Paying Attention To The Sky

John Randall Sachs in his wonderful little book, The Christian View of Humanity, speaks to one of the most distorted of secular images of the Biblical, human beings in the likeness or image of God and the relationship between man and woman. As you read below think of how the diabolists in our midst live their lives and conduct themselves and what the consequences of believing in “science and progress,” “oneself” or one’s “sexual orientation,” and that terrible trap they refer to when they say “Freedom” — what these things actually mean for the human.

The Yahwist (‘J’ source) creation account starts in the second sentence of Genesis 2:4 and continues through the creation of Adam, then the beasts of the field and fowl of the air, and finally the creation of Eve in Genesis 22:22. The Priestly (‘P’ source) creation account starts in Genesis 1:1 and proceeds in a very different sequence through the creation of night and day, the firmament, plants, the heavenly bodies, fish, beasts and fowl, then finally man, both male and female. This account ends in the first sentence of Genesis 2:4. 

Both creation stories in Genesis emphasize the unique nature and position of human beings in creation. The Yahwist describes how the Lord God formed the “earth” creature and breathed into its nostrils to make it a living being. The Priestly account places humanity at the head of creation and gives us the concept which has proved most significant for Christianity’s understanding of being human, the human being as image of God. “Let us make humanity in our image, after our likeness…” (Genesis 1:26). Even though it is not developed in the OT, it seems taken for granted in the NT, and sets the stage for a specifically Christian understanding of God’s saving act of recreation in which we are conformed to the image of God’s Son (Romans 8:29).

First, a brief remark about the words image (ielem) and likeness (demat). The first refers to a concrete, external form of representation, like a carved statue. Many scholars have suggested a background in the practice of the Egyptian pharoahs, who erected statues of themselves throughout their kingdom. In the mind-set of the time, it was thought that the Pharoah himself was actually present in these statues. They were representations that really “presented” him, made him present. As it stands, such a thought would be foreign to the OT understanding of God. But against this background, perhaps, we could take Genesis 1:26 to mean that, although only an image of God (and not the divinity itself), humanity has been established as God’s representative on earth in a unique way.

The term likeness refers more specifically to an internal relationship and similarity. Human beings are radically different from God but uniquely and intimately related to God, capable of personal relationship with God. According to the Priestly tradition, the human creature is defined primarily in relationship to God, not in terms of its relationship to the other types of creatures, the way we might place a particular animal in a specific phylum, genus and species.

The human being is not merely primus inter pares, nor merely the highest among the animals. Some scholars’ see an indication of the difference in the fact that sexual differentiation and subsequent procreation must be explicitly specified for humans in this text. One would assume this of animals, but not of an image of a God like Israel’s, who transcends sexuality.

It is this relationship with God which “defines” human nature and makes us different from all other creatures. It is also the foundation of the inviolable dignity of human life. [I remember when I was in Vietnam how Americans would shrug at the Asian on Asian violence and say that “Life was cheap.” You hear that again in the Middle East and Afghanistan/Pakistan and the employment of suicide bombers to explain the unexplainable. I’ve learned over the years that the “inviolable dignity of human life” is only a given in a Christian context.]

Let us now consider more exactly what this relationship with God means. Three things stand out in the biblical text:

(1) Dominion over the rest of creation,
(2) Creation of male and female and
(3) The command to be fruitful and multiply.

(1) Dominion Over the Earth: A Share in God’s Power
The place of humanity at the head of creation seems to be stressed in the Priestly account. Does the language hint at this when it says that the human creatures are not “brought forth” from the waters or from the earth like the other animals? They are not merely God’s works; they are created to be God’s image. As such, they are given a share in God’s dominion. In the OT, God’s dominion is revealed in God’s creating, sustaining activity in the world; it is a “divine milieu,” both a “place” and a “power” for real life. For God, power is not some neutral potency, the ability to do just anything strongly. God’s power is the strength, fullness and utter dependability of God’s loving creation and creating love.

