Christian
Scholars Review 24.1 (1994) 8-25
Copyright © 1994 by Christian Scholars Review; cited
with permission.
The
Liberating Image?
Interpreting the Imago
Dei
in
Context
By J. Richard Middleton
For
nearly two thousand years now the Christian tradition has singled out
Genesis
1:26-27 for special attention.1 These
biblical verses constitute the locus
classicus of the doctrine of imago Dei, the notion that human beings
are made in
God's image. The text is important
enough to reproduce here in full (including
verse 28, which is an important part of the context).
Then God said, "Let us make humanity in our
image, according to our
likeness. And let them rule over
the fish of the sea and the birds of the air.
Let them rule over the livestock, over all the
earth, and over everything that
moves upon the earth."
So God created humanity in his image. In the image
of God he created him. Male
and female he created them. And God blessed
them and said to them,
"Be fruitful and increase, fill, the earth and subdue
it. And rule over the fish
of the sea and the birds of the air, and over
every living thing that moves
upon the earth." (Genesis 1:26-28)
Although the Christian tradition has typically
treated these verses as con-
taining a central biblical affirmation
with significant implications for human life,
there are only three explicit references to the imago Dei notion in the entire Old
Testament
(Genesis 1:26-27; 5:1; and 9:6). Furthermore these references are all
found in that section of Genesis (chapters 1-11)
known as the "primeval history,"
in literary strands typically assigned to the
priestly writers.2
With the exception of two deuterocanonical
references (Wisdom 2:23 and
Ecclesiasticus 17:3-4), the idea that
humans are made in God's image does not
surface again until the New Testament. Even
here, however, only two texts speak
of creation in God's image (I Corinthians 11:7 and
James 3:9). The rest either exalt
Christ
as the paradigm (uncreated) image of God or address the salvific
renewal
of the image in the Church.
The
concept of the imago Dei has been widely recognized as central to a Christian
un-
derstanding of human beings, yet
the paucity of biblical references has left the way open
for a wide variety of philosophical and theological
interpretations of this notion. In this
essay J. Richard Middleton presents a
"Royal" interpretation which is based on a "virtual
consensus among Old Testament scholars concerning
the meaning of the imago Dei in
Genesis";
he then goes on to deal with contemporary theological objections to such an
interpretation. Mr. Middleton teaches
Old Testament at the Institute for Christian Studies
(
8
The Liberating Image? Interpreting the Imago
Dei in Context 9
The Problem of Contextless Interpretation
This paucity of biblical references has
contributed to a wide diversity of
opinion over what it means to be made in God's
image. The problem is exac-
erbated by the fact that, until
recently, very few interpreters have treated the
immediate context of Genesis 1:26-27 as important
for determining the meaning
of those verses. It is not unusual for interpreters explicitly
to affirm, contrary
to standard hermeneutical practice, that here
context does not clarify meaning.3
As
a result, many have turned to extra-biblical, usually philosophical, sources to
interpret the image, and have ended up reading
contemporaneous conceptions
of being human back into the Genesis text.
Paul Ricoeur could be
taken as a charitable commentator on this state of
affairs, when he introduces his own essay on the
imago Dei with the following
words:
When the theologians of the sacerdotal [or
priestly] school elaborated the
doctrine of man that is
summarized in the startling expression of the first
chapter of Genesis--"Let
us make man in our image and likeness"--they
certainly did not master at once
all its implicit wealth of meaning.
Ricoeur justifies his own explication of this
"implicit wealth of meaning" by
adding that:
Each century has the task of elaborating its
thought ever anew on the basis
of that indestructible
symbol which henceforth belongs to the unchanging
treasury of the Biblical canon.4
1 An earlier version of
this paper was given at the annual meeting of the Canadian Theo-
logical Society, May 1991, in
2 Since Julius Wellahausen's famous documentary hypothesis about the
composition of the
Pentateuch,
argued in Die Composition des Hexateuchs ([1st ed. 1876-78] 4th ed.;
Gruyter, 1963) and in his Prolegomena zur Geschichte
Reimer,
1899), it has been standard academic practice to attribute the final literary
form of
the book of Genesis (plus chapters 1, 5, 17, 23 and
strands of 6-9) to one or more authors or
redactors thought to be of an exilic or
post-exilic priestly orientation (typically designated
"P").
In the past two decades, however, the scholarly consensus has seriously eroded.
For
a convenient summary of the history and present state of Pentateuchal
criticism as
it applies to Genesis, see Gordon J. Wenham,
Genesis 1-15, Word Biblical Commentary 1
(Waco; Texas: Word, 1987), pp. xxv-xlv. For an incisive, extended
evaluation of the past
century of scholarship on Genesis, see Duane
Garrett, Rethinking Genesis: The Sources
and
Authorship of the First
Book of the Pentateuch (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991).
3 G. C. Berkhouwer, for example, in Man: The Image of God, trans. by Dirk W. Jellema (Grand
Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1962), states that Genesis 1 affirms a
likeness between humans and God
"with no explanation given as to exactly what this likeness
consists of or implies" (p. 69).
In
a similar vein, Carl F. H. Henry claims that "the Bible does not define
for us the precise
content of the original imago" (in God, Revelation
and Authority, Vol. II God Who Speaks
and
Shows: Fifteen Theses,
Part One
[
asks: "After all, what is the image of God? The
biblical data furnish no systematic theory
of the subject, no clue as to what is
implied" (in "The Image of God," Bibliotheca Sacra 129
[July
Sept 1972] 515: 238).
4 Paul Ricoeur, "The Image of God and the Epic of Mart,"
History and Truth, trans. by Charles
A.
Kelbley (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1965), p. 110.
Christian
Scholar's Review 10
A different (and less charitable) reading of the
history of interpretation
is given by theologian Hendrikus
Berkhof. Berkhof replaces
the explication of
implicit meaning with another image. "By
studying how systematic theologies
have poured
meaning into Gen. 1:26," he
notes, "one could write a piece of
Berkhof's judgment is echoed, in
somewhat more colourful language, by
Old Testament scholar Norman Snaith. In Snaith's
words:
Many "orthodox" theologians through
the centuries have lifted the phrase
"the image of God"
(imago Dei) right out of its context,
and, like Humpty-
Dumpty, they have made the
word mean just what they choose it to mean.6
Although this may be something of an
exaggeration, it is not much of one.
