Answering Craig Truglia on Icon Veneration: A Claim-by-Claim Response

Craig Truglia and Dr. James White held a live debate on October 17, 2026, at Redeemer Bible Church in Gilbert, Arizona. Craig belongs to the Russian Orthodox Church. Dr. White is a Reformed Baptist pastor. The debate question was this: "Is bowing to icons, as the Second Council of Nicaea taught in the year 787, something the apostles taught?" Craig said yes. Dr. White said no.

An icon is a holy picture, usually painted on wood, of Jesus, Mary, an angel, or a saint. Orthodox Christians bow to icons, kiss them, light candles in front of them, and burn incense before them. They call this "veneration." They say it is honor, not worship.

This article answers Craig's opening speech one claim at a time. The claims are in the same order as in the video, and each one has its time. Bible verses are quoted from the King James Version (KJV). Each time opens the debate at that moment. Under each answer, a Sources box gives the quotes and links behind it.

Part 1 — The Burden of Proof and the Witnesses

"The green shirt": whoever has any evidence wins

Response: This example changes the question. The debate is not "Did early Christians own pictures?" It is "Did the apostles teach what the council of 787 taught?" To match that, the Lincoln question would be "Did Lincoln wear a green shirt to his inauguration?" A green shirt found in a closet 150 years later proves nothing about that.

Every "green shirt" Craig showed was a picture. None of them came from the first century. None of them shows anyone kissing it or burning incense to it. None came with a word from an apostle.

Craig also has the rules backwards. He is the one making the claim, so he has to prove it. Dr. White only has to show that Craig's evidence does not prove it. And Craig's next claim, that there is no evidence on the other side, is simply false (see the next section).

Last, "whoever has any evidence wins" is not how history works. By that rule a heretical group called the Carpocratians would win. They are the only group in the second century that anyone says honored pictures of Christ (see the answer at 23:00).

"Every early writing" supports icons, and there is "zero" evidence against them

Response: This is Craig's main factual claim, and it is the opposite of the truth. No Christian writer before the year 325 approves of bowing to pictures. Every one who talks about images is against them. Even the pagan critics of Christianity said Christians had no images.

• Clement of Alexandria (Egypt, about 200) says Christians are "expressly prohibited" from making images, and he quotes the second commandment. He is attacking pagan statues, but the commandment he quotes covers all images. He lets Christians wear a ring with a dove, a fish, a ship, a harp or an anchor on it, but not a picture of a god.
• Tertullian (North Africa, about 200) says the devil brought image-makers into the world. He also mentions the Good Shepherd painted on communion cups. He mocks those cups, but because of a book called the Shepherd of Hermas, not because they had pictures. So that kind of art did exist, but nothing shows anyone bowing to it.
• Minucius Felix (about 200–240) writes a debate between a pagan and a Christian. The pagan says Christians have "no altars, no temples, no acknowledged images." The Christian does not deny it. He says, "what image of God shall I make, since, if you think rightly, man himself is the image of God?"
• Origen (about 248) answers a pagan named Celsus. Celsus said Christians "cannot tolerate temples, altars, or images." Origen does not deny it. He answers that the only altars and statues Christians have are spiritual ones: the virtues formed in the soul.
• Lactantius (about 305) says, "it is undoubted that there is no religion wherever there is an image." He is talking about pagan statues, but his reason fits any image: true religion is heavenly, and an image is earthly.
• The Council of Elvira in Spain (about 305) made this rule: "Pictures ought not to be in a church, lest what is worshipped be painted on the walls." Scholars argue about why the bishops made this rule. But the words are plain. This was a meeting of 19 bishops, before the year 325, forbidding the very thing the council of 787 commanded.
• Eusebius (about 325), the church historian, was asked by the emperor's sister for a picture of Christ. He said no. He quoted God's law "that no likeness should be made." He said it would make Christians look "like idol worshippers," and that such things were banned from churches everywhere. This letter only survives in pieces, and a few scholars doubt it, but most accept it. Craig uses Eusebius as his own witness at 24:45.
• Epiphanius (about 394), a bishop in Cyprus, found a curtain in a church with a picture of Christ or a saint on it. He tore it down because it was hung "contrary to the teaching of the Scriptures." Craig uses Epiphanius as his own witness at 21:16.

