Imago Dei

We are made in the image of God. Actually in the image and likeness. (Everyone always forgets the likeness part.)

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” (Gen 1:26) 

Even before discussing what the image of God might mean (and there is no universal agreement) we see that this passage implies a three-tiered ordering.

We are made in the image and likeness of God. As wonderful as that is (we must assume, even without knowing precisely what we're dealing with) it certainly implies we are creatures, not God. The image is not the real thing. In the Greek, we are said to be icons of God. I like that.

Nevertheless we are imago dei and the animal kingdom is not. So there is a definite hierarchy, and while it would take the mother of all semi-log plots to represent it, the ordering is 1) God 2) Humanity and 3) The Animal Kingdom.

I am always struck by a routine inconsistency in certain corners of the secular world—those who say than man is just another unexceptional species in the animal kingdom while simultaneously demanding that man should behave in a profoundly exceptional way and avoid killing other animals for food.

The Christian viewpoint is that man is exceptional among the creatures and has dominion over them—while simultaneously acknowledging that the animals (and indeed the earth itself) is a sort of trust fund set up by God in our name, and some will answer for polluting and abusing it,  but not for simply using it. That's what it's there for. This view, unlike the secular view mentioned earlier, is at the very least non-contradictory.

So in Genesis 1 we are made in the image (and likeness) of God. Does that survive the fall? It does. In the fallen world of Genesis 9 we read of the establishment of the principle that murder is a capital offense:

Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed for in the image of God has God made mankind. (Gen 9:6) 

This gives the allegedly contradictory (but in reality, not) instruction that human life is so precious that anyone who takes a life (through murder) is to forfeit his own. And why is that so? Because man—even fallen man—still bears the image of God. It wasn’t lost in the fall. There was much that was lost in the fall, but imago dei survived.

So what does it mean to be in the image of God? I don’t know. I think I know what it doesn’t mean. I don’t think it’s a syllogistic fallacy to say the imago dei exceptionalism of man means that traits we share with higher animals are probably not “image of God” traits. And in higher animals I believe we see volition, love, devotion, compassion, language, tool making, and grief. In my opinion imago dei must be something else. Something related to holiness.

Meh. That just shifts the question to “what is holiness?” I don’t know that, either. I actually don't know much about anything.

Back to where we started.