20: Scripture and the Image of God III

Question 1

Take stock of the biblical materials about the image of God

Answer 1

• While relatively rare in Scripture, the term image of God is crucial for biblical anthropology.
• The imago dei is constitutive of human being. It is an ontological given, i.e., we were made for this.
• The imago dei is also a dynamic reality related to human calling and relating.
• In that our functioning is perverted by the fall, the imago dei is in need of restoration and renewal.
• The model and norm for the restoration of the imago dei is Jesus Christ who is the express image of God.
• “Into the world”

Question 2

What does it mean to glorify God?

Answer 2

• to make God’s presence visible in our lives
• to transcribe God’s character into the world

Question 3

What enables human beings to image God?

Answer 3

1. The reduction of the imago dei to the relational in modern theology
2. There are warrants for an ontological notion of image. But 2 warnings:
   
   1. The biblical emphasis falls upon the calling to image God
   2. Scripture does not explicitly tell us what constitutes the ontological image

Question 4

What capacities, faculties, and realities about human beings enable our calling to represent, reflect, image, glorify, imitate God?

Answer 4

1. Worship
2. Morality
3. We know ourselves in covenantal relation

Question 5

How do we know that we were made for life together?

Answer 5

1. The storied logic of Scripture
2. The imago dei and human diversity
3. Human diversity and the body of Christ
4. We are made for each other
5. The Holy Spirit regenerates, calls and empowers us to bear God’s image into the world

Question 6

How is the imago dei and human diversity related to our being made for life together?

Answer 6

1. God’s intention is human multiformity
   
   • Tribes, peoples, and nations all make their own particular contribution to the enrichment of life in the new Jerusalem.
2. Multiformity is grounded in the creational order
   
   • The image of God is expressed, not in the man alone, nor in the woman alone, but in both together

Question 7

How is the relationship between human diversity and the body of Christ?

Answer 7

“The image of God rests in a number of people, with differentiation of race, talent, and powers–in short in mankind–and further… this image will achieve its full unfolding in the new humanity which is the church of Christ.” - Bavinck, Our Reasonable Faith, 206