Theological Term of the Week

 

You thought I was done with the “im” words, didn’t you? You would be wrong.

 

image of God

(or, for the lovers of Latin, imago Dei.) A phrase used in scripture in reference to humankind as created by God and as distinguished from other creatures. Throughout history, there have been many different ideas as to what it means to be created in God’s image, but the bottom line is that in some way (or ways), human beings are like God and represent him.

• From the Bible:

  Then God said,”Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
  
  So God created man in his own image,
  in the image of God he created him;
  male and female he created them.
  
  And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. (Genesis 1:26-31 ESV)

• From John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I.3:
  

  [T]he image of God extends to everything in which the nature of man surpasses that of all other species of animals. Accordingly, by this term is denoted the integrity with which Adam was endued when his intellect was clear, his affections subordinated to reason, all his senses duly regulated, and when he truly ascribed all his excellence to the admirable gifts of his Maker. And though the primary seat of the divine image was in the mind and the heart, or in the soul and its powers, there was no part even of the body in which some rays of glory did not shine. It is certain that in every part of the world some lineaments of divine glory are beheld and hence we may infer, that when his image is placed in man, there is a kind of tacit antithesis, as it were, setting man apart from the crowd, and exalting him above all the other creatures.
  

• John Frame, in Men and Women in the Image of God:

  [E]verything we are is like God. We are the image of God (1 Corinthians 11:7). To say we are “in” God’s image is to say that are made “to be” the image of God.
  
  I would infer that everything we are reflects God in some way, though of course everything we are is also different from God! Our souls, bodies, reason, will, goodness are like God, but also unlike him, for He is the Creator, paradigm and infinite exemplar of these qualities. Even sin images God in perverse sorts of ways. In sinning, Eve sought to be like God (Genesis 3:5), not by imitating His goodness, but by coveting His prerogatives. And all sin is moral decision, a faculty that we share uniquely with God and the angels.
  
  So human nature itself is the image of God. But more must be said. The fact that we image God in the totality of our being does not discourage but rather encourages us to find more specific kinds of correspondence.
  

Learn more:

1. BeThinking.org: What is the Image of God? by Peter May
2. New Link!: Justin Taylor: The Image of God - A Primer
   
3. Kim Riddlebarger: Divine Image Bearers
4. Bruce Ware: Male and Female Complementarity and the Image of God 
5. Wayne Grudem:  Creation of Man in the Image of God (mp3)

Do you have a a theological term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it, giving you credit for the suggestion and linking back to your blog when I do.

 

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms in alphabetical order.

Sunday's Hymn

We sang this hymn in the worship service this morning.

Blessed Assurance

Blessèd assurance, Jesus is mine!
O what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

Refrain
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior, all the day long;
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Savior, all the day long.

Perfect submission, perfect delight,
Visions of rapture now burst on my sight;
Angels descending bring from above
Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.

I in my Savior am happy and blest,
Watching and waiting, looking above,
Filled with His goodness, lost in His love.

—Fanny Crosby

Via YouTube, you can hear this hymn sung by the St. Olaf Choir.

Other hymns, worship songs, sermons etc. posted today:

• The Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity at Magic Statistics
• Who Is This So Weak and Helpless at Hiraeth
• God, Be Merciful to Me at Field Stone Cottage
• Lord’s Day 33, 2008 at The Thirsty Theologian
• Glory to God, Whose Sovereign Grace at joythruChrist
• Shall We Gather at the River at Conjubilant with Song
• Holy Bible, Book Divine  at Whatever Things…
• Shine Thou Upon Us, Lord at The Happy Wonderer
• Your Weekly Dose of Spurgeon: Illegitimate Contextualization at Pyromaniacs
• All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name at Practicing Theology

Have you posted a hymn today and I missed it? Let me know by leaving a link in the comments or by emailing me at the address in the sidebar and I’ll add your post to the list.

Animal Stories

Lately, I’ve been overrun by animals. There are my own three—the golden retriever and two cats—and last week, there were three more.

There’s Ned, who has been with us for over a month now while his family travels. He’ll be going home on Thursday, and I’ll miss him. If I’d known that he weighed 120 lbs., wasn’t leash trained, and drooled, I might not have taken him in, but I’d have missed out on a whole lot of good fun.

Ned is half rottweiler and half golden retriever, with a 100% rottweiler build.  But his heart? Pure golden. He wakes up bouncy every morning—like Tigger, really: “Oh good! Another beautiful day! What will we do for fun today?” If I were to name his favorite activities, I’d say it’d be going for a walk—in places where he doesn’t need to be leashed, of course—and riding in the car.

Yesterday I opened the trunk of my car to put some more bags of recycling in when Ned came bounding across the yard,  jumping, all 120 lbs, into my trunk where he sat atop the heaps of bags of recycling stuff with a goofy grin on his face. He wanted, I’m guessing, to make sure he wasn’t left behind.

He’s nine years old, but he’s still a puppy. He does enthusiastically foolish things to entertain me almost every day. And he adores me, so I can’t help but love him right back.

And then there are the kittens. They showed up on Tuesday afternoon while I was having my new furnace installed. There were people in and out all day and two kittens bouncing around the yard. They seemed to have come from down the street in the direction of the dead end, but the families in the three houses down there were all gone on holidays. Wherever they came from, they didn’t go back home, but slept the whole night in the adirondack chair on the front porch. 

By Wednesday, we’d concluded they were litter left-overs dumped in the woods beside my house by a cruel owner. The sons begged me to feed them, but I refused.  I did not want to become the crazy cat-lady of Hillcrest. 

But by that night, I’d had pity on them and oldest son took the two, along with an old paint tray, an extra bag of litter and some canned food my persnickety cats won’t eat, to his house downtown.  There, they wreaked havoc for two days and kept him awake for two nights. A pair of kittens, he’s concluded, are totally cute and thoroughly evil.

Thankfully, the kitty-cats are now back with their rightful owners, the family three houses down, who returned home from a month-long holiday to find that the house-sitter had accidently let the children’s precious pets out and had been unable to find them anywhere. How the sitter could have missed those two chasing each other around our yard for a day and a half, I’ll never know, but I am very happy they’re back home with the children who love them.

Ned, I’ll miss. Those rascally kitties, not so much.