What does it mean to be human? Obviously there are various aspects of being human, these components are delicately interwoven and complicated to articulate because, they are holistic. In other words, they are inexplicably united in such a way that to describe the significance of one apart from the others is not doing justice to the nature of humanity. Thus, it is important to maintain an understanding of the importance of all of these aspects as a whole and not as separate entities of what it is to be human. We will be discussing four aspects that compose a picture of what it means to be human: The Imago Dei, the distinction in gender, the importance of society as rooted in marriage and Christ as being truly human.
The biblical narrative opens in Genesis with a creation account. Although there are certain veins of theological thought that take this account as a literal historical account of the origins of life, it is rather clear that the biblical account is rather un-interested in reiterating a scientific modernly historic account of the origins of life, or at least, if it is, it does a definitively poor job of it. We must account for the fact that the ancient scholars and scribes were not living in a modern empirically centric environment. The author of Genesis seems much more interested in interacting with the environment she is in. For example, ancient near eastern societies presupposed the existence of God, or gods. The writers were not concerned with arguing for the existence of God, they merely assumed there was one. What was far more concerning was the relationship that the god or gods had with the people they governed or the part of creation they were directly concerned with. For instance, in Canaan, the god Baal was understood to be the god associated with life, or rain. Each year the God Baal would rise up give the land the water necessary to grow crops and sustain people. Each year Baal would die and each year Baal would rise from death in accordance with the seasons. As such, the livelihood of the gods were directly connected to the cycle of the seasons and the activity of creation. If there were a flood, or a fire, or plague, or famine, the gods were just as much at risk of death or compromise as the rest of the creative order. The temples that were dedicated to whichever god would have in the sanctuary, a statue erected in honor of whichever god to represent the authority and reign of said god in that area. The human kings, who fancied themselves as gods, would also erect statues, images of themselves in the surrounding areas to represent their reign in the region.
When we speak of humanity as being the image of God, we are referring to the same concept. As we read the creation account that is in Genesis 1, the emphasis is on the fact that God, Yahweh, created everything that is in the world, from chaos to order. This signifies God’s authority over creation. Where other gods in near eastern culture were apart of creation, and therefore, susceptible to the elements, Yahweh remained unaffected by creational dangers because He had created them in the first place. Just as He had created day and night, sun and moon, and all living creatures, He also created humanity. He created male and female in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. Whereas other gods and kings would erect statues to signify their rule, Yahweh established humans to rule the rest of creation. Linguistically speaking, an image is a copy. The question that we must now ask ourselves is this: If to be human is to be image, what is the likeness between the copy and the prototype?
To be made in the image of God has three primary implications: we are image insomuch as we are endowed, have function, and participate. There are three main veins of thinking when it comes to God’s image as being endowed and we see these strands being associated by the thinkers who are responsible for them. Augustine saw our endowment as being the ability to reason. Thomas Aquinas saw our endowment emerging as we use our senses to interact with the world beyond us. Finally, Calvin somewhat lumps the two ideas together in saying that endowment is the excellencies of creation as we see in wisdom and beauty, but in the sense that these excellencies are a type of reason our endowment therefore involves both our reason and our senses. When we speak of the image in terms of function, we are ultimately speaking of God’s commands to fill the earth and subdue it. We need to understand that image is not a static quality, such that we bear Gods image and we reflect his quality. Image is a way of describing relationship. Calvin wants to recover this understanding of image as dynamic, sin is not that I have lost something, sin is the interruption of a relationship, in the same way that grace is not a thing, it is the restoration of a relationship. Finally, we understand image through language of participation. Both endowment and function are united in participation. Participation in God’s image must be understood separately from the concepts of fellowship or relationship. We should understand participation within the concept of gift. We are insofar as God gives us, and insofar as we live in God’s gracious gifting. Humanity is only human insofar as it participates with God. Human being is being always being mediated through God. It is always mediated through the mediator. We are insofar as we are in Christ, the mediator.
