page_title: Aniconism in Christianity
section_title: Reformation and Counter-Reformation
hierarchical_section_title: Aniconism in Christianity / Reformation and Counter-Reformation
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Keitum auf Sylt (Schleswig-Holstein), Kirche,Inneres, Foto 2008 English: Keitum (Sylt), Slesvic-Holstein (Germany): church,interior, photo 2008
context_page_description: Christianity has not generally practised aniconism, or the avoidance or prohibition of types of images, but has had an active tradition of making and venerating images of God and other religious figures. However, there are periods of aniconism in Christian history, notably during the controversy of the Byzantine iconoclasm of the 8th century, and following the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century, when Calvinism in particular rejected all images in churches, and this practice continues today in Reformed churches, as well as some forms of fundamentalist Christianity. The Catholic Church has always defended the use of sacred images in churches, shrines, and homes, encouraging their veneration but condemning anyone who would worship them as if they were gods themselves.
  The use of religious icons and images continues to be advocated at the highest level by religious leaders of major Christian denominations such as Lutherans, Methodists, Anglo-Catholics and Roman Catholics. The veneration of icons is also a key element of the doxology of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
context_section_description: Opposition to religious imagery was a feature of proto-Protestant movements such as the Lollards in England.
  The Reformation produced two main branches of Protestant Christianity; one was the Evangelical Lutheran churches, which followed the teachings of Martin Luther (1483-1546), and the other the Reformed Churches, which followed the ideas of John Calvin (1509-1564) and of Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531).  Out of these branches grew three main sects, the Lutheran tradition, as well as the Continental Reformed and Anglican traditions, the latter two broadly following the Reformed (Calvinist) faith. Lutherans and Reformed Christians had different views regarding religious imagery.
  For Lutherans, "the Reformation renewed rather than removed the religious image", at least temporarily.  The Lutheran Divine Service occurred in ornate churches, reflecting Lutherans' exalted view of the Eucharist. Lutherans employed the use of the crucifix as it highlighted Martin Luther's theology of the cross. Lutheran altarpieces, such as Last Supper by Lucas Cranach the Elder (c.  1472 – 1553), were commissioned, although they now served a dual purpose of exciting the mind to thoughts of the Divine, as well as serving to teach Lutheran doctrine.  The altarpiece in St. Peter und Paul in Weimar exemplified the doctrine of the communion of saints by showing Luther and Cranach "alongside John the Baptist at the foot of the cross". Lutherans strongly opposed the iconoclastic campaigns of the Reformed partisans.  But within a few decades of the start of the Reformation production of new paintings for Lutheran churches had all but ceased, and large religious sculpture (as opposed to smaller figures decorating pulpits and other fittings) has never been produced for Lutheran use.
  
  On the other hand, at the time of the Reformation, Calvinists preached in violent terms the rejection of what they perceived as idolatrous Catholic practices such as religious pictures, statues, or relics of saints, as well as against the Lutheran retention of sacred art. Andreas Karlstadt (1486-1541) was the earliest extreme iconoclast, to be followed by Huldrych Zwingli and John Calvin. The Reformed (Calvinist) churches (including the Anglican, Puritan/Congregational and Reformed Baptist Churches) completely prohibited the display of religious images. Reformed theologians such as Francis Turretin, Theodore Beza, the Divines of the Westminster Assembly, and later Robert Dabney and John Murray,  explicitly reject the depiction of Christ, citing arguments drawn from the second commandment, as well as from writings of the early church, using the same texts and arguments as Byzantine iconoclasts. The Calvinist Westminster Larger Catechism of 1647 asks in Question 109:
   'What are the sins forbidden in the second commandment?
  
  Answer: The sins forbidden in the second commandment are, all devising, counseling, commanding, using, and anywise approving, any religious worship not instituted by God himself; tolerating a false religion; the making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature'.
  The Puritan Thomas Watson (c.  1620 – 1686) declared:
  Romanists make images of God the Father, painting him in their church windows as an old man; and an image of Christ on the crucifix; and, because it is against the letter of this commandment, they sacrilegiously blot it out of their catechism, and divide the tenth commandment into two.
  Apart from official destruction of art, there were outbreaks of violent Calvinist iconoclasm - such as the Beeldenstorm in the Low Countries in 1566. During this time, early Anglicanism, falling with the broader Reformed tradition, also removed most religious images and symbols from churches and discouraged their private use. Elizabeth I of England (r. 1558–1603), the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, was one of many Anglicans to exhibit somewhat contradictory attitudes, both ordering a crucifix for her chapel when they were against a law she 
caption: St Severin, Keitum, a German Lutheran church that retains its pre-Reformation carved altarpiece as well as other smaller post-Reformation paintings.
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