For
the vast majority of interpreters right up to recent times have sought the
meaning of the image in terms of a metaphysical
analogy or similarity between
the human soul and the being of God, in categories
not likely to have occurred
to the author of Genesis. As blissfully
unconcerned with authorial intent as any
post-structuralist critic, most medieval
and modern interpreters have typically
asked not an exegetical, but a speculative, question:
In what way are humans
like God and unlike animals? In answer to this
question, various candidates have
been suggested for the content of the image. These
range from human reason,
through conscience, immortality, and
spirituality, to freedom and personhood.
This
dominant metaphysical stream of interpretation stretches from Ireneaus
through Augustine to Aquinas in the pre-modern
period, and until recently has
held sway even in the modern period.
There has been, however, a significant minority
reading of the image which
has attempted to substitute for the metaphysical, substantialistic analogy a dy-
namic, relational notion.
This attempt begins in the Reformation with Luther, and
Calvin,
who at least try to modify or adumbrate the metaphysical interpretation
with the image as ethical conformity or obedient
response to God. In more recent
years, under the influence of "existential"
anthropology, the human-divine, I-
Thou
relation has been suggested as the key to the image. Karl Barth
and Emil
Brunner,
among others, have proposed that the image of God refers to the
capacity of human beings to be addressed by and
to respond to God's Word.7
5 Hendrikus
Berkhof, Christian
Faith: An Introduction to the Study of the Faith, trans. by Sierd
Woudstra (Grand Rapids: Eerdman,
1979), p. 179. Emphasis added.
6 Snaith,
"The Image of God," Expository
Times 86 (October 1974-September 1975): 24. To the
comments of Berkhof and
Snaith could be added those of Karl Barth, who makes essentially
the same criticism in his Church Dogmatics, 3/1 (Edinburgh: T. and
T. Clark, 1958), pp. 192-
193.
Although Barth certainly attempts to root his own
interpretation of the imago Dei in
exegesis, he also ends up, willy
nilly, reading contemporaneous anthropological
notions
into the text.
7 For the terminology of substantalistic
and relational interpretations I am
indebted to Dou-
glas John Hall, Imaging God: Dominion as Stewardship
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), p. 89.
Hall
has himself modified the categories of Paul Ramsey in Basic Christian Ethics (
Charles Scribner s Sons, 1950). Summary accounts of the
history of interpretation are found
The Liberating Image? Interpreting the Imago
Dei in Context 11
What these two (dominant and minor) streams of
interpretation have in
common is that both may be found in the writings of
theologians; writings which
largely, if not entirely, ignore the massive
literature in Old Testament scholarship
on the imago
Dei. This theological ignorance of biblical scholarship is a shame,
on two counts.
First of all, the interpretation of the imago
Dei among theologians almost
universally excludes the body from the image, thus
entrenching a dualistic read-
ing of the human condition.
Although few modern interpreters come to the
Genesis
text with the ascetic predilections of Origen or
Augustine, nevertheless
this unwarranted limitation of the image continues
to perpetuate an implicit
devaluation of the concrete life of the body in
relation to spirituality.
What is a shame about this is that
any Old Testament scholar worth her
salt will tell you that the semantic range of tselem, the
Hebrew word for "image"
in Genesis 1, typically includes "idol,"
which in the common theology of the
ancient
divine. A simple word study would thus lead to the
preliminary observation
that visibility and bodiliness
are minimally a necessary condition of being tselem
elohim or imago Dei.8
But the ignorance of biblical scholarship among
theologians is shameful
for another reason. As my own survey of the field
of Old Testament studies
has revealed (and this is confirmed by the recently
published
of Gunnlaugur A. Jonsson), there is at present a virtual consensus among Old
Testament
scholars concerning the meaning of the imago
Dei in Genesis.9
in Hall, chap. 3: "Two Historical Conceptions
of the Imago Dei"; G. C. Berkouwer, Man: The
Image of God, chap. 2: "A
Preliminary Orientation;" Emil Brunner, Man in Revolt: A Christian
Anthropology, trans. by Olive Wyon (London: Lutterworth, 1939),
Appendix I: "The Image
of God in the Teaching of the Bible and the
Church"; and Anthony A. Hoekema, Created
in God's Image (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1986), chap. 4: "The Image of God: Historical
Survey." A more extended history
of interpretation may be found in chaps. 4-13 of David
8 Although a number of
different Hebrew words translate as "image" or "idol" in
the
Old
Testament, tselem
is used for idols in Numbers 33:52; II Kings 11:18; II Chronicles
23:17; Ezekiel 7:20, 16:27; and Amos 5:26. Based on this usage
Walter Kaiser Jr. in Towards
an Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978), p. 76,
translates tselem
as
"carved or hewn statue or copy." The case for demut
("likeness") is more complicated.
Although
biblical scholars have often suggested that the physical, concrete connotation
of
tselem is intentionally
modified by the more abstract demut, this latter term is sometimes
used within Scripture for concrete, visible
representations, as in I Samuel 6:5 and 11; II
Chronicles 4:3; and Daniel 3:1. Furthermore, a recent
(1979) excavation at Tell Fekheriyeh
in
equivalents of both tselem and demut in Assyrian and Aramaic as
parallel terms designating
the statue. For an account of this inscription, see
A. R. Millard and P. Bordreuil, "A Statue
from
9 See Gunnlaugur
A. Jonsson, The Image of God:
Genesis 1:26-28 in a Century of Old Testament
Research, trans. by
Wiksell, 1988), pp. 219-225. Before reading Jonsson, I would have said that perhaps 85% of
Christian
Scholar's Review 12
This virtual consensus is based, in the first
place, on careful literary and
rhetorical analysis of Genesis 1:1-2:3 as a textual
unit.10 Such analysis notes the
predominantly "royal" flavour of the text, and does not depend only on the close
linking of image with the mandate to rule and
subdue the earth and its creatures
in verses 26 and 28 (typically royal functions).
Beyond this royal mandate, the
God
in whose image and likeness humans are created is depicted as sovereign
over the cosmos, ruling by royal decree ("let
there be") and even addressing the
divine council or heavenly court with the words:
"let us make humanity in our
image," an address which parallels God's
question to the seraphim at the call
of Isaiah (in Isaiah 6:8), "Whom shall I
send? And who will go for us?" Just as
Isaiah
saw Yahweh "seated on a throne, high and exalted" (6:1), so the
writer of
Genesis
1 portrays God as King presiding over "heaven and earth," an ordered
and harmonious realm in which each creature
manifests the will of the Creator
and is thus declared "good."
