Sacred Symbology pt. 5. The Imago Dei: A Prophetic Think Tank

Sacred Symbology: Man as Transponder with God: The Imago Dei

The way in which our theologians speak of the Image of God, the Imago Dei, just scratches the surface.

It seems too simple. God says “let us make man in our own image, after our likeness.” This “in our likeness” is just saying that he wants man to be like him, to live up to the exalted image of God. You do righteous things. You believe in “God.” You are then the fulfilled Image of God. But it’s not that simple, especially in light of the New Testament revelation. The Bible is a big book and the implications of this go far afield of causal and pedestrian sensibilities which is, by the way, the same place from which our intelligensia operates. Everything we now know must be brought to bear on this subject.

This is an attempt to understand the idea of Imago Dei, the Image of God, from the standpoint of the imago, the symbol, the representation, the example, instead of the individual or God. It would seem that the fundamental thing that is not a person but which most closely defines a person is a good starting point for theology (and anthropology) since this is the idea behind the Image of God, that it is both a product of transcendence and a certain expression of it by man, and is assumed to be then the means by which a kind of fundamental communication takes place between them.

Symbolism is so basic to sentient existence that it is not a stretch that in respect to a personal God he would use it to reach man and which man would use to speak to God, and if so then there is a presumption of an ultimate symbol that God has given man to fulfill which man in response gives back fulfilled. An Imago dei.

The identification of the attributes of this theoretical ultimate symbol is the subject of this article. It will roughly outline the imago to draw a conclusion as to what we know that already fits this personal description. We may reverse the assumptions of theology that God is best understood through an understanding and acceptance of a principle, idea or a moral semblance by action, not an imago, a symbol, something that is both an originally a quasi foreign idea and a device of trans-immanent communication. This imago is an informational symbol, one of meaning and knowledge. It is originally foreign to the world yet the most psychologically integratable to a person who is thought of as moral, in the most basic sense. The receiver wants this image, look or it, and in finding it has the choice and ability to bring himself to it. By the imago he comes up as close as possible to the originator in the sense of one will to another who expects a similarity by minds and the Truth that it holds.

Therefore the main purpose here is first to establish against the historical understanding and treatment that the Imago Dei is our concept of God that he sends to man for his response, but another concept that is entirely foreign and supernatural by example. A supernatural image of God which man returns to God in a response agreeable with God’s intention in giving it from man’s deliberative and moral center, and equal to God’s mind.
That true trans-immanent symbolism must be a hybrid of immanence and transcendence, sharly of alien origin, and not handled by man as a mere human construction.
Then, we have to establish what is this imago that God initially gives is, precisely, biblically, as a transcendent symbol, not generally.

If such a thing is found, then it radically changes the reason for the creation of the universe and all things in it, especially man, and radically changes our entire conception of a moral being. For now, morality cannot be conceived, like this divine symbol, as entirely an ideational human construction and choice of the will or by way of insular reason and emotion, but must combine in a demonstrative way both dimensions, which implies a morality of man’s return demonstration of his spiritual handling of divine things expressed by aligning a certain image of foreign meaning with a certain image of legal faith in a foreign meaning. That if this symbol of God is a divine thing of knowledge without which is impossible to obtain, the divine things must be as precise as that knowledge, not generally identified, and not by ideas, but by divine Truth through a Truth of divine phenomena readily available to Man’s choice.

Everything is a Symbol of God

It is easy that if everything is a kind of symbol of God, then man is a kind of symbol of God. But our anthropology here is first formed through an understanding of symbolism, not the enumerating of man’s attributes that resemble God’s or God’s that resemble man’s. Both that of God’s attributes and man’s may show correspondence and incompatibility, and imply certain ontological conclusions, but the fact remains that an attribute is not to be equated with the reason why they are as they are, and what they are ultimately for. If the symbol is the basic carrier of information that is not God and not man, our answer may be found there instead and used to backtrack to God and man instead of thinking that symbolism is a mere product and tool for them in any way they seem fit.

I think that the first task that should be undertaken by, say, a missionary to a primitive tribe of people, is to learn the language. It is obvious that the message that you want these foreign people to understand and accept won’t be accepted unless it is understood by them, and it will not be productive in an effort of reaching these people by overestimating our abilities to assume points of agreement or disagreement on the basis of direct observation. Accordingly, since language is symbolism, in attempting to contact God its also not a good idea to assume that we know all about Him and ourselves at the deepest levels by understanding only the semantics and syntax of our chosen conceptual language and not the basic conceptual object of the symbol itself which is to be exchanged. We would, again, be overestimating our abilities to know ourselves by a direct examination and without the ability to know first the basic unit of our means of knowing and means of showing meaning.

If you ask them, theologians traditionally have no problem with the statement “everything is a symbol of God.” They have no problem with saying that man is a symbol of God because the scriptures quote God as saying, “let us create man in our image, and after our likeness.” They have no problem, that is, with this designation with the exception that it is applied to man in a way that demands that such an image carry a certain knowledge of God to live up to which is originally outside of Man or, more accurately, that the image primarily be that sublime knowledge which is given man to nevertheless inhabit.

The three main approaches to this Imago Dei have been Substantive, Functional and Relational, spanning roughly from Thomas Aquinas to the present day. They are inadequate and tell us very little about man or God through symbolism.

The imago is a symbol of and given by God, and Man was made as an imago by God. That man is already an image of God is not in dispute, but it implies a degree to which man lives up to it, which is the true moral satisfaction of the signification of the image. The theological connective tissue between man and God in an imago then would have to be that which is not them but foremostly like them in relational unity across transcendent boundaries, which can only be a shared vision of a unique kind of Truth given by God for an impossible but acceptable union of dimensions.

An image, we must remind ourselves, is not the signification, the meaning, the substance of the symbol. This is important, lest we take symbol in Image of God as a purely human construction for purely human ends. The image is an indicator of divine meaning, a sure sign, an informational device of that substance. Its cursory and marks a place where meaning is to be found. Symbols are made for speaking meaning to another and are not meaning themselves. And if the symbol is to be received and understood by another it is also a means of communication of that intended information. If between God and man its a device of communication from one dimension to another of a knowledge which in some way unites both parties over that knowledge and meaning, which is the fulfillment of the intended content of that imago.

The Substantive type of Imago was advocated by Aquinas, who saw “let us make man in our image, and after our likeness” to mean that man has something he shares with God’s nature, but the animals do not have, primarily reason. The Functional approach was begun probably by Johannes Hehn, that the Imago Dei is simply a royal title given to man. Later theologians like VonRad (Commentary on Genesis) picked up on this to say that this speaks not of a quality of Man but a call to be God’s representative on earth. The third approach comes primarily from Barth. The image is not in what man is or does, but that man is a counterpart to God. It speaks of a relationship between God and man, wherein man is capable of responding to God. The phrase “let us make man” contains an “I” object in the Trinity and a “thou” object which refers to man, where God calls man and man is capable of responding.¹

We are getting close, but these are circumventing the issue that remains around the idea of image, imago.

Aquinas’s version above takes “image” as man’s abilities that are like God’s, where his higher superficial attribute that is not knowledge of God still allows him to digest it.

Hehn’s moral one is again worthless without the major component of titles and moral actions being marks of the entrusting of and wisdom and judgment around some kind of knowledge of God, which content cannot be separated from a title or an obligation unless our motive for conferring them is unexpressed or they are without value. I can’t call myself an entomologist without a degree in entomology or having passed the Board-Certified Entomologist test.

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