What is the Imago Dei?
- Paul Thomas
- Aug 1, 2021
- 10 min read
Updated: Aug 20, 2021
exploring the major theme of the novel, imago dei
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Speculative Fiction is a fascinating door to open, as it is a door to all kinds of stories, and the story of Imago Dei is such a door that I invite all to enter through. It entails a universal theme, a global topic, and one that I believe to be relevant for today’s modern.
The 21st Century is a time with so much doubt that we often find speculative fiction flirting with questions and vacillating between knowns and unknowns, and especially as of late, about who and what we are as human beings. I enjoy stories like Bradbury’s, The Illustrated Man where he used fiction to explore the human condition while beside technological advancement, possible settings because of scientific progress, and the ethical dilemmas induced by new eras, beside new planets, underneath new stars. There’s always something a bit dissatisfying, however, with many stories that ponder—they seem to ponder for pondering sake and never advance anything beyond a question. Perhaps I offer something equally dissatisfying: a conviction which may soon irritate some readers.
The Story of Imago Dei is written with a sense of urgency to answer the question of, “what does it mean to be human?” It is a question that has been growing popular many decades now, and it has been flirting dangerously beside things like artificial intelligence, macro-evolution, and transhumanism. How do we as humans go forward confidently amidst things like bio-technology without question? We will need more than blind confidence in our experts. Ever wonder what the experts think what it means to be human?
One such expert, beloved by some of our experts today, said this about humanity:
“The earth, said he, hath skin; and this skin hath diseases. One of these diseases, for example, is called ‘man’.”—Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra
Etymology into The Title of Imago Dei
The phrase, "Imago Dei" is Latin meaning, "Image of God."
Much of what The Western World has come to know of God is born out of the efforts of Jewish missionaries, the most famous of which are the twelve disciples of Jesus. Of those twelve, the apostle Paul was particularly influential as he employed his familiarity with the Greek language due to his Roman citizenship. The Roman Empire was continuing its expansion effort and so was the gospel of Jesus. While Paul was an effective speaker and spent his life professing much about Jesus, he would need to expound on this Jesus. Why Jesus? What makes him so special among all the other gods? The Roman Empire was bustling with gods and with The Silk Road for trade between East and West, it only added to the census count of the many gods of the day.
Immediately, the authority of Jesus was challenged: the man who died on a cross. Was he really a god?
Not a god, but The God was the claim from the apostles and disciples of Jesus. Through the witness of Jesus, his disciples, and his ministry, this claim would be espoused to the origin story of – what is now – the first book of The Bible:
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“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.’ So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.” Genesis 1:26-28, NIV
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The Image of God Literal or Figurative?
Most theologians seem to share agreement for a figurative representation between God and humans.
While the word, image seems to have more physical connotation, and thus convey a physical meaning, it should be remembered that our languages are all fraught with context born meanings.
In linguistics, the idea of semantic shifts attributes to the occasion where words may have multiple meanings due to its usage over time, and this is largely understood by the context of a word. For example the word, “left” can have a literal and a conceptual meaning— the man left work for the day (as a conceptual usage), or when stated: the man turned left at the light (as a literal meaning in its usage). Likewise, there is a similar scenario at work when looking at the phrase of, The Image of God.
The key aspect of contextual data concerning the “image of God” as revealed in scripture is found in the words, “us,” and “our”—he says, “Let us make mankind in our image…”. This is a significant moment and wink at the trinity of the triune God, the three persons in one. Because this image of a triune God involves the character traits of three-in-one, it has been exceedingly difficult for scholar and layman alike to express these qualities in which reportedly God intended to share with us. The use of metaphors, parables, and analogy seems to be some of the best means we have to describe this image we take on. For example, God as a relational God: this likeness vested in marriage, in family, and in communities.
Why keep the Latin in the title of my book?
