Imago Dei: Anthropological and
Christological Modes of Divine Self-Imaging
Kurt Anders Richardson
McMaster University
Introduction
The writings of the New Testament reflect the belief that
new prophecy has come to Israel for the sake of the whole world. Some of its
texts, echoing the prophetic texts of the Jewish Scriptures, recapitulate
creation themes not only to memorialize the story of the Creator and the first
human beings, but also to proclaim new creation and a new human being, a new
future when the world as a pleroma of creatures emerges from a divine
act of cosmic liberation and renovation. At the heart of this vision is the
redemption of humankind through the messianic mediation of a second or new
Adam. The distinctive Christian interpretation of this vision employs a variety
of covenantal, messianic and pneumatological models of agency to mediate this
cosmic fulfillment. At the center, obviously, is the messianic, which is
presented as the ultimate recapitulation of the creation narrative [which] entails
a movement where the Creator, always intimately present to creation, assumes
the form of the creature, the human being, in order to effectuate the event of
new creation. No two texts of the New Testament display this prophetic movement
more strikingly than the Prologue of John (1:1-18) and a key passage
from Paul's Epistle to the Colossians (1:15-20).
For our purposes of investigating the scriptural references
to human being in the SSR this year, I would like to focus upon these two texts
for the purpose of drawing out the linkage that is made between imago Dei,
the humanity of God, and the humanity of the human being. The Christological
dimension is included here not only because the New Testament so emphatically
makes the connection, but because the Christological manifestation of the imago
Dei is one of the most important sources of explanation for the claim that
God has not only entered the world in the form of glorious presence as Lord but
also in the form of the human as Servant. Recourse will also be made to select
passages that convey the New Testament's 'Second Adam' Christology, and so
indicate how the imago Dei is presented to connect original creation and
new creation.
The history of Christian theology has offered an immensely
rich variety of interpretations of the imago Dei. Creation texts suggest
divine reality at the center of human nature and virtually all of the great
commentators of Christian history have dealt at length with these allusions.
From Irenaeus to Barth, the doctrine of the divine imago receives
attention and the concept achieves a kind of theological hermeneutic unto
itself. As a result, it is impossible to trace all of the thematic trajectories
here. I will include one linkage that can hardly be avoided, namely, that of
relation between the theophanic and the iconic, the relation of the invisible
to the visible in the struggles of the tradition, as well as the encounter among
the Abrahamic traditions in articulating the boundaries between faithful and
unacceptable representations of the divine in worship and in art. I conclude
with a number of theses to prompt further discussion of the linkage between
anthropological and christological modes of the imago Dei in an endeavor
to highlight those questions that Christian interpretation grapples with at the
point of interpreting its own traditions.
The prologue of the Gospel of John (1:1-18)
is modeled after the first chapters of Genesis. As in the Pentateuchal
narrative, the divine Word brings all things into being. In the case of human
being the divine word which creates becomes the divine word of address to the
first man and the first woman. Together, they are h'adam b'tselemu…elohim,
'human being in the image of God' (Gn 1:26). Their being fashioned according to
the divine image and likeness makes them a 'counterpart' to God.[1]
The human being is not only the object of divine address, but also in a real
sense the representative of the divine in the world. In John, the Logos of God
stands in for the image of God. Reference to the Logos is now not indicative of
a counterpart to God but to God himself. God is his own agent in creation. The
Johannine Prologue refers to the relation of the Logos to the being of a primal
man, but not the first man and woman. Here, the Logos is personified or
hypostatized and is identical with the divine light or glory as 'he' comes into
the world.
