Sacred Symbology pt. 5. The Imago Dei: A Prophetic Think Tank
But a true religious symbol under this transcendent principle would not be one that, like the essences of God and man, is believed non-contingent and revelational but built upon a support structure capable of and definable by substantial change, decay, and erasure. It cant be culturally dependent, or linguistically dependent, or philosophically or theologically dependent, or upon ability or state of man that is capable of functioning without what is above it.
The transcendent symbol influences the formation of true religious symbols of man’s creation, but if they don’t exist the eternal symbol lives on and survives the world and man in the vital center of Transcendence.
A false religious symbol is of man’s exclusive making and is by definition one that is subject to and is infinitely modifiable by the immanent forces culture, psychology, reason, emotion, and anything anthropocentric, and semantically constructed in a such a way to reflect this by assuring that in thought the conceptual point of contact with transcendence is framed as the only way it can: from a distance instead of nearby where we would tend to narrow our field of view of this other dimension and set it on its detail. This is why our culturally influenced Christianity uses significations for biblical symbols that go no further than “the rod of the shepherd means power and authority,” and no closer, since from its vantage point it can’t see details.
But, moving, on, let’s at least say that that man’s spirit can’t be wholly contingent upon the body because if Man is a symbol of God’s existence and nature he must possess minimally existence which is not contingent, or God-like. This is easy to agree upon, within strict limits. But we also have to conclude that the idea of volition and morality is tied to the necessary idea of some very spiritual agreement of man with God on an organic level as well as a demonstrated level and, if so, there has to be something which stands between them, some imago, that resembles them equally, which is also organically and demonstrably Divine and human, holding the basis of an agreement between them so as to give “morality” a meaning which is not imbalanced between man and God. To qualify, this Imago can’t be some (physical) action of either man or God or some common spiritual state, but both a physical action and a spiritual state that exists in the form of an independent symbol: the basis for a Divine, mutually understood language communicating shared loves which are mutually fundamental and specific.
The Personhood of God and Man
Here we set up the relation of man to God, as symbol-to-symbolized, on the basis of their shared and revealed natures by their production or attraction to a certain imago. Most importantly in respect to any concept of a relation between them, they are persons first in the sense that they are both capable of freely acting upon knowledge and capable of creating symbols of that knowledge and exchange them for the union over meaning as partners in communication.
It makes perfect sense that if God is anything more than a mere static, insular, purposeless force, then what He creates would be a sign of this other dimension of God that exists in addition to the mere force. Forces, like gravity and electromagnetism, cause a change in form or position of matter, and because they are one dimensional, they affect things one-dimensionally. If anything existed which also has a conscious dimensionality and a measure of independence from mere matter, then they are not signs of God’s mere existence as a force, but signs of God’s existence in having a certain “nature.” They are therefore more than mere transmitters of a finite piece of information about God’s existence as a force, but they are at least potential transmitters of His moral use of force. They are symbols or at least conceived as symbols, but the highest type of symbol is also what we call “persons,” which is a very comprehensive concept.
God’s supernatural and sovereign “moral use of force,” which makes man capable and desirous to seek him and speak to him, in expectation of a positive relationship, is a way of saying that God is by choice consistent with His own laws when He creates and reaches out to his creation, not by a meaningless static application of force. His is not self-conflicted and double-minded. God is here defined as a person, which means that His willful relation to others like Himself, contained in his nature, though not respectful of persons in the individual sense, is certainly in the ontological sense.
Personhood has been called the ultimate concept by theologians, and so it is integrated within the concept of the imago of God which identifies the nature of God and capacities of man that hold the potential of their agreement. Both God and man are persons. Therefore to know what a person is will be to know something about this image joins God and Man toward a spiritual relationship since this is only possible between persons. This image of God that is sent and received from man is neither God or man but communicates and demonstrates potentiality, morality, fulfillment, freedom, and the supernatural in and of both parties over it’s Truth.
