Heidelberg Catechism · Question 97
Explaining Part III: Thankfulness
May we then not make any image at all?
God cannot and may not be visibly portrayed in any way. Creatures may be portrayed, but God forbids us to make or have any images of them in order to worship them or to serve God through them.
Scripture proofs King James Version
- Ex. 34:13, 14, 17 But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves: For thou shalt worship no other god: for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God: ... Thou shalt make thee no molten gods.
- Num. 33:52 Then ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you, and destroy all their pictures, and destroy all their molten images, and quite pluck down all their high places:
- II Kings 18:4, 5 He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and 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. He trusted in the LORD God of Israel; so that after him was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor any that were before him.
- Is. 40:25 To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One.
Edition & Source Public domain
- Source
- The Heidelberg Catechism
- Translation
- English translation as published by apuritansmind.com; Scripture proofs: King James Version
- Published
- First published 1563
- Copyright
- Public domain.
- License
- Public domain
- Attribution
- Public domain. Text transcribed from apuritansmind.com, which reformed.org's historic-documents index links to. Compared automatically with the PDF at heidelberg-catechism.com, which is the same translation family: 217 of 258 questions and answers matched. Of the 41 that did not, I checked 18 by hand: Q12, Q18, Q27, Q56 and Q61 differ in wording, and the others were page-layout noise in the PDF; the remaining 23 were not checked by hand. Not yet proofread against a printed edition. Part divisions are the standard ones (Q1–2 introduction; Q3–11 misery; Q12–85 deliverance; Q86–129 thankfulness). The question 23 creed text had verse-number markers removed. Scripture proof texts are the King James Version, from the public-domain Project Gutenberg edition, added with tools/add_kjv.py. A few references could not be matched to verses (whole-chapter references such as ‘Genesis 1 throughout’, and typing slips in the source) and are shown without text.
Please visit the original source for the full work.
Cite as The Heidelberg Catechism. First published 1563. https://www.apuritansmind.com/creeds-and-confessions/the-heidelberg-catechism-by-zacharias-ursinus/