by Tony Dekker (Version 1.1, August 2003).
Copyright © 2003 by Anthony Dekker. Permission is given to distribute this review freely for non-profit use, provided that it is not altered and that this copyright notice remains intact. See also http://members.ozemail.com.au/~dekker/essays
English Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. See http://www.gospelcom.net/ibs/niv/
One of the more amazing and challenging doctrines of the Christian faith is that men and women are created in the image of God. Genesis 1: 26–28 says:
“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground.’”
The challenge to all of us in these verses is that the image of God within us, like a city on a hill (Matthew 5:14), should shine more clearly than it does. The following paragraphs record some of my musings over the past months as I have reflected on some aspects of this idea.
The the first sense in which the human race is formed in the image of God is that it is a community, just as God is. The doctrine of the Trinity teaches that, although there is only one God, God consists of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. As the Athanasian creed says:
“We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity… For there is one Person of the Father, another of the Son and another of the Holy Spirit. But the Godhead of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit is all one, the glory equal, the majesty co-eternal. Such as the Father is, such is the Son and such is the Holy Spirit… The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Spirit eternal. And yet they are not three eternals, but one eternal… So there is one Father, not three Fathers; one Son, not three Sons; one Holy Spirit, not three Holy Spirits. And in this Trinity none is afore, nor after another; none is greater, or less than another. But the whole three persons are co-eternal, and co-equal.” — http://www.prca.org/es_text3.html#athanasian
Before the creation of the world — even before the creation of the angels — God was Love: the Father loved the Son (John 17:24), the Son loved the Father (John 14:31), the Holy Spirit loved and was loved by the Father and the Son. In this sense, creating men and women in God’s image was a way for God to increase the amount of love in the Universe. St Catherine of Siena (1347–1380) in her “Dialogue” puts it this way:
“You said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image and likeness.’ And this you did, eternal Trinity, willing that we should share all that you are, high eternal Trinity! You, eternal Father, gave us memory to hold your gifts and share your power. You gave us understanding so that, seeing your goodness, we might share the wisdom of your only-begotten Son. And you gave us free will to love what our understanding sees and knows of your truth, and so share the mercy of your Holy Spirit. Why did you so dignify us? With unimaginable love you looked upon your creatures within your very self, and you fell in love with us. So it was love that made you create us and give us being just so that we might taste your supreme eternal good.”
The challenge for us is to live up to this image. As John says in his first epistle (1 John 4:7–12,19–21):
“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us… We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.”
God created people to be social creatures, so that it would not be good for them to be alone (Genesis 2:18). The first man required a helper to assist him with his primary duty: glorification of God (Revelation 4:11), and with his duty to take care of the created Universe (Genesis 2:15, Matthew 25:14–30). Naturally, the same is true of the woman (who did not yet exist) — she also needed a helper to assist her with these tasks.
God intended the entire fabric of human relationships to develop from this relationship of husband and wife. From this would come the relationships of parent-child, sibling-sibling, uncle-cousin, teacher-student, author-reader, and all other human relationships. But the network of human relationships can transmit both positive and negative forces, and so when the human race fell, it fell as a whole (unlike the angels, of whom only some fell).
From the time of that Fall, all human relationships were poisoned — the sad story of Cain and Abel (Genesis 4) provides an illustration — until the fabric of human relationships could be put right by a new beginning with Jesus Christ. From that beginning, a new network of human relationships could grow — one which restored the purity that should have existed from the beginning. As Paul says (Ephesians 2:19–22, 5:1–2):
“Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God’s people and members of God’s household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit… Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”
This concept of the human race as a single connected entity seems not to apply to the angels. The Bible tells us that angels do not marry (Matthew 22:30, Luke 20:34–36). They have an intense focus on God (Psalm 103:20, Isaiah 6:2–3), but they do not seem to have the same sense of community that people do.
In contrast to the angels, we share our social nature with the animals, particularly social mammals such as horses and wolves. Much as we differ from animals, the similarity is close enough that the human race has successfully incorporated into its society the horse and (even more so) the domesticated wolf (the dog). Dogs fit into our society very well, apparently because they see us as more senior dogs (or wolves) that should be obeyed. We often treat them as people, without too much confusion resulting. There are even occasional (but persistent) reports of human children, abandoned for some reason in the forest, being brought up within wolf society (see, for example, http://www.feralchildren.com/en/social.php). Whether or not this is true, there are certainly resemblances between wolf society and the richer, more complex society of human beings, just as there are similarities between our community and the richer, more complex community of the Trinity.
