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Few biblical motifs have generated as much theological heat as the imago Dei. The idea that we are created in the image and likeness of God, found in Genesis 1:26–27, begs for theological elucidation. Its deceptive simplicity opens up a world of questions.
The Liberating Image: The Imago Dei in Genesis 1
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At first glance, the doctrine of the imago Dei looks like a definition of human nature, but upon closer inspection, it redirects our gaze toward God. We are the image of the divine, yet when we look closely at ourselves, we see but a mirror. The mirror reflects a God who cannot be captured by human sight. So what is it we see in ourselves? A hermeneutical circle sets the mind to spinning.
Where the mind grows dizzy, however, the heart rejoices. Few biblical ideas have provided so much solace and satisfaction as the imago Dei. Genesis singles out human beings, from all of creation, as the image and likeness of God. The mind asks, so what are we? While the heart responds, whatever we are, we are like God!
Perhaps the very fact that we can ask who we are provides the best clue to our divinely appointed role in the world. That is what philosophically inclined theologians have argued throughout the centuries. Those who ask questions for a living have been certain that our reason best reflects God's nature, but this seems like a particularly severe case of wishful thinking. Far from stroking the mind, the imago Dei boggles it. Yet the question lingers: How can we be the image of an imageless God? Without a clear picture of God, the imago Dei looks empty and bare.
J. Richard Middleton's The Liberating Image is clear, careful, and comprehensive. Middleton, who teaches biblical studies at Roberts Wesleyan College, is well known in theological circles for publications on postmodernism and Christian belief. Remarkably, he is as much at home in the latest debates about Sumero-Akkadian creation accounts as he is in arguments about the nature of truth. He writes with one eye on scholars in their study carrels and the other on Christians in the pew. The result is biblical scholarship that is religiously relevant without being watered down.
Middleton is also forthright about how his personal background has shaped his understanding of the imago Dei. He grew up white in predominantly black Jamaica, emigrated to Canada and then the United States, where he settled on "Jamericadian" as the best term to describe his cultural hybridity. His experiences of dislocation and alienation have inspired him to treat Genesis 1:26–27 as something like a biblical declaration of human rights. The image of God is liberating, he argues, because it authorizes the entire human race to represent God's rule on earth.
Middleton is efficient in demonstrating the futility of looking for some part of human being that best reflects the divine. The Old Testament resists dividing humans into distinct constituent parts. Middleton also is quick to dismiss the idea that it is the human body itself that is the image of God. He admits that excluding the body from the image results in a dualistic anthropology that is out of place in the biblical worldview. Nevertheless, he sticks to the idea that the image has to do with what we are called to do in the world, rather than something as trivial as what we look like.
And isn't that obvious? Since I don't think so, I should state up front my own interpretation of the imago Dei. I think this idea is at once impossibly simple and profoundly surprising. The image of God makes little sense in the Old Testament context, where it is mentioned explicitly only three times (Genesis 1:26–27; 5:1, and 9:6). If we are to rescue it from hopeless obscurity, it must be taken both literally and christologically. Our bodies look like they do because God decided from eternity to become incarnate in Jesus Christ. Simply stated, we are like God because we are like Jesus.