By the end of the Prologue the writer is attributing to this
one an appearance of divine glory like that which Moses witnessed in connection
with the Tabernacle. Indeed, when the Johannine writer describes the human
presence of the Logos in the midst of the human world he uses the term skenoo
which quite literally means 'to tabernacle', 'to pitch a tent,' to dwell. Of
course this is an allusion to the 'tabernacle' of his 'flesh' (basar Gn 2:21, 23f; and together with the LXX sarx here in Jn 1:14) as well as the original
Tabernacle and its glory. The Logos is not only the 'Light'[2]
of God but also the 'Life' of God, which is intended to explicate fully the
sense in which the Logos is the agent of creation: the Logos is God through
whom God makes the world and in the case of human beings is their life. The
Logos is also the Light that enlightens every human being and this light is the
life of human beings. Temporally, the Logos of God always was God and with God,
such that at creation, the beginning of all things, the Logos was present with
God as God's agent of creation. But the references to Logos, life and light
quickly move into a different context than original creation. The light has
been rejected by the darkness of the world and so the light is entering now in
a way that will make faith a reality in the world and by such faith salvation
will result. We have then a kind of biographical narrative of the divine Logos who
has become manifest in the form of a new primal human being.
A final designation will be attributed to the Logos in full
personification as 'Son of God,' and those who have acknowledged this Son will
be named as 'sons of God' (tekna theou). Now, instead of a narration of
the newly formed original human beings there follows the narration of newly
'born' (egenethesan) human beings, their new creation status no less of
divine agency as John's text takes pains to cancel out the possibility of human
agency in this spiritual birthing. The Prologue concludes with an attestation
to the prophetic role of the divine Logos-become-human as the one who has
'declared' (exegeomai[3]) the God whom no one has seen.
As Son of God a range of divine attributions accumulate to the enfleshed Logos,
all in terms now, not of creation whose truth is hidden in God, but of new
creation emanating from 'grace upon grace' (charin anti charitos) hidden
in his 'fullness' (pleroma).
Like other New Testament references to creation (cf. 2 Cor
5:17; Gal 6:15; Eph 2:10, 15; Heb 11:3) the Prologue introduces a prophetic
schema which recapitulates and extends the divine and human events of original
creation but largely along the lines of Genesis 1 and not 2 and 3. The humanity
of the new human being that is the incarnate Logos by-passes the original
symmetry of the imago Dei in Genesis 1 as a composite of male and female
– the divine image as an inseparable union of the ish and the isha
in the 'adam. While we do not have time to develop this point here, the
Genesis 2-3 texts do find expositional development in Paul's first epistle to
the Corinthians (11:3-16). Unfortunately, much of the ancient interpretation
which hierarchialized male / female (kephale de gunaikos ho aner)
relations is fully in evidence here. Paul formulates the relation differently,
but only in an eschatological vision, a future where there is ouk eni arsen
kai thelu. 'neither male nor female'(Gal 3:28). This is not necessarily a
denial of sexuality in future human being but a declaration of the removal of
status distinctions.
The Prologue's reference to spiritually born 'children of
God' also tends to remove any reference to sexual identity. This stands in
contrast to Genesis 1, where diverse yet complimentary sexual identity alerts
us to two characteristics of the imago Dei: relationality and hegemony.
In correspondence to the plurality of the divine voice which uniquely creates
by its 'let us' there is a dialogical unity that is 'adam. The creation
of living things had already filled the world with animated communities, but
now there is an inter-subjective sociality with the potential for covenantal
solidarity, for sharing of interests between God and image-bearing humanity.
Out of this image-bearing there is immediate reference to their hegemonic
endowment as stewards of the created order. As creation emerged from God's
conceiving and speaking it into being, the protological framework of Genesis 1
contains an eschatological dimension. While divine work is portrayed as finding
its completion and coming to an end in Shabbat —God is finished and
rests—human work is just beginning and extends beyond the capacity of the
original pair to complete. Their sexuality is basic to their destiny in the
procreation of all future human beings.
