Theopedia

Idolatry

“They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator.”

— Romans 1:25

Definition

Idolatry is giving to a created thing the worship, trust, or supreme love that belongs to God alone (Rom. 1:25). Outwardly, it is the worship of a literal image, whether of a rival god or, as Israel’s own history repeatedly shows, of the true God under a visible symbol he never authorized. Inwardly, it is the heart’s own substitute object of worship, the cravings and attachments Scripture itself calls idolatry even where no image is ever carved (Ezek. 14:3; Col. 3:5).

Confessional Definition

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession has no chapter devoted to idolatry by name, but its chapter on worship states plainly that acceptable worship “is instituted by [God] himself, and so limited by his own revealed will, that he may not be worshipped according to the imaginations and devices of men, nor the suggestions of Satan, under any visible representation, or any other way not prescribed in the Holy Scriptures.”1 The prohibition on graven images is also one of the Ten Commandments, forbidding not only the worship of a different god but the worship of the true God under any image at all.

Biblical Basis

The second commandment forbids making or bowing down to “any graven image, or any likeness of anything” (Exod. 20:4-6), a prohibition Israel broke almost as soon as it was given (Exod. 32). Paul gives idolatry its fullest New Testament diagnosis in Romans 1: humanity had “clearly perceived” God’s own attributes in what he made, yet refused to honor or thank him, and instead “exchanged the truth about God for a lie” (Rom. 1:20-25), a willful suppression of what was already known, not innocent ignorance.2

Idolatry is not confined to literal images. Ezekiel charges Israel’s own elders with having “set up their idols in their heart” even as they sat before the prophet (Ezek. 14:3-4), and Paul names covetousness itself as idolatry (Col. 3:5; Eph. 5:5): an inordinate love of some created thing that credits it with a sufficiency actually found in God alone.3

Historical Development

Israel’s own history supplies idolatry’s clearest case study. While Moses was still receiving the law that forbade it, the people had Aaron cast a golden calf. Yet Aaron’s own proclamation, “tomorrow is a feast to the LORD” (Exod. 32:5), shows the aim was not to abandon the LORD for a different god but to worship him under a visible symbol.4 The same pattern recurred generations later when Jeroboam set up golden calves at Dan and Bethel for the northern kingdom. Both incidents were treated in Scripture as idolatry precisely because “the worship of the true God by images… has ever been considered as much an act of idolatry as the worship of false gods.”4

Idolatry’s persistence has been traced to a standing feature of fallen thought itself. Surveying how quickly idol-worship reappeared after the flood, Calvin concluded that “the human mind is, so to speak, a perpetual forge of idols,” ceaselessly refashioning God into a smaller, more manageable image rather than submitting to him as he has actually revealed himself.5

Objections and Responses

Doesn’t calling covetousness “idolatry” (Col. 3:5) stretch the word past any image or altar, into a loose metaphor for any strong desire? The two are the same sin in different dress. Someone who worships a carved image credits it with a power that belongs to God alone; a covetous person credits a possession, relationship, or ambition with a sufficiency that likewise belongs to God alone, supposing “there is something present in the creature that is not in God.”3 Naming that misplaced trust idolatry does not weaken the word: it identifies the same disordered worship Exodus and Romans already condemn, relocated from an altar to the heart.

Related Doctrines

References

  1. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 22, “Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day,” para. 1. ↩

  2. Craig A. Carter, “What Is Trinitarian Classical Theism?,” in Contemplating God with the Great Tradition: Recovering Trinitarian Classical Theism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021), chap. 2. ↩

  3. Petrus van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, vol. 2, Faith in the Triune God, ed. Joel R. Beeke, trans. Todd M. Rester (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2019), chap. 21, “The All-Sufficiency or Perfection of God,” 504. ↩ ↩2

  4. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 3 (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1873), chap. 19, “The Law,” 290-291. ↩ ↩2

  5. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1845-1846), book 1, chap. 11, 90-103. ↩