Since being human is to be the image of God, and to be the image of God is to be understood as something we participate in, we must discuss how we participate with God. The relation between male and female are the two primary ways of being human. Male and female together are image. We are the image in that we are either male or female. These are the two distinct ways of being human. Male is not more human than the female, and yet both are different. It is not good for the human being to be alone. Adam names the animals, but he has no equal. Marriage is embedded in the fabric of creation. The command to fulfill the earth and subdue it lies on men and women equally. It is this that defines us from the rest of creation. This includes our sexuality. It includes all facets of being human. The self is expressed through the body and our bodies define who we are. Our bodies are not merely vehicles for our souls. To be without a body is to not be human. Through the body we relate to the rest of creation, and through the body we relate to other humans. There are two ways of being a body, as male and female. In our solitude we are image of God, and we become a community of God as we together are individual persons. Although the world consists of many types of relationships and interactions, it is crucial to understand the concepts of marriage since it is the most fundamental interaction between the two primary ways of being human. God gives to us the ability to participate with him by being in relationship mediated by Christ between both God and us, and between each other. As such, the gift of new life in children is the complete gift of oneself. Therefore, children are a necessary, yet not exhaustive aspect of Christian marriage. It is through loving our children that we come to understand God’s love for us. If the family is to properly mirror God as Ephesians 5 and 6 says it ought, the reflection is simply incomplete if children are not included in that picture. Being a child is ultimately something you do not have a choice about. That is, we do not have a choice regarding the family in which we find ourselves. Our choice involves the choice of obedience alongside others who are covenanted.
Now that we have established the foundation of all society and culture, marriage, we should spend a little time identifying the implications of this on a larger scale. While society is established upon marriage, God establishes broader based commands to humanity with regards to culture. Culture is the sum social response to human being in the world. Culture is the total of what humans make with which God has made. Religion is apart of culture and culture is a human construction therefore religion is a human construction. Culture must be understood within the constructs of the created order as we see in the creation narrative, so we will take a look at the expository aspect in Genesis. We need to understand our relation to the rest of creation as much as we need to understand our relation to God and to each other. God animates Adam, and is the source of Adam’s life. Life is received, and therefore we are not separated from the rest of creation, we are apart of it. In Gen 1, day is a spatial reference and not a chronological one. In three of the days God makes space, and the next day God fills the space. It is about moving from Chaotic and empty to ordered and beautiful. We receive our being from creation every bit as much as we receive our being from God. We are sixth day creatures, with them we share the breath of life, we are formed by the stuff that makes the universe and when we die we will become the stuff that makes the universe. We are human in as much as we recognize that this place, this world, this earth is our home. Furthermore, we are human in so much as we die. Mortality is embedded in the good creation from the beginning, but mortality in the form of death is a unique result of the fall. Immortality is an extra gift that is the result of being in relationship with the creator. Even in the garden, immortality is not a sure thing. Immortality is eschatological, it is the life after life. The common task that is laid upon all human beings as the children of Adam and his wife is to represent God as stewards of this world. This is a radical concept in the ancient near east. As we have already said, the ones who represent the gods is the king. The king has dominion and the people are the chattel. The Bible’s mandate is not limited to one class of people but to the whole human race. So there is exultation. And at the same time there is limitation. God is the creator, not us, Adam tends, and extends but he does not plant. Adam names the animals, but it is God who brings the animals to Adam and forms them to be named. Whatever Adam names the animal, that is the animal’s name. If this is the case, stewardship denotes a fundamental disposition towards the world. Striving toward stewardship is to move toward the goodness of work and away from the evil of toil. It is a sign of sanctification. If it is a disposition it applies to all our work. The term stewardship can get high jacked, to mean finances or environment. Stewardship applies to everything we do, in so far as we see ourselves becoming human being in the pattern of receiving from creation and giving to creation. So we see that in all that we do, we are stewards.
Up until this point we have discussed what it is to be the image of God absent of the importance of the cross. Let us be clear, there is nothing that we can speak of that is not affected by Christ’s birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension. As such we cannot speak of humanity as being the image of God without also speaking about the necessity of seeing our role as image in light of the Christ. After all, in light of the Fall, we cannot speak about what it truly means to be human without speaking about He who is truly human. The reason why this paper has been altogether silent about the integration of Christ in the topic of what it is to be human is because we will be discussing this in a later paper. For now, we will simply assert that our humanity is Christ’s humanity. All being is mediated by the Logos of God. This should function as our lens of stewardship. Since we cannot confer about what it is to be human without talking about Christ, we also must mention the importance of the sacraments. Since it is through the act of baptism that we are wed to Christ by faith, and the substance of the bread and wine truly coexist with the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, It is with the water and at the table when we are most human. There is a real union with Jesus, such that he really gives himself to us, so that we might be an obedient humanity towards God. In that connection we remain united to him and in him united to his father.
In conclusion, we have a comprehensive understanding of the four aspects that compose a picture of what it means to be human: The Imago Dei, the distinction in gender, the importance of society as rooted in marriage and Christ as being truly human. In the next paper we will be discussing how our image is affected by sin, and therefore form a more substantial understanding of the importance of Christ as the definition of what it is to be human.
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