The Prologue of John expands upon the protological and the
eschatological dimensions of the original creation narrative concentrating the
covenantal dimension in the coming into human being of the divine, pre-existing
imago Himself, the Logos hypostatized, the One who was the original
image for the human image bearers. Functionally, the Johannine draws upon the
prophetic possibility of bringing into human experience and activity an object
or form that is based upon a heavenly original, deriving from a heavenly
pattern (tabnith), the prototype, as in the transference of Moses'
Sinaitic vision of the heavenly Tabernacle with all its dimensions, a building
plan for the earthly form (e.g., Ex 25:9, 40; Nu 8:4). Immense significance is
given to the idea that a heavenly form (tupikos) of the Tabernacle
exists and will represent itself in the eschatological kingdom of God, (cf. Ac 7:44; Heb 8:2, 5; 9:11; Re 21:3). The pair is the protological extension of imago
for as long as their race can endure. But with their mandate as stewards of
creation to be realized in the future, they signify an eschatological dimension
of a yet-unrealized representation of God's reign in the world.
At this point, we must connect the above with our second
text from Paul's epistle to the Colossians 1:15-20.
In this text, the eikon is explicitly presented in its Christological
form. By the time the text moves to its conclusion, the universal sweep of its
vision of redemption, stemming from God's determination to create and to stand
in full relation with all that he creates, makes this passage a locus
classicus of the Christian tradition. The text opens: hos estin eikon
tou theou tou aoratou, 'he is the
image of the invisible God' – hypostatizing the image as the 'invisible' God is
described as full of personal activities. Like the Logos of God, the Image of
God is the prototype of humanity and the agent of cosmic creation (cf. 2 Cor
4:4).
Although the text focuses upon the creative and redemptive
relation of God to all things through the mediation of God's own image, v. 19
of Colossians explicates the identity of this image further by declaring that pan
to pleroma katoikesai ("the fullness of God was pleased to dwell"). The text borrows from the sense of the glorious
habitation of God with his people as Shekinah (lit. 'dwelling', the
Targumic term connected with the theophanic narratives of Ex 14:20; 40:34-38; Lev 9:23,24; Nu 14:10; 16:19,42; 1 Kings 8:10-13; 2Chr. 5:13,14; 7:1-3). The divine fullness or glory dwells in the imago Dei who is the
agent of creation and redemption of cosmos and humanity. Thus, God contains his
own correspondence, the eikon of himself, who is the prototype of
humanity and the one who mediates the coming into being of all things orata
kai aorata 'visible and invisible.' Indeed, the mediation is regarded as so
powerful and all encompassing that en auto synesteken, 'in him all
things hold together' and through his self-sacrifice apokatalaxai…ta panta
eis auton, God comes 'to restore…all things in him' (v. 20). Again, the
protological and eschatological are united, but here, the end is the
restoration of the original.
The interpretation of this text finds particular poignancy
in Gregory of Nyssa, the great Cappadocian whose melding together of
Christological and anthropological motifs shaped much exegetical practice
historically. One poignant passage runs:
Since then, He who fashioned man,
made him in accordance with the image of God, he (man) is a second blessed by
participation in the Truly Blessed, having come to be in the likeness of that
blessedness. Just as in physical ('sculptural') beauty of form, the prototype
of the beauty is and exists in a living person, and this is only a duplicate
form of that of which it is the image, so also human nature, being an image of
the transcendent blessedness, is imprinted by the same goodness and beauty,
when in itself it shows forth the characteristic qualities of that blessedness.[4]
All of the elements we have been mentioning so far are
summed up here. The mediatorial and incarnate divine Image or Logos furnishes
for human beings the mode of participation in the divine life without ceasing
to be creaturely and yet truly experiencing this life as blessedness and
beauty.
The reason why we have been investigating the connection between
the Christological and anthropological in this essay is the way in which they
are peculiarly connected in Christian scripture and theology through the
semantics of eikon 'image.' That the narrative of human becoming and
embodiment includes the imprinting of imago Dei engenders new prophetic
narratives of eschatological vision through the mediation of an an adamic
figure (cf. Pss 8:4l, 80:17; Dn 7:13-14; 1 Enoch 37-71; 2 Esdr 13; Mk 8:38; Jo 3:13; Ac 7:56; He 2:6) is, for Christian texts, messianic and incarnational. But
we have been skirting around the conspicuous nature of the word 'image' as that
which is inherently visible and visionary. In light of the Commandment against
images it is an arresting thing to discover that the God who has prohibited
their manufacture has himself fashioned an image of the divine in human beings.
Central to that biblical piety which connects the knowledge of God with the
fear of God is a near phobia regarding an alignment of the representations of
the Deity with visibility and corporeality. The scriptures are in favor of
images only if God is the one fashioning them. But the human being is, in fact,
entitled to participate in the divine prerogative of fashioning an image of the
divine through procreation. In Genesis 5:1-3, the ongoing status of the human
as male and female in the image of God, but now also the 'imaged nature' of the
human images itself through the engendering children after the human tselem
and d'muth. We know from the later reference in Genesis 9:6-7 that the
divine imago in human beings persists as does the mandate vis-à-vis the earth
and procreation. Indeed, the Genesis 5 text was the basis of Tertullian's very
early doctrine[5]
of 'traducianism' regarding the human soul as a 'sprout' (tradux, traducem)
of a new human soul from the life of parents.
But the visibility of the divine image in the human is a
difficult problem for Christianity since its churches are divided (between
iconoclasts and icono-douls) over the appropriateness of images precisely on
account of its Christology as embodied in the canons of the Seventh Ecumencial
Council of AD 787. At that council, drawing largely upon the iconic theology of
John of Damascus, the fact that the Word of God could become visible in the
form of alphabetic writing and supremely in human form through the incarnation
of the Logos, a proper use for icons was instituted. Against the historic
'imago-phobia' of the tradition, it was ruled that since corporeal
manifestations of the divine were once visible in the history of redemption, they
could again be made visible according to strict canons constructed from
scriptural inferences. This did not eliminate image-less forms of Christian
worship and tradition but it did create a stumbling block for many across the
Abrahamic faiths. Various forms of Protestantism would challenge iconic
Christianity, particularly Karl Barth, although his argument is curious:
…it is because Paul and Christians
generally saw and thought of the εικωυ so
realistically in Christ that they had to do this in other directions as well.
And it is because they had in this image the reality itself that in contrast
with the pagans around them they did not need any other images, nor in contrast
with Israel, did they need any prohibition of images. Jesus Christ makes both
images (of God and man) and also the prohibition of images superfluous….The
invisible God Himself has become visible in Him. In Him we have the
image in face of which the question of the original is finally answered. The
connexion with Gen. 1:26f is unmistakeable…[6].
Barth who was very stringently imageless in his liturgical
sensibility, tries to argue Christologically for the dispensability of images.
Indeed, throughout the 20th century, a loss of confidence in
representation and therefore in the image elicits numerous examples of
imago-phobia in postmodernism. Martin Jay's great work on the subject[7]
tracks many recent expressions of antipathy toward the image. But the fixation on
linguistic signs as a kind of privileging of the verbal over the visual is
fraught with irony of course, since so much of metaphor at the very level of
syntax has already installed the sense of sight. At one level of course, the
fear of the image is warranted. Exhibitions of human outrage toward oppressors
are often marked by their destruction in effigies in quasi-religious moments of
anticipating their overthrow, indeed, praying for it, and finally, if political
reality corresponds, the iconoclasm of the divinized image. One has in mind,
since 1989, numerous public rituals of iconoclasm, toppling public images of a
once sovereign human being.
But we understand that the
fashioning of images is entirely appropriate depending upon the identity of the
fashioner and that which is being fashioned. As above, God can form the human
being, male and female, to be an 'Abbild,' an 'imprint,' or a 'derived
likeness' (the full sense of the prepositional relations in Gen 1:26 of b'tselemenu
and chedmutenu...) in
relation to an 'Urbild', an 'original image' (such that there is
actually tselem elohim or also d'mut elohim from which the human as imago Dei
is derived, 1:27). Indeed, although Genesis 2 does not contain the terminology
of image, the fashioning of the living being that is 'adam' has many etymological
and anthropological features associated with idol-making in the ancient world.
God is fashioning his own 'idol'. Perhaps in the same way he had fashioned the
earth itself to participate in creation – 'let the earth bring forth…' (1:21, 24), now 'adam', as the created imago, was participating in divine governance
and ordering of the earth. Just as God has fashioned an image after his own
likeness, Adam will do the same, and so establish his own sub-genealogical
order. Seth is the son born according to the image of his father. Seth is also
the evidence of continuing divine favor for Eve , to which Adam has no claim.
The discourse of Eve traces itself through the discourses of the matriarchs
whose claims upon their sons determine both the course of prophecy and politics
– the source and structure for the ordering and governance of the earth. That
Adam is God's son, in his own image (just as Eve is as generative of all future
sons and daughters) is crucial to the genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke
and in turn, to the anthropology / Christology nexus in Paul—where, at his most
typological, the entire history of the divine economy of the world hinges upon
the appearance and actions of two 'Adams', the first through whose death 'all
die' and the second by whom 'all will be made alive.'(Rom 5)
This kind of observation of course spawns extensive debate
over whether God is in some sense corporeal but invisible, incorporeal as well
as invisible, or corporeal but hidden from human sight. It is this image which
Paul christologically identifies and personifies in the passage quoted above.
The original image of God is the agent of creation, of all things visible and invisible.
Thus the connection between divine presence and sight is over and over again a tension-filled
theme in scripture. The testimonies vary as to whether God cannot be seen or
whether God is hidden. In the classic Exodus text, Moses, one of the 'friends'
of God who is distinguished by speaking with God 'face to face,' nevertheless
wishes to view the God of this relationship. God tells him he will be given to
see God's 'back': "'But,' he said, 'you cannot see my face; for no one shall
see me and live.'" (Ex 33:20) This is the theophanic dimension of the
presence of God; although sometimes this visio Dei is the result of the
elevation of the saint who is privileged to glimpse the divine glory – not
unlike one of the most frequent references in the Quran to Allah, the 'Lord of
the throne of glory', his heavenly location, where he is seated in absolute
sovereignty, surrounded by his angels and the praise of all heaven (cf., e.g.,
2:255; 7:54; 20:5; 32:4; 32:7; 32:9; 39:75; 40:7; 81:20; 85:15).
There will remain in the Christian tradition the tension
between image-filled and image-less worship. Something of a resolution to the
problem can be detected in the classic scriptural piety of the imitatio Dei.
The Orthodox tradition elaborates upon the connection in especially striking
ways where the body of the living saint is already progressively accruing
divine glory through the impartation of grace and self-offering to the will of
God in advance of the resurrection. Multiple passages referring to 'putting on
Christ', 'transformed into the image of Christ,' 'participation in the divine
nature', all derive their sense of the redeemed imago in the human being
from imitative or mimetic self-offering.
One of the earliest theological expositions of the imago
doctrine is found in Irenaeus. In his exposition, almost entirely focused upon
the restoration of the image in resurrection, he postulates that it was because
the original image, the divine Logos, had not itself become visible through
incarnation. He then traces the basis of his larger soteriology, the process of
recapitulation, on account of this restoration of the image in the human:
And then, again, this Word was
manifested when the Word of God was made man, assimilating Himself to man, and
man to Himself, so that by means of his resemblance to the Son, man might
become precious to the Father. For in times long past, it was said that man was
created after the image of God, but it was not [actually] shown; for the Word
was as yet invisible, after whose image man was created, Wherefore also he did
easily lose the similitude. When, however, the Word of God became flesh, He
confirmed both of these: for He both showed forth the image truly, since He
became Himself what was His image; and He re-established the similitude after a
sure manner, by assimilating man to the invisible Father through means of the
visible Word. (Adversus haereses. V, 16, 2.)