The dominion which humans have can only exist within, not outside or alongside of, God’s dominion as the concrete expression of it. It can be nothing except the power and authority to care for, to nurture and to develop the whole world. There is nothing wrong with understanding God’s creative desire and our God-given task as the “humanization” of the world as long as we understand that one of the things which makes us truly human is the distinctive ability to acknowledge, appreciate and delight in the reality of all other creatures as other, and to care for them.

We are called to a cosmological and ecological mutuality which is founded on the goodness of creation and the delight which the Creator has in it. Therefore, to be God’s image or representative on earth, to share in God’s dominion, means that we receive a share in God’s power for creation, not simply over creation. It does not give us a license to exploit it as we please. Human beings are accountable to the Creator for the world’s well-being and wholeness. God alone is the Lord; the Lord alone is God (Deuteronomy 6:4).

(2) Male and Female: The Mystery of the Other
Like other creation myths, the Priestly account addresses the reality of sexual differentiation (1:27). It is interesting that being created in the “image of God” is directly related by the text to being created “male and female.” What does this suggest? It certainly cannot mean that God is both male and female. God’s utter transcendence is central to Hebrew faith. God has no gender. God is neither gender specific nor gender composite. Precisely in this point, Israel’s concept of God differed radically from that of its neighbors.

God’s transcendence is forcefully expressed in the strict prohibition of graven images (Exodus 20:4). This is all the more remarkable if we consider that God has made humans beings as God’s image. Since we are created in God’s image, the human, the personal, is a privileged, though analogical, way of thinking about God. Thus the Scriptures are filled with male and female images of God, and it is not only appropriate but important to use both, as long as we realize that such language is metaphorical.

Unfortunately, the Judeo-Christian tradition, in its piety and theology, has deviated from this important truth. Even though the Scriptures themselves offer many examples of female images of God, God has been imaged and spoken of in predominantly male terms. Many claim that this has functioned to exalt the male and the “masculine” as divine, thus helping to create and legitimate an oppressive patriarchy. In order to help overcome this destructive exaggeration, we must learn to speak of God using female images (which is different from predicating of God culturally stereotyped “feminine” traits).

God is represented equally well (and with the same limitations) by images of either sex. But since God is not a person in the ordinary sense of the word, perhaps God’s very transcendence demands that we use both images. Genesis 1:27 suggests that it is human community, both male and female, that most adequately images God .as personal and relational, even if what it means to speak of God as person remains an incomprehensible mystery to us.

Precisely as God’s image, we are challenged, especially in our public worship, both to recover traditional female images which have been lost or suppressed and to use our imaginations to create new ones. It is an important and difficult task, which demands tolerance, respect and love.

As Elizabeth Johnson has suggested, the creation of humanity in the image of God, male and female, brings the utter transcendence and incomprehensibility of God to unique expression.  On the other hand, it also speaks in an analogous way of the inviolable mystery, dignity and transcendence of the human creatures who image such a God.

Sexual differentiation is a particularly clear example of our fundamental relationality and interdependence as human beings. The human person is not created simply as an individual and we cannot exist humanly as isolated individuals. From the first moment of life we are social beings who can only be human in communion with others. To be human means to be-in-relation, to be-with. Even more pointedly, it is something which is radically from others. It is essential that we recognize our real relationality, a truth often obscured by classical theology which, following Boethius, stressed the radical individuality of persons (the human being is an “individual substance of a rational nature”). This truth has also been forgotten by much modern thought since the Enlightenment, which stressed the freedom, rights and autonomy of the individual human subject. What and who my real “self” is, is a mystery which is constituted by the mystery of others.

This means that my humanity is something always profoundly greater, even other, than I am. Sexual differentiation highlights this. Scholars in a variety of disciplines have begun to take seriously what the poets and song writers have always told us: men and women seem to experience and understand reality in some remarkably different ways. Christian theology has tended to ignore this, treating human “nature” independently of its sexual concretization.

While there is much that we can say about being human which is true about both men and women, perhaps we are only now beginning to realize that there is much which cannot be said quite so simply. Each of us, male or female, must realize the fact that there is another mode and experience of being human which is different from, and not reducible to, one’s own. There is another way of being human which remains inaccessibly mysterious. [Claiming this profound mystery can somehow be a product of "sexual orientation," as those who advance the gay agenda do, is simply a parody or cheap trick compared to this profound Christian Truth.]

