Imago Dei

Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image to resemble us ….” So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” [Genesis 1:26-27, NRSV, emphasis added].

For the swath of Christians who follow the church’s (rather than “Caesar’s”) calendar, this Sunday — the first following Pentecost — is designated as Trinity Sunday. Appointing an OT reading for this week is a bit of a challenge for the Lectionary. How does one choose an OT passage for a church doctrine that would not officially manifest itself until 325 A.D.?

Indeed, the word “Trinity,” first used in its Greek form by Theophilus of Antioch, in about 180 A.D., is not found in OT or NT Scripture at all. To be sure, the “concept” is there, both implicitly and explicitly. Some prominent Christian scholars — among them Martin Luther — have seen references to the Trinity in the words I have italicized above. “If it was good enough for Luther, ….”

Instead of concentrating on whether the Genesis text foreshadows the Trinity, I’m drawn instead to the text’s Imago Dei (image of God) language. Run with me here for just a bit. Most OT scholars date this Genesis text [Gen. 1:1 – 2:4] — the first of the two creation stories in the Bible’s initial book — to the “Priestly” source that is thought to have been active during the 6th century B.C., a time when substantial numbers of Jews had been carried off to Babylon.

Addressed to a confused and broken-hearted group of exiles, the text is deeply theological and pastoral in nature. It addresses a real problem: Babylon’s gods seemed to control the future. Babylon’s gods have defeated the dreams of the God of Israel, or at least it so appears. Against this foreboding backdrop, some Hebrew religious leaders came forward and asserted that Yahweh was still God. Yahweh, the One who watches over his Creation, would still bring that creation to well-being. To those despairing in exile, the text declared that the God of Israel was — no, is — the Lord of all of life, since it was Yahweh, and not the Babylonian gods, who had created the cosmos and all that was/is within it.

There is deep and splendid irony in the language of this initial chapter of Genesis, particularly in its Imago Dei references. During its exile — the time of the text — Israel resisted any effort to image God. In a land in which the Babylonians erected countless images of their gods, the Hebrews were reminded that in the second of Yahweh’s Ten Commandments, they had been forbidden to erect any “image” depicting their God [Exod. 20:4; Deut. 5:8].

They might have asked their theological leaders if there’d be any real harm in crafting reminders of who they were — indeed, “whose” they were. But the priests resisted. Couldn’t the exiled Hebrews see and understand that there was but one way in which Yahweh allowed Yahweh to be imaged in the world: humanity! There was but one “created thing” — one “creature” — which disclosed something about the reality of God — the human creature. Yahweh would not be known via some casting of iron, some chiseling of stone; Yahweh was/is to be known through human creatures who receive power and reason (from Yahweh), and through whom (with Yahweh) commitments are made and honored.

As I say, the Priestly writers taught that Yahweh could not be imaged through or in anything fixed or erected by an earthly king. Rather, Yahweh could only be imaged in the freedom of human beings to be faithful and gracious. The strict contrast between fixed images, which were/are absolutely forbidden by Yahweh, and human images, which are absolutely affirmed, was important to the Hebrews in the day of the Babylonian deportation. The same contrast is important for us all today.

We live in a world in which images of the apparently victorious gods of today’s Babylon, to-wit, secular culture, appear to have been victorious. 20 percent of the American workforce is unemployed while the stars of Apple TV’s, The Morning Show, Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston, are reportedly paid $2 million each, per episode, Don’t blame them; blame those of us who watch. At last count, televangelist Kenneth Copeland enjoys three private aircraft, including a $20 million Citation 10 and a Gulfstream V purchased from American movie director Tyler Perry.

On a “lower” level, one doesn’t have to wander far from home to see various forms of sleek, steel and aluminum “chariots” that are capable of speeding down the highway at twice the legal speed limit, and which cost as much as the gross national product of several small nations. According to NT Scripture, our Lord had no place to lay his head, but in the Triangle area, not a few professors, some of whom have advanced degrees from seminaries, enjoy posh zip codes In Durham and Chapel Hill, with residences valued at greater than $1 million. It’s good work, if you can get it.

One is almost left to wonder if the sort of dominion that I’ve described in the last two paragraphs — the sort that is represented in an accumulation of the images of the 21st century “Babylonian” gods — is also the sort that the Priestly writers seem to have affirmed in the first chapter of the Genesis text for which I substituted the ellipsis at the very beginning of this meditation:

[A]nd 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 [Gen. 1:26b].

Indeed, for millennia, some human beings have used that Genesis text to justify and excuse a system of destructive consumption. Yet others have observed that the Imago Dei — the image of God — in the human person is a mandate of power that is only properly exercised as God exercises power. It is a use of power that invites, evokes, and permits. It does not coerce.

How do we know that? Well, as my Grandmother Lib would say, “We have the word of Jesus, who never lied.”

“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” [John 14:9b].

In Christ we see a radical understanding of “dominion.” We see that the one who rules is the one who serves. Lordship means servanthood! As others have noted, it is the role of the shepherd not to control, but rather to lay down his life for the sheep [John 10:11]. Humanity is ordained over the remainder of Yahweh’s creation, yes, but not for humanity’s profit; we are in charge in order that creation might become that which was originally willed by God.

During the COVID-19 crisis, Duke Divinity School has (via Zoom) put on a weekly “Will and Stanley Show.” Featuring Will Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas (if you don’t know about them, I’ll fill you in offline), they’ve been discussing the theology of Karl Barth, one of the great (and difficult) theologians of the 20th Century.

Among Barth’s difficult concepts is the notion that the Creator God is (voluntarily) humanized. The transcendent, all-powerful, omniscient Yahweh is the One who cares in costly ways for the world. God takes great risk in entrusting humanity with the power and authority to rule. As Will and Stanley have pointed out, the Genesis text (through Barth’s eyes) is strikingly revolutionary, for it presents an inverted view of God — not as the One who reigns by fiat and remoteness, but rather the One who reigns through gracious self-giving. Self-giving becomes the true Imago Dei.

In recent months, have you felt as though you have been exiled to a strange land? Do you long for the world as it existed before, say, February? Do the images of our culture’s gods beat down upon you? Are they enticing to the eye or to the touch? Recognize, my friends, that our Lord, Jesus Christ is a new disclosure of God; He embodies a call for a new human community. It is a kind of human community in which its members (come one, come all), imitating the manner of a gracious God, are attentive in calling one another to full being in sacred fellowship. That community looks nothing like Babylon. Can we dare to pray and hope for it?