Craig says ahead of time that these writers were only against pagan art. Some of them were talking about pagan idols. But that does not explain the rest. Celsus and the pagan in Minucius Felix were not saying "Christians have no pagan idols." They were saying "Christians have no images at all." The Christian writers agreed. Clement and Tertullian quote the second commandment, which is not about pagans only. Elvira talks about pictures "in a church." Epiphanius's curtain showed Christ or a saint, not a pagan god. This evidence is early, it comes from many places (Egypt, Africa, Rome, Palestine, Spain, Cyprus), and it is exactly on topic. By Craig's own rule, it settles the question.

Craig also says his evidence is stronger than the evidence for things both men believe, like the 66 books of the Bible or Christ dying in our place. But those beliefs are argued from the apostles' own writings. Craig never once quotes an apostle teaching people to bow to a picture, because no apostle did. Here is what the apostles did say:

• An angel stopped John from bowing to him, twice: "See thou do it not ... worship God" (Rev 19:10; 22:8–9).
• Peter stopped Cornelius from bowing to him: "Stand up; I myself also am a man" (Acts 10:25–26).
• Paul told the people of Athens: "we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device" (Acts 17:29).
• John ended his first letter: "Little children, keep yourselves from idols" (1 John 5:21).

The council of 787 tells Christians to bow to painted wood. But John was told not to bow to a living angel, and Cornelius was told not to bow to a living apostle.

The art historians

Response: There are four problems with this list.

First, listen to how careful the quotes are. "Should not be ruled out." "There is every possibility." "Possibly even." "May be considered." "Could serve." These scholars are saying "we cannot rule it out." Craig presents them as saying "it is proven." If you read them as written, they say the question is still open. That helps Dr. White, not Craig.

Second, some of the quotes work against Craig. Mathews and Muller say Christian icons continue the way pagans honored painted pictures of their gods. That is exactly what Protestants say: icons came from pagan habits. Finney agrees that Christians made no art of their own before about the year 200. He does not think they were against images. He thinks they were too poor and too few. Either way, the church of the apostles had no art. Harley-McGowan's gem with the crucifixion is a magic charm with magic names carved on the back. One expert thinks it came from a heretical group. A magic charm is not church practice. Jensen's quote is about honoring the cross. Both sides in the 700s honored the cross, so that does not prove anything about icons.

Third, the major experts on the history of icons place the rise of icon veneration much later. Ernst Kitzinger (1954) and Hans Belting (1990) both say it grew in the 500s, and that the earlier evidence is thin. Craig picked only the quotes he liked.

Fourth, Craig's own summary gives it away. "Christians had images and they were devotional." Everyone agrees with the first half. The second half is the very thing being debated, and for the time before the year 325, Craig's own scholars only say "possibly."

Icons do more than receive prayers

Response: This makes Craig's job harder, not easier. Now he has to show that the apostles taught that painted pictures of Christ and the saints work miracles, protect from evil, pass honor along, and are holy in themselves. The New Testament says none of this.

God did heal people through cloths taken from Paul's body (Acts 19:12). People even laid the sick in the street so Peter's shadow would fall on them (Acts 5:15–16). But neither apostle told anyone to bow to those things or keep them as holy objects.

The idea that "honor passes to the person in the picture" comes from Basil, a bishop in the 300s. He was talking about Jesus being the image of the Father, and he used the emperor's portrait as an example. The council of 787 took that sentence and used it for painted wood. That is a fourth-century example reused in the eighth century. It is not apostolic teaching.

Part 2 — Israel, the Temple, and the Bronze Serpent

The two exceptions in Judaism: angels and "types"

Response: The cherubim prove the opposite of what Craig needs. God gave a general rule: make no images (Exod 20:4–5; Deut 4:15–16). Then he named a few exceptions, for one building, by direct command. A rule with named exceptions is still a rule. You cannot go from "make two cherubim for the ark" to "paint anyone you like and bow to it."