These and other rhetorical clues, when taken
together with the wealth of
comparative studies of
tation which sees the image of
God as the royal function or office of
human beings
as God's representatives and agents in the world, given
authorized power to share
in God's rule over the earth's resources and creatures.11
Since the main function of divinity in
both
precisely to rule (hence kings were often viewed
as divine), it is no wonder Psalm
8
asserts that in putting all things under their feet and giving them dominion
over
the works of God's hands, God has made humans
"little less than elohim"
(Psalm
8:5-6).
It does not matter whether elohim is translated as "God" or
"angels" (as
in the Septuagint), the meaning is virtually
unchanged. In the theology of both
Psalm
8 and Genesis 1, humans (like the angelic heavenly court) have been given
royal, and thus god-like, status in the world.12
Old
Testament scholars were in agreement with the interpretation proposed here. Jonnsson,
however, whose study surveys a century of Old
Testament research in English, West
European
and Scandinavian languages, portrays the degree of consensus as considerably
higher. The two most substantial articles in English
by Old Testament scholars on the imago
Dei,
both of which contain extensive references, are D. J. A. Clines, "The
Image of God in
Man,"
Tyndale Bulletin 19 (1968): 53-103 and Phyllis
A. Bird, "'Male and Female He Created
Them':
Gen 1:27b in the Context of the Priestly Account of Creation," Harvard Theological
Review 74 (1981) 2: 129-159.
10 Examples of good
literary analyses of Genesis 1 include Walter Brueggemann,
Genesis
(Atlanta:
John Knox, 1982), pp. 22-39 and Bernhard W.
Priestly
Creation Story," in Canon and
Authority: Essays in Old Testament Religion and Theol-
ogy, ed. by George W. Coats
and Burke O. Long (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), pp. 148-162.
11 The near unanimity in
Old Testament scholarship in proposing this "royal" interpretation
of the imago
Dei does not extend to the actual reasons advanced for this interpretation.
Various
scholars forward quite different lines of evidence, not all of which are of
equal
value. In this paper I summarize only the main lines
of such evidence as I find convincing.
12 0n the centrality of
God as Ruler in the Old Testament, see Patrick D. Miller, Jr., "The
Sovereignty
of God," in The Hermeneutical Quest: Essays in Honor of
James Luther Mays on
His
The Liberating Image? Interpreting the Imago
Dei in Context 13
Although a "royal" reading of the
image has found scattered support in
the pre-twentieth century history of
interpretation, its career in the field of Old
Testament
scholarship begins in 1898 and 1915 with the work, respectively, of
H.
Holzinger and Johannes Hehn.13 And although there are at present a few
important dissenters within Old Testament studies,
such as Claus Westermann
who holds to a modified Barthian
interpretation, the last thirty years have seen
the royal interpretation of the imago Dei come virtually to monopolize
the field.14
Old Testament scholars, however, tend to be
notorious in their hesitancy
to make broad theological pronouncements based on
their research, preferring
instead to remain submerged in the textual and
linguistic minutiae of their dis-
cipline. The theological
significance, therefore, of the royal interpretation of the
imago Dei has remained largely unexplored. The time is ripe, then,
for extended
theological reflection on the image of God that
takes seriously both the biblical
materials and contemporary biblical scholarship.
Contemporary Objections
to the Royal Interpretation
But just as this opportunity presents itself,
the very notion of rule, whether
human or divine, has become problematic. This is not
the place to rehearse the
recent history of feminist theology, with its profound
challenges to patriarchy
as an ideologically legitimated social system.
Suffice it to say that no theologian
today attempting to reflect on the imago Dei as rule can avoid grappling
with
the objections raised, for example, by Sallie McFague in Models of
God to the
traditional picture of God as a transcendent divine
Monarch exercising absolute
rule over his kingdom--a picture obviously crucial
for the royal interpretation of
the image. Such a picture, claims McFague, is derived from a patriarchal model
Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. by Donald G.
Miller (Allison Park,
1986),
pp. 129-144; G. Ernest Wright, The Old Testament and
Theology (
Row,
1969), chap. 4: "God the Lord," pp. 97-150; and J. Stanley Chestnut, The Old Testament
Understanding of God (Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1968), chap. 4: "God and Kingship," pp.
70-81.
On the relationship of divinity and rule in the
ancient Near East, see Gary V. Smith,
"The
Concept of God/the Gods as King in the Ancient Near
East and the Bible," Trinity
Journal 3 (Spring 1982) 1:
18-38; and Henri Frankfort, Kingship and
the Gods: A Study of
Ancient Near Eastern
Religion as the Integration of Society and Nature (
13 An early example of the
royal interpretation in the Jewish tradition is found in Saadya's
10th
century commentary on Genesis (cited by Jon D. Levenson,
Creation and the Persistence
of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence [
112).
An early example of the royal interpretation in the
Christian tradition is found among
16th
century Socinians and is explicitly stated in the Socinian Catechismus .Racoviensis of 1605
(see Berkouwer, p. 70 and Hall, pp.
71 and 217). On the pioneering work of Holzinger and
Helmn, see Jonssori s
account on pp. 55-59.
14 Westermann's
extensive treatment of the imago Dei
text is found in part one of his three-
part commentary on the book, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary, trans. by John J. Scullion from
the 1974 German edition (Minneapolis: Augsburg,
1984), pp. 142-161.
Christian
Scholar's Review 14
of man ruling over woman and serves to enforce and
legitimate such rule by its
association of male dominance with God's
transcendence.15
Neither can theologians ignore the objections
raised by Catherine Keller,
to take another example, in her superb
interdisciplinary study, From a Bro-
ken Web, where she attempts to deconstruct the first chapter of
Genesis as a
thinly disguised--more gentlemanly--version of the Enuma Elish, the
classic
Mesopotamian
creation story, which--on her reading--served mythically to le-
gitimate patriarchy in the
Babylonian empire. Keller goes further than McFague
in exposing not only the parallels between
God-world and man-woman, but the
way in which rule involves the externalization of
the other as an object and its
ultimate demonization.16
In addition to feminist objections, however, the
Genesis mandate for human
dominion of the earth has often been linked to
the present environmental crisis.
The
literature is too large to cite exhaustively, but historians like Lynn White,
Jr.
and contemporary scientists from Ian McHarg to David Suzuki have challenged
the Western model of humanity over against the
non-human world, which they
trace back to its roots in Genesis.17
Beyond both feminist and ecological objections,
however, Old Testament
scholar Walter Brueggemann
has noted the propensity of creation theology to
serve to legitimate the status quo. In his prolific
writings on the Old Testa-
ment, in which he (unlike
many Old Testament scholars) powerfully bridges
the hermeneutical gap between ancient text and
present situation, Brueggemann
has vividly shown how easily ideologies ground the
present social order in the
order of creation, thus religiously disallowing the
possibility of change.18
In the wake of this host of warnings
concerning the oppressive consequences
of creation theology in general and the monarchial
model in particular, a legiti-
mate question arises as to whether a
"royal" reading of the imago
Dei, whatever
its exegetical basis, is tenable today.
