NEW! The Dictionary of Scripture & Ethics

[R. Mansfield]

Now available for the Accordance Library: The Dictionary of Scripture & Ethics.

 

Be certain to read David Lang's blog post "Of Apes & Ethics" for an application of this new reference work.

 

screenshot:

 

[Daniel Francis]

Owning the IVP Pocket Dictionary of Ethics, I wondered whether this new title might be a book I even needed (now the tittle of IVP alone tells me it is only a starting place but I have multivolume Bible dictionaries to supplement it). Having read the blog on it I decided to take a chance and get it. I compared a few entries and found not surprisingly that Baker’s was far more in depth. One thing that has impressed me about this dictionary in the several entries I have read is not only the  depth of articles but the quality and how they give you not only the facts but a depth theological insight. This book does not simply give you a simple answer to ethical questions but places it in a Biblical framework and begins well thought out theological implications to help you understand not only what the Bible has to say but how to best relate it to these same or similar questions we ask today. Strangely enough I found The Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics almost devotional for me in that at the end of reading more than one article I felt the need to ponder what I read and pray over it (not in that it disturbed my faith but left me realizing deeper implications of scripture on the topic). This is not an ultra conservative book but it respects differing viewpoints and did not seem to me to be pushing any agenda, beyond perhaps a rejection of simplistic black and white answers. Our world is full of colour and this book helps to think about these issues in just that the mullti-dimensional colour of life. I am very happy to have bought this book and grateful that Accordance has brought it to us.

 

-Dan

[R. Mansfield]

That's a great review, Dan--thanks. I, too, like that it doesn't just offer black and white treatments of very complex subjects. 

[Daniel Francis]

I did try to post it as a review by for whatever reason it never seemed to take unless it is under some sort of review process...

 

-dan

Edited June 13, 2016 by Dan Francis

[ukfraser]

So can we see the image of god article mentioned in david's post?????????

 

 

[Daniel Francis]

Image of God 

 

Central to most Christian theological ethics is the idea that humans are made in the image of God (Lat. imago Dei). The idea first occurs in the Bible in Gen. 1:26–28, where God creates humanity (both male and female) in his “image” and “likeness” (parallel terms) and grants them the task of subduing the earth and ruling over the animals. The idea of creation in God’s image is not, however, widespread in Scripture, found explicitly in only four other texts (Gen. 5:1–3; 9:6; 1 Cor. 11:7; Jas. 3:9). Most biblical occurrences of the imago Dei refer to Christ as the image par excellence or to the salvific renewal of the image in the church.

 

The Image of God and the Cultural Mandate

 

Although the idea that humans are created in God’s image is rare in the OT, its meaning is clarified by other creation texts that portray the original human purpose. The imago Dei crystallizes the functional or missional view of humanity found in texts such as Gen. 2 and Ps. 8.

In Gen. 2 God plants a garden in Eden and places the first human there with the task of tilling and keeping the garden (2:15). Agriculture therefore is the first communal, cultural project of humanity. Since it is the Creator who first planted the garden, it could be said that God initiated the first cultural project, thus setting a pattern for humans, created in the divine image, to follow. Whereas Gen. 2 focuses on agriculture, Ps. 8 highlights animal husbandry as the basic human vocation. Humans are crowned with royal honor and granted rule over the works of God’s hands, including various realms of animal life (Ps. 8:5–8). Here the domestication of animals is regarded as a task of such dignity and privilege that through it humans manifest their position of being “a little lower than God” (Ps. 8:5), an expression that begins to move in the direction of God’s image/likeness.

Genesis 1:26–28 combines these two themes: humans are created to subdue the earth (similar to tending the garden in Gen. 2) and to rule over the animal kingdom (as in Ps. 8). And they are to accomplish these tasks as God’s representatives or delegates on earth, entrusted with a share in his rule, which is the upshot of being made in God’s image (Gen. 1:26–27). In the ancient Near East the king was thought to be the living image of the gods on earth, representing the gods’ will and purpose through his administration of society and culture. In Gen. 1 the entire human race is appointed to this privileged role. The human task of exercising communal power in the world, initially applied to agriculture and the domestication of animals, results in the transformation of the earthly environment into a complex sociocultural world. Thus, Gen. 4 reports the building of the first city (4:17) and mentions the beginnings of cultural practices and inventions, such as nomadic livestock herding, musical instruments, and metal tools (4:20–22). This transformation of the world (the so-called cultural mandate) accomplished by God’s human image on earth is a holy task, a sacred calling, in which humanity reflects the Creator’s own lordship over the cosmos.

