Image of God

"Such an explanation is unnecessary, not only because the terms had clear meanings, but also because no such list could do justice to the subject: the text only needs to affirm that man is like God, and the rest of Scripture fills in more details to explain this.

Apostolic Constitutions quotes Genesis 1:26 verbatim, while the Anaphora in the Liturgy of St. Gregory the Theologian uses the interesting phrase "You inscribed upon me the image of Your authority.

"[12] In Christian theology there are three common ways of understanding the manner in which humans exist in imago dei: Substantive, Relational and Functional.

The substantive view can also be seen in the Jewish scholar Maimonides who argues that it is consciousness and the ability to speak which is the "image of God;" both faculties which differentiate mankind from animals, and allow man to grasp abstract concepts and ideas that are not merely instinctual.

In fact, the account of Adam and Eve disobeying God's mandate is neither expressly rendered as "sin" in B'reishit, nor anywhere else in Torah for that matter.

Midrashim, however, finds common ground with the Thomist view of humanity's response to the image of God in the stories of Cain and Abel filtered through the, "Book of Genealogies" (Gen 5:1-6:8).

Midrashim interprets Gen 4:10 as Abel's blood crying out not only to God, but also "against" Cain, which lays the onus squarely on Adam's firstborn.

For example, in humans the created order of male and female is intended to culminate in spiritual as well as physical unions Genesis 5:1–2, reflecting the nature and image of God.

Since other creatures do not form such explicitly referential spiritual relationships, these theologians see this ability as uniquely representing the imago dei in humans.

"[30] He went on to say that "In the very essence of the individual, in terms of its quality as a subject; the image of God, we believe, is the very personal and solitary power to think and to choose; it is interiority.

[32] Pope Benedict XVI wrote regarding imago dei, "Its nature as an image has to do with the fact that it goes beyond itself and manifests .…the dynamic that sets the human being in motion towards the totally Other.

Archaeology discovered many texts where specific kings are exalted as "images" of their respective deities and rule based on divine mandate.

[34] There is some evidence that imago dei language appeared in many Mesopotamian and Near Eastern cultures where kings were often labeled as images of certain gods or deities and thus, retained certain abilities and responsibilities, such as leading certain cults.

Reformation theologians, like Martin Luther, focused their reflections on the dominant role mankind had over all creation in the Garden of Eden before the fall of man.

The imago dei, according to Luther, was the perfect existence of man and woman in the garden: all knowledge, wisdom and justice, and with peaceful and authoritative dominion over all created things in perpetuity.

[36] Luther breaks with Augustine of Hippo's widely accepted understanding that the image of God in man is internal; it is displayed in the trinity of the memory, intellect and will.

[37] The twentieth and early twenty-first centuries saw the image of God being applied to various causes and ideas including ecology, disabilities, gender, and post/transhumanism.

[42] Instead of various extra-biblical interpretations, he pushed for a royal-functional understanding, in which "the imago Dei designates the royal office or calling of human beings as God's representatives or agents in the world.

Some modern theologians are arguing for proper religious care of the earth based on the functional interpretation of the image of God as caregiver over created order.

Within the functional view, it is often thought that disabilities which interfere with one's capacity to "rule," whether physical, intellectual, or psychological, are a distortion of the image of God.

[citation needed] Glen Stassen argues that both the concept and the term human rights originated more than a half-century before the Enlightenment thinkers like John Locke.

[54] According to the scholar of Puritan literature William Haller, "the task of turning the statement of the law of nature into ringing declaration of the rights of man fell to Richard Overton.

One of the themes that foreshadowed Richard Overton's reason for giving voice to human rights, especially the demand for separation of church and state, is implicitly connected to the concept of the image of God.

Many theologians from the patristic period to the present have relied heavily on an Aristotelian structure of the human as an inherently "rational animal," set apart from other beings.

[80] Furthermore, bodily phenomena typically associated with sin and taboo (e.g. menstruation), have been redeemed as essential pieces of the female experience relatable to spirituality.

[81] Feminism attempts to make meaning out of the entire bodily experience of humanity, not just females, and to reconcile historical prejudices by relating to God through other frameworks.

[82] The understanding of imago dei has come under new scrutiny when held up against the movement of transhumanism which seeks to transform the human through technological means.

Therapeutic uses of technology such as cochlear implants, prosthetic limbs, and psychotropic drugs have become commonly accepted in religious circles as means of addressing human frailty.

[86] Christians concerns of humans "playing God" are ultimately accusations of hubris, a criticism that pride leads to moral folly, and a theme which has been interpreted from the Genesis accounts of Adam and Eve and the Tower of Babel.

Brenda Brasher thinks that this revelation of the hybridity of human nature presents insurmountable problems for scripturally-based theological metaphors bound in "pastoral and agrarian imagery.