Also, look at what Israel did with the cherubim: nothing. The cherubim on the ark stood in the Most Holy Place. Only the high priest went in there, "once every year" (Heb 9:7). There were also cherubim woven into the curtains and carved on the temple walls, and the priests saw those (Exod 26:1, 31; 1 Kings 6:29). But the Bible never says anyone bowed to them, kissed them, lit a lamp to them, or burned incense to them. The images God commanded never got the honor the council of 787 requires.

Some of Craig's symbols are made up. The Bible does say the veil stands for Christ's body (Heb 10:20). It never says the curtains are "the womb of Mary." Also, symbols in the Bible point forward to Christ, and once Christ comes, the shadow is done (Col 2:17; Heb 10:1). Paul scolds the Galatians for going back to "the weak and beggarly elements" (Gal 4:9). Using the old tabernacle to create a new set of holy objects runs the Bible's symbols backwards.

Psalm 99:5, 1 Kings 8:30, and Jerome

Response: Psalm 99:5 says, "Exalt ye the LORD our God, and worship at his footstool; for he is holy." Now read verse 9 of the same psalm: "Exalt the LORD our God, and worship at his holy hill; for the LORD our God is holy." These two lines match. The footstool and the hill are where Israel worshipped. The LORD is who they worshipped. Both verses end "for he is holy," not "for it is holy." No one says the hill was an icon. Craig's wording, "venerate his footstool," comes from the old Greek translation of the Old Testament. Even there, the footstool is honored because God is present there, and some church fathers said it meant Christ's body, not a picture.

Also, the ark was not a picture of God. It was the place where God promised, "there I will meet with thee" (Exod 25:22). Bowing at the place where God promised to meet you is not the same as bowing to a painting of a saint.

1 Kings 8:30 is the same. Solomon prays toward the temple. In the same prayer he says:

the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded?

1 Kings 8:27KJV

Daniel prayed toward Jerusalem, not to it (Dan 6:10). And Jesus said that time was ending:

the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father ... God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth

John 4:21, 24KJV

Jerome's comment is about the Jews honoring God's presence in the Most Holy Place. It does not say they bowed to or kissed the cherubim. Ordinary Jews never even saw the cherubim on the ark.

The bronze snake, Barnabas, phylacteries, and mezuzahs

Response: The bronze snake is the worst example Craig could pick. The Bible tells us what happened when Israel started to honor it. King Hezekiah "brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan" (2 Kings 18:4). "Nehushtan" means "a piece of bronze." The only image God commanded that ever received honor got smashed, and the Bible praises the king who did it. Notice what Israel was doing to it: burning incense. That is exactly what the council of 787 commands for icons. Craig praises Hezekiah at 13:43 for destroying pagan idols. Hezekiah also destroyed the honored "picture of Christ."

The Jewish writings Craig quotes actually say the snake had no power.

• The Jewish paraphrase says the person's "heart was set on the name of the Word of the LORD." The healing came from trusting God, not from the snake.
• The Wisdom of Solomon says it plainly: the person who turned to the snake "was not saved by the thing that he saw, but by thee, that art the Saviour of all" (Wis 16:7).
• The Mishnah, an early Jewish law book, asks: "Did the serpent kill, or did the serpent preserve life? Rather, when the Jewish people turned their eyes upward and subjected their hearts to their Father in Heaven, they were healed."
• The Letter of Barnabas (written between 70 and 135, most likely around 130) does say that the snake, "even though dead, it is able to give him life." But Barnabas says the snake is a picture of Jesus on the cross, so the life comes from Jesus. Barnabas also points out that Moses made it even though he had forbidden images, only so "that he might reveal a type of Jesus." Barnabas says nothing about bowing to it.

None of these say a picture passes on God's grace. The Jewish writings deny it outright.

