Imago Dei Doctrine's Principles - Assignment Example

THEOLOGY By Theology Introduction The current of theology is based on the principles of the so-called Imago Dei doctrine, or the expression that “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them” (Gen 1:27). It is not enough to say that this statement has far reaching implications for theology and Christian anthropology. Rather, it would be fair to assume that the statement lays the foundation for the development the new vision of a Christian man, his relationship with other people, relationship with God and his inner spirituality and religious thinking. In general terms, the statement implies that a man is made in God’s likeness but is not God himself; a man was created by God to promote his message and spirituality by building close relationships with other and interact with the community to which he belongs. That man was created by God, in the image of God and in God’s likeness is difficult to deny. From the viewpoint of Christian anthropology, man was created by God, meaning that the act of creation, and no other way, became the key to human existence. Ratzinger (1990) is correct when he says that man is the recipient of a valuable gift – the gift of creation – and creation from God is the only way for man to come to existence. Going further, the gift of creation is the result of God’s love toward man and God’s desire to turn nothing into something, and something into the full act of existence (Ratzinger 1990). By receiving the gift of creation, man is automatically obligated to use it for the benefit of the society in which he lives. In other words, God creates a man, anticipating that the gift of creation will reciprocate through the act of man’s giving himself to the society. The forms of such give-and-take may vary, but Christian anthropology keeps to a belief than only through the act of sincere giving oneself to the society and others, can man fully discover himself and his true spiritual identity (Hahn 2002). The gift of creation given by God to man and the fact of man’s likeness with God implies that God, like man, speaks understandable language, uses understandable ideas and even looks like man (or, man looks like God). In this sense, the basic principles of Christian anthropology accept the anthropomorphic vision of God, although religious adherents often keep to a belief that it is unacceptable to dwell upon God in an inappropriately “human” light (Klein 1992). It should be noted, that the Old Testament ruled against the image of God, while early Christians sought to reestablish the relevance of those principles and to prove that the image of God with human features and the use of this image in icons promote idolatry and made anthropomorphism unacceptable (Kelly 1977). In this sense, it is important to understand that although man was created to follow God’s likeness, the images of man and God are very distant and should be kept this way. Augustine wrote that there is some likeness between man and God but God must be treated as the distant image of man (Klein 1977). Such likeness, according to Augustine, does not necessarily imply that a man looking into the mirror sees the reflection of God; this likeness is more in spirituality than in appearance (Klein 1977). This distinction is critical for the better understanding of Christian anthropology and theology, in general. In Gen 1:27 we read: “male and female he created them”. This distinction of genders is very important in the context of Christian anthropology. That God created man as male and female does not mean that God is male or female. What it means is that God has features of male and female character which can be readily compared to those of man (Brown et al. 1995). The Scripture provides numerous instances which present God as a complex combination of both masculine and feminine character traits; however, the principles of theology and Christian anthropology rule that God is neither feminine nor is God masculine (Brown et al. 1995). God can be fairly regarded as the father of the divine sense and the superhuman abilities (Brown et al. 1995). In no way can God be assigned purely masculine or feminine features; nor can God be assigned any gender features characteristic of man (Brown et al. 1995). The statement that man was created by God and in God’s likeness provides some opportunities to reconsider the principles of value of Trinity. Actually, Trinity adds knowledge to the current understanding of Christian anthropology. The fact is that “the plurality of divine persons is proven from the fact that man is said to have been made in the image of God” (Ouellet 1999), meaning that a man, like God, is expected to exist in the atmosphere of plurality and follow the analogy of divine communication and relations between these divine representations. God is never solitary but is a continuous communication and when God calls himself plural he also implies that man, like God, is a mystery of plurality and is a whole family of divine characters in one (Ouellet 1999). This information and knowledge of plurality have far-reaching implications for the human being, who wants to better understand his inner world and the links between man and the Christian reality. It is through the multiplicity of ties that a man can look deeper into his own likeness to God. The statement that man was created from God’s image and in God’s likeness implies that a man should be able to reconsider his own human reality through the prism of the complex combination of mind, body, and soul. One of the basic questions Christian anthropology seeks to answer is in whether man’s likeness with God is limited and possible only in terms of the bodily composition, or whether this likeness extends to cover spiritual and moral dimensions. Scholarly opinions on the topic vary: for example, Thomas Aquinas was confident that body and soul created a unity (Kelly 1977). Philo believed that the likeness of God and man was limited to only spiritual dimension. Based on the basic Biblical rulings, both the spirit and the body matter, because the Bible often emphasizes the importance of the body, because God created man to turn his word into flesh and to use man as the carrier of his divine knowledge into the masses (Hogan & Levoir 1992). Man resembles God equally in body and soul, because “man is not a mere soul, nor a mere body, but both soul and body” (Hogan & Levoir 1992). This, however, also means that man cannot exist without establishing close ties with other individuals. In fact, that God is a complex combination of several identities and that man follows this principle, too, means that man is a relational being and to fulfill his mission of the carrier of the divine word, he must be able to establish close ties with other individuals. He must be able to create the sense of harmony between his inner identities and be responsible for his decisions. Finally, the fact of being created by God does not give man full independence and decision-making power. On the contrary, the fact of being created by God means that man is neither God, nor can he claim the full ownership over his existence (Schweder 1999). He does not possess powers necessary to rule his own destiny but he cannot also deny the wonder of his own creation and the fact of being a human. “You have made them little less than a god, crowned them with glory and honor” (Ps 8:6), which means that man is both dependent on god and possesses the sense of dignity and honor for being a conscious being. Obviously, this sense of dignity and honor for being a human and a conscious being is the distinctive feature of man which makes him different from animals. The close link between man and God is the source of human dignity and the sense of being special and different from the rest of the living world. This dignity is intrinsic: it can be ignored but can never be eliminated (Schweder 1999). Man and dignity are inseparable. The nature of man and the gift of creation predetermine the presence of this dignity in all humans. Dignity is the gift from god, the reasonable response to which is love. Dignity is the same among all persons and individuals. Dignity is something man cannot get rid of, because it is given by God. Dignity is something that unites people, turns them into social beings, and emphasizes the role of ethics and communion in human life (Schweder 1999). As God creates man in his own likeness, God also makes people in ways that turn man “into the highpoint of the whole order of creation in the whole world” (Hahn 2002) and lead man to live and ethical and moral life – the life which will let man use his intellectual abilities and wit to raise himself over the beasts of field and to fulfill his responsibility toward the environment and people around. References Brown, H, Hudecki, D, Kennedy, LA & Synder, J 1995, Images in the human: The philosophy of the human person in a religious context, Chicago: Loyola Press. Hahn, S 2002, First comes love, Image. Hogan, RM & Levoir JM 1992, Covenant of love, Ignatius Press. Kelly, JN 1977, Early Christian doctrines, A&C Black. Klein, RG 1992, Evolutionary anthropology, Routledge. Ouellet, M 1999, Towards a Trinitarian anthropology of the family, Eerdmans. Ratzinger, J 1990, ‘Concerning the notion of person in theology’, Communio, vol. 17, pp. 100-102. Schweder, RA 1999, ‘Humans are really different’, Science, vol. 283, p. 798. Read More