It's who we are…

Humans who survive birth without suffering severe impairment, however, are able to represent God as originally intended. They do so by means of a spectrum of abilities we have as humans. These abilities are part of our being like God. They are attributes we share with God, such as intelligence and creativity. The attributes God shared with us are the means to imaging, not the image status itself. Imaging status and our attributes are related but not identical concepts.—Michael Heiser, The Unseen Realm, 59 (emphasis original)

Just? Not so much

Ancient Near Eastern gods were not just; although they valued justice (because order in the human world allowed humans to serve their function of providing for the needs of the gods), they themselves were petty, vindictive, and arbitrary in bestowing favor or disfavor. In contrast, because Yahweh’s identity is vested in justice, if Israel behaves according to its culture’s understanding of justice (circumscribed by the holiness code), it will be a recipient of blessing.— The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest, 122–23

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If ever there was an understatement, they just made it! Not just ANE gods, but ancient Greek and Roman gods fit that description. Remember, the Greek philosophers bemoaned the moral state of the gods! They were anything but just themselves, although they didn't like injustice among the people and were thought to be quick to judge it.

And this snippet brings up another thing that John Walton has continually pushed in his books: The gods created humanity to serve them so they could party/do their thing. So, basically people aren't valued as people, but as slaves. That's a radically different viewpoint from the biblical one, where humanity ('adam) is created in the image and likeness of God (בְּצַלְמֵ֖נוּ כִּדְמוּתֵ֑נוּ). Not as serving a needy god, but as stewards of his creation. There's a lot to unpack there, but we'll leave it alone today.
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There's an order here, and it matters

This can be seen from the order of the statements about the Imago Dei and the mastery of Nature. The former must come first; the latter follows naturally from it. Man does not become human through culture and civilization. But civilization and culture become human when the man who creates them is truly human. The true human quality of man, however, is rooted in his relation to God, in the acceptance and realization of his destiny for love and for eternal life. When, instead of this, man seeks his supreme end in culture and civilization, and puts this in the place of God, and turns it into an absolute, the germ of inhumanity has been introduced into his life. A civilization and culture which has severed its connexion with God, and thinks more of achievement than of persons, necessarily becomes inhuman. It loses its true centre, and thus disintegrates into sectional spheres and sectional interests, each of which comes into conflict with the others, and tries to develop itself at the cost of the rest. True civilization and true culture can only develop where the cultural creation and activity is directed and ordered from a centre which transcends culture. A culture or civilization which is indifferent to morals and religion is bound to degenerate. Religion and morality, however, are identical, where the God of Holy Love is known as the foundation of all being, and His will as the norm of all morality; that is, where man knows himself to have been created by God for love, and for communion with the God of love, in faith in Jesus Christ.—Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 68

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Boy. He's certainly describing out culture right now, isn't he? But the antidote is right there: We were created in the image of God in order to love God, who created us for that purpose. And out of that love, all the rest flows.

And that doesn't mean culture wars! That means self-emptying sacrificial love, just as he's been saying throughout the book so far. Creation began by God's self-limiting of Godself; how can we do any less? "Unto the least of these…"
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On being truly human

Man's decisive position above Nature, however, is attained in the fact that he does not worship it as divine. Man's distance from Nature presupposes that he knows God as the Creator of the World, as the One who stands above the whole creation. So long as man regards Nature as divine—(as is the case throughout the pagan world)—he is not really its master, he has not really risen above it, and he is also not really capable of being truly human. When, as is the case to-day, he falls back into the habit of treating Nature as divine, inevitably he will once more lose his humanity. On the other hand, however, man also loses his true human quality when he believes that this consists in his mastery of Nature, in his civilization, or even in his technics. Civilization—in the broadest sense—is no guarantee of “humanity” (Menschlichkeit). On the contrary, where it is not subject to a Higher Power, it becomes perverted into something inhuman.—Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 67–68

<idle musing>
Wow! There's a lot going in in that passage, isn't there? We are between two gulf: Worshiping nature and losing our true humanity; or, just as dangerous, and the one we are probably most guilty of in the West, thinking we can control nature and therefore seeing ourselves as gods.

A good dose of healthy humility would be help! And a recognition of who we are: We are created in the image of God. We are created to love God, just as he loves us. And that also means loving our fellow humans and all that that entails, and loving creation, which means being good stewards of it.