A second aspect of the image of God is the use of language and reason. Rational thought is thought expressed in language, or at least thought about linguistically defined concepts. God thinks and speaks (Genesis 1:26, Numbers 23:19). Indeed, we would be lost, were it not for the fact that God speaks to us.
The angels also share the ability to think and communicate, both in praise of God (Luke 2:13–14, Revelation 5:11–12), and with human beings, most notably at the time of Christ’s birth (Luke 1:5–38, Luke 2:8–12).
Animals do not share this ability, in spite of determined efforts to teach for them (see, for example, Stephen Budiansky’s delightful little book “If a Lion Could Talk: How Animals Think,” and Steven Pinker’s equally fascinating “The Language Instinct”). Attempts to teach sign language to gorillas and chimpanzees have been guilty of wishful thinking, prompting the apes with signs to imitate (as revealed by video footage), and being overly generous in interpreting hand gestures as valid signs (as described by a native “speaker” of sign language involved in one such project). Even if we ignore these flaws, three things are evident from these language experiments:
“Nim eat. Nim eat. Drink eat me Nim. Nim gum me gum. You me banana me banana you.”
In contrast, this is the language of a young child (Pinker 1994, p 274):
“My teacher holded the baby rabbits and we patted them.”
“Once upon a time a alligator was eating a dinosaur and the dinosaur was eating the alligator and the dinosaur was eaten by the alligator and the alligator goed kerplunk.”
Most human relationships are at least partly based on communication with language. Words provide one of the most important ways of giving and receiving love, although Gary Chapman (in “The Five Love Languages”) also points out the importance of quality time, giving and receiving gifts, acts of service, and (reflecting those things we have in common with the animals) physical touch.
Since language and thought are so central to being human, it is rather sad that the sometimes fail to use our abilities for their primary purpose: to express love of God and each other (Matthew 22:37–39). As James says (James 3:9–10):
“With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be.”
The Gospel of John tells us (John 4:24):
“God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”
We humans share in this spiritual nature, but (as C. S. Lewis says in his well-known “The Screwtape Letters”) we are “amphibians.” Like God and the angels, we are spiritual beings, but like animals we are creatures in a body. As a result of this, the closest we come to the constancy of God is what C. S. Lewis calls “undulation” — a repeated return to a level from which we repeatedly fall back.
Our spiritual nature carries with it a moral sense — a sense of what is right and wrong. Crime such as murder, adultery, lying, theft, and disrespect for parents have been almost universally condemned around the world and throughout history. Yet, because we are “amphibians,” we have a distressing tendency to ignore our consciences and to do things that we know are wrong. As Paul says (Romans 7:21–23, 8:9–11):
“So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members… You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.”
Through Christ we establish a right relationship with God, which not only restores us as individual spiritual beings, but also (within the Church) restores the spiritual community of which we should be part.
We humans also share in the image of God throughout creativity. Genesis 1:31 says:
“God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning — the sixth day.”
The things that we create — tiny though they are in comparison — should be created in the same spirit (Colossians 3:23–24):
“Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.”
Dorothy Sayers, in her essay ‘Why Work?’ (part of the collection “Creed or Chaos?” from Sophia Institute Press) says that work should be performed:
“not as a necessary drudgery to be undergone for the purpose of making money, but as a way of life in which the nature of man should find its proper exercise and delight and so fulfil itself to the glory of God. That it should, in fact, be thought of as a creative activity undertaken for the love of the work itself; and that man, made in God’s image, should make things, as God makes them, for the sake of doing well a thing that is well worth doing.”
The process of creativity brings together the other aspects of the image of God, for some of the greatest acts of human creation have involved a community of co-workers (for example, the team responsible for bringing to the screen a great movie). Yet all these aspects of the image of God are so tarnished within us that they cannot shine out without help from God Himself. This is why daily prayer is so important:
|
O Padre nostro, che ne’ cieli stai,
laudato sia ‘l tuo nome e ‘l tuo valore
Vegna ver’ noi la pace del tuo regno,
Come del suo voler li angeli tuoi
Dà oggi a noi la cotidiana manna,
E come noi lo mal ch’avem sofferto
Nostra virtù che di legger s’adona, |
Our Father, dwelling in the Heavens, nowise
Hallowed Thy Name be and the Power thereof,
Let come to us, let come Thy Kingdom’s peace;
Like as with glad Hosannas at Thy throne
Our daily manna give to us this day,
As we, with all our debtors reconciled,
Put not our strength, too easily ensnared |
This prayer is the expanded version of the Lord’s Prayer in Canto XI of Dante’s Purgatorio (http://www.italica.rai.it/principali/dante), itself a wonderful example of human creativity. The English translation is by Dorothy Sayers, available in Penguin Classics.