Hm, as far as I know, it is sort of debated what the "classical christian view" is. But I certainly have seen lots of pictures from god in churches portrayed as the bearded guy up in the sky. It is definitely the common concept. Father, son and holy spirit. Plays a strong role with catholics
“Do not imagine God according to the lust of your eyes. If you do, you will create for yourself a huge form or an incalculable magnitude which (like the light which you see with your bodily eyes) extends in every direction. Your imagination lets it fill realm after realm of space, all the vastness you can conceive of. Or maybe you picture for yourself a venerable-looking old man. Do not imagine any of these things. If you would see God, here is what you should imagine: God is love“
Maybe you can educate as what other "classical christian view" you know of. The pictures show a symbol for a property of God, they are not supposed to be taken literally, or do you also think, that Mary used to stand on a sickle on top of a miniature earth holding baby Jesus, which in turn holds a golden apple with a cross and in the other hand a lance that he pokes at snakes? Or that the Holy Spirit is a literal pigeon? That's not what is depicted in those images, but that would be the literal description.
This is actually the crux of the argument for iconoclasm. This is why faiths like Judaism and some sects of Islam strictly forbid any representation of creation or humanity, especially to "represent" the divine or spiritual realities.
If you begin personifying everything, if you represent spiritual/invisible concepts in concrete, human terms, if you reduce transcendent concepts to the pragmatic and the visible product of a sculptor's hands, people can get really confused. I promise.
People can lose sight of that transcendence and eternal meaning behind the symbols. They can get really wrapped up in the physical manifestations. This is also the central problem with the autism spectrum and such.
Aniconism attempts to free the mind from these limiting images. If you're Muslim and you contemplate a building with nothing but artistic words and text scrawled all over it, you obtain a far different result than contemplating a richly symbolic statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Many people have the intellect and the insight to go beyond that concrete imagery, but not all.
True. The reason why Christianity broke that is that Jesus was a human physically existing on earth. I think seeing Jesus as a white european, a black african, and a chinese person or in Renaissance clothes should bring the point across that it is not about what is literally depicted, but yeah some people might not get it. The question is would they get it without the imagery or do the simply lack the will or ability to perceive God as transcendent?