15 Sallie McFague, Models of
God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (
tress, 1987), pp. 63-69. Also relevant is McFague's Metaphorical
Theology: Models of God in
Religious Language (Philadelphia: Fortress,
1982), chap. 5: "God the Father: Model or Idol?"
16 Catherine Keller, From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism, and
Self (
1986),
pp. 73-88.
17
1967):
1203-1207; Ian McHarg, Design with Nature (
Press,
1969), p. 26 et passim; David Suzuki, "Subdue the
Earth," Part 2 of his television
series, A Planet
for the Taking (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1985).
18For example, see Walter Brueggemann, The
Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary (Minneapolis:
Augsburg, 1984), pp. 27-28; The Prophetic
Imagination
(Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1978), pp. 39-40;
I: Structure Legitimation,"
Catholic Biblical Quarterly 47
(January 1985) 1: 28-46 (especially pp.
41-42).
I have questioned the one-sidedness of Brueggemann's
argument in "Is Creation
Theology Inherently Conservative? A Dialogue with Walter Brueggemann," Harvard
Theological Review 87 (1994) 3.
The Liberating Image? Interpreting the Imago
Dei in Context 15
It is, of course, impossible to give a
comprehensive answer to this question
in the short compass of this paper. My purpose is
less to settle the matter than to
indicate the main contours of an adequate
response, and thus to open dialogue
on the subject.
A Personal Confession
Let me begin by saying that I do not take these
contemporary objections
lightly. As one whose consciousness has been
shaped by both biblical and post-
modern sensitivity to marginalization and oppression
(even in the name of high
ideals;), I have had to re-evaluate my own use
of creation and kingdom language,
as well as its function in Scripture and the
church.
I am highly suspicious, for example, of the triumphalist use of such lan-
guage within the growing
conservative movement in the
to some extent in
tion." This movement,
which represents the extreme right-wing of Calvinism,
not only propounds a post-millennial eschatology of
progress, but claims a royal
reading of the imago Dei as part of its program for "reconstructing"
along theocratic lines, with full implementation of
Old Testament legislation and
sanctions. A commentary on Genesis by a leading reconstructionist is thus aptly-
and ominously--entitled The Dominion Covenant. With
a combination like that I
believe the potential for oppression is obvious.19
Let me, therefore, freely admit that
creation theology and monarchial images
of God and humanity may be--and have been--used to
legitimate systems of
oppression. The trouble is that I do not believe
that either creation theology or
the metaphor of rule have exclusive rights to being
oppressively used.20
19
nomics, 1982). The two
foundational texts of Christian Reconstructiion are Rousas John
Rushdoony, Institutes
of Biblical Law (Nutley, N.J.: Craig Press, 1973) and Greg L. Banhsen,
Theonomy in Christian Ethics (Nutley, N.J.: Craig
Press, 1977).
For a brief summary of
the movement, see Rodney Clapp, The Reconstructionists
(rev. ed.;
InterVarsity
Press, 1990).
For a sustained, sympathetic critique, see the essays in William
S.
Barker and W. Robert Gofrey (eds.), Theonomy: A Reformed Critique (
Zondeivan,
1988).
20 It is well known that
Karl Barth's objection to Emil Brunner's call for a
new (non-
Thomistic) "natural theology" or
emphasis on creation order was in part fuelled by his
observation that German National Socialism appealed
to the notion of such order to
legitimate its conservative, authoritarian
ideology. Brunner himself agreed that there were
"political" consequences to a theology of creation, but
pointed out (correctly, I believe)
that these were not inherently conservative, but
could indeed be revolutionary (see Natural
Theology, trans. by Peter Fraenkel [
in the social practice of Calvinism (that branch
of Protestantism with the most explicit
theology of creation), see Nicholas Wolterstorff, Until Justice
and Peace Embrace (Grand
Rapids:: Eerdmans, 1983), chap. 1:
"World Formative Christianity."
Christian
Scholar's Review 16
I grew up in a small pietistic church with a
virtually non-existent creation
theology. The dominant theology of fall and
salvation, however, encouraged
quietistic attitudes to the world
and tended to legitimate the status quo
by
divorcing social concerns from the life of faith.
I was pushed to a more world-
transformative spirituality precisely
by a theology of creation which questioned
the identity of the present order with the way
things were creationally meant to
be. Creation thus functioned as a transcendent
ground of criticism vis a vis the
status quo. This theology, furthermore, affirmed the goodness and
integrity of the
natural order against every attempt to
manipulate it for purely human ends.21
As for the metaphor of rule, it strikes me that
this captures something
of the empirical realities of power, which humans
undoubtedly have over our
environment, and which is not an intrinsically male
trait, as Genesis 1 recognizes
("male and female he created them"). I do not believe we
can avoid the question
of power, since the dialectic of oppression and
liberation can be retranslated
as a dialectic of powerlessness and empowerment.
The question is not whether
humans have power, but how they organize and use such
power.22
Furthermore--and this may be a sensitive issue
for a male to raise--I can
testify to having experienced (justly, I
suppose) marginalization at the hands
of some feminists. I have even attended lectures
by a prominent feminist the-
ologian whose aggressive stance
and triumphalistic fervor would have put any
reconstructionist to shame.
The problem with the critique of ideology is
that it cuts both ways. Any
position can itself become ideological if it is
exempted from the possibility of
critique. Certainly, the imago Dei as rule can become an ideology. But it is not
necessarily ideological.
The Polemical Intent of
Genesis 1
On the contrary, if read contextually, vis a vis
its historical background, in
terms of its polemical intent against ancient Near
Eastern notions of humanity
and kingship, Genesis 1:26-27 turns out to be not
oppressive, but liberating and
empowering. At least, that is how the text would
have functioned for its original
hearers.
It has long been recognized that Genesis 1
likely contains a polemic against
ancient Near Eastern polytheism, replacing the
bloody battle of the gods found in
21 See Brian J. Walsh and
J. Richard Middleton, The Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian
World View (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1984) for an attempt to articulate
a creation theology that is alternative to both
dualistic, world-avertive pietism and the
modern secular ideal of world-mastery.
22 On the subject of power
in the Scriptures, see J. P. M. Walsh, The Might from Their
Thrones: Power in the
Biblical Tradition (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1987). The connection be-
tween theology/ideology and
social power arrangements is the major focus of
K.