Therefore, no human being can claim to experience or understand the mystery of what it means to be human only from his or her humanity. The real humanity of each person, male or female, is something that points beyond itself to a real other. This is a paradox. Male and female are not simply accidental characteristics of human being; neither are they two different creatures. They are irreducibly different in one humanity.

This, it seems to me, expresses something of the mystery of God and about our relationship with God. The mystery of the sexually other human is a symbol of the absolute mystery of God’s other-ness and of our relatedness to and transcendence towards God as our final personal wholeness and fulfillment. Our humanity is essentially ecstatic, other-directed. We are whole and entire only in our relationships with others: both human others and with God, that divine Other.

[This to me is the Biblical teaching -- so it always amazes me when others take this amazing and liberating Scriptural image and refer to it in terms of female oppression or patriarchal dominance. Could anything be farther from the truth? ]

(3) Fruitfulness: Creativity and Future
Just as humanity male and female may share in and image the divine dominion (1:26) it is also the precondition for the divine command to “be fruitful and multiply” (1:28). Procreation is certainly a central way in which we share in and image God’s creative power. (Creator comes from the Latin word which means to beget.)

Moreover, the command to be fruitful and multiply should not be understood narrowly, precisely because procreation is not an end in itself. The propagation of human life is the basic condition for the deeper fruitfulness and creativity of our lives.

This story invites us to see a broader connection between God’s creation and our creativity, and therefore, the theological importance of human labor. Human activity in all its forms is blessed with the possibility and responsibility of bearing fruit. In this way it is an image of God’s creative act. Of course we do not literally create the world. It belongs to God alone to create, to bring into being out of the void and chaos. But the work of our hands can image God’s creative act. Indeed, in gifting us with freedom, God has made us responsible for the shape which we give our lives and the world. In human beings, in a way far different from the fertility of the other creatures, the whole world is full of possibilities.

Ecology: Stewards of Creation
Western society has, to a large extent, lost a vital sense of connection to the earth. Especially since the Enlightenment, it has tended to see human reason and autonomy at the center of things. Since the Age of Discovery and the rapid accomplishments of science, this anthropocentrism has led to an ever more individualistic, utilitarian and exploitative attitude toward the world and its resources. It is true that the scientific advances of the last century, especially in physics, astronomy and space travel, have done something to rekindle a sense of awe in us and given us a more chastened appreciation of the infinitesimal size, and perhaps significance, of our planet in the universe. Nevertheless, these very advances have also tended to reinforce some of the worst traits of our basic technological and manipulative attitudes. We continue to put science to work in ways which threaten to destroy us.

Theologians like Sallie McFague remind us that we are living in an age when the threat of ecological and nuclear destruction are real and pervasive. Ironically, it is our very technological creativity and sophistication that have apparently given us the ability to destroy our human world. The consequences of these advances are making more and more people view the profound holistic sensibility of more “primitive” peoples and times with greater respect. It is precisely in this context that we ought to listen to the biblical stories and look at their vision of the world.

In different ways, both creation stories stress that we are part of a unified, interrelated whole and have a special place in it. We have already focused on the Priestly account in some detail. Humanity as an image of God has a unique capability and responsibility for the well-being and future of the world. I would now like to turn to the Yahwist story of creation. It has a timely message for us and can challenge us to understand humanity in an ecological context. We are not merely beings who walk on the earth, we come from it and are truly a part of it.

The cultivation and care of creation is highlighted in the Yahwist account. I think it presents us with a more holistic view than the Priestly story. After a mist arises and waters the earth, God creates a man, forming him, as the name Adam indicates, out of the ground, making him alive with the divine breath (Genesis 2:6-8).

