The Creator of God and free man

“The first promise which we hear from the Bible about man is his creation in the image of God.  What is meant by this, and what does it mean today? “God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him.” (Gen. 1:27).  This means, first of all, that man is a creature of God, like all His other creatures.  They are His fellow-creatures.  He is not their God, and conversely neither “Mother nature” nor “Father State” are his God.  In between God and nothing man exists together with all other beings, as the creation of the divine good pleasure.  There is a solidarity which embraces Him together with nature.  This belief in creation has a critically liberating force, if it is taken seriously.  The gods and demons vanish from the world, which is understood as a creation of this transcendent God.  This cuts the ground from under the feet of  the self-deification of man, of national politics, of nationalism and of the fetishism of goods.  There are no divine men.  Human man is neither “man”s God” nor “man’s wolf”, but is conscious of being a creature of a free God among his fellow-creatures.  Like them he has been called out of nothingness into endless existence.  This means, further, that of all creatures it is man alone that has been created and destined as the image of God upon the earth.  The image or likeness is something that corresponds to God Himself and is meant to do so.  In His image the creator wills to find His partner, His echo, and His honour.  In His image He wills to be present Himself upon the earth.  His image is meant to represent Him and to act in His name.  In His image He can Himself be encountered, and His goodness experienced.  The doctrine of creation sees all things as a creation of God, but man as the image of God.  This indicates the special position of man in the world.  Things and animals are just what they are.  But man is a mirror of what he fears and loves above all things.  This may be a mirror of his bodily interests, a mirror of his society, a mirror of his own work ahd his social roles, but always and image of what he loves and fears.  This is hte point of his off-centre position.  The appointment of man in the image of God means that man cannot be absorbed in that which is to hand, but that the infinite distance of the creator from his creation also destines man to infinite freedom over against all finite things and relationships and even his own reality. It is the honour of man that he is counted worthy of this relationship.  And it is his wretchedness that from the moment he forgets his transcendent background, he must expect or fear infinitude in infinite things, and divinity in earthly and human relationships.  “What you put your heart on is your God”, Luther rightly said in the Larger Catechism.  “He who looks upon himself does not give out light”, says a Chinese proverb.”

 

Quote: Jurgen Moltmann, On Human Being, pgs. 108-109

     “If Christians think about the basis of their hope, about the “human reign of the Son of Man,” then these two ways, of the “great refusal” and the numerous forms of accommodation, become marginal phenomena.  The basis of Christian hope lies in faith in the crucified Son of Man.  It is in him that the wholly other kingdom of God has set foot on earth.  It is therefore “hidden under the cross” (Luther), and becomes present only during  temptation and struggle.  Following the crucified Jesus creates distance of Christians from this “passing world”, which one can only have “as if one had it not” (1Cor.7.29).  The following of the crucified Jesus however also creates the strength for the incarnation of love in those possibilities which one has or finds.  This love grips this life as if it were everything, and yet at the same time knows that that which is is not all there is.  It denies itself as passionately as if everything were over, and yet it hopes in the resurrection of the dead.  It finds God in the concrete, and yet it knows that everything concrete is transcended  by God.”

