Theology – Page 17

Created. Now What? Part 3: Recognizing the Image of God

October 23, 2017 by Dan Olinger

So the first major takeaway from creation theology is the fact that we’re special—specifically, that we’re in the image of God.

Before we get to what that means, I’d like to take a post to note whom it involves.

It involves every human—everyone who’s descended from Adam and Eve.

First, it includes sinful humans, and that’s all of us, of course. Every descendant of Adam and Eve is sinful, in at least three ways:

We’re guilty of Adam’s sin, because Adam was our representative in the Garden. Paul tells us that in Adam, “all sinned” (Rom 5.12)—not “all sin,” or “all will sin,” but “all sinned.” There are different theories as to how that works, but no orthodox theologian denies the fact that the guilt for Adam’s sin has been imputed to us.

What’s that you say? That’s not fair? Sure seems like it, doesn’t it? But let me encourage you to take a look at the whole picture. Adam’s guilt is imputed to you; that really hurts. But your sin is imputed to Christ (Is 53.4-6), and that’s not “fair” either. And the coup de grace is that Christ’s righteousness is imputed to us (2Cor 5.21), so that God sees us through Christ-colored glasses.

That’s quite an arrangement.

You can whine about fairness if you want, but this is the best deal in the history of ever, and you’d be a fool not to take it.

As descendants of Adam, we’ve inherited his sinful nature, so that we’re inclined toward sin; we naturally lean in that direction (Rom 8.5-8; Eph 4.22). We like it.

And we sin. Even if Adam’s sin weren’t on our account, we have plenty of our own to answer for. We’re guilty (Rom 3.10-18), as guilty as sin. And if you don’t think so, consider how you’d feel if your thoughts were broadcast, 24/7, to everyone you know. I sure wouldn’t like it. I’m not the only one like that, am I?

But here’s remarkable thing. Even as sinners, we’re still in the image of God (Gen 9.6; Jam 3.9). God’s image in us is so powerful, so deeply embedded by his sculpting hand, that all the sin in the universe can’t blast it away. God is bigger than sin, and so is his image in us.

And one more thing. At the moment he placed that image in us, he said specifically that it involved both kinds of humans: male and female (Gen 1.27).

No, the woman wasn’t an afterthought. That’s ridiculous; God doesn’t have afterthoughts. She’s in the image of God too. I’d go so far as to suggest that neither sex completely reflects the image of God; the image is most clearly and completely displayed by the two together. Which means, I suppose, that the sexes image God most clearly when they’re friends, not enemies.

So why did God delay the creation of Eve? He didn’t say, but as a teacher, I have a suspicion.

He wanted Adam to realize his own incompleteness before he completed him with Eve. He wanted him to treasure what a remarkable and perfect gift she was. So he set him out to name all the animals (Gen 2.19), and here they came, two by two, each male with his perfect female complement. And Adam noticed the obvious: there’s no one like that for me (Gen 2.20). He recognized his need. (Discovery learning!) And when God met that need, perfectly (Gen 2.21-22), Adam burst into poetry (Gen 2.23).

Men have been writing poems to women ever since, with varying degrees of skill. And reception, alas.

Now, how do you treat the image of God?

Well, suppose I’m in London, and I see a bust of the Queen. And I spit on it.

I’m going to have to do a lot of explaining to a lot of Brits, some of them undoubtedly in an official capacity.

And what if I say, “I didn’t spit on the Queen; I spit on a chunk of marble”?

Nope. That excuse is not gonna fly. It’s a piece of marble that looks like the Queen, and that’s the whole point. My treatment of the image can reasonably be taken to reflect my attitude toward the original, the person depicted.

That’s why murder is wrong, you know. Not primarily because the human has a right to life (which he does), but because murder is an attack on, a defacing of, the image of God (Gen 9.6).

So how do you treat the image of God that you see every day? In the rich? The poor? The white? The black? The male? The female? The stronger than you? The disabled? The respectable? The death-row inmate? The countryman? The refugee?

Images of God. All of them. Better not spit on them, or you’re going to have to answer to the Original, and he’s not going to be happy about it.

You disrespect certain kinds of people? Then you need to ask yourself why you despise God so much. You need to repent, and you need to make restitution. You need to repair the damage you’ve done.

