Sacred Symbology pt. 5. The Imago Dei: A Prophetic Think Tank
Between humans, we, of course, look for signs of this malevolence all the time to determine the extent to which communication, and a positive relationship, can be established. We must maintain an unbroken commitment to respect, be patient when one is speaking, taking care not to speak unintelligibly, just to name a few. This is especially important when we are communicating over mail, the phone, or in some other impersonal way, because in the absence of visual cues there is the need for us to be very precise, perhaps beyond our linguistic abilities, and also causes us to be placed in a position where misunderstandings cannot be quickly resolved.
Having an expectation of benevolence with the party, other problems arise deeper, because, between two people who differ by distance as well as in being all of these problems are magnified, and require something simpler in the method and message of communication to avoid perhaps the most serious consequences imaginable in It a misunderstanding and miscommunication.
Because God is conceived as a symbol by man and man is a symbol himself, this symbol of knowledge that best unites them is minimally going to be a symbol as well. It is some kind of word. I do not say that this is a “sign.” For me to say this would be me being satisfied that man and God is going to speak about something that has an arbitrary content, where the only thing important is that they are speaking, not what they are speaking. This is the traditional realist/idealist way of things, both agreeing that the important thing is that all of this is meaningful to Man in the widest sense, but not necessarily meaningful to God. This distinction comes out when we think about the difference between things that are signs and things that are symbols.
A sign is arbitrary in the sense that the meaning of most types of sign is determined by a factor extrinsic to the reality itself. A human observer decides that a red light is a sign for a stop. A sign has a secondary relationship to the reality to which it points to; it is not necessarily joined with the object signified and has no inexorable connection with the very nature of that object. The operative factor of a symbol, however, is that it is the proper expression of another reality.1
This is also roughly sketched out in Aquinas’s concept of the Imago Dei and the Vestigia Dei. The vestige of God is the traces of God that are found in all creatures. The image of God is found only in humans. But Thelike, without saying so directly, elegantly alludes to this idea of man being a symbol meant for the purpose of transponding God’s nature in saying that things other than man receive only God’s breath, but man has to do with His Word:
…it is the fellowship with God as both a gift and a task which constitutes the imago Dei. This fellowship finds expression in the twofold fact that God endows man with his breath, his penuma., and hat he addresses man, setting him over against himself as a Thou. The rest of creation, like everything that is perishable, is also a likeness of God (Ps. 104). But there is a profound difference precisely in the form of the similitude. These other creatures receive their life from God unconsciously. God’s creativity and providence are poured out in the plenitude of creaturely life, but without involving any question, appeal, problem, or possibility of failure. Unconscious nature, whether organic or inorganic, has to do only with the breath of God; more precisely, it is simply the object of this breath (Ps. L04:30). Man on the other hand has to do with God’s Word. Herein lies his distinction, his dignity, and his burden.2
This is a word, a symbol, that does not have an arbitrary content as given by God and a word that is not to be thought acceptable to man for arbitrary reasons. It must be something very simple and very specific, and also about something in which both share an interest, can understand and agree about that goes to the heart of such a seemingly improbable relationship. What would it be? Just remember, it must also be supernatural, not prosaic and mundane.
I think what it must be hinge on are two other conditions to this word of communication. One, that God must initiate the communication because only he has the power to independently transcend and condescend to man. Two, this communication that is initiated by God to secure a beneficent relationship, since it is presumably initiated by the originator of language and truth, we would expect that the language and the end intention is set by God: that this communication is for the purpose of fulfilling a plan that God already had for man which the communication is designed to fulfill, and this communication is of a type that cuts across all superficial and man-made linguistic boundaries.
Our assumption is that only man is joined fully with the ultimate object he signifies: God.3 The joining comes generally through the vehicles of thought and language, but only by a particular thought and language that is set by God. God’s plan intends to take claim of all space, but space which is by definition free, and therefore not space which can be taken by force. It must be voluntarily given up by its owner. The free spiritual space inside of man can only be voluntarily signed over to God if Man understands the specific language of the contract and agrees to its terms. The contract is not arbitrary and set by man, nor is it complex and inaccessible to his personal and direct judgment. It does not come out of his idealistic fantasies or his realistic calculations.
What is it? I have already strongly suggested it, but think of it as a transponder code.
Encyclopedia/Dictionary of Religion. The source of this citation has been lost. ↩
Theological Ethics, “Foundations.” P. 159, Fortress Press 1966 ↩
See Man: The Image of God, by Gerrit Cornelis Berkouwer. He points out the scriptures never refer to the angels as having the image of God, and the traditional teaching that they share has contributed to a blurring of distinctions between angels and man. Leading my own view on the subject is the understanding that man is fully joined with his signified object, God, because he was born into an imperfect world, a world containing both accurate and misleading evidence’s to the truth, where choosing the good seems a perfectly equal alternative to choosing the bad. Therefore choosing the good in such a situation becomes perfectly and transcendentally good. ↩
