A purely spiritual Christianity is more like Mancheanism. Christianity is BOTH spiritual AND physical. Your own quote:
I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. Acts 17:21-22.
HE USED THE ALTAR, A PHYSICAL OBJECT to teach about God, but you don't get it. Paul was wrong according to you.
Deut. 4:15 – from this verse, Protestants say that since we saw “no form” of the Lord, we should not make graven images of Him.
Deut. 4:16 – of course, in early history Israel was forbidden to make images of God because God didn’t yet reveal himself visibly “in the form of any figure.”
Deut. 4:17-19 – hence, had the Israelites depicted God not yet revealed, they might be tempted to worship Him in the form of a beast, bird, reptile or fish, which was a common error of the times.
Exodus 3:2-3; Dan 7:9; Matt. 3:16; Mark 1:10; Luke 3:22; John 1:32; Acts 2:3- later on, however, we see that God did reveal himself in visible form (as a dove, fire, etc).
Deut. 5:8 – God’s commandment “thou shall not make a graven image” is entirely connected to the worship of false gods. God does not prohibit images to be used in worship, but He prohibits the images themselves to be worshiped.
Exodus 25:18-22; 26:1,31 – for example, God commands the making of the image of a golden cherubim. This heavenly image, of course, is not worshiped by the Israelites. Instead, the image disposes their minds to the supernatural and draws them to God.
Num. 21:8-9 – God also commands the making of the bronze serpent. The image of the bronze serpent is not an idol to be worshiped, but an article that lifts the mind to the supernatural.
I Kings 6:23-36; 7:27-39; 8:6-67 – Solomon’s temple contains statues of cherubim and images of cherubim, oxen and lions. God did not condemn these images that were used in worship.
2 Kings 18:4 – it was only when the people began to worship the statue did they incur God’s wrath, and the king destroyed it. The command prohibiting the use of graven images deals exclusively with the false worship of those images.
1 Chron. 28:18-19 – David gives Solomon the plan for the altar made of refined gold with a golden cherubim images. These images were used in the Jews’ most solemn place of worship.
2 Chron. 3:7-14 – the house was lined with gold with elaborate cherubim carved in wood and overlaid with gold.
Ezek. 41:15 – Ezekiel describes graven images in the temple consisting of carved likenesses of cherubim. These are similar to the images of the angels and saints in many Catholic churches.
Col. 1:15 – the only image of God that Catholics worship is Jesus Christ, who is the “image” (Greek “eikon”) of the invisible God.
Images have been used since the 1st century to teach the illiterate, which was 95%+ of the population. Paleo-Christian art in the catacombs still exists, but you have nothing to do with the Christians that put it there. Pity.
One of the great sorrows — after the
church attacks, murders, abductions, rapes and
forced conversions — caused by the Islamic persecution of Christians must be the defilement of holy icons by Muslims. Indeed, it is highly probable that the iconoclast heresy which rocked Christianity in the seventh through the ninth centuries was triggered or accelerated by the brutal and sudden rise of Islam after the death of Muhammad in 632A.D.
Even after the Seventh Ecumenical Council upheld the use of icons (in 787), the iconoclasts continued to trouble the Church, led by the emperor Theophilus. But after his death, in 842 the icons were permanently restored, and continue to be a defining characteristic of the Orthodox Church and all the Eastern Christian communions (the Coptic Church, Assyrian and Chaldean churches, etc.).
Islam is strongly set against images of any kind, although one may encounter in rare Islamic books depictions of Muhammad and his earliest companions, or Muhammad being visited by the spirit-being supposed to be the archangel Gabriel. But when it comes to Christian images of Jesus Christ, the Virgin Mary, or the saints, Islam is the “icon smasher” extraordinaire. (“Icon smasher” is a literal translation of “iconoclast.”)
In the Christian lands conquered by Muslims from the seventh century onwards, only a small percentage of churches were left to serve the indigenous Christian population. Those churches not destroyed were converted into mosques, their frescoes and mosaics painted or covered over, or, if they were panel icons, hacked into pieces and burned.
Naming and confronting Islam’s profound, innate hatred of traditional Christianity’s holy images helps us grasp the deeper motivations behind the recent push to
re-convert all the Hagia Sophia churches of Turkey into mosques, including and especially the great Hagia Sophia of Constantinople (Istanbul) built by the Emperor Justinian in 537A.D.
The restoration of the original Christian frescoes and mosaics, revealing once again the holy images of Christ, His Mother, and the Saints, is the ultimate theological affront to the Islamic supremacist mind. It is the icons themselves — which proclaim the Christian faith in Jesus Christ as the incarnate Word of God, and therefore God Himself — that outrage Muslims as the worst possible sin, that of
shirk, the association of another with Allah, whom Muslims believe to be far beyond having a son or any other in association with him.
Because of this hyper-charged, religiously-based hatred of Christianity’s holy images, with the re-Islamicization of Turkey we see special emphasis on once again covering (or even destroying) all Christian icons, most readily accomplished by simply converting all the Hagia Sophia churches into mosques. This is in fact a modern application of the
Pact of Omar, the classic conditions imposed by Muslims on conquered Christians from the 7th century on.
This is the same phenomenon that we saw in Egypt, as the Muslim Brotherhood sought to implement Sharia Law as the foundation for the country’s new constitution, and unleashed a wave of persecution against Egypt’s Coptic Christians, in accordance with the Pact of Omar. Likewise in Syria, where the jihadist rebels have openly stated that they intend to enforce the Sharia, even as they strive to rid the country of Christians by
massacring whole villages at a time. So now Turkey applies anew the Conditions of Omar to eradicate the last vestiges of Christian iconography.
Islam’s Iconoclasm and the War Against Christians - Raymond Ibrahim
