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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 in the Early Christian church, in 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 Calvinist churches, Fundamentalist Christianity, as well as among other evangelicals. However, the use of religious icons and images continues to be advocated by the highest level religious leaders of major Christian denominations such as Anglicans and Catholics.〔〔〔 The veneration of icons is also a key element of the doxology of the Eastern Orthodox Church.〔〔 Christian aniconism has only very rarely covered general secular images, unlike aniconism in Islam; Anabaptist groups such as the Amish are rare exceptions. ==Early Christianity== Several voices in Early Christianity expressed "grave reservations about the dangers of images",〔Freedberg, 176〕 though contextualizing these remarks has often been the source of fierce controversy, as the same texts were brought out at intervals in succeeding centuries. Ernst Kitzinger described the mentions of Christian views on Christian images before the mid-6th century as "scattered and spotty",〔Kitzinger, 95〕 and of an earlier period wrote: It is a striking fact that when painting and sculpture first began to infiltrate Christian assembly rooms and cemeteries they did so practically unheeded by either opponents of or apologists for Christianity—engaged though these were in passionate disputes over idols and idolatry. No literary statement from the period prior to the year 300 would make one suspect the existence of any Christian images other than the most laconic and hieroglyphic of symbols.〔Kitzinger, 86〕 — and yet from archaeology it is clear that the use of quite complex figurative Christian images was widespread by that date. There are mentions of images of Jesus from the 2nd century onwards. The Catacombs of Rome contain the earliest images, mostly painted, but also including reliefs carved on sarcophagi, dating from the end of the 2nd century onwards.〔Jensen, 9-12〕 Jesus is often represented by pictogram symbols, though he is also portrayed. In the Dura-Europos church, of about 230-256, which of the very early churches surviving is in the best condition, there are frescos of biblical scenes including a figure of Jesus, as well as Christ as the Good Shepherd.〔Graydon F. Snyder, ''Ante pacem: archaeological evidence of church life before Constantine'', p. 134, Mercer University Press, 2003, (google books )〕 The traditional Protestant position on the history of images in places of worship however is expressed by Phillip Schaff, 'Yet previous to the time of Constantine we find no trace of an image of Christ properly speaking except among the Gnostic Carpocratians and in the case of the heathen emperor Alex ander Severus who adorned his domestic chapel as a sort of pantheistic Pantheon with representatives of all religions The above mentioned idea of the uncomely personal appearance of Jesus the entire silence of the Gospels about it and the Old Testament prohibition of images restrained the church from making either pictures or statues of Christ until the Nicene age when a great reaction in this respect took place though not without energetic and long continued opposition.' Paul Corby Finney's analysis of Early Christian writing and material remains distinguishes three different sources of attitudes affecting Early Christians on the issue: "first that humans could have a direct vision of God; second that they could not; and, third, that although humans could see God they were best advised not to look, and were strictly forbidden to represent what they had seen". These derived respectively from Greek and Near Eastern pagan religions, from Ancient Greek philosophy, and from the Jewish tradition and the Old Testament. Of the three, Finney concludes that "overall, Israel's aversion to sacred images influenced early Christianity considerably less than the Greek philosophical tradition of invisible deity apophatically defined", so placing less emphasis on the Jewish background of most of the first Christians than most traditional accounts.〔Finney, viii-xii, viii and xi quoted〕 Images were also associated with the idolatry of the pagan Ancient Roman religion and other cults and religions around them,〔Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, et al. "Iconoclasm." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, (subscription required ) (accessed April 26, 2011).〕 and much early Christian polemic was devoted to attacking paganism for idolatry. In the 1st century the issues are discussed in the Letters of St. Paul and a prohibition of idolatry is included in the Apostolic Decree. The objections to "decorative and symbolic devices, narrative and didactic images", a description that encompasses much though not all of the earliest Christian art, were much less, as these were not plausibly capable of "idolatric abuse"; according to Kitzinger, "much of the art of the Roman catacombs betrays a studied attempt to avoid any suspicion or encouragement of idolatric practices".〔Kitzinger, 89〕 Jocelyn Toynbee agrees:"In two-dimensional, applied art of this kind there was never any danger of idolatry in the sense of actual worship of cult-images and votive pictures".〔Toynbee, 294-295; see also Jensen, 13-19 on the types of early images.〕 In the 4th century there are increased, if scattered, expressions of opposition to images. At the Spanish Synod of Elvira (c. 305) bishops concluded, "Pictures are not to be placed in churches, so that they do not become objects of worship and adoration", the earliest such prohibition known.〔Canon 36, http://www.csun.edu/~hcfll004/elvira.html〕 Eusebius (died 339) wrote a letter to Constantia (Emperor Constantine's sister) saying "To depict purely the human form of Christ before its transformation, on the other hand, is to break the commandment of God and to fall into pagan error";〔David M. Gwynn, From Iconoclasm to Arianism: The Construction of Christian Tradition in the Iconoclast Controversy (Roman, and Byzantine Studies 47 (2007) 225–251 ), p. 227.〕 though this did not stop her decorating her mausoleum with such images. By the end of the century Bishop Epiphanius of Salamis (died 403) "seems to have been the first cleric to have taken up the matter of Christian religious images as a major issue".〔Kitzinger, 92〕 He wrote an appeal to John, Bishop of Jerusalem (c. 394) in which he recounted how he tore apart a curtain hanging on the doors of the church decorated with an image of 'Christ or one of the saints' and admonished the other bishop that such images are "opposed ... to our religion", while also replacing the curtain with another expensively embroidered one.〔Paragraph 9, (letter 51 )〕 Other writers cited in later controversies were Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, and Lactantius, although evidence of opposition to images by church leaders is often also evidence of their usage in the church.〔 It has been suggested that the question of images caused a tension in the early church between a theologically-trained clerical elite and the broad mass of followers of the church, and perhaps especially women; the letter of Eusebius being a leading piece of evidence cited here. However other scholars, including Finney and Toynbee,〔Finney, viii-xii; Toynbee, 295〕 dispute this reading of the documentary evidence, pointing out that the physical evidence of sites such as the Catacomb of Callistus suggests that "church authorities at least tolerated if not approved both the decoration and the content of the iconography on its own property over a fairly long period of time".〔Jensen, 23〕 There is some evidence that the use of images was regarded as especially characteristic of heretics. Irenaeus, (c. 130–202) in his ''Against Heresies'' (1:25;6) says scornfully of the Gnostic Carpocratians, "They also possess images, some of them painted, and others formed from different kinds of material; while they maintain that a likeness of Christ was made by Pilate at that time when Jesus lived among them. They crown these images, and set them up along with the images of the philosophers of the world that is to say, with the images of Pythagoras, and Plato, and Aristotle, and the rest. They have also other modes of honouring these images, after the same manner of the Gentiles ()". Irenaeus does not speak critically of icons or portraits in a general sense, only of certain gnostic sectarians use of icons. On the other hand, by the 8th century there is evidence that opposition to images was associated with what was by then the largely vanished heresy of Arianism, though the historical evidence for this now appears slender,〔David M. Gwynn, From Iconoclasm to Arianism: The Construction of Christian Tradition in the Iconoclast Controversy (Roman, and Byzantine Studies 47 (2007) 225–251 )〕 and important early figurative mosaics in Italy were created under Arian rule. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Aniconism in Christianity」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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