In Our Image

Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’ (Gen. 1: 26) Despite the problems of interpretation, to be discussed later on, most Christians have little problem in accepting this passage. Leaving aside the issue of what the plural might signify, let us turn at once to the question of the divine image. What does it mean to say that human beings are created in God’s image? Young children have little difficulty with this. Their concrete concepts of the divine naturally lead them to conceive of a God who is physically like us – a wise and benevolent father figure who sits on his throne in the sky. We may smile at such naivety, but in fact our adult sophistication is not always so far removed from it. We speak of God as watching over us, grieving over our sins, rejoicing at our faithfulness, delighting in our prayers, and so on. God can be angry and vengeful, or he can be benevolent and forgiving. He has just the same kind of emotions as we have – or so it seems, if our talk about him is to be accepted at face value. Many Christians are reluctant to give up this all too human understanding of God because the Bible itself seems to adopt the same line. God ‘speaks’ to his servants, such as Moses (Exod. 3: 1 – 4: 17); he intervenes when his people encounter hostility, using his strong arm or hand (Exod. 15: 12, 16; Deut. 33: 2; Pss. 89: 13; 77: 15; 98: 1; Lam. 2: 4); he can smell a pleasing sacrifice (Gen. 8: 21). And although God’s thoughts are not our thoughts (Isa. 55: 8), the implication is that he does have a brain to think with. He even appears to have a few human defects. At one point he plays hide-and-seek with Adam and Eve, and cannot seem to find them (Gen. 3: 9); and later he has second thoughts about his having created man in the first place (Gen. 6: 5-6) – perhaps it had not been such a good idea after all. God, it seems, is just a big old humanoid at heart. Although many are quick to deny this rather naïve understanding, the truth of the matter is somewhat different. Because we cannot speak of God in anything other than human terms it is hard for us to shake off the idea of his superhumanity. So: ourselves in God’s image, or God in ours? Which is it?... … My thesis is that although we claim that God has made man in his image, it is all too easy for us to turn the tables and make him in our image. Fundamentalism is particularly vulnerable to this because, since it describes God in such familiar and hence necessarily human terms, he can readily become an idol of man’s own making. Of course, people do not see this. Anthony Freeman refers his readers to Isaiah 44: 14b-17 where the prophet lampoons those who make idols out of wood and worship them. Isaiah seems to invite the reader to join in the fun, and so we do. But when we make ourselves so familiar with God, and describe him in human terms, we turn him into little more than a superhuman, and so make of him an idol. We denude God of his real attributes, and trivialise him by substituting human ones. We do not easily see it, because the process of doing so is more subtle than making idols of wood, but the parallel is there. In my view what is most lacking in Christianity today is a true sense of the holy. We declare that God is holy, and sing songs about his holiness, but our demeanour suggests that we do not really believe it. We are much more comfortable with the God of the Garden of Eden who walked with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening (Gen. 3: 8) than with the God who slew Uzzah for touching the Ark of the Covenant (2 Sam. 6: 6-7). But God’s holiness – his ‘wholly otherness’, that is – must be paramount. When we realise that, then perhaps we can go some way to restoring a right understanding of God’s true nature. So how might we proceed? First of all, it is necessary to humbly acknowledge our fundamental agnosticism. For Thomas Aquinas, for instance, God is indescribable – timeless, spaceless, bodiless, immutable, and wholly simple. Note that these terms, apart from the last, are all negatives. This description in itself has huge implications for our relationship with God and for the way in which we may speak of him. How is it possible for us to know such a God? The implication of this initial point is that, secondly, we must refrain from being ‘pals’ with God. Familiarity, it is said, breeds contempt, and it certainly leads us to trivialise God. What is more, he becomes our God, as opposed to anyone else’s – a possession to be jealously guarded. In reality, of course, he is no-one’s possession: the creature cannot possess the Creator – but it does seem like that, sometimes. Thirdly, and perhaps more contentiously, if God is what Aquinas says he is, all religious rivalries are futile since, ultimately, there can be no difference between the God of Christian theism, Yahweh, Allah and Brahman. A God of such ineffable proportions can only be God. God, Yahweh, Allah, Brahman – these are simply labels for man’s sense of the divine. They simply show that people of all races and cultures acknowledge God and worship him.