Someone might come forward with truth as judge and say to them: How does God answer or become known through these things? Is it through the material of which they are made, or through the form they bear? If it is through the material, what need is there of the form? Why did God not simply appear through every kind of matter before these things were fashioned? Then their temples have also been built in vain, enclosing a single stone, piece of wood, or portion of gold, when the whole earth is full of these substances.
But if the form imposed on the material causes the divine manifestation, what need is there of gold and the other materials? Why should God not rather appear through the actual living creatures whose forms the carvings represent? By the same reasoning, their conception of God would have been nobler if He appeared through living creatures, rational and irrational, instead of being looked for in lifeless and motionless things.
Here above all they commit impiety against themselves. They detest and turn away from the actual living creatures—four-footed animals, birds, and creeping things—because of their savagery or uncleanness. Yet they carve their forms in stone, wood, and gold and make gods of them. They ought rather to worship the living creatures themselves than to worship their images in these materials.
Or perhaps neither the form nor the material causes God’s presence. Perhaps only skilled art summons the Divine, since art is an imitation of nature. But if the Divine comes to the carvings because of skill, what need is there again of the material, when the skill resides in human beings? For if God appears solely because of the art, and the carvings are therefore worshiped as gods, then the human beings who are the originators of the art ought to be worshiped and served instead, since they are rational and possess the skill within themselves.