Gottwald's ground-breaking and massive work, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the
Religion of Liberated
The Liberating Image? Interpreting the Imago
Dei in Context 17
the Enuma Elish with the serene, unchallenged rule of Yahweh.
Catherine Keller
is much too suspicious on this point. She
dismisses out of hand the possibility
that Genesis 1 might constitute a critique of
Babylonian mythology, claiming
instead that the heroic dismembering of Tiamat, the primordial female, by the
young male upstart, Marduk,
is simply repressed and submerged in Genesis.23
Yet many biblical scholars have noted a number
of fundamental contrasts
between the two creation accounts. To give two
examples: Not only is creation in
Genesis
both harmonious and "very good" (1:31), as opposed to being the
tragic
result of Marduk's rending
apart of the dead body of Tiamat (a rending which
represents violence and evil as constitutive of the
very fabric of the cosmos),
but the Genesis text seems to be critical of
Babylonian astrology. For example,
sun and moon, astral deities in ancient
never being named, but instead merely described in
terms of their function as the
"greater" and the "lesser" lights to regulate
the seasons (1:16). And the creation of
the stars, likewise divinities which were thought
to influence human action, are
mentioned parenthetically, almost as an
afterthought ("he also made the stars").
The
Genesis creation story thus serves to propose an alternative vision of both
God
and the cosmos.24
23 In this, Keller is
closer to Herman Gunkel's pioneering study, Schopfung and Chaos in
Urzeit and Endzeit (Gottingen:
Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht,
1895), where he argues that
Genesis
1 is essentially a "faded" recension of the
Babylonian myth (see pp. 3-29, 114-
120).
Ever since Gunkel's work, some connection between
Genesis 1 and the Enuma Elish
has been undeniable. Few scholars today, however, accept
Gunkel's conclusion of simple
dependence of the biblical account on the
Babylonian myth. For typical recent assessments,
see Gerhard F. Hasel,
"The Significance of the Cosmology in Genesis I in Relation to
Ancient
Near Eastern Parallels,"
"The
Polemic Nature of the Genesis Cosmology," Evangelical Quarterly 46 (1974): 81-102;
Arvid S. Kapelrud,
"The Mythological Features in Genesis Chapter I and the Author's
Intentions,"
Vetus Testamentum 24
(1974):178-186; Alexander Heidel, The Babylonian Genesis:
The Story of Creation (2nd ed.:
1963),
chap. 3; and Conrad Heyers, The Meaning of Creation: Genesis and Modern Science
(Atlanta:
John Knox, 1984), chaps. 2 and 3.
But not only is Keller too suspicious, at one
point she is simply mistaken. She follows older
scholarship in claiming the derivation of
Hebrew tehom ("deep") from Akkadian
tiamat. The majority of
scholars today, however,
have been convinced by Heidel's
argument in The Babylonian Genesis
(p. 100) that both
words probably go back to a common semitic root.
24 The underlying issue
here is that Genesis 1 and the Enuma Elish embody widely divergent
worldviews. This is recognized even outside the
arena of biblical scholarship, among
scholars of comparative religion. Whereas Mircea Eliade, in The Myth of the Eternal Return:
Or, Cosmos and History, trans. by Willard R. Trask (Princeton:
1954),
distinguishes the two worldviews as the "cyclical" and the "historicistic," Merold
Westphal, in God,
Guilt and Death: An Existential Phenomenology of Religion (
Indiana
University Press, 1984), contrasts them as "mimetic" versus
"covenantal" (see
chaps. 10 and 11). Paul Ricoeur's insightful analysis of the Babylonian worldview
also
makes clear its fundamental divergence from the
Hebraic. See The Symbolism of Evil, trans.
by Emerson Buchanan (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969),
Part II, chap. 1: "The Drama of Creation
and the 'Ritual' Vision of the World."
Christian
Scholar's Review 18
What has riot been as widely recognized,
however, is that Genesis 1 may
also be read as polemical against ancient Near
Eastern notions of being human
and, by extension, against the use of such notions
to legitimate an oppressive
social order.25
Although the following account agrees
in broad outline with the conclusions
of numerous Old Testament scholars, no single
scholar has read the evidence in
precisely the configuration that I have, nor has
all the evidence been gathered
solely from scholars working on the imago Dei. What follows, therefore, is
my
own "contextual" reading of the
counter-ideological, and thus liberating, function
of Genesis 1.
This contextual reading begins with the
recognition that ancient Near East-
ern society, whether
Mesopotamian (that is, Sumerian, Babylonian or Assyrian),
West
Semitic (that is, Canaanite), or Egyptian, was hierarchically ordered and
ideologically dimorphic. The
hierarchy ranged from the gods at the top (and there
is even an intra-divine hierarchy of classes of
gods, with one god as supreme--as
Marduk was in
class came more privileged groups like artisans,
merchants, the civil bureaucracy
and the miliary, and
above them were the priesthood and the royal cou.rt.26
Standing between the human realm, on the one
hand, and the gods, on the
other, was the king, universally viewed in the
ancient Near East as the mediator
of both social harmony and cosmic fertility from
the gods. To contrast the two
cultures we know most about, whereas in
eternally begotten son of the gods, in
son. Both, however, are referred to as the image of this or that particular god,
whether Re, Amon, Marduk, 'Shamash or Enlil.27
Although there are many more extant references
to Egyptian Pharaohs than
to Mesopotamian kings as imago Dei, the Egyptian references tend to be from
25 A number of scholars do, in fact,
recognize a polemic in the Genesis text against Meso-
potamian
"anthropology." This is, however, usually taken to mean a critique of
the Meso-
potamian idea or view of humanity,
without any exploration of its implications for Israelite
critique of the concrete, existing Babylonian social order. See, for example, Hasel, "The
Significance
of the Cosmology in Genesis 1," pp. 15-17; Hasel,
"The Polemical Nature
of the Genesis Cosmology," pp. 89-90; and
Bird, "'Male and Female He Created Them,"'
pp.
143-144.
26 On the sociology of the
ancient Near East, see I. M. Diakonoff
(ed.), Ancient
Socio-Economic History (Moscow: "Nauka" Publishing House, 1969),
especially chaps. 1, 5
and 9; George Steindorff
and Keith C. Steele, When
Society,"
Journal of Biblical Literature 84
(1965): 259-271; A. F. Rainey, The Social
Stratification of
K.
Gottwald, The Tribes of Yahweh,
especially Parts 8 and 9.
