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Gunton (iv) on Imago Dei

Theologians throughout the Christian tradition have debated and disputed the question of what is the nature of the imago Dei? How do we define it? In what ways are human beings like God? Is it something human beings possess, do or are? And furthermore, what is the effect of sin upon the image of God? The history demonstrates the doctrine of the image of God is complex. Gunton suggests three reasons why this is the case (1998:193-195). Firstly, the persistent influence of Greek philosophy is, perhaps, no more apparent than in theological attempts at interpreting this doctrine. There is consistent evidence of Greek dualistic thought controlling the content of the imago Dei – the separation of matter and spirit, body and soul, finite and infinite. Secondly, although the doctrine of the image of God clearly appears in scripture, its occurrence is rare and references to the image are ambiguous, there is no precise meaning of its nature given. Therefore, use of the concept, theologically speaking, ‘must serve as a conceptual means of saying something about human beings according to the whole teaching of scripture’ (1998:195). Thirdly, from a systematic position the doctrine of the image of God ‘cannot be considered without due reference to redemption, both in the present and eschatologically’ (1998:195). That is, the doctrine cannot stand alone, but is closely related to, and informed by, other doctrines. With these issues in mind, our discussion begins with the outline of the two basic positions identified in the tradition: the structural view and the relational view.

The structural view, as propounded by Irenaeus and Augustine, amongst others, and then later in the mediaeval period by Aquinas was (and is) the mainstream reading of the imago Dei. It argues that the ‘divine image is something we “possess”, and it includes the properties which constitute us as human beings’ (Grenz, 1994:219). With this view, the image is unaffected by humanity’s fall into sin; rather, the image is something inherent, something characteristic of human beings. Rationality or reason is the characteristic usually emphasized by those advocating this view. Reason, in Greek philosophy was a property of the divine – of spirit not matter, of soul not body, of infinite not finite – and furthermore, it was a way in which the human was differentiated from the non-human creation. Gunton sums up the view, referring first to Irenaeus: ‘In his famous distinction between image and likeness there began a process of making reason both a chief ontological characteristic and a criterion of difference between human and non-human. By the time of Aquinas the tendency had hardened into a dogma’ (1991:48). The distinction between image and likeness enabled the theologians advocating this view to say that at the Fall the likeness of God is lost (although the image is retained), and so redemption is still necessary to restore this divine likeness.

The relational view arose out of the Reformation’s rejection of the distinction between image and likeness as ‘exegetically unwarranted and theologically injurious’ (Grenz, 1994:221). Instead, the relational view, according to Luther, understands the image of God as man’s original righteousness, ‘essentially a special relationship with the Creator’ (Grenz, 1994:222). Therefore, the Fall renders the image all but lost or destroyed. However, Luther and Calvin do speak of a ‘relic’ of the image that remains: ‘Still, we see in this diversity some remaining traces of the image of God, which distinguish the entire human race from other creatures’ (Calvin, Institutes 2.2.17). This relic is necessary if human beings are to recognise their uniqueness in creation. The relational argument runs thus: (1) human beings are created in relation to God (i.e. God’s image); (2) the Fall breaks this relation (i.e. destroys the image); (3) redemption restores human beings’ relationship to God (i.e. restores the original image).

The structural and relation views are the two most commonly found in the history of the doctrine of the imago Dei. What are we to make of them? Are they helpful approaches to understanding the imago Dei? In short, the answer is no, as the theologians of the twentieth century have demonstrated. Karl Barth, taught us that ‘the entire theological enterprise is to be an exercise in Nachdenken’ (Torrance, 1996, 74), that is, as a response to divine revelation. Both views we have outlined so far demonstrate an a priori approach to the question of the imago Dei. For Barth, this is the wrong method for doing theology and therefore instead of looking to what distinguishes human from non-human creation - the approach of the structural view - he argues we should begin with the question who is God and what is he like?

Gunton also argues that the tendency of the above views to take ‘an individualistic direction’ is harmful and is typical of ‘the modern crisis of culture – its fragmentation and decline into subjectivism and relativism’ (1993:2). The above views maintain ‘one dimension of relationality, the vertical, but not the other, the horizontal. To be was to be in internal relation to God, but not, essentially, to the neighbour or the world’ (1993:65).

