Sunday, April 02, 2006
(2:13 PM) | Adam Kotsko:
The Image of God, pt. 2
A general thesis: "Moreso than in other areas of theology, 'the image of God' encourages theologians to simply make shit up."That is, you read the following in Genesis:
Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.”You think to yourself, "Hmm, I wonder what that 'image of God' thing means. It's kind of hard to tell, because the text itself gives basically no information in that regard, nor does the rest of the Bible." So you reason to yourself, "Obviously, the image of God would be something good.... So therefore it must be the best part of humanity! Therefore it's... reason!" Huzzah! Because the God portrayed in Genesis is nothing if not reasonable!
Here's the really awesome part: I'll bet you could go through the entire history of the doctrine of the "image of God," and less than 10% of theologians would refer to the underlying Hebrew. They wouldn't even break out the Greek for when it says in Colossians that Christ is the "image of the invisible God." No, virtually all of them would use the Latin term imago Dei. We would know that we are "created in" the imago Dei, so therefore -- the imago Dei is "in" us! Get it -- if we're "in" it, it's "in" us. Wait... Actually that's a completely unwarranted intellectual leap.
Anyway, yeah, the imago Dei is something that we can either have or lose, or have to varying degrees (say, less than "we" had it "before the Fall" -- like maybe 50% or even 75% of the imago Dei remains to us). It's probably unfair to say that "we" lost it entirely, though -- you know, this thing that we "have" because we were created "in" it. There are tons of examples like that! Because I was created "in" my mother's womb, I have a womb. Because I was born "in" Flint, Michigan, the entire city is contained within my essential nature. Etc. This is common-sense stuff.
So probably, the imago Dei is a good thing that I have. Or at least I have part of it, because it is in the very nature of this thing "in" which we have been created for it to be divisible. I'd be willing to go as low as 25% here, but no lower -- 25% of the imago Dei is the bare minimum that I would say that we "have," after being created "in" it and then experiencing the "Fall." Here's what God says in Genesis about the punishments after the Fall, just for reference:
The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you among all animals and among all wild creatures; upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.”Maybe the imago Dei is leisure time? Or weed-killer? Or anaesthesia during childbirth? Or a snake with legs? Wait, I forgot this next sentence:
To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your pangs in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children, yet your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”
And to the man he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
And to them all he said: "Oh, and by the way, you are losing a certain portion of the imago Dei as a result of this infraction."Wait -- actually I just made that up. Am I a theologian now?
