What do you think of when you hear the phrases image of God or imago Dei?
Are they just Christianese euphemisms that have become commonplace?
This series opens up the discussion again. It is based on previous research, but has been revised based on the dialogue I had with Professor Brian Edgar.[1] The interdisciplinary questions at hand are: what exactly is our interior life, and do we have the ability to have relationship with God?
Relationship With God
Throughout time, we have often considered the concept of imago Dei with regard to our relationship with God. “The imago may be best understood not in terms of something humans possess, or a description of our place in the order of creation, but as expressing a particular relationship and responsibility to God.”[2]
Relationship with God is not just a Judeo-Christian construct, but also an idea found in many religions. Christians are specifically known for, “having a distinctive kind of relationship with God and to some degree growing towards the likeness of God.”[3] In fact, John Wesley often equates the imago Dei with his understanding of sanctification and holiness.
i. Fall, Sin, and Redemption
Fallen humanity poses a unique question for man. Does man lose the image of God? “Those created with the status of God’s image no longer measure up to the standard of what God’s image should look like.” The image is still there, albeit marred.
After the flood, God makes a new covenant with Noah. Genesis 9.6 is among the decrees: “Whoever sheds man’s blood, By man his blood shall be shed; For in the image of God He made man.” This shows that fallen man retains the imago Dei. Noah had seen the digression of man that grieved the Lord (Genesis 6.5-7). Somehow humanity’s interior life, one of the aspects of us that images God, became corrupt because, “every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.” There is also a hint at our fallen nature or image in the story of Adam’s family.
“And Adam lived one hundred and thirty years, and begot a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth” (Genesis 5.3).
Perhaps we no longer pass on the imago Dei in the purest sense, but rather the image of fallen man. This is one of the issues that scholars are raising when speaking against human cloning. “Cloning is inherently despotic, for it seeks to make one’s children . . . after one’s own image . . . and their future according to one’s will.”[4]
Because of sin, man fell. Because of the fall, man sins. “‘Sin,’ then, is inhabiting the muck and executing the ways of a religious and moral climate set against God; it is present as an ethos of unrestrained immorality and craving that cannot but shape persons in its own likeness.”[5] Sin itself, apart from the fallen nature, corrupts the image of God.
Mitchell portrays the fallen nature in terms of alienation from God. This separation must be bridged by redemption. “They must recognize the hopelessness of their alienation, give up all attempts to improve their situation through their own (futile) efforts, and invite God to re-create them in the image of God-revealed-in-Jesus-Christ.”[6] The fallen and sinful image only finds redemption in Jesus Christ our Lord.
ii. Reductionism vs. The Soul
Evolutionary psychology might suggest that human beings are nothing but survival machines for their genes . . . that we are ‘nothing but’ our central nervous systems . . . that the mind is ‘nothing but’ a computer program . . . strong reductionist claims are always speculative, and no more that an act of scientific faith.[7]
Against the complexity of the human person stands the reductionist, the monist, the naturalist, etc. “Naturalists hold to a view of a human person known as physicalism, asserting that a person is no more than his or her biological parts.”[8] This view is really based on empiricism, or science that only adheres to what is verifiable.
Joel Green sees the inner man as a whole. In one case, he references the soul in Deuteronomy 6.5 to support the entirety of one’s being.[9] However, he ignores the words heart and might that occur in the same verse. He mentions them elsewhere as parallelisms. Jesus eventually quotes this verse and adds mind, also translated understanding (Matthew 22.37; Mark 12.30, 33; Luke 10.27).
The question is whether or not these different words point to distinct traits of the interior life, or if they are simply parallel thoughts like synonyms.
Although there are Christians who are monists, many react against reductionism, holding to the belief in a soul or spirit or both. “Within Christian theological anthropology, human beings are corporeal beings – ensouled bodies – made in the image of their Creator.”[10] These diverging views are as old as the clash between Jewish and Greek thought. Though the Jew may have believed in a spirit man, his view of human nature was much more holistic than the Hellenistic separation of body and spirit.
For those who hold a dualistic or tripartite view of man, the danger is that the spirit world is elevated over against the material. “Though Christianity wants to insist that human beings are spiritual creatures, in the sense of being made in the image of God and having a conscious relationship to God, it has no reason to deny that we are also natural creatures.”[11]
There are questions left to be answered for those with a monistic, dualistic, or tripartite view. Earlier in my studies, I held a tripartite view. However, now I believe that such distinctions are probably more artificial or perhaps functional. I still believe there are different parts of the inner man. Yet there is also a holism to the Hebrew literature that has been eclipsed by classic Greco-Roman philosophy, and even cults that unduly separated the physical from the spirit realm.
If there is no clear answer from the academie, then perhaps an answer does not need to be sought. In some mysterious way, we image God. In some mysterious way, the Trinity operates. Can we fully explain either the parts of the imago Dei, or all the ways the Persons of the Trinity operate?
iii. Neurotheology or Spiritual Neuroscience
“With the turn of the new millennium an area of study known variously as ‘neurotheology’ or ‘spiritual neuroscience’ has emerged in the interstices between psychology, spirituality, and neuroscience.”[12] The object of study in this new field is embodied spirituality and even embodied conversion.
In a couple of cases, researches took brain scans of Tibetan monks and Franciscan nuns during prayer exercises, charting the areas of the brain that were active. Interestingly, “A single emission computed tomography (SPECT) study demonstrated changes in cerebral activity (particularly, the frontal lobes, parietal lobes, and left caudate) during glossolalia.”[13]
What Neurotheology is telling us is that the brain is active in new and surprising ways during “spiritual” encounters.
There is a basis for dialogue about the spiritual through these observations. As one who grew up in a faith tradition that encourages glossolalia (speaking in tongues), I find it interesting that this phenomenon would stimulate new types of brain activity. In classical Pentecostalism, glossolalia is an activity in which we yield our voice to the Holy Spirit. Do we lose control? No, but do we yield and participate with the Spirit in some unique way? We most certainly do.
Scientific studies of the brain show that glossolalia produces a reaction within us that we are incapable of producing on our own.
Certainly we are more than the sum total of our biological parts, as a true reductionist would say.
Certainly there is an aspect of our interior life that is capable of connecting with the spirit realm.
We are created for relationship with God.
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