In its infancy, The Christian world was governed by The Roman Empire. It wasn’t until The Edict of Milan declared by the Emperor, Constantine in 313 A.D. that Christianity would enjoy liberation from cultural and political tyranny. While the Greek language was widely used, Latin was becoming a common tongue spoken. By 382 A. D., Rome decided that a Latin translation of The Bible was necessary for the western part of the Roman Empire spoke it regularly. A priest and theologian by the name, Jerome was commissioned for such an undertaking.
Jerome was multilingual and therefore could access both Hebrew and Greek. He applied himself to the Septuagint (The Greek translation of the first five books of the Hebrew scriptures, also known as The Pentateuch) and to the Hebrew texts themselves, he gave careful study. The completed work, which took 23years to translate, would eventually be deemed “the exclusive standard for The Bible” by the Council of Trent in 1546.
It is because of the relationship that The Roman Empire had with The Bible (not only a book to reference, but an authority), Jerome’s commission and translation of that authority into the Latin language, and then with the creation of universities as centers of learning where Latin would be recognized as The Scholar’s Tongue, because of these historic moments, Latin would be made into a significant language.
Universities, in the days of their original construction, didn’t just entertain religious thought, but were leaders in religious thought, and most especially in France. But Latin would ultimately become a dead language and the Christian spirit of the university disembodied. Events like The French Revolution would supplant the eminence of Christian thought, and the gatekeepers of knowledge would become secular in its stead. If anyone was to learn in those days, they couldn’t do so without grasping Latin first. Jerome’s, Vulgate Bible, The Vatican’s esteem of The Vulgate as authoritative, the rich and compelling writing of Scholastic Monks (like Thomas Aquinas), and The University all cooperated together to ennoble the Latin tongue to the status of enlightenment and grandeur. But as with all language, Latin would become a dead language. It would fracture into what we today refer to as the, “romance languages” and then ultimately flatline due to the evolution of language. It was for the reason that Latin was no longer alive that secularists, and especially the scientific community, would find utility in it. Finally, there was a respectable language that was static and no longer changing and would make things like classification more possible without being upset by the shifting nature of a living language.
Now comes the moment of tension and inspiration: it is because Latin had become a language of prestige by the religious scholar and then later became a borrowed tongue by the secular scholar to be enjoyed all the fruits of centuries of labor by benefactors that would slander their heritage. Today, a secular scholar enjoys the privilege of culture’s approval and is regarded as more sane, more intelligent, and more enlightened than the religious scholar. My appropriation of the Latin language for the title of my book is to call attention to the respect of both types of scholars, if for no other reason than they both are made in the image of God.
How is this theme relevant today?
The story of Imago Dei is a narrative that imagines a world radicalized by the current trends of environmentalism and the mounting effort to preserve and protect the world and all of its ecosystems. The everyday wo/man may encounter these efforts through any given company, through advertisements, and political speeches that it seems unnecessary to mention at length. Some of the pet phrases we are familiar with supporting this trend: green-energy, sustainable practice, sustainable development, and net-zero carbon emissions to name a few. These concerns are important and hopefully more than just a fad, but something we as a global community endorse and pursue. There’s always a caveat though… we must bring our morals with us.
Morality has been and still is a source of contention between people. The challenge of right and wrong is a desperate one, most especially in Nietzsche’s brave new world where the most virtuous life to lead is an amoral and self-centered one. Morality has increasingly become a grey area, like a candle dwindling under its flame, the once bright perimeter turned a dusky shadow.
It was Darwin’s mind that was antecedent to Nietzsche’s. It is no coincidence that Nietzsche’s “will to power” should be coined after Darwin’s, “Survival of the fittest”—the spark that would beget a fire and set the whole world aflame.
It is said that morality is nothing, but convention (this is a popular truism in the realm of academia now), and as such, this presents an obvious friction: if what is right and wrong is to be relegated as what is natural and organic to our natures, then all of the ethics, morality, and principles which tradition has so esteemed and made us benefactors of is at risk of complete disregard since in our human natures we have also the capacity for great evil—but evil is only called, “evil” by the conventions of old, some say.