Gunton’s approach to the imago Dei takes seriously the trinitarian nature of God – ‘a communion of persons inseparably related’ (1991:58) – as that which determines the nature and the meaning of the image of God. Human beings’ likeness to God consists in that they are ‘in certain ways analogous to the persons of the Trinity, in particular in being in mutually constitutive relations to other persons’ (1998:208). This is the key for Gunton: God is ‘a communion of persons’, we are made in God’s image, and so we are persons - ‘to be in the image of God is to be a person’ (1991:58). What does it mean to be a person? According to Gunton, ‘to be a person is to be distinct from other persons and yet inextricably bound up with them: to be ‘other’ only in ‘relation’’ (2002:43). Gunton agrees with Luther and Calvin that the image of God is to be understood relationally, but he argues, it is more than our vertical relation to God, the image must also reflect our beings in horizontal relation to other persons and also the non-human creation. ‘To be in the image of God is to subsist in relations . . . with other human beings’ and ‘to be in a set of relations with the non-personal creation’ (1993:3). Gunton stresses the horizontal relations because to do otherwise would permit individualistic interpretations of the image, which the Reformers are prone to.

How does Gunton deal with the effect of Sin and the image? The answer Gunton provides is to place the imago Dei in the larger doctrine of creation. Echoing the theology of Irenaeus, Gunton understand ‘creation as a project’ in which human beings, created in the image of God, have a unique role, that of enabling the rest of creation to praise it’s Creator (1991:60). The Fall, according to Gunton, sets humanity on the wrong track, in the wrong direction and as such in contradiction of the divine image. ‘God re-inaugurates the project of creation by means of the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus’ (1998:202). Jesus Christ is the image of God (Col. 1:15) and thus, ‘First, Jesus represents God to the creation in the way the first human beings were called, but failed, to do; and second that he enables other human beings to achieve the directedness to God of which their fallenness has deprived them’ (1992:100).

By means of the Spirit, humanity is recreated in the image of Christ, who is the image of God. Of course this is not an instantaneous happening, but eschatologically-focused, ‘in that true personhood will be realised only in the final Kingdom of God’ (Zizioulas, cited in Gunton, 1998:209).

Gunton identifies the basis for describing the imago Dei: the trinitarian being of God. The imago Dei means ‘being in relation’ according to Gunton and rightly so, because it articulates our relation to God (cf. the Reformers), to other persons (cf. Barth), and to the non-personal creation (cf. Pannenberg).

So, what does it mean to say human beings are made in the image of God? In short, it is to say a great deal theologically. The doctrine of the imago Dei is grounded in the nature of the trinitarian God and speaks of our relation to Him, of our relation to our neighbour, and of relation to the non-personal creation. It is a doctrine that is eschatologically-shaped; as creation is a project, so the imago Dei is a project, it has a telos, a directedness (to borrow Gunton’s language), which finds it perfection, by means of the Spirit, in (the image of) Christ.

Texts Used:

Barth, Karl (1956-1975) Church Dogmatics, Trans. Eds. G. W. Bromiley & T. F. Torrance. Edinburgh: T & T Clark.
Calvin, John (1960) Institutes of the Christian Religion, in Library of Christian Classics, Volumes XX-XI, Trans. Ford Lewis Battles. Ed. John T. McNeil, Philadelphia: Westminister.
Grenz, Stanley J. (1994) Theology for the Community of God, Carlisle: Paternoster.
Gunton, Colin E. (1991) ‘Trinity, Ontology and Anthropology: Towards a Renewal of the Doctrine of the Imago Dei’. In Persons, Divine and Human, pp. 47-61. Eds. Christoph Schwöbel and Colin Gunton, Edinburgh: T & T Clark.
_____(1992) Christ and Creation, Carlisle: Paternoster.
_____(1993) The One, the Three and the Many, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
_____(1998) The Triune Creator, Edinburgh: Edinburgh Academic Press.
_____(2002) The Christian Faith, Oxford: Blackwell.
Torrance, Alan J. (1996) Persons in Communion, Edinburgh: T & T Clark.

