Christian
Scholars Review 24.1 (1994) 8-25
Copyright © 1994 by Christian Scholars Review; cited
with permission.
The
Liberating Image?
Interpreting the Imago
Dei
in
Context
By J. Richard Middleton
For
nearly two thousand years now the Christian tradition has singled out
Genesis
1:26-27 for special attention.1 These
biblical verses constitute the locus
classicus of the doctrine of imago Dei, the notion that human beings
are made in
God's image. The text is important
enough to reproduce here in full (including
verse 28, which is an important part of the context).
Then God said, "Let us make humanity in our
image, according to our
likeness. And let them rule over
the fish of the sea and the birds of the air.
Let them rule over the livestock, over all the
earth, and over everything that
moves upon the earth."
So God created humanity in his image. In the image
of God he created him. Male
and female he created them. And God blessed
them and said to them,
"Be fruitful and increase, fill, the earth and subdue
it. And rule over the fish
of the sea and the birds of the air, and over
every living thing that moves
upon the earth." (Genesis 1:26-28)
Although the Christian tradition has typically
treated these verses as con-
taining a central biblical affirmation
with significant implications for human life,
there are only three explicit references to the imago Dei notion in the entire Old
Testament
(Genesis 1:26-27; 5:1; and 9:6). Furthermore these references are all
found in that section of Genesis (chapters 1-11)
known as the "primeval history,"
in literary strands typically assigned to the
priestly writers.2
With the exception of two deuterocanonical
references (Wisdom 2:23 and
Ecclesiasticus 17:3-4), the idea that
humans are made in God's image does not
surface again until the New Testament. Even
here, however, only two texts speak
of creation in God's image (I Corinthians 11:7 and
James 3:9). The rest either exalt
Christ
as the paradigm (uncreated) image of God or address the salvific
renewal
of the image in the Church.
The
concept of the imago Dei has been widely recognized as central to a Christian
un-
derstanding of human beings, yet
the paucity of biblical references has left the way open
for a wide variety of philosophical and theological
interpretations of this notion. In this
essay J. Richard Middleton presents a
"Royal" interpretation which is based on a "virtual
consensus among Old Testament scholars concerning
the meaning of the imago Dei in
Genesis";
he then goes on to deal with contemporary theological objections to such an
interpretation. Mr. Middleton teaches
Old Testament at the Institute for Christian Studies
(
8
The Liberating Image? Interpreting the Imago
Dei in Context 9
The Problem of Contextless Interpretation
This paucity of biblical references has
contributed to a wide diversity of
opinion over what it means to be made in God's
image. The problem is exac-
erbated by the fact that, until
recently, very few interpreters have treated the
immediate context of Genesis 1:26-27 as important
for determining the meaning
of those verses. It is not unusual for interpreters explicitly
to affirm, contrary
to standard hermeneutical practice, that here
context does not clarify meaning.3
As
a result, many have turned to extra-biblical, usually philosophical, sources to
interpret the image, and have ended up reading
contemporaneous conceptions
of being human back into the Genesis text.
Paul Ricoeur could be
taken as a charitable commentator on this state of
affairs, when he introduces his own essay on the
imago Dei with the following
words:
When the theologians of the sacerdotal [or
priestly] school elaborated the
doctrine of man that is
summarized in the startling expression of the first
chapter of Genesis--"Let
us make man in our image and likeness"--they
certainly did not master at once
all its implicit wealth of meaning.
Ricoeur justifies his own explication of this
"implicit wealth of meaning" by
adding that:
Each century has the task of elaborating its
thought ever anew on the basis
of that indestructible
symbol which henceforth belongs to the unchanging
treasury of the Biblical canon.4
1 An earlier version of
this paper was given at the annual meeting of the Canadian Theo-
logical Society, May 1991, in
2 Since Julius Wellahausen's famous documentary hypothesis about the
composition of the
Pentateuch,
argued in Die Composition des Hexateuchs ([1st ed. 1876-78] 4th ed.;
Gruyter, 1963) and in his Prolegomena zur Geschichte
Reimer,
1899), it has been standard academic practice to attribute the final literary
form of
the book of Genesis (plus chapters 1, 5, 17, 23 and
strands of 6-9) to one or more authors or
redactors thought to be of an exilic or
post-exilic priestly orientation (typically designated
"P").
In the past two decades, however, the scholarly consensus has seriously eroded.