     Jurgen Moltmann, On Human Being, pgs. 44-45

     “What is really new in the New Testament, and is repugnant to any form of humanism, is in fact, the recognition of true God and of true man in the crucified Jesus.  How, however, is humanness to be seen in him?  Compared with the Greek ideal for man of the good and of the beautiful, the exact opposite is to be found in Jesus.  From the beginning of his ministry right to the end of it men come to him with every conceivable illness and fault, from fever to blindness, from demon-possession to leprosy, from treason to prostitution.  Jesus born in a manger and of humble origin, was himself one of these “poor”.  He did  not preach and live out a new ideal of the good and just man, but brought the gospel of the kingdom of God to the poor, sat at table with “sinners and tax collectors”, healed the sick and drove out demons, called blessed the poor, the mourning, those that wept, and the hungry: “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”.  He brought God to expression among the godless and the despised.  He preached righteousness as being God’s free gift of grace to the unrighteous.  He embodied the secret, “God with us”, “God for us”, on earth in such a way that he became a brother to the wretched.  For this reason the rejected and the outcasts come to him out of the holes and corners into which good society has driven them.  The poor of whom he speaks and who come to him, are so poor that they can find a place in no human society.  They live unprotected, abandoned to nothingness.  They cannot appear to be other than they are.  They cannot conceal their sickness and defects.  They are not simply oppressed slaves and the exploited proletariat, but are in fact those “accursed of this earth”, out of whom no state can be made, nor any revolution produced.  In that Jesus sees himself in them through his fellowship with them, he can  be called “the Son of Man”.  The Son of Man is he who sees himself in the possessed, in that he drives out the demons.  The Son of  Man is he who sees himself in sinners, in that he forgives their sins.  The Son of Man is he who identifies with those who are below the mean of humanness, in order to call them human.  Because he recognizes himself in the poor, the hungry and those in prison, he calls them “the least of my brethren” (Matt. 25:40).  Already in Jesus’ course this fellowship of God with godless man becomes visible.  Man is revealed as the being accepted and loved by God in the manner of Jesus, and God is revealed through him as this human God.”

     What does this say about how we are to be before  others and with others in our world, if we are to be like Christ?

Quote: Jurgen Moltmann, On Human Being: Christian Anthropology in the Conflicts of the Present. pgs. 18-19

     We live in a world, particularly in the west, where image is everything.  We go to extremes to project an image that people will be enamoured with, and sold on.  Our image seemingly takes us places or limits the heights that we may go.  But when the bible speaks of image, it is not something that we put out for our benefit.

     In Genesis, God says, Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness.  For centuries, theologians have tried to express exactly what that means.   At times it has been boiled down to us being unique because we have an intellect and a will, we can make decisions, or that we have been charge of the earth.  Today, this image is related to the Trinity and is about relationship.  For Augustine, According to Stanley Grenz, “the ultimate mark of the imago dei is the mind in proper relation to God.”  Thoughts of what being made in the image of God means vary and the statements above are both simplified and limited.  A lot has been written on the subject and today in particular there is a resurgence and expansion of the Trinitarian concepts of the imago dei.

     For us to see the true imago dei, we need to look to christ.  The idea of image or icon and Christ is expressed most clearly in the New Testament, in Paul’s writings.  2 Corinthians 4:4 says, In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.  Colossians 1:15-16 says, He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers–all things have been created through him and for him.

      We are perhaps a mere reflection, whereas Christ is the exact representation, or image of God.  It does not stop there for us.  As new creations in Christ, we are being transformed into the likeness of Christ by the Holy spirit.  This is ongoing, and will continue until we are united with him.  Yes image is everything, but its God’s image, expressed in the person of Christ that is everything.

Quote:  Stanley Grenz, The Social God and the Relational Self: a Trinitarian Theology of the Imago Dei, pg. 156

Picture: Self Image is Everything, by ojbyrne

     A regular series with Jurgen Moltmann.  Today’s quote taken from his book, On Being Human, page 16.  He writes,

Ecce Homo! Behold the man!       

“When we get down to the heart of the matter, in the biblical stories the question, “What is Man?” is not derived from comparisons with that which exists for ever, with animals, with other nations, or with the divine above us.  It arises in specific form in the face of a surprising and specific divine call and commission.  So Moses on Mount  Sinai (Exodus 3:11), When confronted with the God who speaks to him out of the burning bush and charges him with the release of Israel from slavery in Egypt, asks “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt?” So Jeremiah, in his inaugural vision, confesses, ”Ah Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth” (Jeremiah 1:6)  And Peter in his encounter with Jesus confesses, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord” (Luke 5:8). Here self-knowledge does not arise simply from the impression of the divine above.  It arises at the point at which man in his life is charged with something impossible by the call of God.  In this event the man affected knows his particular limits and inabilities and recognizes them as being his fault. He learns what sort of man he should be but cannot be of himself.  He learns what could be made out of him, but as far as he is concerned cannot be.  The divine call, which demands of him a new being, places him at an insuperable distance from himself.  It cuts so deeply into his life that it separates him from himself, and involves him in a change of identity.”