Just as God constructed the cosmos (heaven and earth) by wisdom, understanding, and knowledge (Prov. 3:19–20), so humans require this very same triad of qualities when they build a house (Prov. 24:3–4). This makes sense of the portrayal of Bezalel, who is put in charge of constructing the tabernacle. Bezalel is filled with God’s Spirit (the same Spirit who attended creation in Gen. 1:2) and also with wisdom, understanding, and knowledge (Exod. 31:2–5; 35:30–35)—the same qualities that God exhibited when he made the world. The human embodiment of good artisanship in earthly construction projects thus recapitulates God’s own building of the cosmos, which was also a developmental project, transforming an original unformed and unfilled mass (Gen. 1:2) into a complex world, over six days.

 

The Image of God and the Mediation of Divine Presence

 

The assumed parallel in the Bezalel account between the creation of the world and tabernacle construction (as macrocosmos and microcosmos) suggests the background picture of the created order as a temple, a sacred realm over which God rules. This picture is explicit in Ps. 148, which calls on a variety of heavenly and earthly creatures (148:1–4, 7–12) to praise their creator (148:5–7, 13–14), as if together they constituted a host of creaturely worshipers in the cosmic sanctuary. According to Isa. 66, heaven is Yahweh’s throne, and the earth is his footstool (66:1a). Thus, the text questions why anyone would build an earthly “house” for God (referring to postexilic rebuilding of the temple), since God has already created the cosmos (66:1b–2). Why construct sacred space—a place to worship God—when all space is already sacred?

In the cosmic sanctuary of creation humans are the authorized “image” of God. Just as the physical cult statue or image in an ancient Near Eastern temple was meant to mediate the deity’s presence to the worshipers, so humans are the divinely designated embodied mediators of the Creator’s presence from heaven (where Yahweh is enthroned) to earth, thus completing the destiny of the cosmic temple, so that God might fully indwell the earthly realm, much as the glory of Yahweh filled the tabernacle when it was completed (Exod. 40:34–35). Although the Spirit of God was, indeed, hovering over creation at the beginning (Gen. 1:2), as if God was getting ready to breathe his presence into the world, when the Creator rests on the seventh day (Gen. 2:1–3), the world is not yet filled with God’s glory. The issue is not human sin, at least not yet. The key point is that the mediation of God’s presence on earth is precisely the historical vocation of humanity as the imago Dei, a vocation that has only just been assigned (and not yet carried out) in Gen. 1.

 

Human Violence and the Image of God

 

The incursion of sin tragically compromises the human calling to image God. From the primal disobedience in the garden (Gen. 3) through the first murder (Gen. 4), humans misuse their power to image God and so shut off earth from God’s full presence. Indeed, human violence (which is fundamentally the misuse of the power of imago Dei) escalates, until the earth becomes filled with violence (Gen. 6:11) rather than with the presence of God. This violence leads to the flood (Gen. 6:13), which is a restorative operation meant to cleanse the earth.

The incursion of sin into God’s good creation does not, however, obliterate the imago Dei. God’s creation of both male and female in his “likeness” is reiterated (Gen. 5:1–2), and this image/likeness is passed on to future generations (Gen. 5:3). After the flood, God reaffirms the creation of humans in his “image,” and this affirmation grounds the sanctity of human life (Gen. 9:6). The postfall persistence of the imago Dei is assumed also in Jas. 3:9, which, like Gen. 9:6, undergirds a specific ethical implication, challenging those who would bless God yet curse a person made in the divine “likeness.” This NT text echoes the OT wisdom tradition that people somehow represent their maker, so that oppression or kindness shown to the poor and needy are equivalent to insult or honor shown to God (Prov. 14:31; 17:5; cf. 22:2). A similar idea lies behind Jesus’ claim in the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matt. 25:31–46) that whatever works of love a person performs to “one of the least of these” is done to him (Matt. 25:40).

