintained, idolatry has vanished from the face of the earth. There is not now a temple to a heathen god where the word of God is read."

"Whosoever denies idols is called a Jew."

"If you uproot the idol and fail to plant the love of Christ in its place, the idol will grow back."

"The principal crime of the human race, the highest guilt charged upon the world, the whole procuring cause of judgment, is idolatry."

"If no law of God had prohibited idols to be made by us; if no voice of the Holy Spirit uttered general menace no less against the makers than the worshippers of idols; from our sacrament itself we would draw our interpretation that arts of that kind are opposed to the faith. For how have we renounced the devil and his angels, if we make them? What divorce have we declared from them, I say not with whom, but dependent on whom, we live? What discord have we entered into with those to whom we are under obligation for the sake of our maintenance? Can you have denied with the tongue what with the hand you confess? unmake by word what by deed you make? preach one God, you who make so many? preach the true God, you who make false ones? "I make," says one, "but I worship not;" as if there were some cause for which he dare not worship, besides that for which he ought not also to make,--the offence done to God, namely, in either case. Nay, you who make, that they may be able to be worshipped, do worship; and you worship, not with the spirit of some worthless perfume, but with your own; nor at the expense of a beast's soul, but of your own. To them you immolate your ingenuity; to them you make your sweat a libation; to them you kindle the torch of your forethought. More are you to them than a priest, since it is by your means they have a priest; your diligence is their divinity. Do you affirm that you worship not what you make? Ah! but they affirm not so, to whom you slay this fatter, more precious and greater victim, your salvation."

"All over the world you will find images in some form or other. With some, it is in the form of a man, which is the best form…One sect thinks a certain form is the right sort of image, and another, thinks it is bad. The Christian thinks that when God came in the form of a dove it was alright, but if he comes in the form of a fish, as the Hindus say, it is very wrong and superstitious. The Jews think if an idol be made in the form of a chest with two angels sitting on it, and a book on it, it is all right, but if it is in the form of a man or a woman, it is awful. The Mohammedans think that when they pray, if they try to form a mental image of temple with the Caaba, the black stone in it, and turn towards the west, it is alright, but if you form the image in the shape of church it is idolatry. This is the defect of image worship, yet all these seem to be necessary stages."

"Maurras, with perfect logic, is an atheist. The Cardinal [Richelieu], in postulating something whose whole reality is confined to this world as an absolute value, committed the sin of idolatry. ... The real sin of idolatry is always committed on behalf of something similar to the State."

"Our patriotism comes straight from the Romans. This is why French children are encouraged to seek inspiration for it in Corneille. It is a pagan virtue, if these two words are compatible. The word pagan, when applied to Rome, really possesses the significance charged with horror which the early Christian controversialists gave it. The Romans really were an atheistic and idolatrous people; not idolatrous with regard to images made of stone or bronze, but idolatrous with regard to themselves. It is this idolatry of self which they have bequeathed to us in the form of patriotism."

"The Hebrews took for their idol, not something made of metal or wood, but a race, a nation, something just as earthly. Their religion is essentially inseparable from such idolatry, because of the notion of the "chosen people.""

"As there is no firm foundation for the love of our brethren, except the love of God, so there is no possibility of loving God, except we keep ourselves from idols."

"The duty of the survivor is to bear testimony to what happened... You have to warn people that these things can happen, that evil can be unleashed. Race hatred, violence, idolatries—they still flourish."

"Just as it would be an impossible task to survey everything that has been written on iconography in the polytheistic tradition of India, so it would be an equally impossible task to survey everything that was written against images in the monotheistic tradition. The word idolatry is formed from the Greek eidoolon, 'image', and latreia, 'adoration'. Hence, from a strictly etymological point of view, idolatry would mean nothing more than 'adoration of images'. However, the concept of idolatry originated in the con- text of the monotheism of Israel, i.e. in the application of the Second Commandment, forbidding the making of representations of the divinity. Idolatry is what was to be censured of the pagan cults by the prophets of Israel. As such the concept passed into the New Testament and early Christianity, and, ultimately, into Islam, with the result that all three great monotheisms censured idolatry. In other words, it was through Greek translators of the Bible that eidoolon acquired the meaning of 'false god': nothing but vanity, molded metal and carved wood."

"It is clear that the images and other representations which we have in the houses of worship have caused the risk of idolatry. Therefore they should not be allowed to remain there, nor in your chambers, nor in the market-place, nor anywhere else where one does them honor. Chiefly they are not to be tolerated in the churches, for all that is in them should be worthy of our respect. If anyone desires to put historical representations on the outside of the churches that may be allowed, so long as they do not incite to their worship. But when one begins to bow before these images and to worship them, then they are not to be tolerated anywhere in the wide world; for that is the beginning of idolatry, nay, is idolatry itself."