Reflections on 'interpreting Scripture as an art'

What are the implications of saying "interpreting Scripture is an art"?  This seems to go against the grain of thought commonly found, that anyone can interpret scripture, and suggest instead that we must become skilled readers.  It echoes Hays' colleague at Duke, Stanley Hauerwas, who in his book Unleashing the Scripture argues (provocatively) that 'no task is more important than for the Church to take the Bible out of the hand of individual Christians' (p.15).  In other words, the individual Christian is not capable of interpreting scripture rightly, or perhaps a better word is, faithfully.

We do not read scripture well. We do not read scripture enough. We are not skilled interpreters of scripture's words.  This is a fundamental problem in today's churches.  We have a poor grasp of the narrative of scripture. This results in a small and sometimes false view of God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, creation, redemption, eschatology, church; in a different but related way we do not have skills to be critical of  the television we watch, the magazines we read,  the culture we inhabit.   

Being readers of scripture should not be privilege of the few, but of the many. We need to invent ways of teaching the skills of reading faithfully - of helping the church see the larger and small narratives of scripture (the forest and the trees), of developing the ability to see the layers of meaning - the "multi complex senses" - within scripture, of connecting the God of Israel with the God of Jesus Christ (how the Testaments cohere), of allowing scripture to speak to us, in other words, submitting ourselves to the text, rather than trying to be masters of it.

This is not about getting Christians to have a more "devotional quiet times," this can work to only make us worse readers of the texts.  We must read with ears listening to those who have read before (there is a long history of interpretation we would be fools to ignore it) and with those who read with us now.  Ministers stop reading scripture <em>for</em> our churches, and instead, help our churches be enabled to readers for themselves.  If interpreting scripture is an art, where are the art classes.  Maybe as priamry schools must have a literacy hour every day, the church should have a reading hour, where we are trained to be good and faithful readers - to know scripture, that is, to know God's big story, is to begin to live more and more by it, as the Spirit of God transforms us in the image of the Son.    
   

Hays on the Art of Reading Scripture

Mark Goodacre drew my attention to this write up from Tim Gallant on some lectures by richard b. hays. Richard Hays is Professor of New Testament at Duke University and author of the following very important books: The Faith of Jesus Christ, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, and The Moral Vision of the New Testament. It's worth checking out the whole post. I really liked this from Hay's second lecture:

Interpreting Scripture is an art. This is both bad news and good. The bad news is that it is difficult to do well. No one expects to pick up a violin on the spur of the moment and play brilliantly, but for some reason, we expect to do something similar with the Bible.

The good news about the artistic character of interpretation, however, is that the art of biblical interpretation carries within it the potential for creating something beautiful. Hays goes so far as to suggest that readings of Scripture ought to be judged by the standards of beauty. He also draws attention to the all-too-pervasive tendency of biblical commentaries to be ugly and boring ...

... In his concluding section, Hays goes on to speak of "Reading Scripture through the eyes of the Evangelists." This entails seven matters:

1. God is the primary agent of the biblical story. (Hays says that in his first semester with new students, he likes to drill into them the notion: "It's about God, stupid!" Contra much "biblical scholarship," Scripture is not merely human reflections upon the divine.)

2. Scripture tells a unified story, from creation to the eschaton.

3. In the words of Hays's colleague David Steinmetz, the Bible must be read both "from front to back" and "from back to front." Neither "end" can be understood apart from the other.

4. Scripture has multipled complex senses, given by God - and some come into focus only retrospectively.

5. We are summoned to a "conversion of the imagination." We must learn not to be literalistic and unimaginative. (Hays recounts the story of a student of Brevard Childs who was labouring hard and long on everything, and only getting B's. Finally, he went to Childs and asked what it took to get an A. Reportedly Childs said: "Become a more interesting person.")

6. The story is open-ended, unfinished. Hays cites the endings of the Gospels and Acts, which are characterized by lack of "closure." Thus the readers are invited into an ongoing process.

7. Scripture is rightly read in communities of prayer, service, and witness - in other words: not from a position of supposed "objective neutrality." Such a position is doomed to sterility and misunderstanding.

Hays also notes what is requisite to all of this. We must get to know the texts "by heart," in its most extensive sense. Only immersion in the Scriptures made it possible for the Evangelists to write as they did; and likewise, only such immersion in the Scriptures will enable us to understand them. It was due to that immersion that the Evangelists were able to re-narrate the story of Jesus for the contexts which they addressed; we too have that same goal of re-narrating Jesus' story to our contexts, and therefore require a similar immersion.