One way to categorize religious traditions is whether or not they accept or advocate the use of two- and/or three-dimensional objects to symbolize or embody the divine. Some traditions, such as temple Hinduism, Buddhism, and Orthodox and Catholic Christianity, see the use of such images as central to their theologies and rituals. In these traditions images can serve three functions. They can be understood to be representations or likenesses of deities, symbols of deities, or the deities themselves. Other traditions, such as some schools of Islam, Judaism, and Reformed Protestant Christianity, are iconoclastic or otherwise oppose the use of images. Still others, such as Lutheran Christianity and the Advaita Vedānta school of Hinduism, are ambivalent or indifferent to the use of images.

Scholars of art and religion generally prefer the use of the terms image and icon to idol, as...