 

The Image of God and the Ethical Use of Power

 

The ethical significance of the imago Dei cannot be limited, however, to the injunction to honor God by respecting his image on earth. Persons made in God’s image are not simply the recipients of ethical action; they are also called to act, imaging God’s own use of creative power.

According to the creation account that forms the immediate context for the imago Dei, God creates without vanquishing any primordial forces of chaos (in contrast to ancient Near Eastern creation myths such as Enuma Elish), since to do so would enshrine violence as original and normative. Instead, God painstakingly develops the initial, unformed watery mass (Gen. 1:2) into a complex, well-constructed world. Not only is each stage of this creative process portrayed as “good” (Gen. 1:4, 10, 12, 18, 21, 25); when creation is complete, it is “very good” (Gen. 1:31). The human use of power in God’s image is also to be nonviolent and developmental.

In ancient Near Eastern religious practice sacrifices were understood as providing food for the gods and were thought necessary to guarantee fertility of crops and flocks on earth. However, the God of Genesis freely blesses animals and humans with perpetual fertility (Gen. 1:22, 28) and grants food to both for their sustenance (Gen. 1:29–30). Most significantly, the biblical Creator does not hoard power as sovereign ruler of the cosmos but instead gladly assigns humanity a share in ruling the earth as his representatives (Gen. 1:26–28). God’s own generous exercise of power for the benefit of creatures thus provides the most important model for the human exercise of power.

There are implications here for environmental stewardship, grounded first of all in the fundamental kinship that humans share with all other creatures (we do not transcend creation) and in the fact that all existence is a gift from the generous Creator. That humans have only a delegated, derivative authority in the world, and that the Creator’s own use of power is the normative model for dominion further suggest that human rule over the earth and the nonhuman creatures is to be characterized by generosity and care.

However, we cannot stop with environmental stewardship, narrowly conceived. While the picture of the human vocation in Gen. 1:26–28 certainly grounds care for the earth, the Bible intends something much broader by its association of the imago Dei with the exercise of cultural, developmental power. In the biblical worldview, all cultural activities and social institutions arise from interaction with the earth. Thus, so-called creation care should not be treated as an ethical agenda separate from attending to the social structures that we develop, including governments, economic systems, technological innovations, forms of communication, and the urban and suburban landscapes in which we live and work. Such a separation may well result in the absence of critical ethical reflection on the defining human calling to develop culture and our contemporary need to work for its healing in a broken world.

Ethical reflection on human culture must take into account the fact that no human being is granted dominion over another at creation. The process of cultural development is meant to flow from a cooperative sharing in dominion. This provides a normative basis to critique interhuman injustice or the misuse of power over others, both in individual cases and in systemic social formations. More 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 patriarchy and sexism that arise in history. And since the imago Dei is prior to any ethnic, racial, or national divisions (see Gen. 10), this critiques ethnocentrism, racism, and any form of national superiority. That God’s intent from the beginning is for a cooperative world of shalom, generosity, and blessing is evident most fundamentally from the Creator’s generous mode of exercising power at creation, which ought to function as an ethical paradigm or model for gracious and loving interhuman action.

 

The Renewal of the Image and the Flooding of Earth with God’s Presence

 

Since human sin/violence has impeded and distorted (but not obliterated) the calling to be God’s image on earth, God has intervened in history to set things right, initially through the election of Abraham and his descendants as a “royal priesthood” (Exod. 19:6), that they might mediate blessing to all families and nations (Gen. 12:3; 18:18; 22:18; 26:4; 28:14). Israel’s vocation vis-à-vis the nations therefore is analogous to the human calling as imago Dei vis-à-vis the earth. Indeed, the redemption of Israel constitutes the beginning of God’s renewal of the image, a process that would ultimately spread to the entire human race. Likewise, the tabernacle is God’s initial move to dwell on earth among a people who are being redeemed. But one day, “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea” (Hab. 2:14 [cf. Isa. 11:9]).