Creation theology means that there shouldn’t need to be #metoo hashtags. Or any other campaigns to end abuse, physical or verbal, or even simple disrespect. It’s all ungodly, and in that sense it’s also subhuman.

Get with the species.

Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

Photo by David Marcu on Unsplash

Created. Now What? Part 2: Implementing the Image of God

October 19, 2017 by Dan Olinger

Part 1

We’re six days into Creation week. God has issued orders, as a sovereign from his throne, and the universe is running like clockwork.

It’s all good.

But now, on day 6, God changes everything. He comments to himself that he’s about to do something qualitatively different; he’s going to make someone “in our image” (Gen 1.26).

And he rises from his chair.

Why do I say that?

The account in Genesis 1 is tersely straightforward: God makes man in his own image (Gen 1.27), as he had said he would. But Moses, the narrator and cinematographer, has kindly given us a close-up shot of the same scene in the next chapter:

Then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature (Gen 2.7).

Unfortunately, we’ve become so familiar with these words that their significance escapes us.

This is physical, not verbal, language. God is not speaking Adam into existence; he’s sculpting him, forming him, shaping him, with his hands. He’s “rescue breathing” into him, with his lungs and mouth.

This is shocking language. God is a spirit (John 4.24); he has no hands, lungs, or mouth. What’s this all about?

I’d like to engage in a little biblically informed theological speculation for a moment.

We know that the active agent of creation was the Son (John 1.3; Col 1.16; Heb 1.2). We also know that the Son is the person who later, in God’s eternal plan (Heb 10.5, quoting Ps 40.6-8 LXX), became incarnate, permanently united with a human nature, including a human body, which he retains to this day (Acts 1.11; Col 2.9) and apparently will forever. We’re also fairly confident that Jesus appeared in bodily form repeatedly in the Old Testament, before the incarnation, as the “Angel of YHWH.” In Genesis 18 Abraham has an extended conversation with God, apparently this same “Angel of YHWH,” after sharing a meal with him in his tent—a very physical activity indeed. (Centuries later, Jesus would ask for a piece of fish to eat [Lk 24.41-43], specifically to demonstrate to his disbelieving disciples that he was indeed with them physically.)

So here’s what I imagine.

The Son, Jesus, is the one speaking all things into existence. In embodied form, he rises from his chair and steps to an area of clay. Kneeling, he begins to work the clay with his hands—physical hands—and fashions a body—a recumbent statue—that looks like him. (Isn’t it more appropriate that our body is in the image of the Son’s than that his is in ours?) When the sculpture is complete, he leans back on his heels and surveys his work, not to inspect it for flaws but simply to take joy in it.

It’s good.

But it’s not complete. It’s not human. It’s not alive.

The Son leans over the lifeless form and, placing his lips on the clay mouth, he exhales.

Once? Twice? Several times?

One thing we know. There is none of the desperation that accompanies CPR today: Come on, buddy; breathe for me now. Don’t die on me, man. Breathe for me!

The Son exhales with sovereign authority, and this statue, this clay mass, pinks up. It comes to life.

And there, sitting in the clay, is a living, breathing image of God.

Adam.

Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

Photo by David Marcu on Unsplash

Created. Now What? Part 1: Anticipating the Image of God

October 16, 2017 by Dan Olinger

Once you’ve settled on the fact that God is the Creator, the world never looks the same. A number of ideas immediately become obvious. I’d like to meditate on two of them for the next few posts.

One of the most obvious is that you and I are special.

I don’t mean that in the fawning sense, the way moms tell their children that they’re special. I mean it in the most life-changing way possible.

The creation account makes it obvious.

During the 6 days of active creation, God spends most of the time, metaphorically speaking, sitting in his chair and issuing orders. As I’ve noted before, sometimes he just speaks and items spring into existence: he says, “Let there be light” (Gen 1.3), and there is; he says, “Let there be an expanse” (Gen 1.6), and there is; he says, “Let there be lights in the heavens” (Gen 1.14), and the sun, moon, and stars come into being; he speaks (Gen 1.20), and fish swim in the seas, and birds fly through the atmosphere. Sometimes, when he speaks, he’s acting on things he has already created: he orders the waters to gather so that dry land becomes visible (Gen 1.9), and he causes plants (Gen 1.11) and then animals (Gen 1.24) to spring from the ground.