Phylacteries are boxes of Bible verses, not pictures of anyone. So they have nothing to do with icons. The only thing the New Testament says about them is a rebuke: "they make broad their phylacteries" (Matt 23:5). Justin Martyr does call the writing in them "holy." But in the same sentence he says the command shows that Israel had forgotten God in their hearts. That is not praise of charms. Also, the "phylactery from the 600s BC" is probably the Ketef Hinnom silver scrolls. Those are small charms with the priestly blessing from Numbers 6 on them, not phylacteries. The oldest real phylacteries come from Qumran, around 100 years before Christ. As for the mezuzah being kissed at Qumran, no evidence was given. Mezuzah texts were found at Qumran. A kissing custom was not. Kissing the mezuzah is a later Jewish custom.

Hezekiah's seal, a cherub carving, a coin, and the "living" temple

Response: Every item here shows that Jews in Judah used decorations and royal symbols. Not one shows a Jew bowing to, kissing, or burning incense to an image. Craig keeps proving that images existed, and then claiming they were venerated. Those are two different things.

• Hezekiah's seal says "Belonging to Hezekiah son of Ahaz king of Judah." It shows a winged sun with Egyptian life symbols. That was a common royal design in that region. The writing names the king, not God, and the idea that the sun stands for Yahweh is only a guess. It is a stamp pressed into clay, about a centimeter wide. No one ever bowed to a stamp.
• Solomon's temple had carved lions, oxen, palm trees and fruit. Nobody bowed to them. Josephus, a Jewish priest in the first century, even says Solomon did wrong in making the bronze oxen.
• The coin is from the time when Persia ruled the land. Scholars do not agree on who the figure is. Some say Yahweh, some say Zeus, some say a Persian ruler. If it is a god, it shows a Persian governor breaking Jewish law, not a normal Jewish practice. And no one bows to money.
• The Qumran scroll describes the temple in heaven. Copies were found at Qumran and at Masada, so it was read in more than one place. But there is no evidence it was used in the Jerusalem temple. Angels in heaven being alive says nothing about bowing to carvings on earth.

We know what Jews in Jesus' time thought about images. When Pilate brought Roman flags with Caesar's picture into Jerusalem, crowds lay down and offered their necks to the swords rather than allow it. Young men were burned alive for tearing down Herod's golden eagle from the temple gate. The Roman writer Tacitus said the Jews "set up no statues in their cities, still less in their temples." This is the Judaism the apostles grew up in. To say it agreed with the council of 787 is simply wrong.

Part 3 — From the Incarnation to the Catacombs

What changed when Christ came

Response: There are two gaps here. First, "could be pictured" is not the same as "must be bowed to." Even if everything Craig says about Hades were true, it would not prove we should bow to pictures.

Second, the apostles never draw Craig's lesson. What they stress is loving a Lord we cannot see. Peter writes to people who never saw Jesus: "Whom having not seen, ye love" (1 Pet 1:8). Jesus said:

blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed

John 20:29KJV

Paul says, "we walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Cor 5:7). The apostles saw Jesus with their own eyes. Yet they left no picture of him, ordered none, and never even described his face. They told the church to love him without seeing him.

The argument "Jesus became a man, so pictures of him are allowed" first shows up clearly at a church council in 692. John of Damascus built it out in the 700s. It is a later argument, and a disputed one. It is not what the apostles taught.

Praying to the saints: 22 writers, 11 percent, 500 wall prayers

Response: Craig himself says this is "not the topic of this debate," and he is right, so this can be short. The "22 writers" are not named and no source is given. The early evidence usually cited is writing on graves and scratched prayers at a shrine to Peter and Paul in Rome. Those come from the middle or late 200s. That is about 200 years after the apostles. They are not icons, kisses, incense, or candles before a picture.

Comparing old writers with Christianbooks.com is not how history is done. Counting scratches on one wall against the number of books that survived only shows that people scratched on walls more than they wrote books. None of this tells us what the apostles taught about pictures.

The archaeology: churches, catacombs, Pompeii

Response: No one in this debate denies that Christians in the 200s painted Bible scenes on grave walls and in one baptism room. The question is whether they bowed to them. Not one catacomb painting has a place for a lamp in front of it, an incense burner, a surface worn from kissing, or any writing that shows it was venerated. The pictures tell Bible stories about being saved: Jonah, Noah, Daniel, Moses hitting the rock, the Good Shepherd, a person praying. And the Council of Elvira shows that when some Christians did start painting church walls around 305, the bishops told them to stop. Pictures prove only that there were pictures.