Some Postscript Thoughts
The Image of God is something that, even the agnostic and atheist cannot ignore. It is the oldest claim to our origin story here in the western world: that both men and women are creatures made in the image of God. The story of Imago Dei seeks to raise to the surface and make salient the most contentious aspect of our modern world: that there are those of us who have read the prologue of our lives and now pace ourselves by the index of, “creature.” Consequently, a creature who has a creator. Those who are iconoclastic or otherwise indifferent to the Creator-Creature Theory have since branded themselves as species, animals among animals. It is for this reason that the global theme of the story seeks to display this disagreement. Sure, the Christians of the Roman Empire (under the auspice of many popes and their leadership) may have already had a shot at governing civilization, and failed; however, consider a civilization that is governed by animals. If the civilization that once held a belief that humans are endowed and privileged to share in the image of The Creator of the universe and thus believed to dignify that image with reciprocity, if that society failed and could become abusive to its subjects, how much more a society ruled by predators toiling to become apex predators?
But of course, there are those who scoff at the idea that religion is required for ethical living. And yet I challenge with this: Ethics is only possible because of religion. Ethics is not born out of the genetic imperatives for survival. Religion sets the conditions for ethics, and these conditions may be enjoyed by all. The one who prefers a Darwinian mentality—the brain primed by evolutionary psychology: seeks to exploit, to rid of, or side-step ethics when conditions for personal gain are possible. The religious characters of my story can point to where and by whom they get their ethics with logical coherence. The irreligious characters on the other hand, are represented as the most dangerous for the reason that their ethical standards are all borrowed with a shelf life determined by their wills and their wants.
The story written under the banner, Imago Dei, is not intended to be read by some anthropocentric lens so as to make humanity akin to God and therefore making mankind, divine. While I believe we do share in His likeness, God also exhibits a sort of otherness in relation to his creature, man. Historically, this idea of God’s divine otherness is understood by the personal accounts of Moses and the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, most especially by the knowledge of God’s law and what dictums he set to establish and let be known what righteousness looks like.
It seems to be universally known that humanity is far from righteous and individually we decide to wrestle with this distance between us and God, or we run and create even further distance, but there is a likeness nonetheless. Theologians and layman alike look to Jesus for a better understanding of this likeness.
This story is not written with some exclusive cultural value (such as by an American or Western vantage point). That is to say, it strives away from a myopic approach to the subject matter of the image of God that would err on cultural relevance alone: all humans are made in the image of God, that is the guiding logic of the story. It is also a significant reason as to why the protagonist should be female: to loosen the historical narrowmindedness about the image of God as it relates to the genders, “male and female he created them.” Conceptually, men have understood this, but in practice… to our shame, we haven’t reflected this understanding across the cultures very well. We forget that God said to [them] to rule over creation; much of this instituted authority has [historically] been relegated to men exclusively (as if the command were given to Adam alone). This story seeks to not only consider the concept of the image of God, but to feel its greater depth.
This blog is not intended to express in full, the complete theology of the image of God, and therefore, I recommend further study. Some names to consider for your future studies on this topic may include: Wayne Grudem, Francis Chan, and Anthony Hoekema to name a few theologians.
Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Vulgate." Encyclopedia Britannica, September 29, 2020. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Vulgate.
Cairns, Earle. Christianity Through The Centuries: A History of the Christian Church, 3rd ed. Zondervan (Grand Rapids, MI, 1996), 267-277.
Nietzsche, Fredrich. “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” Great Treasury of Western Thought: A Compendium of Important Statements on Man and His Institutions by the Great Thinkers in Western History. Mortimer J. Adler, and Charles Van Doren, eds. R. R. Bowker Company, (New York, NY, September 1977), 20.
Shelley, Bruce. Church History In Plain Language, 3rd ed. Thomas Nelson Inc. (Nashville, TN, 2008), 312-363.
Weaver, Douglas C., Rady Roldán-Figueroa, and Brandon Frick, eds. Exploring Christian Heritage: A Reader in History & Theology, Baylor University Press, (Waco, TX, 2012), 21.
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