For
a convenient summary of the history and present state of Pentateuchal
criticism as
it applies to Genesis, see Gordon J. Wenham,
Genesis 1-15, Word Biblical Commentary 1
(Waco; Texas: Word, 1987), pp. xxv-xlv. For an incisive, extended
evaluation of the past
century of scholarship on Genesis, see Duane
Garrett, Rethinking Genesis: The Sources
and
Authorship of the First
Book of the Pentateuch (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1991).
3 G. C. Berkhouwer, for example, in Man: The Image of God, trans. by Dirk W. Jellema (Grand
Rapids:
Eerdmans, 1962), states that Genesis 1 affirms a
likeness between humans and God
"with no explanation given as to exactly what this likeness
consists of or implies" (p. 69).
In
a similar vein, Carl F. H. Henry claims that "the Bible does not define
for us the precise
content of the original imago" (in God, Revelation
and Authority, Vol. II God Who Speaks
and
Shows: Fifteen Theses,
Part One
[
asks: "After all, what is the image of God? The
biblical data furnish no systematic theory
of the subject, no clue as to what is
implied" (in "The Image of God," Bibliotheca Sacra 129
[July
Sept 1972] 515: 238).
4 Paul Ricoeur, "The Image of God and the Epic of Mart,"
History and Truth, trans. by Charles
A.
Kelbley (Evanston: Northwestern University Press,
1965), p. 110.
Christian
Scholar's Review 10
A different (and less charitable) reading of the
history of interpretation
is given by theologian Hendrikus
Berkhof. Berkhof replaces
the explication of
implicit meaning with another image. "By
studying how systematic theologies
have poured
meaning into Gen. 1:26," he
notes, "one could write a piece of
Berkhof's judgment is echoed, in
somewhat more colourful language, by
Old Testament scholar Norman Snaith. In Snaith's
words:
Many "orthodox" theologians through
the centuries have lifted the phrase
"the image of God"
(imago Dei) right out of its context,
and, like Humpty-
Dumpty, they have made the
word mean just what they choose it to mean.6
Although this may be something of an
exaggeration, it is not much of one.
For
the vast majority of interpreters right up to recent times have sought the
meaning of the image in terms of a metaphysical
analogy or similarity between
the human soul and the being of God, in categories
not likely to have occurred
to the author of Genesis. As blissfully
unconcerned with authorial intent as any
post-structuralist critic, most medieval
and modern interpreters have typically
asked not an exegetical, but a speculative, question:
In what way are humans
like God and unlike animals? In answer to this
question, various candidates have
been suggested for the content of the image. These
range from human reason,
through conscience, immortality, and
spirituality, to freedom and personhood.
This
dominant metaphysical stream of interpretation stretches from Ireneaus
through Augustine to Aquinas in the pre-modern
period, and until recently has
held sway even in the modern period.
There has been, however, a significant minority
reading of the image which
has attempted to substitute for the metaphysical, substantialistic analogy a dy-
namic, relational notion.
This attempt begins in the Reformation with Luther, and
Calvin,
who at least try to modify or adumbrate the metaphysical interpretation
with the image as ethical conformity or obedient
response to God. In more recent
years, under the influence of "existential"
anthropology, the human-divine, I-
Thou
relation has been suggested as the key to the image. Karl Barth
and Emil
Brunner,
among others, have proposed that the image of God refers to the
capacity of human beings to be addressed by and
to respond to God's Word.7
5 Hendrikus
Berkhof, Christian
Faith: An Introduction to the Study of the Faith, trans. by Sierd
Woudstra (Grand Rapids: Eerdman,
1979), p. 179. Emphasis added.
6 Snaith,
"The Image of God," Expository
Times 86 (October 1974-September 1975): 24. To the
comments of Berkhof and
Snaith could be added those of Karl Barth, who makes essentially
the same criticism in his Church Dogmatics, 3/1 (Edinburgh: T. and
T. Clark, 1958), pp. 192-
193.
Although Barth certainly attempts to root his own
interpretation of the imago Dei in
exegesis, he also ends up, willy
nilly, reading contemporaneous anthropological
notions
into the text.
7 For the terminology of substantalistic
and relational interpretations I am
indebted to Dou-
glas John Hall, Imaging God: Dominion as Stewardship
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), p. 89.
Hall
has himself modified the categories of Paul Ramsey in Basic Christian Ethics (
Charles Scribner s Sons, 1950). Summary accounts of the
history of interpretation are found
The Liberating Image? Interpreting the Imago
Dei in Context 11
What these two (dominant and minor) streams of
interpretation have in
common is that both may be found in the writings of
theologians; writings which
largely, if not entirely, ignore the massive
literature in Old Testament scholarship
on the imago
Dei. This theological ignorance of biblical scholarship is a shame,
on two counts.