27 For these references
see Bird, "'Male and Female He Created Them,"' pp. 140-143; Clines,
"The
Image of God in Man," pp. 83-85; and Edward Mason Curtis, Man as the Image of
God in Genesis in the
Light of Ancient Near Eastern Parallels (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation,
The Liberating Image? Interpreting the Imago
Dei in Context 19
pre-Israelite times, clustered around
the 16th century B.C. The Mesopotamian
references, though fewer, range from the 13th
century Middle-Assyrian empire
to the 7th century Neo-Assyrian and 6th century
Neo-Babylonian empires.28
There has been disagreement for many years now
in Old Testament studies
over whether Egyptian or Mesopotamian (or, for that
matter, Canaanite) parallels
are more significant for the Old Testament. That is
also true in the case of the
imago Dei.29 One factor that might help decide the
issue is the question of when
the book of Genesis (or at least its prologue,
1:1-2:3) is to be dated.
Although a great deal of what the older
literature referred to as the "assured
results" of Old Testament scholarship is
presently in creative ferment (some
would say outright chaos), under pressure from the
postmodern decline of Carte-
sian certainty and the old
hegemonic paradigms, a 6th century, exilic dating for
the canonical form of Genesis (whatever its pre-history
might have been) is still
the most plausible alternative at hand. One crucial
indication for a 6th century
date is the relative paucity of Old Testament
references to humans as the image
of God and the strange limitation of such
references to the book of Genesis. It
is unlikely that so fecund an image, if it were
early, would receive no intra-
scriptural commentary whatsoever, given the
proclivity of the biblical writers to
engage in such commentary and the later attraction of
both Jewish and Christian
commentators to this notion. It is,
furthermore, difficult to imagine that the
dramatic question of Isaiah 40:18 (spoken in the
midst of Babylonian exile), "To
whom, then, will you liken God?/What image will you
compare him to?" could
have been written by a prophet who was aware of the imago Dei texts in Genesis.
Of course, if Genesis is exilic, the imago Dei is more likely to have a Babylo-
nian than an Egyptian
background. And this is further supported, I believe, by
the Babylonian creation story, the Enuma Elish.
Although this story, to judge from
some of the divine epithets it contains, may have
had a Sumerian (and therefore
pre-Babylonian) origin, Marduk only came to ascension in the old Babylonian
empire at the time of Hammurabi
(18th century). However, the major text of
the Enuma Elish that we possess was found in the ruins of Asshurbanipal's
library at
the Babylonian exile.30
28 There are about
half-a-dozen Mesopotamian references to particular kings as the image
of particular gods (as well as one reference to a
priest as the image of Marduk). These (ad-
mittedly few) references are
embedded in the ubiquitous Konigsideologie or royal
ideology
of the ancient Near East. This ideology is part of
a wider theology which holds that the
divine presence is locally mediated to the masses,
whether by idols (also called "images"),
kings or priests (indeed, in
For
the theology of images, see Curtis, pp. 97-142; and Clines, pp. 81-82.
29 The dominant (though
not unanimous) opinion seems to favour an Egyptian
origin for
the notion. For an account of this debate, see Jonsson, pp. 142-143, 154, 207-209. For
an intriguing suggestion of how Egyptian notions
of imago Dei could have influenced
Mesopotamian
notions, and hence Genesis 1, see Curtis, pp. 167-170.
30 It is also known that the Enuma Elish was
immensely popular in 6th century
and that it was ritually re-enacted during the
annual Akitu (new year) festival at that time.
Christian
Scholar's Review 20
Earlier I noted that ancient Near Eastern
society was both hierarchical
and dimorphic, and while I touched on the hierarchy
I did not address its
ideologically dimorphic or two-tiered
character.
If the king, the priesthood and the royal court
could be regarded as the
highest elites of
mediating the rule of the gods in human life, at the
bottom of the social pyramid
were the peasants and slaves (those who built the
Egyptian pyramids and the
splendour that was
as the bureaucracy, the merchants and the
military) would align themselves
with the privileged or underprivileged groups
depended on how they read their
own mythology.
Just as the king, and by extension, the entire
Babylonian elite classes, re-
ceived ideological legitimation by the imago
Dei notion (hence this has come
to be known as the ancient Near Eastern royal
ideology), so the lowest classes
received mythic legitimation
for their status by the Enuma Elish.31
In that account, after Tiamat
had been slaughtered and the cosmos con-
structed out of her body, the defeated
(and now demoted) rebel gods who had
sided with Tiamat began to
complain that they had too much hard work to do,
too much menial labour.
So a divine decision was made. Kingu, who was both
consort of Tiamat and
instigator of the revolt that led to her death, was executed
and from the blood of this chief rebellious deity,
human beings were fashioned
by Ea, Marduk's father,
says the Enuma Elish, as
cheap slave labor, to do the
dirty work of the lower gods.32
The
most recent translation of the Enuma Elish is found in Stephanie Dalley,
Myths from
Mesopotamia: Creation,
the Flood, Gilgamesh and Others (
1989),
pp. 228-277. The best exposition and commentary is given by Thorkild
Jacobsen
in The
Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion (
versity Press, 1976), chap. 6.
For older translations of the Enuma Elish, accompanied by
an introduction, see Heidel,
pp. 1-60 and James B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient
Near Eastern
Texts Relating to the
Old Testament
(3rd ed.; Princeton:
pp.
60-72, 501-503.
31 Although this is all
well known, I am not aware of anyone beside myself who has
explicitly connected both the Konigsideologie and the Enuma Elish in
their function of
mythically legitimating the social order as the
explanatory background to the imago Dei
in Genesis. That is, I propose we go beyond a
literary, to a socio-political, reading of the
Genesis text. I have developed this
reading further in "Genesis I as Ideology Critique: A
Socio-Political
Reading of Creation in God's Image," a paper given at the June 1993
meeting
of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies, in
32 The creation of human
beings is recounted in Enuma Elish, Tablet
VI, lines 1-37. The notion
that humans are created to relieve the gods of their
labor is a distinctly Mesopotamian,
not Egyptian, notion. It is found also in the Atrahasis epic,
Tablet I, lines 240-24.2. For a
translation, see W. G. Lambert and A. R. Millard, Atra-hasis (
1969).
Other ancient (and fragmentary) Mesopotamian myths
that agree with Atrahasis and
the Enuma Elish on the purpose of human
creation may be found in Heidel, pp. 68-71,
Thorkild Jacobsen, The Harps That Once. ..: Sumerian Poetry in Translation (
The Liberating Image? Interpreting the Imago
Dei in Context 21
The social hierarchy of
purpose of the mass of humanity is to serve the
gods, and the king represents
those gods as their son and image, then the gods are
served precisely by serving
the king, who wills the present social order.
