Iconoclasm: Destroying the Incarnation

There are many in the Church today who would prefer to see simple architecture and minimalist art in even the cathedrals of Christendom. Preferring the spiritual to the corporeal, they would make short, squatty churches with plain walls and bare crosses. The important thing, they say, is that we are united to the love of Christ. Indeed they are right, but could that be all? God created man as a composite creature, body and soul. The body expresses the inward beauty of the soul and the soul brings life to the body. He made us body and soul; should we not expect Him to save our bodies and souls? Yet if the way of salvation is communion with Christ, and we expect and anticipate the salvation of body and soul, doesn't this mean that both must be in communion with Christ?

Christ came among men to save them and He, the Eternal Word of the Father, took on our flesh. The Lord Himself has taken on the body and soul of man to redeem the body and soul of man. Does it make sense then that we should ignore the fact that He took on our flesh?

Yet this is exactly what the iconoclasts do! The Lord, the God of all creation, gave us the sacraments and they testify to this very fact. Not a single sacrament is without the physical aspect. We need only look to the Eucharist. Jesus Christ gives us to eat His Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity. The word in the Greek means "to chew" and the word St. Thomas Aquinas uses, manducat, means the same. We chew our Lord who comes sacramentally and substantially to us in the humble form of bread. This is what George Weigel calls the "grittiness" of Catholicism.

The scandal lies in the fact that God became man. It is such a profound fact and so sublime that hardly anyone could think such a thing possible. Indeed, it seems completely impossible. The Incarnation is central to the faith. By it, our bodies and souls may be saved.

Those who deny that we come to know God in this way deny that in order to come to know God, we must be conformed to Him. To know God is not merely intellectual. The wording "to know" is used in Scripture to mean union, particularly the marital union. How can we know God without becoming one flesh with Him? It is an entirely Lutheran idea that salvation can come to us merely by our intellectual and volative assent. The gritty Catholic knows that to be justified, one must be sanctified, and to be sanctified, one must be conformed to Christ, and to be conformed to Christ, one must know Him, body and soul, and grow into deeper and deeper communion with Him.

Those who claim that we have no place for sacred art, music, or incense simply don't understand that we are embodied souls. We need to experience with our senses so that our minds can comprehend the data. Those who would have us live in their iconoclasm forget that Christ came to save our bodies and souls and meant, most surely, to conform them to Himself. The iconoclasts wish to do away with the scandal of the Incarnation.

As for me, I will revere the icons, the chant, and the incense of my faith. By these means is the Word of God Incarnate communicated to me. Let the iconoclasts have only their souls redeemed. At least we'll be able to beat them at football when we get to heaven.