After a long and complex history of redemption, God’s saving action culminates in the coming of Jesus, the paradigm imago Dei (2 Cor. 4:4–6; Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:3), God with us (Matt. 1:22–23), the one who completely manifested God’s character and presence in the full range of his earthly, human life (John 14:9). As the second Adam, Jesus fulfilled through his obedience (even unto death) what the first Adam compromised by disobedience (Rom. 5:12–19).

And the risen Jesus, vindicated through resurrection, has become the head of the church, an international community of Jew and gentile reconciled to each other and to God and indwelt by God’s Spirit. The church is thus the “new humanity” (a much better translation than “new self”), renewed in the image of God (Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:9–10; cf. 2 Cor. 3:18) and called to live up to the stature of Christ, whose perfect imaging becomes the model for the life of the redeemed (Phil. 2:5–11; Eph. 4:7–16, 22–24; 5:1; Col. 3:5–17). Indeed, one day the church will be conformed to the full likeness of Christ, which will include the resurrection of the body (1 Cor. 15:49; 1 John 3:2).

Whereas the church is God’s temple (1 Cor. 3:16–17; 6:19; 2 Cor. 6:16; Eph. 2:21) indwelt by the Holy Spirit as a foretaste of that promised future, the day will come when “all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the LORD” (Num. 14:21) and “God will be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28). Thus, at the end of the book of Revelation, when the curse is removed from the earth (a reversal of Gen. 3:17), God’s dwelling can no longer be confined to heaven; rather, God’s throne will be permanently established on a renewed earth (Rev. 21:3; 22:3), and those ransomed by Christ from all tribes and nations will reign as God’s priests forever (Rev. 5:9–10; 22:5). This climactic fulfillment of the cultural mandate and the imago Dei is portrayed through the figure of the new Jerusalem, which is both holy city and redeemed people, representing the renewal of communal urban culture, a righteous, embodied polis.

In the present, as the church lives “between the times,” those being renewed in the imago Dei are called to instantiate an embodied culture or social reality alternative to the violent and deathly formations and practices that dominate the world. By this conformity to Christ—the paradigm image of God—the church manifests God’s rule and participates in God’s mission to flood the world with the divine presence. In its concrete communal life the church as the body of Christ is called to witness to the promised future of a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.

 

See also Animals; Authority and Power; Creation Ethics; Ecological Ethics; Egalitarianism; Humanity; Sin

 

Bibliography

 

Anderson, B. “Human Dominion over Nature.” Pages 111–31 in From Creation to New Creation: Old Testament Perspectives. Fortress, 1994; Bird, P. “Sexual Differentiation and Divine Image in the Genesis Creation Texts.” Pages 5–28 in The Image of God: Gender Models in Judaeo-Christian Tradition, ed. K. Børresen. Fortress, 1995; Hall, D. Imaging God: Dominion as Stewardship. Eerdmans, 1986; Janzen, W. Still in the Image: Essays in Biblical Theology and Anthropology. Faith & Life Press, 1982; Middleton, J. The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1. Brazos, 2005; Middleton, J., and B. Walsh. “The Empowered Self.” Pages 108–42 in Truth Is Stranger Than It Used to Be: Biblical Faith in a Postmodern Age. InterVarsity, 1995.

 

J. Richard Middleton

 

 

J. Richard Middleton, Dictionary of Scripture and Ethics, s.v. “Image of God ,” 394-397.

 

-Dan

[ukfraser]

Once again, you are a star dan ( bet that's from the full fat version)

 

Many thanks

 

;o)

[Helen Brown]

I did try to post it as a review by for whatever reason it never seemed to take unless it is under some sort of review process...

 

-dan

 

Dan, sorry about that. It was a glitch on the website that is now fixed, and your much appreciated review is now live.

[R. Mansfield]

Heads up! Introductory pricing for the Dictionary of Scripture & Ethics ends sharply at midnight EDT tonight!