c. 1998 Religion News Service
JERUSALEM _ Idol worship. It has long been the bane of the three great monotheistic religions _ something Muslims, Christians and Jews could all agree was evil.
Yet recently some two dozen religious scholars and students gathered here in the spiritual center of world monotheism to re-examine the issue of images, icons and idols _ both literal and pictorial _ in Jewish texts, Christian art and Hindu temples.
The seminar, part of an innovative new program for interfaith dialogue and study called the Elijah School for the Study of the Wisdom of World Religions, brought together Jews, Muslims and Christians of various denominations and nationalities. Also on hand were a Hindu professor of religion from the University of Florida and a scholar of ancient Egyptian religions at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.”When Jews, Christians and Muslims meet we get often caught up in a particular set of problems stemming from our common historical heritage,”said Alon Goshen-Gottstein, founder and director of the Elijah School, now in its second year.”Bringing in other perspectives challenges some of our conventions and widens our horizons beyond the Abrahamic perspective.”The issue of icons and images stands at the root of tensions within the monotheistic religions, and at the root of the divide between so-called monotheistic and non-monotheistic religions,”he continued.”Looking at the historical background that influenced the biblical ban on images is a topic that is both strong philosophically and powerful theologically.” But students and scholars do not merely study together at the Elijah School. They also seek to”experience”the deeper spirituality of other traditions, Goshen-Gottstein said, by attending joint worship services and visiting mosques, synagogues and monasteries in the diverse environment that only Jerusalem can offer. “This was a pilgrimage in the medieval `Hindu’ sense,”said Vasudha Narayanan, a theologian from Florida who presented the Hindu point of view on idols and images.”Where else could we go to a Cathusian (Roman Catholic) monastery, be participant observers in a Sunday Mass, spend the (Jewish) Sabbath eve at the Western Wall, and listen to a conversation between a local Torah scribe and a (Catholic) icon-maker? The context of the Holy Land was inexplicably connected to the intellectual experience,”said Narayanan.
During the seminar it became clear the distinctions between religious use of images in monotheistic and non-monotheistic traditions is far from clear.
In some streams of Hindu tradition, such as the Vaishnava movement, for example, idols and images are regarded as actual dieties, noted Narayanan, who showed slides and photographs of Hindu idols and holy sites to convey the”concept and experience of the palpable presence of the deity in a Hindu temple”to those for whom the experience is foreign.
Yet on the other hand, Narayanan added, other Hindu streams regard their idols more as icons representing an inscrutable divinity. That Hindu view is not so far removed from the one represented in Catholic tradition, where icons of Jesus, the saints, apostles and the Virgin Mary have long been an integral part of worship and devotions, and ritual objects such as the bread of the Eucharist are believed to embody the flesh of Jesus.
Goshen-Gottstein recalled that the very idea for the session on idolatry grew out of a Hindu scholar’s encounter with a Christian holy site in Jerusalem.
The scholar, T.S. Rukmani of Concordia University in Montreal, taught last summer at the Elijah School and paid a visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where many Christians traditionally believe Jesus is buried.
The church is replete with icons and sacred artifacts from the Catholic, Orthodox and Coptic traditions, and Rukmani returned from her visit excited and confused, Goshen-Gottstein said. “Having visited one of the holiest places in Christendom, some of the dividing lines that had previously in her mind separated world religions from one another became confused. She asked the Christians on the program, `Why do you accuse us Hindus of idolatry? Your churches look just like a Hindu temple,'”Goshen-Gottstein said.
As the issue was explored in depth this year, a number of Christian scholars and students maintained the crucial distinction between Hinduism and Christianity lies in the relationship between the believer and the sacred object. “There has to be a level of trust in the whole idea of Christian representation _ trust that God will work for good, and not evil, and that you are really praying not to the icon but to the mystery it represents,”said Sister Michaela, who lives in a meditative community of Catholic nuns in the Jerusalem suburb of Abu Ghosh, where she makes religious images and objects as her vocation.”Although Christianity emerged out of Judaism, it did not take over the latter’s prohibition against producing visual images of God. Why not? … Since visual depictions of God in art have been so much a part of Christianity, we do not usually ask the question. This is one of the rich fruits of dialogue,”said Ewert Cousins, a prominent Catholic theologian from Fordham University in New York.”It often takes another tradition to awaken one to what one really holds,”he said.
By far, the most adamant arguments against any religious use of images whatsoever were heard, not surprisingly, from the school’s Muslim scholar, Mustapha Abu Sway of Al Kuds University in Jerusalem. “For me, images and icons are like a computer program which is infected with a virus,”said Abu Sway.”When there is a virus, the program freezes on the image. To get beyond it, you have to turn off the computer and get rid of the picture. “I understand fully that some see the relationship with the object and not the object itself as the problem, but from adoration for the object to idol worship is only one small step, considering the weakness of men. I would avoid even the first step,”he said.
Even the Arabic language, the language of the Koran, is inherently vague in its representation of images, so that even textual descriptions of God avoid evoking a mental image of the divine, added Abu Sway.”The Arabic language is a field of meanings. None of them really permits a physical representation,”he noted.
Judaism forbids images of God, yet textual descriptions of the divine abound in biblical and post-biblical Jewish texts, said Goshen-Gottstein.”In Judaism, since we can’t represent God with images, God sometimes becomes so abstract and transcendental that we lose hold of him,”he said.
But monotheistic limitations on the use of images need not necessarily be a spiritual handicap, argued Melila Hellner-Eshed, a Jerusalem-based Jewish scholar who has traveled widely in India. “The challenge is to find the points of high creativity that are available within the religious boundaries,”said Hellner-Eshed, who teaches Jewish mysticism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.”Like artists whose hands are tied behind their back, we must develop alternative forms in language or literature for our experience of the presence of the divine.”The restriction against images, if it is not seen only in a negative way, can be a wonderful ground for developing other kinds of religious expressions,”she added.”Consider for instance, the incredible poetry that comes out of the Jewish and Muslim religious traditions. That’s our allowed form of idolatry.”
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