I noticed the image you selected here is the bronze serpent that was lifted up in Exodus. Would you contend that is not an icon of Christ and the crucifixion or that it is an icon and that people are? Venerating icons too hard and committing an idolatry?
Good catch, and yes, I chose the bronze serpent deliberately, because it's the hardest case for my own argument, not the easiest. So let me take the horn you're offering.
I don't deny it's a type of Christ. Christ says so Himself: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up" (John 3:14). I embrace that fully.
But notice what the type actually does. In Numbers the serpent heals by being looked at, look and live, and John keeps that same logic. The eye passes through the sign to the One it signifies, and faith rests on Him, not on the bronze. That is a world away from what happened later, when Israel burned incense to the object itself. The type invites you to look through it; the idolatry began when devotion stopped at it.
And here's what I think settles it: Hezekiah's remedy. If the problem were only that people venerated a legitimately venerable object too hard, the righteous fix would be to correct the excess and keep the object. Instead he destroys it and renames it Nehushtan, "a piece of bronze," and a king is commended for it (2 Kings 18:3–4). You don't grind a God-commanded type of Christ to powder if it had a rightful place for veneration. You do that to something that never had standing to be venerated in the first place. Its divine origin bought it nothing once devotion attached.
So to answer plainly: it is an icon of Christ in the typological sense, and that is exactly why it's devastating rather than helpful to the veneration case. The most directly Christ-pointing image God ever authorized still could not survive being venerated.
One last thing, since you've put your finger right on the essay's nerve. To say "they only venerated too hard" assumes a line between honor that's fine and worship that isn't, and then places Israel on the wrong side of it. But the text draws no such intermediate zone. It goes straight from "made at God's command" to "idolatry, destroy it." Supplying the missing gradation is the very move the essay is about. Where does that line sit, and who draws it? That's the empty seat.
This seems reasonable. I think the prayer once the incense is placed on the coal is something to the degree of “incense we offer to thee Christ our God.” Then the swinging of the censor before the people serves a purification role like Number 16. The issue with bronze serpent is they begin to worship it like an idol, which would entail offering a sacrifice to it, so once moving from icon to idol (because of the role it served in the community), is then destroyed, in a manner proper to holy things that have fallen into disrepair (Torah scrolls, Gospel books, vestments).
I guess the setting of the “rules of veneration” would depend on the tradition. Nicaea II for Orthodox and Catholic, a bit more unclear for Lutherans and Anglicans, or for Calvin not at all
You've put the strongest form of the case, so let me grant what's true in it before I say where I think it still bites.
On incense, I have no quarrel with it. Scripture is full of incense offered to God: the golden altar, Psalm 141, Numbers 16 as you note, the bowls of Revelation 5 and 8. So "incense we offer to Thee, O Christ our God" is not the thing I am questioning, because its terminus is God. The contested act was never incense as such. It is the honor directed toward the image, of which censing the icon is one expression. Numbers 16 and that prayer settle incense-to-God, which I grant freely. They do not reach the act actually in dispute.
On the serpent, your disposal point is a good one, and it does weaken the crude version of my argument. "He destroyed it, therefore it was never holy" does not follow, since holy things are indeed destroyed when they can no longer serve. But look at what the text flags. The reason given is not disrepair; it is that they were burning incense to it. And the manner is not reverent retirement but breaking in pieces plus a contemptuous renaming, Nehushtan, "a piece of bronze," the way the calf and the Asherah were reduced to powder and dust in the reforms. A worn Gospel book is buried whole with honor. It is not crushed and given a dismissive nickname. The passage reads as iconoclasm, not a genizah.
And this is the part I would press hardest, because I think your own reading concedes it. On your telling, a God-commanded image, one that types Christ Himself, drifted into idolatry through the role it came to serve in the community, and had to be destroyed. That is precisely the danger the essay is about, and it befell the one image God authorized among His own covenant people. If the best-credentialed image in redemptive history could not bear sustained veneration without tipping into idolatry, the burden sits with anyone who says his own images, under his own rules, are safe. What keeps them off that road, and who is watching the line?
Which brings us to your best point and the real disagreement: the rules depend on the tradition, Nicaea II for you, less clear elsewhere. That is honest, and it frames the essay's question exactly right. The seat is not empty because no one claims to sit in it. It is that the claimant speaks on the Absent One's behalf, and the question is how the proxy is verified. Naming Nicaea II answers "who is claiming the authority" and relocates "what makes this ruling God's ruling rather than the Church's ruling about itself." Worth remembering, too, that a council also sat in the other chair. Hieria, 754, some 338 bishops, claiming the same ecumenical standing, dogmatically rejected the veneration of icons, and Nicaea II anathematized it thirty-three years later. On this exact question the conciliar organ gave both answers. What selected which one counts was not the bare fact of a council, since there were two. It was later reception, settled only in 843. You may answer that Hieria simply failed the test of reception, and that is just so. But reception is the Church judging the Church, and that self-reference is the seat I mean. It is occupied, but by a body validating its own authority to occupy it.
So I don't think the emptiness lands on the Protestant side by default. I think it is the structural question underneath every tradition's answer, including the one with the clearest rule.