Quite a charge, that. May we prove willing, by the power of the Holy Spirit, to take it on and fulfill it!
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Anthropomorphism and God

Without this similarity between the human process which we call “speech” and “word”, and the divine process which we describe in these terms, we cannot speak of God at all. The Bible speaks of God so simply and “anthropomorphically”, and not in an abstract manner, so personally and not impersonally, because God reveals Himself to us in the Scriptures as Person, and because at the same time He reveals man as having been created in His Image.—Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 44

Where and what is the image of God?

The intention is not to identify “the image and likeness” with a particular quality or attribute of man, such as reason, speech, power, or skill. It does not refer to something which in later systems was called “the best in man," “the divine spark,” “the eternal spirit,” or “the immortal element" in man. It is the whole man and every man who was made in the image and likeness of God. It is both body and soul, sage and tool, saint and sinner, man in his joy and in his grief, in his righteousness and wickedness. The image is not in man; it is man.—Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, 369

The starting point matters

Man is man not because of what he has in common with the earth but because of what he has in common with God. The Greek thinkers sought to understand man as a part of the universe: the prophets sought to understand man as a partner of God.—Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, 369

But which god?

In many religions, man is regarded as an image of a god. Yet the meaning of such regard depends on the meaning of the god whom man resembles. If the god is regarded as a man magnified, if the gods are conceived of in the image of man, then such regard tells us little about the nature and destiny of man. Where God is one among many gods, where the word “divine” is used as mere hyperbolic expression, where the difference between God and man is but a difference in degree, then an expression such as “the divine image of man” is equal in meaning to the idea of the supreme in man. It is only in the light of what the biblical man thinks of God—namely, a Being who created heaven and earth, the God of justice and compassion, the master of nature and history who transcends nature and history—that the idea of man having been created in the image of God refers to the supreme mystery of man, of his nature and existence.—Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, 368

A little lower than the…

I would say that the major religious problem today is the systematic liquidation of man's sensitivity to the challenge of God. Let me try to explain that. We cannot understand man in his own terms. Man is not to be understood in the image of nature, in the image of an animal, or in the image of a machine. He has to be understood in terms of a transcendence, and that transcendence is not a passive thing; it is a challenging transcendence. Man is always being challenged; a question is always being asked of him. The moment man disavows the living transcendence, he is contracted; he is reduced to a level on which his distinction as a human being gradually disappears. What makes a man human is his openness to transcendence, which lifts him to a level higher than himself. Overwhelmed by the power he has achieved, man now has the illusion of sovereignty; he has become blind to his own situation, and deaf to the question being asked of him.—Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, 251

<idle musing>
I was reading in Hebrews today, where the author says that humanity was created a little lower than the angels. Today's excerpt from Heschel fits in well here. We have lost site of who we are, what we were created to be. We have become drunk with our own power, little realizing that with power comes responsibility—responsibility for how we use that power, whether for good or ill. Unfortunately, we have largely used that power for ill. And the earth shows it.

But you can't abuse power forever without repercussions. And we are beginning to feel those repercussions in our climate. And in the dissolving of our social networks.

But, like the infamous "cows of Bashan" in the book of Amos, we ignore them. As long as we have full stomachs and entertainment, all is well. Except, just as Amos says, all is not well and at some time the bills will come due.

I pray that God will be merciful!
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What image?

The divine symbolism of man is not in what he has—such as reason or the power of speech—but in what he is potentially: he is able to be holy as God is holy. To imitate God, to act as He acts in mercy and love, is the way of enhancing our likeness. Man becomes what he worships. “Says the Holy One, blessed be He: He who acts like me shall be like me. ” Says Rabbi Levi ben Hama: “Idolators resemble their idols (Psalms 115:8); now how much more must the servants of the Lord resemble Him.

. . .

But man has failed. And what is the consequence? “I have placed the likeness of my image on them and through their sins I have upset it” is the dictum of God.”

The likeness is all but gone. Today, nothing is more remote and less plausible than the idea: man is a symbol of God. Man forgot whom he represents or that he represents.—Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, 86–87 (emphasis original)

More on the image of God

As not one man or one particular nation but all men and all nations are endowed with the likeness of God, there is no danger of ever worshipping man, because only that which is extraordinary and different may become an object of worship. But the divine likeness is something all men share.