In the context of the 6th century Babylonian
exile, then, the people of
who were uprooted from their land and transplanted
into an alien culture, would
have been faced with this same oppressive social
system and its ideological
legitimation. The mythology of the Enuma Elish, it
seems likely, would have
conspired with the Babylonian social order and the
royal ideology to keep Jewish
exiles subservient to both the king and the gods of
If this is taken together with
foundation in the book of Exodus along radical
egalitarian lines, the situation the
exiles faced constituted a massive challenge to their
religious and social identity.
In
this historical context Genesis 1 came as a clarion call to the people of God
to take seriously again their royal-priestly
vocation in God's world, a vocation
outlined in that early election text, Exodus
19:3-6, which describes
"kingdom of priests" and a "holy nation," a
text quoted in the New Testament
(in both I Peter and the book of Revelation) and applied to
the church.33
It is not, therefore, that Genesis 1 introduces
any radically new idea about
human beings. Rather, facing the supreme challenge of
the exilic loss of Israelite
identity--which meant the loss of
essential continuity with the ethical, religious
and social ideals of earlier Scrip-
ture (including the
pervasive prophetic critique of absolute kingship in
daringly seized on the bold symbol of the imago Dei to crystalize
insight about being human, in the process (as
numerous scholars have noted)
"democratizing" the ancient Near Eastern royal ideology,
by applying it to all
human beings, male and female.34
Thus, far from constituting an oppressive
text, Genesis 1 (arid the imago Dei
as rule) was intended to subvert an oppressive
social system and to empower
A Study of the Spiritual
and Literary Achievement in the Third Millennium B.C. (Rev. ed.; New
33 For analyses of the
radically egalitarian nature of early
Paul
D. Hanson, The People Called: The Growth
of Community in the Bible (
Harper and Row, 1986), chap. 3. Hanson explicitly deals
with the Exodus 19 election text
in the context of describing the Yahwistic vision of
the hierarchy of
34 One of the first scholars to claim this
democratization is Helmer Ringgren,
"Ar den
bibliska skapelseberattelsen
en kulttext?" Svensk Exegetisk Arsbok
13 (1948): 13. This is not
to say that this democratizing, egalitarian vision
was applied universally to men and
women in either
this. Nevertheless it may be argued that this vision
contains the seed of the destruction of
patriarchy and implies
the radical equality of humans in the teaching of Jesus as well as
the Pauline statement in Galatians 3:28,
"There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free,
male nor female, for you are all one in Christ
Jesus."
Christian
Scholar's Review 22
despairing exiles to stand tall again with dignity
as God's representatives in
the world.
The Wider Biblical
Context
That this "socio-political" reading of
Genesis 1:26-27 is on track is indi-
cated by the pervasive
understanding of both idolatry and monarchy in the Old
Testament. Although space limitations preclude a
thorough investigation here,
it would be important to explore the connection
between the imago Dei text in
Genesis
1 and idolatry: both the ubiquitous prohibition against "images" from
the beginning of
East)
and the later, increasingly strident, opposition to idolatry voiced by the
prophets. Against this background, the Genesis
text gains in depth. It suggests
a critique of idolatry as a system of localized,
mediating images which function
to control access to the divine, a system usually
supervised by the royal and
priestly elites.35 The Genesis text
instead proclaims that human beings have direct
access to God's presence simply by being human. We
have here liberation from
the hegemony of the "clergy" and the root
of the later Christian notion of the
priesthood of every believer.
With regard to monarchy, it is noteworthy how
contingent the institution
was in
practice, but post-exilic
tus of kingship in
monarchy is typically traced back to creation
itself and the king is thought to be
crucial to the cosmic and social ordering of
reality. The Old Testament, however,
not only subjects the institution of kingship to
strict limitations (Deuteronomy
17:14-20),
it testifies to both an early anti-monarchial strain in
confederacy (illustrated by Gideon's refusal of
kingship in Judges 8:22-23 and
by Samuel's opposition to the people's request for
a king in I Samuel 8:4-22) as
well as to later (9th to 7th century) prophetic
critique of the monarchy in the
name of allegiance to Yahweh.
What is particularly worth exploring about the
Old Testament's critique
of both idolatry and kingship is how they are seen
as usurpation of Yahweh's
rule, which inevitably leads to injustice and
oppression, and how this impacts
the imago Dei texts in Genesis. Could
it be that some notion of "democracy"
35 Suggestive studies on
images in
The Ten Commandments and
Human Rights
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1980), pp. 61-72, Robert P.
Carroll,
"The Aniconic God and the Cult of Images," Studia Theologica 31
(1977): 51-64, Wal-
ter Brueggemann,
"Old Testament Theology as a Particular Conversation: Ajudication
of
Theme, and Text, ed. by Patrick D.
Miller (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), and J. J. Stamm
with
M.
E. Andrew, The Ten Commandments in Recent Research (
Inc.,
1967), pp. 76-88.
The Liberating Image? Interpreting the Imago
Dei in Context 23
and the sharing of power is an essential implication
of biblical monotheism, an
implication consonant with our human status as
creatures?36
If we move from the Old Testament to the New,
the imago Dei as rule is
further corroborated, but also nuanced. Although
we can no more discuss the
matter fully than we could the Old Testament issues of
monarchy and idolatry,
it is important to note the connection between the
Christian confession of Jesus
as Messiah (Mark 8:29; Matthew 26:62-64; Acts
2:36) and the New Testament
portrayal of Jesus as image of God par excellence
(Colossians 1:15; Hebrews 1:3;
II
Corinthians 4:4-6).37
Although by the first century Messiah or Christ
(literally, "anointed") was
understood as essentially a royal designation,
Jesus persistently refused the pop-
ular acclamation of those
who tried to make him king. His own discernment
of what constituted true kingship was atypical of
the times. It is exhibited in
his counsel to the disciples that they were to
exercise power not as the Gentiles
do, lording it over one another, but in serving
each other, "for even the Son of
Man
did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom
for many" (Mark 10:42-45; cf. Luke 22:25-27).
Thus, the life and characteristic
teaching of Jesus, and especially his paradoxical
enthronement on a cross, point to
a canonical trajectory from rule to compassionate
service.38 That is, Jesus
explicitly exemplifies what is at least implicit in
Genesis 1 and often explicit in the
Old
36 For a beginning of this
exploration-though without any connection to the imago Dei--
see Gottwald, pp.
