The Lutheran position on cult images

Abstract

In this text we intend to emphasise that, unlike most Protestant leaders, Luther was not an iconoclast. He did not consider the respectful veneration of cultic images to be appropriate, but he did not incite the Bildersturm. In his text against Karlstadt, he legitimised images as long as it was accepted that they were "nothing", although they served as a reminder and support for preaching. His indifference to images meant that the symbolic and cultic value of religious art, so characteristic of Catholic and orthodox art, was devalued, although it promoted the daily and current theme of art. These new territories should not be understood as an end-form of the symbolic meaning of art.