Look at the specific items:

• Dura-Europos (about 232–256): the paintings that survive come from the small baptism room, and none of them shows anyone bowing to a picture. Next door, the Jewish synagogue was covered in Bible paintings from floor to ceiling. The Jews there had far more pictures than the Christians, and nobody says those Jews bowed to icons.
• "The first-century icon of Solomon from Pompeii": this is a pagan Roman painting. It shows the story of Solomon and the two mothers acted out by cartoon-like pygmies, as a joke, in a series of comic Nile scenes. It is not Christian, not Jewish, and no one ever venerated it.
• "The Christian altar with a cross": the best-known example is actually in Herculaneum, the town next to Pompeii. Most scholars now think the cross-shaped mark on the wall is where a shelf or cabinet was once attached. Most do not think it is Christian at all.
• Callixtus: the oldest Christian parts are usually dated to about the year 200. Scientists have carbon-dated some burials there, but no study dates a Christian painting there to the year 81. The popes buried there all died in the 200s. Their burial room is known for its writing, not for icons. Burying bishops in a graveyard does not make the paintings in the next room "official church teaching."
• The Lateran apse: the apse there now was rebuilt in the 1800s, copying a mosaic from 1291. There is a story that Christ's face appeared by a miracle when the church was opened. Some scholars think the face copies a mosaic from the 400s. Either way, it is not older than the 300s.

Craig's 77 percent is a count of decorated graveyards from the 200s. The debate is about the first century and about bowing to pictures. On both points, Craig's number is zero.

The Good Shepherd, the praying figures, and Daniel's ring

Response: The praying figure with raised hands was the normal way people prayed in the ancient world. Paul speaks of "lifting up holy hands" (1 Tim 2:8). In the catacombs this figure usually stands for the dead person's soul at peace. That is why it often has the words "in peace" next to it. These figures face the viewer with their hands raised to heaven. They do not face the Shepherd. On the Priscilla ceiling, the Shepherd is in the middle circle and the praying figures are in separate boxes around it. That is a decoration pattern, not a worship service. Saying they are "praying toward the icon" is reading your own idea into the paint.

The ring actually helps Dr. White. Around the year 200, Clement of Alexandria said Christians could wear a ring with a symbol on it so they could be known as Christians. But he said no pictures of gods. A tiny ring with Daniel and a shepherd is a symbol of God saving his people. No one lit a candle to a ring. The ring shows Clement's rule being followed: symbols yes, objects of worship no.

The early art was symbols, not real portraits

Response: Here Craig gives away his case. The council of 787 says honor passes from the icon to the real person because the icon looks like that person and carries their name. A young man with a sheep who could just as easily be the pagan god Hermes or Orpheus cannot do that. The council would not have called it an icon of Christ. By Craig's own words, the earliest Christian art was not what the council of 787 describes.

Craig's explanation for the change is also telling. He says portrait icons came in the 300s and 400s because of all the new converts. That is exactly what Protestants say. Icon veneration came into the church with the flood of pagans who joined after Emperor Constantine, not from the apostles. Mathews and Muller, whom Craig quoted at 6:36, say the same: icons continue the pagan habit of honoring painted gods.

Part 4 — The Written Witnesses

Epiphanius says most bishops bowed to images; the picture of St. Lawrence

Response: Epiphanius is a saint in the Orthodox Church. He is the one bishop from the 300s who wrote at length on this question. Here is what he said and did:

• He tore down a church curtain with a picture of Christ or a saint on it, because it was hung "contrary to the teaching of the Scriptures." He told the church to use the cloth to bury a poor person. This story comes from a letter Jerome translated, and it is the best-supported text.
• In other writings he asks which of the old church fathers ever painted a picture of Christ in a church or in a house.
• In those writings he also asks the emperor to remove pictures, and tells his people never to put pictures in churches or graveyards.