903-913; and George V. Pixley, God's Kingdom: A Guide for Biblical Study,
trans. by Donald D. Walsh (Maryknoll,
N.Y.: Orbis, 1981), chap. 2: "Yahweh's Kingdom,
the Political Project of the Israelite Tribes."
Hanson’s monumental study, The People
Called,
is suffused with concern for this question.
37 For a fuller treatment
of the New Testament teaching on the imago
Dei, see Hall, Imaging
God, pp. 76-87, and Walsh
and Middleton, The Transforming Vision, pp. 83-86.
38 The enthronement of the Messiah on a
cross is an ironic theme in Mark's Gospel. It
is signalled by Mark's
description of the crucifixion of Jesus: "The written notice of the
charge against him read: THE KING OF THE JEWS. They
crucified two robbers with him,
one on his right and one on his left."
(15:26-27) Indeed, this ironic portrayal is alluded
to in the verses preceding the Marcan
text cited above, where Jesus corrects his disciples'
understanding of rule. This
correction is occasioned by the demand of James and John
for privilege in the Messianic kingdom: "Let
one of us sit at your right and the other
at your left in your glory." (Mark 10:37) The
irony is clear to the reader (if not the
disciples) when Jesus tells them that they don't know
what they are asking (10:38) and
that those places have already been assigned
(10:40), alluding to the crucifixion scene.
But
the enthronement of the Messiah on a cross is also a Johannine
theme. Raymond E.
Brown
(among others) has discussed the ambiguity of Jesus' sayings about being
"lifted
up" (John 3:14, 8:28, 12:32-34) in connection
with the theme of his glorification. Drawing
perhaps on the lifting up of the suffering
servant in Isaiah 52:13 (the same word, hypsoun,
is used in both John and in the Septuagint of that
text), John portrays the death of
Jesus
on the cross as an exaltation, the inextricable
beginning of his Messianic glorifi-
cation, which finds its climax
in the resurrection and ascension. See Brown, The Gospel
of John (i-xii): Introduction,
Translation and Notes
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966),
PP-
146, 475-478.
Christian
Scholar's Review 24
Testament,
namely that the right use of power is not oppressive control of others,
but their liberation or empowerment.
So much for rule, but how is this connected to
the imago Dei? The answer
lies in the church's fundamental discernment of
nothing less than the character
and purposes of God precisely in this paradoxical self-giving of
the Messiah. As
the one who is the paradigm imago Dei, Christ's death on a cross, perceived by
the world as foolishness and weakness, reveals
instead, to those who have faith,
the wisdom of God and the power of God (I
Corinthians 1:18-25). The death of
Jesus
discloses and models nothing less than the rule of God.
Since Christ is the head of the church, this
community of faith inherits his
revelatory, representative task. The "body of
Christ" is no mere metaphor; it is
the calling of the church to continue the
incarnation and mission of Christ by
manifesting God's redemptive purposes and coming
kingdom. Just as Christ is
sent by and discloses God, so the church as the new
humanity, renewed in the
imago Dei (Ephesians 4:24; Colossians 3:9-11; II Corinthians
3:17-18), is sent by
Christ
and called upon to imitate his paradigm of self-giving, thus witnessing to
God's rule in the concrete shape of their
communal life.
Perhaps the crucial text
is Paul's argument in Philippians 2:5-11. Citing
what is in all likelihood an early
hymn, the apostle argues that if Jesus, as the
unique imago Dei, used his divine
power and sovereignty not for his own interests, but
to serve others, even unto
death, then the Christian community, following in its
Lord's footsteps, should
have among itself the same "mind" of
compassionate self-giving.39 In the New
Testament,
imago Dei as rule becomes imitatio Christi.
What ties together this whole trajectory from
Genesis 1 to the New Testa-
ment is the consistent
biblical insight that humanity from the beginning-and
now the church as the redeemed humanity--is both gifted by God with a royal
status and dignity and called by God actively to represent his kingdom in the
entire range of human life, that is, in the very way
we rule and subdue the earth.
If
Genesis 1 focuses on the gift of imago
Dei (although not to the exclusion of
the call), in contrast to dehumanizing ancient Near
Eastern alternatives, the New
Testament
makes both gift and call crystal clear. In gratitude for God's gracious
mercy in gifting us with salvation, the community of
faith is called upon by
Paul
in Romans 12:1-2 to stop mirroring passively the culture in which it lives
("conformed to the world") and instead to mirror God in
and to the culture. But
a mirror, although a traditional symbol for the imago Dei, is too flat to capture
the full-orbed character of the human calling to be
God's royal representatives
in creation.40 A more adequate symbol
might be the prism. Humanity created
39 For a careful reading
of the Philippians text that not only interacts thoroughly with the
history of interpretation, but which integrates
insightfully the unique deity of Jesus as Lord
and the call to imitate him, see N.T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the
Law
in Pauline Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1991), chap. 4.
40 The idea of the imago Dei as a mirror of God's glory
derives ultimately from II Corinthians
3:18
via John Calvin's influential reflections. See his Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol.
I, Book 1, Chap. 15, no. 4 (also Hall's
analysis, p. 104).
The Liberating Image? Interpreting the Imago
Dei in Context 25
in God's image--and the church as the renewed imago Dei--is called and em-
powered to be God's multi-sided prism in the
world, reflecting and refracting
the Creator's brilliant light into a rainbow of
cultural activity and socio-political
patterns that scintillates with the glory of
God's presence and manifests his reign
of justice.
There is much more that could be said, both
connecting the imago Dei
to the full range of Scripture and, especially,
drawing out its implications for
contemporary human life.41
Even as far as this paper's explicit task goes, I do not
expect the foregoing brief analysis to be entirely
satisfactory, either in defending
the scholarly opinion that imago Dei means rule or in answering contemporary
theological objections to this interpretation.
Nevertheless, if this paper stimulates
theologians and others to take seriously the work of
biblical scholars on the imago
Dei and to engage in
biblically informed reflection on this subject, I will be more
than satisfied.
41 The imago Dei as rule
is discussed in Walsh and Middleton, The
Transforming Vision, chap.
3,
and the book as a whole constitutes a concerted attempt to work out its implications
for
contemporary life. See also
Middleton and Walsh, "Dancing in the Dragons Jaws: Imaging
God at the End of the Twentieth Century," The Crucible 2 (Spring 1992) 3: 11-18.
Todd Steen, Managing Editor
Christian Scholar's Review
Hope College, P.O. Box 9000
Holland, MI 49422-9000
http://www.hope.edu /resources/csr/
Please
report any errors to Ted Hildebrandt at: