Board index ‹ Specific Bible verses, texts, and passages ‹ Genesis

[Mary Poppins]

Back to my original question: God's work is dominion and rulership? That's it? Isn't there something more to god's image?

[jimwalton]

Thank you. We can move forward.

> Back to my original question: God's work is dominion and rulership? That's it? Isn't there something more to god's image?

Not by my analysis of the text. Genesis 1.26-28 directly and specifically align the image of God with ruling over creation as God's co-regents. To verify the analysis, we have to look at other places in the Bible where the "image of God" is mentioned to check consistency and validity.

We'll notice that after Adam & Eve's sin, the "image of God" was neither taken away nor damaged (so it can't possibly pertain to spiritual status or morality [since they were both damaged], or to our dignity as humans [since even that was corrupted by sin]).

- Gen. 9.6. Humans aren't to kill each other because we are the image of God: God's representatives on earth. To kill a human being is to assault the divine majesty/sovereignty.
- 1 Corinthians 11.7. A reference that we were created in the image of God without particular specification.

And that's it for the whole Bible. The Bible only uses the phrase pertaining to humanity 3 times: Genesis 1, 9 and this text in 1 Corinthians. The Bible doesn't make a huge deal of it. It says we were created with it, and that seems to be that. There doesn't seem to be anything more to God's image.

So let's talk. What are you thinking?

[Mary Poppins]

That it lacks imagination, and reeks of human projection. Makes me suspect that it was made up.

[jimwalton]

You seem to think it's suspicious because it's not fanciful, but only common ("lacks imagination"). Obviously, you are welcome to believe what you want, but to me that seems a weak reason for rejection. It seems that you would be more prone to believe it if it were, let's say, esoteric?

> reeks of human projection. Makes me suspect that it was made up.

My curiosity is piqued by this suspicion. Why is normalcy and commonness so hard to believe? Or, from another angle, why is what is so obvious (that humanity is is more the regulator of the earth than any other species) so hard to believe as God-ordained?

[Mary Poppins]

> Why is normalcy and commonness so hard to believe?

Because we're talking about God, which is like nothing that exists in this universe. There is nothing common about a god.

> that seems a weak reason for rejection

Sure. And if it was the only reason, I would agree with you.

[jimwalton]

> There is nothing common about a god.

True, but there's plenty common about us. We're just, y'know, us people. There are lots of things. God gave us the sun, but that's common. Rain. Animals. Lots of common stuff because we're just people. Now God is something different altogether, but he lets us share with him in the care of the earth as his image.

The word "image" in Gn. 1.26 is a common word meaning a representation or a likeness. Mostly in the Bible it refers to an idol: an image that is a representation of the deity. Genesis 1.26 uses it in a different sense than that: as a representative.

In the ancient Near East, when kings would conquer a land, they would leave a statue of themselves (or a carved stelae of a relief of the king's image) in areas that now belonged to them, symbolizing the sovereignty of that king over his new territory. In this case God didn't leave a statue, but he left humans in the new territory to represent his presence on the earth and to symbolize his sovereignty over the earth. The image was a physical manifestation of the king's presence, fulfilling the function that king would fulfill if he were physically there.

An idol image of deity, the same terminology used here, was thought to be accomplishing the work of the deity as if the god were doing it him- or herself.

This doesn't imply that humans are considered to be divine. The image here is representative, not of the essence of the God.

I think the real issue that the Bible never seems to make a big deal about the image of God. It only mentions it 3 times. Once in the creation story, once in the re-creation story (Gn. 9), and once in the NT. Biblically it's not a big deal. Just sort-a plain. Common.

[Mary Poppins]

> In this case God didn't leave a statue, but he left humans

This is anthropormorphism at it's best. You just admitted that we're common, and god is not....and in the next breath you claim that god acts just like us. Common. It's my very point, with a bow on top. Human projections, that reflect not divinity, but our own commonness.

[jimwalton]

> This is anthropormorphism at it's best.

Agreed. It's anthropomorphic.

Agreed. We are common, and God is not.

God acts just like us? Sometimes, but it's more accurate to say we sometimes act just like God. He is the source, we are the ones who come later. So God did it first (be sovereign), and we did it (be sovereign) because he conferred it on us. Divine sovereignty is both qualitatively and quantitatively different from our sovereignty, and our sovereignty is a derived and conferred sovereignty. That doesn't make God common, so I'll have to remove your bow from the top. Though humanity is often guilty of making God to be like us (the mythologies, and possibly all religions have people guilty of this), the story of the Bible is that God's sovereignty is not a human projection of our commonness, but instead that our sovereignty over the earth has been delegated to us by the One who is truly sovereign over all.

[Mary Poppins]

If God did it first then it's not anthropomorphism. Our anthropomorphism of god is our projection of our traits on to god. That is why the claims being made seem so common, because it isn't actually god....just our projections of ourselves.

What the bible says is not the final word...because it hasn't been shown to be 1) accurate or 2) not completely made up by people.

[jimwalton]

Then I'll have to back off on my agreement to your use of term "Anthropomorphic." You were the one who used the term a post ago, and I casually agreed to it without thinking thoroughly enough about the term. But since you've point out that it's not really anthropomorphism, I can see that I shouldn't have agreed so quickly. Go back to the previous things I said for better explanations, then.

> What the bible says is not the final word...because it hasn't been shown to be 1) accurate or 2) not completely made up by people.

First of all, this is a change of subject and direction, almost a diversion. If you want to know what the Bible says about the image of God and means by it, then we have to talk about the Bible. If you want to claim that the Bible is inaccurate or possibly made up, then we shouldn't be trying to have a discussion about what the Bible means by the concept of Imago Dei.

I'm glad to have the discussion about the accuracy and validity of the Bible, but frankly it's a different discussion than this one.