This is a conception of far-reaching importance to biblical piety. What it implies can hardly be summarized. Reverence for God is shown in our reverence for man. The fear you must feel of offending or hurting a human being must be as ultimate as your fear of God. An act of violence is an act of desecration. To be arrogant toward man is to be blasphemous toward God.

He who oppresses the poor blasphemes his Maker,
He who is gracious to the needy honors Him. —Proverbs 14:31

“You must not say, since I have been put to shame, let my neighbor be put to shame ... If you do so, know whom you put to shame, for in the likeness of God made he him." Rabbi Joshua ben Levi said: “A precession of angels pass before man wherever he goes, proclaiming: Make way for the image (eikonion) of God.”—Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, 85

<idle musing>
And that is a very good reason to be against the death penalty! Further, it is the reason that racism and sexism are so repugnant to God. All are made in the image of God, male and female, every race and nationality. All are to proclaim the wonders and glories of God together. Lord, haste the day when that is true!
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In the image and likeness of…

And yet there is something in the world that the Bible does regard as a symbol of God. It is not a temple or a tree, it is not a statue or a star. The one symbol of God is man, every man. God Himself created man in His image, or, to use the biblical terms, in His tselem and demuth. How significant is the fact that the term tselem, which is frequently used in a damnatory sense for a man—made image of God, as well as the term demuth—of which Isaiah claims (4o:18) no demuth can be applied to God—are employed in denoting man as an image and likeness of God!

Human life is holy, holier even than the Scrolls of the Torah. Its holiness is not man’s achievement; it is a gift of God rather than something attained through merit. Man must therefore be treated with the honor due to a likeness representing the King of Kings.

Not that the Bible was unaware of man's frailty and wickedness. The divine in man is not by virtue of what he does but by virtue of what he is. With supreme frankness the failures and shortcomings of kings and prophets, of men such as Moses or David, are recorded. And yet Jewish tradition insisted that not only man’s soul but also his body are symbolic of God. This is why even the body of a criminal condemned to death must be treated with reverence, according to the Book of Deuteronomy (2 1:23). He who sheds the blood of a human being, “it is accounted to him as though be diminished [or destroyed] the divine image.”—Abraham Joshua Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, 84–85

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He keeps going, but that's enough for today. This section reminds me of the C.S. Lewis essay/sermon entitled "The Weight of Glory," which also gave it's title to the book, Weight of Glory (the other essays are well-worth your time, too).

We are all image-bearers of God. Whatever happened in Gen 3 didn't erase that image. It might have defaced it, making us "cracked eikons," as Scot McKnight puts it, but it didn't erase that image. Remember that as you face what you think are your enemies. Remember that when you are tempted to hurl insults at others. They, too, are images of their (and your) creator!
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Imago Dei

If we are created in the image of God, each human being should be a reminder of God’s presence. If we engage in acts of violence and murder, we are desecrating the divine likeness.—Susannah Heschel in Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays, xxv

God's initial (and continuing) intent (hint: It's not what you think)

God’s intent from the beginning is thus for a cooperative world of shalom, generosity, and blessing, evident most fundamentally in his own mode of exercising power at creation. In the New Testament, Jesus even grounds love for enemies in the imago Dei, suggesting that this sort of radical generosity toward others reflects the creator’s own “perfect” love toward all people, shown in his causing sun and rain to benefit both the righteous and the wicked (Matt. 5:43-48; cf. Luke 6:27-35). In the end, nothing less than God’s own exercise of creative activity ought to function as the ethical paradigm or model for our development of culture, with attendant care of the earth and just and loving interhuman action. By our wise exercise of cultural power we truly function as imago Dei, mediating the creator’s presence in the full range of earthly activities, thus fulfilling the initial narrative sequence of the biblical story.—J. Richard Middleton, A New Heaven and a New Earth, 52

Complementarians take note!