Those other writings only survive as quotes kept by the icon-breakers in the 700s, so scholars argue about whether Epiphanius really wrote them.

So if some bishops of his time told him they bowed before pictures, Epiphanius's answer was that the apostles never taught it. That is the very question in this debate. A bishop in the 300s who calls the practice new and against Scripture is evidence against Craig, not for him.

The council of 787 knew this, which is why it said Epiphanius's writings against icons were forgeries. But the curtain story comes from a letter that Jerome translated in the 390s, long before anyone fought over icons. Most scholars accept it.

Craig says these were "small" bishops, and that Rome had "no argument" about icons. His proof is that no one wrote about an argument. That is an argument from silence, the very kind of argument Craig said Dr. White is not allowed to use.

A picture from the 300s with a prayer to St. Lawrence is a picture from the 300s. It shows that people were praying to martyrs 300 years after the apostles. It does not show what the apostles taught. It fits exactly with the time when Protestants say the practice began.

Galatians 3:1: Christ was "portrayed" among you

Response: The Greek word can mean "to write," "to draw," or "to put up a public notice." So "portrayed" is one possible translation. The King James says "evidently set forth." The question is what Paul meant, and the next few words answer it. The very next verse tells us how the Galatians received Christ: "by the hearing of faith" (Gal 3:2). Hearing, not looking. Paul says the same about Corinth:

I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified

1 Corinthians 2:2KJV

John Chrysostom, a great Greek church father, explains this verse. He points out that Christ was crucified in Jerusalem, not in Galatia. He says Paul means that faith can see clearly even what happened far away. The early church fathers read this verse as being about preaching, not about a painted cross.

The archaeology agrees. Christians did not draw the crucifixion for about 400 years. The oldest Christian pictures of it come from the 400s. The only earlier ones are a pagan cartoon mocking a Christian, and the magic gem Craig mentioned at 7:37. Craig says "scholars believe this cross was used for protection," but he names no scholar. The "cross" only exists in Craig's reading of one Greek word.

Dionysius the Areopagite

Response: Experts of every church, including Orthodox scholars like Andrew Louth and Alexander Golitzin, date these writings to about the year 500. The writer copies a pagan philosopher named Proclus, who died in 485. He describes saying the Creed in the church service, which only started around 476.

The first person known to quote these writings was Severus of Antioch, in the 520s. When his side used them at a meeting in 532, an Orthodox bishop named Hypatius right away pointed out that older fathers like Athanasius and Cyril had never heard of them. No scholar today says they come from before 220, and almost no scholar since 1895 has thought they were really by Paul's convert. A writer from around 500 who used the name of a man from Acts cannot tell us what the apostles taught.

Even on its own terms, the passage is about using physical things in general (Bible imagery, church services, sacraments) to lift the mind to God. It does not tell anyone to bow to, kiss, or burn incense to painted wood.

The Acts of John, Irenaeus, and the Carpocratians

Response: These are the two earliest writings that mention anyone honoring a Christian picture. Both are against it.

The Acts of John. A man named Lycomedes has a portrait of the apostle John painted. He puts it in his bedroom with flowers, lamps and an altar. When John finds it, he says, "can it be one of thy gods that is painted here? for I see that thou art still living in heathen fashion." He also calls it "a dead picture of the dead." Craig says "the Gnostic writer criticizes." But in the story it is the apostle John who criticizes. The writer expected his readers in the 100s to think it natural that an apostle would call an honored picture pagan. The council of 787 had this very story read aloud, and then condemned the book. The oldest story of an honored picture that the council talked about was one it had to reject.

Irenaeus. Here is what he says about the 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." This is not calm reporting. It is in a list of the errors of a heretical group. The words "after the same manner of the Gentiles" go with the "other modes." But putting crowns on statues was itself a pagan custom. And Irenaeus puts their pictures of Christ right next to their statues of Plato and Aristotle, as part of their paganism. Two later writers, Hippolytus and Epiphanius, repeat it as a mark of heresy. Epiphanius says plainly that they worship the images. None of the three says that only sacrifices or sexual acts were the problem. Craig added that.

