Icons Are Us

THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH WAS CATHOLIC, NOT ICONOCLASTIC 

by Micah McDaniel, edited

To those who reject relics, saints, and sacred images as “not biblical, man-made tradition,” let’s be clear:

The earliest, persecuted Church, the one that hid in catacombs, bled in the arenas, and wrote copies of, as well as preserved the New Testament....THEY venerated relics, honored saints, and called on their intercession.

1. Even the Enemies of the Church Admit It

But don’t take the word of the people who know this best, The Catholic Church, on this. In fact, take her enemies’ word for it:

• Julian the Apostate (4th c.) sneered that Christians had “filled the world with tombs and shrines” for saints.

• Lucian the Satirist (2nd c.) mocked them for revering the bones of martyrs.

• Celsus (2nd c.) accused them of seeking healing at martyrs’ graves.

• Porphyry (3rd c.) complained that Christians prayed to dead saints instead of the gods.

• Vigilantius (4th c.), a Christian dissenter, raged against “lamp lighting, relic kissing, and disturbing the tombs of the dead.”

These aren’t voices friendly to The Church, by the way - they’re hostile witnesses from the period, itself. Yet, unwittingly, they confirm that the early Church honored relics, venerated saints, and prayed at their tombs, long before Constantine joined The Church, and long before Rome was the center of Church position.

2. The Church Fathers Defended These Practices as Apostolic

When critics arose, the Fathers didn’t say:

“You’re right, we'll drop these medieval errors!”

No, they responded with clarity and boldness:

• St. Jerome crushed Vigilantius, defending relics and saint veneration as apostolic and biblical.

• St. Basil the Great said the relics of martyrs were “more precious than gold and jewels.”

• St. Athanasius testified that even heretics trembled at the power of saints’ remains.

• St. Gregory of Nyssa refuted Eunomius for attacking the feasts and veneration of the saints.

The Protestant Lie

So ask yourself: "Who was closer to to the actual Church, the only Church of Christ, and His Apostles?

- Would it be The Church Fathers, who lived within a century or two of the Apostles, themselves...

- Or would you try to substitute angry-minded, prideful men like Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, and the others, inventing their own versions of Christianity 1,500-1,600 years too late?

If this sounds antagonistic, it is for good reason: these men and their followers are still antagonistic to The Church. They continue to concoct all kinds of falsehoods and hateful rhetoric against the only Church Christ, Himself, initiated.

It is their legacy, and sadly, it is one that many of them - if not most - gleefully embrace. They see themselves as separatists, and The Church their enemy. We Catholics pray for their human anger to subside, and for unity between all Christians. But we also recognize this truth.

3. Scripture Affirms What Protestants Reject

• 2 Kings 13:21 – A dead man is revived by touching Elisha’s bones.

• Revelation 5:8 – The saints in heaven offer prayers to God.

• Matthew 17:3 – Moses and Elijah appear and speak with Christ.

• Acts 19:12 – Paul’s handkerchiefs heal the sick.

• Hebrews 12:1 – We are “surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.”

• Revelation 6:9–11 – The souls of martyrs pray beneath the altar of God.

Yet Protestants today have an iconoclastic zeal among all their many sects, to foolishly denounce the very practices that Scripture, early Christian witnesses, and even pagans hostile to The Church all confirm.

4. Protestantism: A Tradition of Mortal Men

The early Church never rejected:

• Sacred images

• The intercession of saints

• The veneration of relics

• Holy feast days for martyrs

But Reformers like Zwingli and Calvin did, 1,500 years later, in a rush to distance themselves from the Catholic Church by creating a Christianity in their own image. Which is still happening today… 

They smashed statues, burned relics, whitewashed churches, and then wrongly claimed that was “apostolic Christianity.”

It’s not. 

It’s historical amnesia. 

It’s rupture, not reform. 

It's nothing more than the very commonplace propaganda trick of telling a lie, repeating it endlessly to yourself and anyone who makes the mistake of listening, and so coming to believe your own lie as truth.

You say you reject relics and saints because they’re, “not in the Bible”?

Even pagans in the 2nd century knew Christians were honoring relics and invoking saints. 

Well before there was a Bible.

If you don’t like relics and saints, fine; just don’t pretend you’re restoring veracity to Christianity through your hatred.

You’re not.

You’re only trying to replacing it with your own botions, and self-rationalizing your attemps to do so.

+++++

References:

🔥J.N.D. Kelly Early Christian Doctrines (5th edition)

🔥Robert Louis Wilken, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought 

🔥Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity 

⚜️ All affirm the Church’s veneration of saints and relics as early, Apostolic, Scriptural, and central to Christian doctrine.