Image of God and Imago Cancelled

Today's Reading

Read Genesis 1:26-27: "Then God said, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness... So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.'"

Then read Genesis 9:6 — God's word to Noah after the flood: "Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image." Note that the prohibition against murder is grounded not in social order or sentiment but in the fact that the human being is an image of God.

Read James 3:9-10: "With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers, these things ought not to be so."

Finally, read Psalm 8:3-9 ("what is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?") — David's astonished celebration of the dignity God has placed on the human creature.

Reflection

The doctrine of the imago Dei — that every human being is made in the image of God — is the load-bearing wall under any Christian thought about race. Take it out, and the structure collapses. Keep it in, and certain things become impossible.

Genesis 1 says it twice in one verse: "in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them." It is the only thing in the creation account said of human beings that is not said of any other creature. The sun is good. The fish are good. The stars are very good. But only of humans does Scripture say: made in the image. And — crucially for our purpose — Genesis 1 says it before any ethnic distinctions exist. The image precedes the nations. The nations come later, and they come as a fullness, not a fall: in Genesis 10 the table of nations is a flowering of the original blessing, and in Revelation 7 the nations are still there, gathered around the throne. The image is in every nation because it is in every human being from the start.

Augustine, writing in the early fifth century, returned to this theme constantly. He understood that to be made in God's image is to be made for God — restless until we rest in him, oriented to him by our very design. Whatever else a person is — citizen or stranger, master or slave (Augustine lived in a slave-holding empire), Roman or "barbarian" — they bear within them a structural orientation toward the God who made them. Augustine's City of God was written as Rome was sacked, and he insisted that the cives Dei, the citizens of God, are gathered out of every people. The category of "Roman" was, for Augustine, a passing thing. The category of "image-bearer" was not.

John Calvin, twelve hundred years later and on the receiving end of religious persecution himself, pressed this further. The Fall, Calvin said, did not erase the image. It defaced and disordered it, but did not remove it. Even in the worst, most degraded human being, "some spark at least of God's glory" still shines. This matters enormously for race, because it means: there is no human face — none — at which a Christian is permitted to look and not see God's image at work. Calvin's commentary on Genesis 9 is fierce on this point: anyone who attacks a fellow human attacks the image of God, and "the greater the dignity of human nature, the more abominable is the cruelty of him who slays his brother."

Now hear James 3 against that background. James, the half-brother of Jesus, writing to the early Jewish-Christian diaspora, is talking about the tongue. He says we use the same mouth for two things that cannot coexist: we bless the Lord and Father, and we curse people who are made in his likeness. James does not say "this is hard" or "this is unfortunate." He says, "These things ought not to be so." It is, in his view, a contradiction so basic it should not be possible — like a fountain pouring out fresh and salt water from the same opening (v. 11).

And yet the church has done it. For centuries. With its mouth full of the doxology.

The American slave catechism — there really were such documents — taught enslaved people that obedience to their masters was a religious duty, while the same masters sang on Sunday morning to the God who made every nation from one blood. The "scientific racism" of the 19th century, which proposed gradations of humanity, was constructed and defended by men who would have professed Genesis 1 if asked. The lynching photographs of the early 20th century — the postcards mailed home — show crowds of white Americans, many of whom would have been in church the next Sunday, smiling beside the body of a man made in the image of God. From the same mouth, blessing and cursing.

It is tempting to file this in the past. It is more honest to ask: where does my own mouth do this? Whose face do I find easier to curse than to bless? When I speak about a political enemy, an immigrant, a homeless man on the corner, the people of a country I dislike, the people of a neighborhood I avoid — am I speaking about an image-bearer of the living God? If a stranger heard the way I talked about them in private, would they conclude that I believe Genesis 1?

The doctrine of the image is a knife that cuts the racist's argument at the root, but it cuts deeper than that. It cuts every casual cruelty, every dehumanizing joke, every flattening of an entire group into a caricature. It is not a tool for indicting only the worst people in history. It is a daily diagnostic for the way we open our mouths.

Augustine made the connection explicit: to love God truly is to love what God loves, and God loves what he has made in his image. You cannot love the painter and despise his self-portrait. You cannot bless the source and curse the likeness. These things ought not to be so.

Going Deeper

Try this for a day: every time you find yourself thinking or speaking dismissively about another human being — anyone, of any color, on any side — say silently, "image of God." Say it about the person you disagree with on the news. Say it about the driver who cut you off. Say it about the political figure you find loathsome. Say it about the kind of person you assume is the problem. Notice what happens to your sentence when you finish it.

Then ask: what would my church look like if every member did this for one Sunday morning? What would my country look like if every Christian did this for one election cycle? The doctrine of the image is not academic. It is, James says, the difference between a fountain that gives life and a tongue set on fire by hell.