I have touched on this topic on a couple of entries before, referring to my agreement with John Frame. This was kind of a no brainer, but since by American Fundamentalist influence, many in the Presbyterian churches, particularly the OPC, are hard against having pictures of Jesus Christ, I find it necessary to open a topic on this. The superstitious mentality of these is really not far from the Muslims' ban on pictures of Mohammed.
PCA seems to be okay with it, but not OPC.
Here's Frame's 5 points rebuttal(based on Justin Taylor's summary), in his The Doctrine of the Christian Life, under IMAGES IN WORSHIP & IMAGES OF JESUS
Frame, John M.. The Doctrine of the Christian Life (A Theology of Lordship) (p. 481). P&R Publishing. Kindle Edition.:
- Based on 2nd Commandment, so Jesus may not be pictured.
Frame: Scripture does not teach purely and simply that God cannot be pictured. Christ, God incarnate, was picturable: could be seen, felt, touched as well as heard. His face could be held in memory and such mental images were not sinful. To deny this is docetism. Here lies the sharp difference between Old vs. New Covenants: from emphatically no form (Deu 4:15) to emphatically form (1John 1:1ff., etc.) - Veneration of Christ's images circumscribes Jesus' divine nature or make his human and divine natures separable.
Frame: Jesus in both his natures, deity was in one sense circumscribed since all its fullness dwelt in him; though in another sense, God was active beyond the body of Jesus. To picture Jesus is to picture a divine person, not one nature or other. To venerate such a picture would be wrong, but the opponents have yet to give an adequate argument against pedagogical use of such pictures. - Nobody now knows what Jesus looked like, so pictures are deceptive.
Frame: A picture does not become a "lie" simply by being non-exhaustive [to insist full "representation" exhaustively in art exhibits poor imagination/creativity, a sign of foolishness, a biblicist's own trap]. We don't know how Jesus looked but we know something about His looks: male, Semitic, in midlife, wearing a robe, etc. - 2nd commandment excludes deity representations.
Frame: only those intended for use in worship, not elsewhere. - Whenever pictures of Jesus are used, there's risk of idolatry.
Frame: True.