“Image of God” The doctrine that humanity is in certain respects created in the divine likeness/image of God. The Bible answers the question of the nature of humanity by pointing to the imago Dei. The fact that humanity by creation uniquely bears the image of God is a fundamental biblical doctrine; as is also that this unique image is sullied/defiled by sin, and that it is restored by divine salvation. Humanity’s nature and destiny are interwoven with this foundational fact, and speculative philosophies inevitably strike at it when they degrade humanity to animality or otherwise distort the personality. “Biblical Data” The biblical data pertaining to imago Dei are found in both the Old and New Testaments. Their setting throughout is revealed religion and not speculative philosophy. Dependence on the Pauline view on the Hellenistic mystery religions has been asserted by the comparative religions school. Reitzenstein has affirmed {Die hellenistischen Mysteries Religionen, 7-10} that Paul’s teaching on the image is indebted to the private mystery cults in Egypt, Phrygia, and Persia, particularly those of Isis, Attis and Cybele, and Mithra, with their goal of salvation secured through personal union with god or goddess. But H. A. A. Kennedy has argued in St. Paul and the Mystery Religions that the basic New Testament ideas are forged against the background of Hebrew theology, rather than of the Hellenistic cults, and that even in respect to the image, the resemblance between the Pauline concepts and the mysteries is superficial. Davis Cairns also emphasizes that “the New Testament writers make almost no use”—he might properly have deleted the word “almost”—of notions frequently found in the mystery cults, such as the divinization of the believer and human absorption into the Deity. Hebrew- Christian theology frames the doctrine of the imago in the setting of divine Creation and Redemption. “The gist of the Doctrine of Creation is surely this,” Cairns reminds us, in respect to the image, “that man’s being, though linked with the divine, is itself essentially not divine, but created, and thus dependent on God, and of a different order from His own being, though akin to it” {63}. Bible doctrine do not, therefore, simply affirm in a religious manner what speculative philosophies express more generally in their emphasis on the inherent dignity and worth of the person, or on the infinite value and sacredness of human personality. For Scripture conditions one’s dignity and value upon the doctrine of Creation, and not upon an intrinsic divinity, and assuredly it does not obscure the fact of the fall, and of the desperate need of Redemption. Those who, like Kingsley Martin, profess to find in Stoicism a superior and sounder basis for human dignity than that afforded by biblical theology, seem little to realize that in such a transition to pantheism, the Hebrew- Christian dimensions of the imago are actually abandoned. The biblical discussion turns in the Hebrew words selem and demut, and the corresponding Greek terms eikon and homoiosis. Scripture employs these terms to affirm that humankind was fashioned in the image of God, and that Jesus Christ the divine Son is the essential image of the invisible God. The passages expressly affirming the divine image in humanity, are Genesis 1:26, 27, 5:1, 3, 9:6; 1st Corinthians 11:7; Colossians 3:10; and James 3:9. The doctrine is implied also in other passages in which the precise phrase “image of God” does not appear, particularly in Psalm 8, which J. Laidlaw called “a poetic replica of the creation narrative of Genesis 1 as far as it refers to man” {HDB 2:452a}, and in the Pauline reference on Mars Hill to humanity and the Maker: The terms “image and likeness” in Genesis 1:26 and 5:3 don’t distinguish different aspects of imago, but state intensively the fact that men and women uniquely reflect God. Instead of suggesting distinctions within the image, the juxtaposition vigorously declares that by Creation, humanity bears an image, actually corresponding to the divine original. Genesis 1:27 the word “image” alone expresses the complete idea of this correspondence, whereas in Genesis 5:1 the term “likeness” serves the same purpose. Although humanity images God by Creation---a fact that the divine prohibition of graven images {which obscure the spirituality of God} serves pointedly to reinforce---the fall precludes all attempts to read off God’s nature from humanity’s. To project God in humanity’s image is therefore a heinous form of idolatry confounding the Creator/Yahweh Adonai with the creaturely {Romans 1:23}.This confusion reaches it’s nadir/lowest point in worship of the beast and his image or statue {Revelation 14:9-11}...To God Be The Glory...[To Be Further Completed At A Later Date]
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 15:10:37 +0000
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