Checkpoint wrote: ↑Wed Apr 07, 2021 2:05 am
This thread covers an interesting and important subject for us to discuss and debate.
This first post is brief, and asks these questions:
1). What is this Genesis 1:27 scripture telling us, as you understand it, about God, and about mankind?
So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
2a). Does the Bible give any direct or specific answers to question 1, in this verse, or anywhere else?
2b). If you conclude it does, where are the verses and what do they specify?
If you conclude it does not, why doesn't it do so?
3). The previous verse puts our subject in a different way.
26 Then God said, “Let Us/us make man in Our/our image, after our/Our likeness, to rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, and over all the earth itself and every creature that crawls upon it.”
3a). Why is the difference there; plural in this verse, 26, and singular in verse 27?
3b). Who is "our/Our" and "Us/us" referring to? God as a Trinity, the angels, or?
3c). Do Christianity and Judaism give different answers to question 3b?
If so, what, and why?
The text quite specifically addresses the question of in what respect man differs from the animals. The difference is not the 'breath of life' it is not the 'soul' or 'being' of man, as the animals have the same language and nature. It is not immortality, since man is dust of the land, mortal. In fact the text and the context is the man is an animal (e.g. Ecc. 3:18-21).
Man's difference is that he is to rule the animals. It follows that the 'image of God' is the right or power to rule. God has the right and power to rule, and he delegates and appoints man as his co-ruler or vice-regents in the world. For example, Col. 1 uses the image language in connection with headship, and birth as a son:
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16 For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17 And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be pre-eminent. 19 For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
Christ's work in rulership and ascendancy to domination and power is his expression or revelation of his status as the image of God.
We can understand the 'image of God' language by looking at some of its alternative expressions: being 'father' (superior), or being born or adopted as a 'son,' for example. The father is the higher king, and the son is the lower king. Adam's status as the son of God (Luke 3:8) is equal to him being made in the image of God. The phrase 'like father, like son' shows that the son bears the likeness (power) of the father. This father-son language is very common in the bible to refer to status and power, for example, Israel is God's son, Ex. 4:22, but more importantly, the Israelites, as individuals, are all sons of God (Deut. 14:1). The status of 'image of God' is in each man, and in particular, in each man with his woman: 'male and female' i.e. monogamy. The woman is in the image of man, because the man is the head of his wife (1 Cor. 11:2-16). Yet the head of the man is not another man, but Christ alone (1 Cor. 11:3), and this concept destroys the idea of political power of a man, other than Christ, over other men. When men have political power over other men, they are 'sons of God' in this unauthorised and improper sense, e.g. Gen. 6:1-4. They are also improper in that they took multiple women, i.e. polygyny. These polygynous kings filled the world with violence and tyranny and war. The image of God in man 'male and female' is the antidote and alternative to this violent and repressive social and political structure.
The point of the image of God is that the one bearing the image of God has the status as a son of God, and is therefore a 'brother' or an equal, with every other son of God. For this reason, the Torah forbade Israel's kings to be a son of God in a sense higher than his brothers, i.e. other men, who were also sons of God, Deut. 17:14-20. The submission of each man to God and to God's law, makes each man a brother, to each other man, and therefore has a duty not to commit adultery with his wife (Ex. 20:14), and not to covet his wife (Ex. 20:17), and not to kill him and take his wife (Gen. 12:10-20:1-13; 26:6-11), and not to take more than one wife (Lev. 18:18 -- the phrase 'a woman to her sister' means like things in a chain or set, and does not refer to biological human sisters), and not to divorce his wife (Deut. 22:19,29) and marry another (Luke 16:18).
The status of a man bearing the image of God is that he has a royal status that must be respected by God's other sons. Thus, to murder a man is to make war upon God, and to draw God's judgement. Cain murdered his brother, who was in the image of God, and yet Cain himself was in the image of God, and so God put his mark on Cain that Cain would not be killed, Gen. 4:1-16. The image of God is therefore both motive for the death penalty, but also the reason that it is not to be carried out. Cain's action was the first murder, but Cain's action was to be repeated by others who rose in social and political ascendancy to become the 'father' of many, and apparently created a dynasty, and a polygynous kingdom under Lamech. Lamech then murders a 'young' (weak, low status?) man for some slight, and correctly claims the legal precedent that murderers are not to be avenged, since they too are in the image of God, Gen. 4:17-24. The social and political development then went down-hill as the monogamous social structure broke down and the 'mighty men' arose on the land, and became 'sons of God' ruling over other men, and filling the land with violence and shedding human blood, because of their tyranny and domination and wars (Gen. 6:1-13).
Getting back to the animals that man was to rule over, in having the image of God and being made in the image of God. The man was an animal, but he was to be different from the animals, ruling the animals, by being 'male and female' (i.e. monogamous) and bearing the image of God as individual men, each with his one woman. Man is to rule the animals, or he would become or revert to his merely animalistic status. The story of Genesis 3-6 is man's fall from being truly in the image of God to being animalistic. The animal that was the snake, appears to be external to the man, and tempts the woman and deceives her and her husband. Yet, on closer analysis, the snake is man and it is in man. The arch-predator of man, the snake, the man realises is not merely a physical and animal predator, but is other men, and is inside man: it is inside himself. Man is his own worst enemy. The snake re-appears as the crouching beast of sin awaiting to pounce on Cain in Gen. 4:7. This beast is the thing that Cain does have the power to master, but like Adam, he fails, and is mastered by the animal. Cain becomes the animal, and kills his brother. Cain becomes the snake, or he is mastered by the snake. This snake-animal tendency then re-appears in Lamech and then the Mighty Men, as polygynous kings. Men become predator and prey of each other. In this context, the flood is sent upon the beasts -- and the men who were beasts. Noah, the monogynous one, and his three monogynous sons, and the monogymous animals, 'male and female' and each 'male with his mate' are saved from the flood.
The judgement of the flood, and the covenant of Noah, addresses the 'animals,' that is the men who had been mastered by the animals and who had become beasts. Accordingly, the covenant of Noah was made with the beasts, Gen. 9:9-17. This is the context for the undertaking and warning of the Second Flood:
4 But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. 5 And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.
6 “Whoever sheds the blood of man,
by man shall his blood be shed,
for God made man in his own image.
The beasts were to be held accountable for shedding human blood. Yet, not with water, but by man. The second flood would be a flood of men of war, Dan. 9:26-27, which would come upon the men who had become beasts and who had shed the blood of man. As the first judgement was a mass judgement, so the second judgement would be a mass judgement. This is not mandating the death penalty for murder that was already precluded by God in response to Cain's murder of Abel. The Second Flood was to fulfil the last days judgement upon Israel, as outlined in the Song of Moses: God would send a flood of fire, disasters, plagues and beasts upon Israel. God would build up the sin of Israel in a vault, and then, when the vault was full, it would then be poured out in judgement, as a flood of men of war, the sword of YHWH, to avenge the blood of his servants shed on the land (Deut. 32). The foolish builders who rejected the gospel would have their 'house' washed away by the flood (Mat. 7:24-27). The blood shed on the land would be repaid in a desolation of that 'house' upon those men as the 'brood of vipers' (Mat. 23:29-38).
In summary, the image of God is the status and the mandate granted to individual men, to rule with God, over the chaos and weeds of the world, with his one wife as his allay, ruling not only over the world and the animals outside, but also over the snakes inside him. Man is to rule and to do the work of God in creation and ordering by means of monogamy and having a social and political structure that is not based on dominating other men so as to kill them and take their wives. This status and mandate is a constraint, not only upon murder, but also against the death penalty, or death as a political tool.