I noticed the image you selected here is the bronze serpent that was lifted up in Exodus. Would you contend that is not an icon of Christ and the crucifixion or that it is an icon and that people are? Venerating icons too hard and committing an idolatry?
Good catch, and yes, I chose the bronze serpent deliberately, because it's the hardest case for my own argument, not the easiest. So let me take the horn you're offering.
I don't deny it's a type of Christ. Christ says so Himself: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up" (John 3:14). I embrace that fully.
But notice what the type actually does. In Numbers the serpent heals by being looked at, look and live, and John keeps that same logic. The eye passes through the sign to the One it signifies, and faith rests on Him, not on the bronze. That is a world away from what happened later, when Israel burned incense to the object itself. The type invites you to look through it; the idolatry began when devotion stopped at it.
And here's what I think settles it: Hezekiah's remedy. If the problem were only that people venerated a legitimately venerable object too hard, the righteous fix would be to correct the excess and keep the object. Instead he destroys it and renames it Nehushtan, "a piece of bronze," and a king is commended for it (2 Kings 18:3–4). You don't grind a God-commanded type of Christ to powder if it had a rightful place for veneration. You do that to something that never had standing to be venerated in the first place. Its divine origin bought it nothing once devotion attached.
So to answer plainly: it is an icon of Christ in the typological sense, and that is exactly why it's devastating rather than helpful to the veneration case. The most directly Christ-pointing image God ever authorized still could not survive being venerated.
One last thing, since you've put your finger right on the essay's nerve. To say "they only venerated too hard" assumes a line between honor that's fine and worship that isn't, and then places Israel on the wrong side of it. But the text draws no such intermediate zone. It goes straight from "made at God's command" to "idolatry, destroy it." Supplying the missing gradation is the very move the essay is about. Where does that line sit, and who draws it? That's the empty seat.
This seems reasonable. I think the prayer once the incense is placed on the coal is something to the degree of “incense we offer to thee Christ our God.” Then the swinging of the censor before the people serves a purification role like Number 16. The issue with bronze serpent is they begin to worship it like an idol, which would entail offering a sacrifice to it, so once moving from icon to idol (because of the role it served in the community), is then destroyed, in a manner proper to holy things that have fallen into disrepair (Torah scrolls, Gospel books, vestments).
I guess the setting of the “rules of veneration” would depend on the tradition. Nicaea II for Orthodox and Catholic, a bit more unclear for Lutherans and Anglicans, or for Calvin not at all
You've put the strongest form of the case, so let me grant what's true in it before I say where I think it still bites.
On incense, I have no quarrel with it. Scripture is full of incense offered to God: the golden altar, Psalm 141, Numbers 16 as you note, the bowls of Revelation 5 and 8. So "incense we offer to Thee, O Christ our God" is not the thing I am questioning, because its terminus is God. The contested act was never incense as such. It is the honor directed toward the image, of which censing the icon is one expression. Numbers 16 and that prayer settle incense-to-God, which I grant freely. They do not reach the act actually in dispute.
On the serpent, your disposal point is a good one, and it does weaken the crude version of my argument. "He destroyed it, therefore it was never holy" does not follow, since holy things are indeed destroyed when they can no longer serve. But look at what the text flags. The reason given is not disrepair; it is that they were burning incense to it. And the manner is not reverent retirement but breaking in pieces plus a contemptuous renaming, Nehushtan, "a piece of bronze," the way the calf and the Asherah were reduced to powder and dust in the reforms. A worn Gospel book is buried whole with honor. It is not crushed and given a dismissive nickname. The passage reads as iconoclasm, not a genizah.
And this is the part I would press hardest, because I think your own reading concedes it. On your telling, a God-commanded image, one that types Christ Himself, drifted into idolatry through the role it came to serve in the community, and had to be destroyed. That is precisely the danger the essay is about, and it befell the one image God authorized among His own covenant people. If the best-credentialed image in redemptive history could not bear sustained veneration without tipping into idolatry, the burden sits with anyone who says his own images, under his own rules, are safe. What keeps them off that road, and who is watching the line?
Which brings us to your best point and the real disagreement: the rules depend on the tradition, Nicaea II for you, less clear elsewhere. That is honest, and it frames the essay's question exactly right. The seat is not empty because no one claims to sit in it. It is that the claimant speaks on the Absent One's behalf, and the question is how the proxy is verified. Naming Nicaea II answers "who is claiming the authority" and relocates "what makes this ruling God's ruling rather than the Church's ruling about itself." Worth remembering, too, that a council also sat in the other chair. Hieria, 754, some 338 bishops, claiming the same ecumenical standing, dogmatically rejected the veneration of icons, and Nicaea II anathematized it thirty-three years later. On this exact question the conciliar organ gave both answers. What selected which one counts was not the bare fact of a council, since there were two. It was later reception, settled only in 843. You may answer that Hieria simply failed the test of reception, and that is just so. But reception is the Church judging the Church, and that self-reference is the seat I mean. It is occupied, but by a body validating its own authority to occupy it.
So I don't think the emptiness lands on the Protestant side by default. I think it is the structural question underneath every tradition's answer, including the one with the clearest rule.