First of all, the interpretation of the imago
Dei among theologians almost
universally excludes the body from the image, thus
entrenching a dualistic read-
ing of the human condition.
Although few modern interpreters come to the
Genesis
text with the ascetic predilections of Origen or
Augustine, nevertheless
this unwarranted limitation of the image continues
to perpetuate an implicit
devaluation of the concrete life of the body in
relation to spirituality.
What is a shame about this is that
any Old Testament scholar worth her
salt will tell you that the semantic range of tselem, the
Hebrew word for "image"
in Genesis 1, typically includes "idol,"
which in the common theology of the
ancient
divine. A simple word study would thus lead to the
preliminary observation
that visibility and bodiliness
are minimally a necessary condition of being tselem
elohim or imago Dei.8
But the ignorance of biblical scholarship among
theologians is shameful
for another reason. As my own survey of the field
of Old Testament studies
has revealed (and this is confirmed by the recently
published
of Gunnlaugur A. Jonsson), there is at present a virtual consensus among Old
Testament
scholars concerning the meaning of the imago
Dei in Genesis.9
in Hall, chap. 3: "Two Historical Conceptions
of the Imago Dei"; G. C. Berkouwer, Man: The
Image of God, chap. 2: "A
Preliminary Orientation;" Emil Brunner, Man in Revolt: A Christian
Anthropology, trans. by Olive Wyon (London: Lutterworth, 1939),
Appendix I: "The Image
of God in the Teaching of the Bible and the
Church"; and Anthony A. Hoekema, Created
in God's Image (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans,
1986), chap. 4: "The Image of God: Historical
Survey." A more extended history
of interpretation may be found in chaps. 4-13 of David
8 Although a number of
different Hebrew words translate as "image" or "idol" in
the
Old
Testament, tselem
is used for idols in Numbers 33:52; II Kings 11:18; II Chronicles
23:17; Ezekiel 7:20, 16:27; and Amos 5:26. Based on this usage
Walter Kaiser Jr. in Towards
an Old Testament Theology (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1978), p. 76,
translates tselem
as
"carved or hewn statue or copy." The case for demut
("likeness") is more complicated.
Although
biblical scholars have often suggested that the physical, concrete connotation
of
tselem is intentionally
modified by the more abstract demut, this latter term is sometimes
used within Scripture for concrete, visible
representations, as in I Samuel 6:5 and 11; II
Chronicles 4:3; and Daniel 3:1. Furthermore, a recent
(1979) excavation at Tell Fekheriyeh
in
equivalents of both tselem and demut in Assyrian and Aramaic as
parallel terms designating
the statue. For an account of this inscription, see
A. R. Millard and P. Bordreuil, "A Statue
from
9 See Gunnlaugur
A. Jonsson, The Image of God:
Genesis 1:26-28 in a Century of Old Testament
Research, trans. by
Wiksell, 1988), pp. 219-225. Before reading Jonsson, I would have said that perhaps 85% of
Christian
Scholar's Review 12
This virtual consensus is based, in the first
place, on careful literary and
rhetorical analysis of Genesis 1:1-2:3 as a textual
unit.10 Such analysis notes the
predominantly "royal" flavour of the text, and does not depend only on the close
linking of image with the mandate to rule and
subdue the earth and its creatures
in verses 26 and 28 (typically royal functions).
Beyond this royal mandate, the
God
in whose image and likeness humans are created is depicted as sovereign
over the cosmos, ruling by royal decree ("let
there be") and even addressing the
divine council or heavenly court with the words:
"let us make humanity in our
image," an address which parallels God's
question to the seraphim at the call
of Isaiah (in Isaiah 6:8), "Whom shall I
send? And who will go for us?" Just as
Isaiah
saw Yahweh "seated on a throne, high and exalted" (6:1), so the
writer of
Genesis
1 portrays God as King presiding over "heaven and earth," an ordered
and harmonious realm in which each creature
manifests the will of the Creator
and is thus declared "good."
These and other rhetorical clues, when taken
together with the wealth of
comparative studies of
tation which sees the image of
God as the royal function or office of
human beings
as God's representatives and agents in the world, given
authorized power to share
in God's rule over the earth's resources and creatures.11
Since the main function of divinity in
both
precisely to rule (hence kings were often viewed
as divine), it is no wonder Psalm
8
asserts that in putting all things under their feet and giving them dominion
over
the works of God's hands, God has made humans
"little less than elohim"
(Psalm
8:5-6).
