IDOLATRY
636
IDOLATRY
Bellarmine-Labbe, Scriptores eccleaiattiri, 467. 501; Fabri-
cius. Bio. med. al. I\', 619: VI, 112-113; Raynaud, Opera
Omnia, XI, 37-66; Esser in Kirchmlei.
Arthur De\ine.
Idolatry (Gr. elSoAoXarpla) etymologically denotes Divine worship given to an image, but its signifi- cation has been extended to all Divine worship given to anyone or anything but the true God. St. Thomas (Summa Theol., II-II, q. xciv) treats of it as a species of the genus superstition, which is a vice opposed to the virtue of religion and consists in giving Divine honour {cultux) to things that are not God, or to God Himself in a wrong way. The specific note of idolatry is its direct opposition to the primary object of Divine worship; it bestows on a creature the reverence due to God alone. It does so in several ways. The creature is often represented by an image, an idol. "Some, by nefarious arts, made certain images which, through the power of the devil, pro- duced certain effects whence they thought that these images contained something divine and, consequently, that divine worship was due to them." Such was the opinion of Hermes Trismegistus. Others gave Divine honours not to the images but to the crea- tures which they represented. Both are hinted at by the Apostle (Horn., i, 23-25), who says of the first: "They changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds, and of four-footed beasts and of creeping things"; and of the .second: "They worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator". These worshippers of creatures were of three kinds. Some held that certain men were gods, and these they honoured through their statues, e. g., Jupiter and Mercury. Others opined that the whole world was one God, God being conceived of as the rational soul of the corporeal world. Hence they worshipped the world and all its parts, the air, the water, and all the rest; their idols, according to Varro, as reported by St. Augustine (Do Civ. Dei, VHI, xxi, xxii), were the expression of that belief. Others again, followers of I'lato, admitted one supreme Ciod, the cause of all things; under Him they placed certain spiritual substances of His creation and participat- ing in His Divinity; these substances they called gods: and below these they put the souls of the heav- enly bodies and, below these again the demons who, they thought, were a sort of aerial living beings {animalifi). Lowest of all they placed the human souls, which, according to merit or demerit, were to share the society either of the gods or of the demons. To all they attributed Di\inc worship, as St. Augus- tine says (De Civ. Dei, VHI, 14).
An essential difference exists between idolatry and the veneration of images practised in the Catholic Church, viz., that while the idolater credits the image he reverences with Divinity or Divine powers, the Catholic knows " that in images there is no di- vinity or virtue on accovint of which they arc to be worshipped, that no petitions can be addressed to them, and that no trust is to be placed in them. . . that the honour which is given to them is referred to the objects (prnU^ti/pfi) which they represent, so that through the images which we kiss, and before which we uncover our heads ;in(l kneel, we adore Christ and venerate the Saints whose likenesses they are" (Cone. Trid., Sess. XXV, "de invocatione Sanc- torum").
Moral Aspect. — Considered in itself, idolatr\' is the greatest of mortal sins. For it is, by definition, an inroad on God's sovereignty over the world, an at- tempt on His Divine majesty, a rebellious setting up of a creature on the throne that belongs to Him alone. Even the simulation of idolatry, in order to escape death during persecution, is a mortal sin, because of the pernicious falsehood it involves and the scandal it Causes. Of Seneca w^ho, against his better knowledge,
took part in idolatrous worship, St. Augustine says:
" He was the more to be condemned for doing menda-
ciously what people believed him to do sincerely".
The guilt of idolatry, however, is not to be estimated
by its abstract nature alone; the concrete form it as-
sumes in the conscience of the sinner is the all-impor-
tant element. No sin is mortal — i. e. debars man
from attaining the end for which he was created — that
is not committed with clear knowledge and free de-
termination. But how many, or how few, of the
countless millions of idolaters are, or have been, able
to distinguish between the one Creator of all things
and His creatures? and, having made the distinction,
how many have been perver.se enough to worship the
creature in preference to the Creator? — It is reason-
able, Christian, and charitable to suppose that the
"false gods" of the heathen were, in their conscience,
the only true God they knew, and that their worship
being right in its intention, went up to the one true
God with that of Jews and Christians to whom He had
revealed Himself. "In the day when God shall judge
the secrets of men by Jesus Christ the gen-
tiles who have not the law, shall be judged by their
conscience" (Rom., ii, 14-16). God, who wishes all
men to be saved, and Christ, who died for all who
sinned in .\dam, would be frustrated in their merciful
designs if the prince of this world were to carry off all
idolaters.
Causes. — Idolatry in its grosser forms is so far re- moved from the Christianized mind that it is no easy matter to account for its origin. Its persistence after gaining a first footing, and its branching out in count- less varieties, are sufficiently explained by the moral necessity impo.sed on the younger generation to walk in the path of their elders with only insignificant devia- tions to the right or to the left. Thus Christian gen- erations follow upon Christian generations; if sects arise they are Christian sects. The question as to the first origin of idolatry is thus answered by St. Thomas: "The cause of idolatry is twofold: dispositive on the part of man; consummative on the part of the demons. Men were led to idolatry first liy disordered affections, inasmuch as they bestowed divine honours upon some- one whom they loved or venerated beyond measure. This cause is indicated in Wisdom, xiv, 15: 'For a father being afflicted by bitter grief, made to himself the image of his son who was quickly taken away; and him who then had died as a man. he began now to worship as a god . . . ', and xiv, 21: 'Men .serving either their affection or their king, gave the incom- munical)le name to stones and wood'. Second: By their natural love for artistic representations: uncul- tured men, seeing statues cunningly reproducing the figure of man, worshippcil them as gods. Hence we read in Wisdom, xiii, 11 sq,, 'An artist, a carpenter has cut down a tree proper for his use in the wood
and by theskill of his art fashioneth it and
maketh it like the image of a man ..... and then maketh prayers to it, in<|uiring concerning his sub- stance and his children or his marriage'. Third: By their ignorance of the true God: man, not considering the excellence of God, attributed divine worship to certain creatures exceUing in beauty or virtue: Wis- dom, xiii, 1-2: ' neither by attending to the
works have [men] acknowledged who was the work- man, but have imagined either the fire, or the wind, or the swift air, or the circle of the stars, or the great water, or the sun and moon, to be the gods that rule the world'. — The consummative cause of idolatry was the influence of the demons who offered them- selves to the worship of erring men, giving answers from idols or doing things which to men seemed mar- velous, whence the P.salmist says (Ps. xcv, 5): 'All the gods of the gentiles are devils'" (II-II, Q. xciv, a. 4).
The causes which the writer of Wisdom, probably an Alexandrian Jew living in the second century b. c.