So here is an honest summary of the 100s. The only Christians anyone says crowned and honored pictures of Christ were the Carpocratians, and three orthodox writers listed that among their heresies. The only story of a picture honored with lamps and flowers has an apostle condemn it. Craig's own scholar admits this "might not yet be within official Christianity." Then Craig says icons were everywhere and orthodox. His evidence shows they were heretical.

Eusebius and the statue at Paneas

Response: Read what Eusebius actually wrote. He says Gentiles made the statue. He explains that the ancients, "as was likely, following a habit of the Gentiles," honored their saviors this way. He says painted pictures of Peter, Paul and Christ exist for the same reason. So Eusebius's own explanation for Christian pictures is this: they come from a pagan habit. Eusebius says he saw the statue himself. He says a strange plant grew up to the hem of the bronze robe and was said to heal all kinds of sickness. But nothing in the text says anyone bent down and touched the robe. That is Craig's guess built on Jensen's guess. Many scholars today think the statue was first a pagan statue, maybe of an emperor, that people later took to be Jesus and the woman.

We also know exactly what Eusebius thought about pictures of Christ, because he wrote it down. When the emperor's sister Constantia asked him for one, he refused. He quoted God's law "that no likeness should be made." He said such pictures would make Christians look "like idol worshippers." He said such things were banned from churches everywhere. He also told her that a woman once brought him a picture of two men dressed like philosophers, said to be Paul and Jesus, and he took it away so it would not offend others. The council of 787 answered this letter by calling Eusebius a heretic. So Craig has called as a witness the one man raised in the 200s who wrote down his opposition to pictures of Christ.

The note on Luke comes from a collection of quotes, and no one is sure Eusebius wrote it. Even if he did, calling an emperor's smashing of a monument "wicked" is not the same as approving of bowing to images. And Sozomen, writing around 440, does not say the pieces were venerated. He says pagans smashed the statue around 362, and "the Christians recovered the fragments, and deposited the statue in the church in which it is still preserved." Preserved, not venerated. Craig added the veneration. And even his version is about 300 years after the apostles.

Part 5 — Craig's Summary

Craig's summary

Response: Every claim here was answered above. But three of them are stated more strongly here than in the speech, so they need a short answer.

No Christian icon survives from the first century. The oldest Christian art of any kind is from about the year 200. Craig's "first-century" examples were a pagan joke painting in Pompeii (17:37) and one Greek word in Galatians (21:58). The oldest object Craig showed with a prayer to a saint written on it is from the 300s (21:16).

The early writings do not support veneration. They condemn it. The "heretical" source is the Carpocratians, whom three orthodox writers condemned for honoring pictures "after the same manner of the Gentiles." The orthodox sources are Clement, Tertullian, Minucius Felix, Origen, Lactantius, the Council of Elvira, Eusebius and Epiphanius. None of them approves of bowing to pictures, and those who talk about pictures in Christian worship are against them. Craig says writers against pagan images "do not count." But the pagan critics were not saying Christians had no pagan images. They were saying Christians had no images at all, and the Christian writers agreed.

Galatians 1:8 points the other way. For 300 years the gospel Paul preached spread through a church whose writers proudly said it had no images. The council of 787 curses anyone who will not bow to images. If the apostles really taught what the council of 787 taught, then every Christian writer who spoke on this for 300 years, plus a council of bishops in Spain, plus the church historian Eusebius, plus a saint bishop in Cyprus, all went against the apostles, and no one at the time noticed or objected.

The simpler answer is the one the evidence gives. The early church did not bow to images. The practice grew up among new converts from paganism between the 300s and the 500s. The council of 787 made it official, using legends (like the story of a picture of Jesus "not made by hands" sent to King Abgar) and a borrowed sentence from Basil about Jesus.

Craig kept saying, "Believe facts rather than words." The facts are pictures of Jonah on grave walls. The words are what the early church said those pictures meant. And from the apostles to Epiphanius, the words say Christians did not bow to them.