Through all of this activity (again, metaphorically speaking), God has never left his chair; he has spoken, and his will has been done. But now the story changes dramatically.

To begin with, God speaks, not to command his creation, but in meditation with himself. He says not, “Let there be man,” but “Let us make man” (Gen 1.26). He counsels with himself on what he is about to do.

In the hindsight of the New Testament, Christians see the Trinity here: the persons of the Godhead, perfectly one, speak among themselves, with the Father as administrator and visionary, the Son as active agent, and the Spirit as nurturer and protector. I don’t doubt that all that is true, but the picture here in Genesis, at the outset of God’s self-revelation, is murkier. God is speaking to himself, and he’s using the plural. Is this a majestic king planning his next action, or is it a consultation between or among infinitely exalted equals?

Well, neither, exactly. This is complicated by the fact that God doesn’t think of things, or through things, in the sense that we do. Sovereign and omniscient, he never hatches a plan or finds a solution. So why is he talking to himself, appearing to think through what he’s about to do?

It seems pretty clear what he’s doing. He’s pausing to relish what’s coming. This is not just another step in the long process of creating stuff. This next step is different in kind from what has happened so far; God is about to do something really extraordinary (as if speaking the cosmos into existence in an instant [Gen 1.16] isn’t extraordinary enough!).

In what way is this next step extraordinary? His joyous words tell us plainly: “Let us make someone like us! In our image! Exponentially greater than everything else!” (Gen 1.26a, paraphrased with abandon). May I say reverently, it’s as though he says, “You think that’s impressive? Just watch this!”

And then, metaphorically speaking, he rises, majestically and purposefully, from his chair. No pointing and giving orders now; he’s going to get involved. He’s going to roll up his sleeves and plunge into his creative work clear up to his elbows. Foreshadowing the coming incarnation, he’s going to step right into the middle of his creation.

In the next post we’ll consider what that means.

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9

Photo by David Marcu on Unsplash

How Atheistic Educators Teach Theology in Spite of Themselves

September 7, 2017 by Dan Olinger

Photo by NASA on Unsplash

Every day in every school, millions of schoolchildren are learning about God. In every subject.

Don’t think so?

Watch.

If there were no Bibles, we’d know a lot about God. For starters, we could just look around. If God created the world—and he did—then it’s a piece of art. And art tells us a lot about the artist. Just a glance at Picasso’s work tells us that he distorted the female form. Hmmm. I wonder if he had issues with women. Turns out he did.

So when we study the cosmos, the created universe, we’re studying the work of God—and we’re consequently studying him. In school we call that science. And for some reason we’ve gotten the idea that science and religion are in conflict.

Nope. It’s all about him.

What can be known about God is plain to [mankind], because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse (Rom 1.19-20).

But there’s more. When God created the universe, he used a design language—a coding language, if you will. There are relationships between the parts of the universe. In school we call that language math.

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures (Galileo).

I would suggest that math is the most intimate look we get at the mind of God outside the Bible. It’s theology writ large. And we didn’t invent it; God did. He was counting before there were any humans around (Gen 1.5).

Even more. When God created humans, he made them, as Scripture puts it, “in his image” (Gen 1.26-27). That means that when we study mankind—when we study the humanities—we’re studying God too. Language. Literature. The fine arts—music, speech, art. It all reflects the creative impulses of mankind, and in so doing it reflects the creative God who created us. It’s theology.

And the sourcing doesn’t end with creation. Theologians call creation God’s first work, but they recognize another one as well. Since day 1, God has been directing in the affairs of men, telling a story that he has written from eternity past.

He made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place (Acts 17.26).

He changes times and seasons; he removes kings and sets up kings (Dan 2.21).

And what do we call that in school?

Theologians call it providence, or more specifically, government. Schoolteachers call it history.

Every school subject is about God. Science, math, language, literature, fine arts, history. All of it.

And no surprise, because it all comes from him.

It’s a shame more schools don’t recognize that. And it’s ironic—downright comical—that thousands of educators are teaching about the God they deny without even realizing it.

He who sits in the heavens laughs.

And I like to chuckle right along with him.