IMAGE OF GOD: WE CANNOT BE HUMAN WITHOUT THE ANIMALS

“God’s resolve to create in the divine image is coupled with a commissioning to have dominion. . . . It is as representative (image) of God that we are given capacity for power in the world.”

                               ~ Bruce Birch

In last Friday’s post, I took a very brief look at some of the traditional understandings of what it means to be created in the image of God and how that has led to the perspective that humans, separated from the rest of creation with the gifts of reason and will, are privileged in creation.  We saw that these traditional understandings of our creation were heavily influenced by philosophical ideas from different times and places and that those philosophical views about what it meant to human were grafted onto theological interpretations of our creation in God’s image.  In particular, many theologians, notably Augustine and Aquinas, were strongly influenced by Aristotle, including Aristotle’s view that there exists a natural hierarchy, with the “lesser” things in creation existing for the benefit of the “greater.”  Thus, the church traditionally reasoned, animals were created for the benefit of humans, which was fully in keeping with our privileged status as the only creatures in God’s image and thus (it was thought) the only creatures capable of being in relationship with God.  We shall see in a later post that there have always been Christians who have felt that compassion for animals is a necessary part of what it means to be Christian, but the mainline traditional view, that animals were created for human benefit, has resulted in a great deal of suffering by God’s creatures and has kept humans from living more fully into the purpose for which we are created. 

Aristotle

 Before I turn to what I call the “minority report” on animals from the Christian tradition or the consequences of the church’s mainline traditional view, however, I would like to take a closer look at how modern Old Testament scholarship is changing our understanding of what it means to be created in the image of God.  Over the last few decades, as scholars have come to better understand ancient cultures in which the stories of the Old Testament were preserved and written down, a new perspective has arisen that has garnered nearly unanimous support among those scholars.  This perspective underscores, in keeping with all Biblical teaching on power and privilege, that our creation in God’s image brings with it significant responsibility, answerable to God.  

Richard Middleton sums up the two primary aspects of this perspective.  The first highlights the royal aspect of the text.  Here humans are given the ability to rule over the earth and its creatures just as God rules over the cosmos.   The second basis of the emerging consensus, which is the more prominent, is closely related.  It looks to the historical social context of the ancient Near East, where it was the practice for rulers to place images of themselves in regions of their empire where they did not personally appear to represent their rule.  Similarly, God has placed humans on earth to represent Him and His rule; His image on earth.  Middleton calls this “a functional – or even missional – interpretation of the image of God.”  Thus, he argues, human beings are created with a calling to serve as God’s agents in the world.  This approach, he believes, can be used to develop “an ethics of power” based on understanding humans as “empowered agent[s] of compassion.”[1]

Here, the right exercise of power is central to what it means to be created in the image of God.  In contrast both to interpretations that place humans in a position of privilege based on their inherent capacities or endowments and to interpretations that focus on the individual relationship with God, this understanding of imago Dei imposes significant responsibilities on human beings in relation to the rest of the world.  Building on Middleton’s logic, it follows that, as addressed in my earlier posts on Dominion and Power (here and here), because creation in the image of God is expressly linked with human power over animals, if the image requires a compassionate exercise of power, clearly that compassion must extend to our fellow creatures.

            Walter Brueggemann is among the Old Testament scholars who concur that “the most plausible hypothesis [of what it means to be created in the image of God] is that the human person is placed among all other creatures to attest to and enact the rule of God,” reminding creatures of God’s rule, as an ancient ruler would place a statue of himself in areas of his realm where he could not go.[2]  For Brueggemann, the remarkable significance of this role is signaled by the context of the Jewish faith in which these scriptures were written, a context strongly opposed to “images” of God.  To say that humans are created in that image, therefore, is a statement of great force, bringing with it responsibilities not to be taken lightly.[3]  Connecting the image of God to dominion over the animals, Brueggemann explains that “the human creature not only exhibits the rule of YHWH, but in fact enacts it on behalf of and in the place of the sovereign God who is not visibly present to the other creatures. . . . With the gift of dominion intrinsic to human personhood comes immense responsibility . . .”.[4] 

Birch has explained that “[i]t was von Rad who fully developed the view that ‘image of God’ pointed more to human purpose than being – more to teleology than ontology.”[5]  Birch argues that because the words translated as “image” or “likeness” of God are related to representations or models, they “cannot be read to indicate some aspect of the divine within humanity (soul, spirit, rationality, will, etc.).  It is the whole of our being that is somehow like God.”[6] Birch particularly calls out a hierarchical understanding of the created order as a “distortion of creation theology.”[7] 

            Bruce K. Waltke draws on many early philosophical and theological traditions to explain the image of God, but like Brueggemann, Birch, and others, he argues for a primarily functional understanding of the image.  Underscoring the importance of this whole idea of image of God, he notes that human creation in the image of God is “fundamental to Genesis and the entirety of Scripture.”[8] The imago Dei for Waltke sets humans apart from other creatures, “establishes humanity’s role on earth, and facilitates communication with the divine;” in addition, an image “possesses the life of the one being represented” and represents the presence of that one.[9]  Inseparable from the notion of image as representation, he argues, “the image functions as ruler in the place of the deity.”[10] Thus, as we function as representatives of God, “mirroring God and breathing God’s life, we may live in relationship with God and exercise our dominion over all the earth.”[11]

These modern understandings of the imago Dei, grounded in the context of Scripture, are unanimous in concluding that our creation in the image of God imposes on humans significant responsibilities.  The image of God is not something we can stand on, but it is something we are called to live into, and a central aspect of that calling is the compassionate exercise of power, revealing to the creation the character of God, caring for the creation, especially animals, as God Himself would.  

Moreover, as Waltke especially emphasizes, this is not a theological side show.  This is foundational to who we are created to be.  Faith communities cannot continue to put aside questions of our relationships to animals – all animals, including the ones whose suffering we support and whose relief would require us to change the way we live – as theologically inconsequential or as unimportant in comparison to all the needs of the human community.

Animal welfare is a need of the human community because caring for animals is intrinsic to our creation and our call as human beings.

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[1] Middleton, J. Richard.  The Liberating Image: Imago Dei in Genesis 1 (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2005), pp. 25-34.

[2] Brueggemann, Walter, Reverberations of Faith. Louisville: West Minster John Knox Press, 2002, p. 106.

[3] Brueggemann, pp. 105-06.

[4] Brueggemann, p. 106.

[5] Birch, Bruce C. Let Justice Roll Down: The Old Testament, Ethics, and Christian Life. Louisville: West Minster/John Knox Press, 1991, p. 87.

[6] Birch, p. 87.

[7] Birch, pp. 85-86.

[8] Waltke, Bruce K. Genesis: A Commentary. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2001, p. 65.

[9] Waltke, p. 65.

[10] Waltke, p. 66.

[11] Waltke, p. 70.