Only then, with a human creature capable of tilling the ground (2:5) does God plant a garden and place the first human in it to tend it (2:15). How different from the Priestly account, in which the world in all its diversity is prepared for humanity and placed at its disposal. Like the Priestly writer, the Yahwist also indicates the special status of the human creature as the one who has the right to name the animals. But here the order and perspective are reversed. This text seems to say that God prepared for the abundant earth which was to be created, by first creating all that was necessary for its fruitfulness and well-being. Seen in this way, the earth is not simply created for humankind but humankind is created for the earth.

But it is not good that the human should be alone. In order that the first human might have a suitable partner, God created all of the other animals. While none was to be found, so the story continues, God created a woman from the rib of the man. Here at last is the partner suitable to help carry out the task of caring for the garden. The point here is not that the woman is subordinate to the man as a mere “helper” (the Hebrew word does not connote inferiority). Nor is loneliness the issue. The story takes place in a garden which must be cared for. The image of helper focuses not so much on the man, as it does on the garden, really the whole creation, which the human creatures are to till and for which they are responsible.

In God’s plan, as the Yahwist understands it, the original relationship between humanity and the earth is one of responsible care. We are not merely the namers of the other creatures; we are not to be petty tyrants and manipulators. We must learn to see ourselves as gardeners, careful tenders of the earth, realizing that our mutual survival and development is at stake.

The Yahwist image of gardening challenges false notions of God’s dominion and the human patterns of both domination (“If God is in charge and has given me charge, then I can do what I please”) and indifference (“If God is in charge, I don’t have to worry; it doesn’t matter what I do”).

In human beings, the world becomes conscious of itself and able creatively and actively to choose its future. Human beings, by virtue of their uniquely transcendent capacity for relating to all the other creatures, are precisely the ones who have the enormous responsibility to choose a future which is really the future of the whole and not merely the advantage of a part. In Sollicitudo Rei Socialis (On Social Concern), Pope John Paul II emphasized the obligation we have to respect nature in order to ensure and just a human development of the cosmos.

Today the hope that the world really does have a future is threatened more than ever. Christian hope for the world’s future is based on God’s faithful, sustaining, creative power. God’s powerful Word, which brought the world into being is powerful enough to accomplish God’s desire for the world’s life. But both the OT and the NT witness the conviction that the life and fullness of the world will not be the predictable outcome of a process of evolution. And we moderns have become enlightened about the Enlightenment’s belief in civilization and progress.

The life of the world is always a life that must be saved. It must be chosen intentionally, labored and sacrificed for. It is life that must be rescued from the many powers of death and destruction which threaten it. As Christians, we are part of a biblical tradition that asserts this explicitly of God.

The world has a future because in Jesus Christ it has been chosen intentionally, labored and sacrificed for by God. God so loves the world (John 3:16). The key word here is world, not just me, certainly not just my soul, not even us or our collective souls. The Christian understanding of salvation must recover its inherent universality and inclusiveness. It is something which involves not just human beings, but the whole of creation.

But it is important to consider for a moment what it really means to say that God wishes to save the world. If the reality of the world as a living, active, intentional and self-constituting whole is what God wishes to save, then it seems to me that God’s saving activity is not something that happens alongside or instead of but in and through the world’s activity, especially in and through human action. Therefore, the necessity that salvation come from God and the necessity that human beings take responsibility for the world’s well-being are directly proportional. The greater our belief in salvation from God, the greater the obedience of faith to acknowledge our active responsibility for the world. God does not wish to save us from doing. God wishes to save us from all that would prevent us from doing.

According to the Yahwist narrative, humankind is intimately related to the Creator in a way that distinguishes it from the rest of God’s creatures. This is not because human beings are enlivened by the breath of God (Genesis 2:7), for God has breathed this breath into all the animals (Genesis 7:22). Rather, the dignity of human beings is especially evident in their partnership with God in caring for creation. As tenders of the garden and stewards of creation, human beings are not mere underlings with a task to perform. If they are superior to the other creatures, it is because through them the creative, divine Spirit is present and active in a unique way. As a result, humans are more capable of and responsible for the well-being of the creation. Human beings are from God and the earth as well as with God for the earth. Thus the salvation which God desires and promises the world as its sure future is precisely what makes us acknowledge our human responsibility for the world.