Irenaeus goes on to make the closest connection between the
redemption by reference to the Holy Spirit. In creation, the Spirit had caused
the 'co-mingling' of body and soul that is by definition a human being created
in the image of God. By this same Spirit, on account of the sacrifice of the
incarnate word but also the union of the Word and the flesh in the very act of
incarnation, the imago in the human is and will be restored and perfected:
Now the soul and the spirit are
certainly a part of the man, but certainly not the man; for the perfect man
consists in the commingling and the union of the soul receiving the spirit of
the Father, and the admixture of that fleshly nature which was moulded after
the image of God….But when the spirit here blended with the soul is united to
[God's] handiwork, the man is rendered spiritual and perfect because of the
outpouring of the Spirit, and this is he who was made in the image and likeness
of God. (V, 6, 1)
The attention paid to the image of God and the human is due
to its significance as the sign of their kinship from the side of God.
We might draw then, a number of working theses about the
anthropology and Christology of the Imago Dei:
1) The
anthropological Imago Dei is the theocentric grounding of the human being, male
and female.
2) The
anthropological Imago Dei is prepositionally expressed and therefore connotes
an original or theological 'imago Dei' after which the human creature is
fashioned.
3) While
certainly present individually, ish and isha, andros or gyne,
the anthropological imago Dei ('adam) embraces the two and finds
its complementary expression as humanity as such and somehow also in the
procreation of human being by this union. In their identity as female and male
they are the anthropological imago Dei.
4) The
christological Imago Dei is the appearance of the Urbild the
original image in human form and thus, according to the image of the Abbild
or the impress or derived image. This is the continuation of Theophany but now
not merely in the form of the human but as human.
5) The
christological Imago Dei becomes the full expression of the humanity of
God and the divinity of the human as the original Imago Dei who is both
agent of creation and now also of redemption.
6) The
christological Imago Dei is also the eschatological image of human
resurrection, whose likeness is the destiny of redeemed humanity.
7) The
fulfillment of the anthropological imago Dei in the Christological,
result in the possibility of acknowledging the creaturely form of the divine in
visible representations in liturgical celebration. At the same time, however,
faith, hope and love may also eschew visible representation in favor of
imageless devotion, reconciled to the present the sees through the 'dim mirror'
of the flesh until the eschatological fulfillment of 'face to face.'
8) Profound
relations between the visio Dei and the imitatio Dei are
connected here. God communicates his attributes to human beings through the
human being whose act and being are Son of God / Son of Man, image of God /
image of man.
ENDNOTES
[1]
Claus Westermann, Genesis 1-11: A Continental Commentary. John J.
Scullion, tr. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994, 59-69; also, G.A. Jónsson, The
Image of God. Genesis 1:26-28 in a Century of Old Testament Research. CB,
OT Series, 26, 1988; S. Lehming & J. Jervell, Abbild, Ebenbild. BHHW
I 4ff; T.N.D Mettinger, 'Abbild oder Urbild? "Imago Dei" in
traditionsgeschichtlicher Sicht,' ZAW 86, 1974, 403-424; C. H. Ratschow,
'Bilder under Bilderverehrung I, RGG3 I, 1268-1271.
[2]
One question is the extent to which, if at all, the Gospel is drawing upon some
of the ideas of Philo; cf. such texts as:
Now the unseen and mental
light was made an image of the Word of God interpreting its origin. And it is
the star beyond the heavens, the source of the sensible stars... Creation 31a
The problem being that while much later Origen will
speculate about 'sensible stars' John does not. Having said that, the crucial
role played by a personified image of God and the Logos of God is striking.
While dependence is perhaps not at all in evidence, the ideas are about.
[3]
A hapaxlegomenon in John and involves proclamation or narration of the works of
God.
[4]
On the Beatitudes, Sermon I.
[5]
Treatise on the Soul 3:181-235
[6]
Cf. Church Dogmatics III, 1, 201ff.
[7] Martin
Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth-Century French
Thought. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
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