I started a new (in the sense that I hadn't read it yet) book yesterday: J. Richard Middleton, A New Heaven and a New Earth (2014). It is written in such a way that it doesn't lend itself to excerpting very well, so there probably won't be a lot of posts on it. In fact, the first one is from almost 20 percent into the book, on page 52. So far, although there are a few nitpicky things I disagree with him on, the book is very good, a much needed correction to most people's eschatology (my own included in that I hadn't put all the pieces together in a coherent way). So, here's the first excerpt:

The Genesis creation account provides a normative basis to critique interhuman injustice or the misuse of power over others, whether in individual cases or in systemic social formations. Specifically, since both male and female are made in God’s image with a joint mandate to rule (Gen. 1:27-28), this calls into question the inequities of power between men and women that have arisen in patriarchal social systems and various forms of sexism throughout history. And since the imago Dei is prior to any ethnic, racial, or national divisions (see Gen. 10), this provides an alternative to ethnocentrism, racism, or any form of national superiority; beneath the legitimate diversity of cultures that have developed in the world, people constitute one human family.—J. Richard Middleton, A New Heaven and a New Earth, 52

Something to look forward to

We often think of God and humanity as opposites. Humans are error—prone, God is infallible; humans are sinful, God is sinless; humans are mortal, God is immortal; humans are weak, God is all—powerful. This, however, is to reflect upon humans as we find them, not upon humans in light of God’s ultimate intentions for them. All humans are made in the image of God. Yet the ability of fallen humanity to act as the idol of God (i.e., to represent God dynamically by exercising stewardship over creation) has been hampered by the fall. In the incarnation, Jesus comes to us as the genuinely human one, the fulfillment of God’s intentions for what it means to be most completely human. The stunning mystery of what it means to be a flourishing human is this: to be fully human doesn’t mean to be the opposite of God; it means to fully image God, to reflect and represent God flawlessly in God’s entirety, glory, and splendor.—Matthew Bates in Salvation by Allegiance Alone, 155

Imaging God

How does unauthorized idol worship harm humanity? It results in a defacing, so that humans do not appropriately bear the glorious image of God to creation. That is, when a person is truly acting as the image of God, he or she serves as a genuine contact point between God and creation, mediating God’s presence to creation (including other humans and all other creatures). But when a person worships false idols, the capacity to serve in this way is undermined. The glory of God that the image is to radiate has become distorted. So other humans, animals, plants, and the rest of the earth fail to experience God’s sovereignty through that human as God would desire it to be exercised, and the creation falls into corruption. As Paul puts it, “The creation waits eagerly for the revelation of the sons of God” (Rom. 8:19). And why? Because it is awaiting the fullness of the glory of the children of God as they reign alongside the Son (Rom. 8:17; cf. Col. 3:4; 2 Tim. 2:12; Rev. 20:6). In fact, it is in association with the “freedom of the glory of the children of God” that creation is finally “released from its bondage to decay” (Rom. 8:21). In short, if I fail to act as the full image of God, then my neighbors, family, pets, livestock, and the places on the earth over which I have royal stewardship will be bereft of God’s life—giving, wise, ordered rule. 152

And we are that image

Even as we have seen many points of contact between Genesis and the ancient Near East, we should not neglect to notice the places where the Israelites were departing from the standard ways of thinking in the ancient world. People (God’s images) were placed in sacred space just as the images of the Babylonian gods were placed in sacred space in their temples to mediate God’s presence and God’s revelation. But images were excluded in worship in Israel—we are the only images God allows.—The Lost World of Adam and Eve, p. 196

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That's the end of this book. Hope you enjoyed it. Next up, we'll move to the New Testament for a bit.
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Marred, not removed

[W]e can affirm that all human beings must be considered as participating in the divine image. It is something that is more corporate than individual. Furthermore, it is clear from the occurrences throughout the biblical text that the image was not lost when Adam and Eve were sent from the garden, though it was marred. The functions that were entrusted to us in Genesis 1 are still our responsibilities, though our ability to carry out those functions may be hampered in a variety of ways by our current condition.—The Lost World of Adam and Eve, p. 196

What is this imago dei anyway?

The notion of the “image” doesn’t refer to a particular spiritual endowment, a secret “property that humans possess somewhere in their genetic makeup, something that might be found by a scientific observation of humans as opposed to chimps. The image is a vocation, a calling. It is the call to be an angled mirror, reflecting God’s wise order into the world and reflecting the praises of all creation back to the Creator. That is what it means to be the royal priesthood: looking after God’s world is the royal bit, summing up creation’s praise is the priestly bit. And the image is, of course, the final thing that is put into the temple (here I draw on John Walton’s careful exposition of Genesis 1 and 2 as the creation of sacred space, and the seven days of Genesis 1 as the seven stages of temple building), so that the god can be present to his people through the image and that his people can worship him in that image.—The Lost World of Adam and Eve, p. 175