“The images or pictures of God are an abomination and utterly unlawful, because they do debase God, and may be the cause of idolatrous worship. It is not lawful to have pictures of Jesus Christ, because his divine nature cannot be pictured at all, and because his body, as it is now glorified, cannot be pictured as it is; and because, if it do not stir up devotion, it is in vain; if it do stir up devotion, it is a worshipping by an image or picture, and so a palpable breach of the second commandment.” (Thomas Vincent, An Explanation of the Assembly’s Shorter Catechism (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, n.d.) 162.)
“Perhaps more people living today have derived their ideas of Jesus Christ from these typically ‘liberal’ pictures of Jesus than have derived their ideas of Jesus from the Bible itself. Such people inevitably think of Jesus as a human person, rather than thinking of him according to the biblical teaching as a divine person with a human nature. The inevitable effect of the popular acceptance of pictures of Jesus is to overemphasize his humanity and to forget or neglect his deity (which of course no picture can portray).” (Johannes G. Vos, The Westminster Larger Catechism: A Commentary (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 2002), 292.)
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