Genesis 1:26-27
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground. 27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them;male and female he created them.”Pete Enns argues "it is complete guesswork. It is also difficult to see what is gained here. Preserving the biblical description of human origins this way means it has to be adjusted well beyond what it says...
More importantly, equating image of God with the soul or other qualities that make us human puts a burden on Genesis 1:26-27 than it cannot bear—which brings us to the next point."[1]
But then turns around and bases his view entirely on guess work around a secondary meaning of image as a representation of likeness such as sculpture or painting.
J. Richard Middleton (Roberts Wesleyan College) puts it well in The Liberating Image. He offers that the image of God describes “the royal office or calling of human beings as God’s representatives and agents in the world.” Image of God means that humans have been given “power to share in God’s rule or administration of the earth’s resources and creatures.”[1] When one reads Genesis 1:26-27 with this in mind, the point becomes fairly obvious: “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish…birds…cattle…wild animals…creeping things” (NRSV).Are fish, birds, and livestock supposed to see man and say to themselves, "O that's like God being in charge of things?" It makes more sense that it either refers to God's physical body or to God's qualities as a conscious thinking entity. If one is not prepared to think of God as having a body, and I am not, then it must be the latter. The fact that the text equates image with ruling over creation indicates it's more than justa body. It's the quality that n=enables ruling over creation.
[1] Pete Enns,"What Does 'Image of God' Mean?" Biologos (July 27, 2010) https://biologos.org/articles/what-does-image-of-god-mean?fbclid=IwAR2qn0WA2918_6XFTPRgPSviVZyoS78yt9Y8PpnyvbS7khGUR7X88jNb-4Q accessed 1/5/2023
4 comments:
The Hebrews were originally polytheistic, and originally understood El to be the the father of the pantheon, just as Zeus was father of the Greek pantheon. And both were understood to look like men. When it says in the image of God, likely all it means is that man resembles how they thought the gods looked back then.
It was only when they abandoned polytheism that it got complicated.
Pix
Sure the Hebrews had a polytheistic background. Abraham came from Ur which was a polytheistic culture. Revelation is processive. We get bits of it at a time. it piles up. Bit the passage itself gives us reason to assume it means more than just physical body. It's linked to ruling over nature, Just having a buoy doesn't entitle rule. Having rationale, intellect and the necessitating consciousness entitles rule.
We have to remember that though the Hebrews began as polytheistic, by the time this text was written down in its present form, it was the Babylonian exile, and the writers were not only monotheistic, but they blamed Israel's exile on the worship of other gods.
I usually agree with Peter Enns, but I think it's important to take into account the implications of the meaning. Why would humans have a "royal calling as God's ... agents in the world"? Doesn't that imply some identification of humanity with divinity, or of human nature with divine nature? I think it implies the very thing he shies away from saying it means directly: the "imago Dei" implies that every human being is to be looked upon as having sacred value because of a special dispensation of the divine nature.
This is something I've wondered about a lot because the Bible has more to say about how we are different than God than how we are the same. But some people think bearing the image of God has to do with our capacity for moral awareness. I would be more inclined to believe that than merely having consciousness since lots of animals have consciousness and at least some rudimental ability to reason.
Post a Comment