Everything that has being exists because it is created and "formed" [gebildet] by God; it exists because, by God's immeasurable love, it was given to live in communion with the Creator and Redeemer. Hence all creatures are expressions and "images" [Bilder] of God's design.
To the extent to which our hearts are pure, we will be able to perceive things as such images. "To this end, however, we need a profound purification of our imagination, of our ideas, and of our thoughts. Only by way of purification will it be possible for the thoughts of God, the creative sparks burning in all things, to shine for us."(45)
It is not possible for us to depict God in his essence. It is only in Jesus Christ, true God and true man, that the greatness of God is mediated to us in a way proportionate to our limited senses.
"Therefore I boldly draw an image of the invisible God, not as invisible, but as having become visible for our sakes by partaking of flesh and blood. I do not draw an image of the immortal Godhead, but I paint the image of God who became visible in the flesh."(46)
From this fact derives the possibility and legitimacy of the veneration of images, since "the honor given to the image is transferred to the prototype."(47)
For the theologian of images John Damascene, the first vocation of images consists in this, that "the invisible is recognized in the represented works and that they spur us on to imitate the good."(48)
The image is of even greater significance for those (e.g., children) "who cannot read, so as to learn at least from the appearance what they cannot understand from books."(49)
Artists dealing with the sacred should therefore strive to employ representations that are allegorical and understandable. Since sacred art, along with its symbolism, has the task of edifying the faithful and predisposing them for prayer, the artist has to pay attention that the correspondence between divine reality and the physical sense image is intelligible and accessible to the Christian people, so that the "sign" does indeed signify something divine to them.
For all its symbolic power, the enigmatical sense image is never identical with the world of the invisible and supernatural, which it reflects. It permits us merely to have some vague sense about the divine world.
Since "man does not have immediate knowledge of invisible things..., the image was devised that he might advance in knowledge, and that secret things might be revealed and made perceptible. Therefore, images are a source of profit, help, and salvation for all, since they make things so obviously manifest, enabling us to perceive hidden things. Thus we are encouraged to desire and imitate what is good and to shun and hate what is evil."(50)
Of course, here too, there is the demand for high artistic quality, for which, obviously, criteria like design, interplay between form and content, and aesthetic wholeness are just as important as the specific content-essential for sacred works-which is the religious message.
How far God's grace works in man-made images independent from their artistic quality (e.g., miracle-working images) is left up to his will.
"The form of the image must be of the greatest lucidity. This lucidity does not only refer to the complete lucidity of the composition of the image as a whole in relation to its parts, but also decisively characterizes the light and splendor of the spirit, by which the composition of the whole image is determined. All the while, the image is a permeable recipient for the luminous proclamation of the eternal light, just as the divine light of the God-man shines through his human nature and forms his human nature."(51)