It does not matter whether elohim is translated as "God" or
"angels" (as
in the Septuagint), the meaning is virtually
unchanged. In the theology of both
Psalm
8 and Genesis 1, humans (like the angelic heavenly court) have been given
royal, and thus god-like, status in the world.12
Old
Testament scholars were in agreement with the interpretation proposed here. Jonnsson,
however, whose study surveys a century of Old
Testament research in English, West
European
and Scandinavian languages, portrays the degree of consensus as considerably
higher. The two most substantial articles in English
by Old Testament scholars on the imago
Dei,
both of which contain extensive references, are D. J. A. Clines, "The
Image of God in
Man,"
Tyndale Bulletin 19 (1968): 53-103 and Phyllis
A. Bird, "'Male and Female He Created
Them':
Gen 1:27b in the Context of the Priestly Account of Creation," Harvard Theological
Review 74 (1981) 2: 129-159.
10 Examples of good
literary analyses of Genesis 1 include Walter Brueggemann,
Genesis
(Atlanta:
John Knox, 1982), pp. 22-39 and Bernhard W.
Priestly
Creation Story," in Canon and
Authority: Essays in Old Testament Religion and Theol-
ogy, ed. by George W. Coats
and Burke O. Long (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), pp. 148-162.
11 The near unanimity in
Old Testament scholarship in proposing this "royal" interpretation
of the imago
Dei does not extend to the actual reasons advanced for this interpretation.
Various
scholars forward quite different lines of evidence, not all of which are of
equal
value. In this paper I summarize only the main lines
of such evidence as I find convincing.
12 0n the centrality of
God as Ruler in the Old Testament, see Patrick D. Miller, Jr., "The
Sovereignty
of God," in The Hermeneutical Quest: Essays in Honor of
James Luther Mays on
His
The Liberating Image? Interpreting the Imago
Dei in Context 13
Although a "royal" reading of the
image has found scattered support in
the pre-twentieth century history of
interpretation, its career in the field of Old
Testament
scholarship begins in 1898 and 1915 with the work, respectively, of
H.
Holzinger and Johannes Hehn.13 And although there are at present a few
important dissenters within Old Testament studies,
such as Claus Westermann
who holds to a modified Barthian
interpretation, the last thirty years have seen
the royal interpretation of the imago Dei come virtually to monopolize
the field.14
Old Testament scholars, however, tend to be
notorious in their hesitancy
to make broad theological pronouncements based on
their research, preferring
instead to remain submerged in the textual and
linguistic minutiae of their dis-
cipline. The theological
significance, therefore, of the royal interpretation of the
imago Dei has remained largely unexplored. The time is ripe, then,
for extended
theological reflection on the image of God that
takes seriously both the biblical
materials and contemporary biblical scholarship.
Contemporary Objections
to the Royal Interpretation
But just as this opportunity presents itself,
the very notion of rule, whether
human or divine, has become problematic. This is not
the place to rehearse the
recent history of feminist theology, with its profound
challenges to patriarchy
as an ideologically legitimated social system.
Suffice it to say that no theologian
today attempting to reflect on the imago Dei as rule can avoid grappling
with
the objections raised, for example, by Sallie McFague in Models of
God to the
traditional picture of God as a transcendent divine
Monarch exercising absolute
rule over his kingdom--a picture obviously crucial
for the royal interpretation of
the image. Such a picture, claims McFague, is derived from a patriarchal model
Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. by Donald G.
Miller (Allison Park,
1986),
pp. 129-144; G. Ernest Wright, The Old Testament and
Theology (
Row,
1969), chap. 4: "God the Lord," pp. 97-150; and J. Stanley Chestnut, The Old Testament
Understanding of God (Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1968), chap. 4: "God and Kingship," pp.
70-81.
On the relationship of divinity and rule in the
ancient Near East, see Gary V. Smith,
"The
Concept of God/the Gods as King in the Ancient Near
East and the Bible," Trinity
Journal 3 (Spring 1982) 1:
18-38; and Henri Frankfort, Kingship and
the Gods: A Study of
Ancient Near Eastern
Religion as the Integration of Society and Nature (
13 An early example of the
royal interpretation in the Jewish tradition is found in Saadya's
10th
century commentary on Genesis (cited by Jon D. Levenson,
Creation and the Persistence
of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence [
112).
An early example of the royal interpretation in the
Christian tradition is found among
16th
century Socinians and is explicitly stated in the Socinian Catechismus .Racoviensis of 1605
(see Berkouwer, p. 70 and Hall, pp.
71 and 217). On the pioneering work of Holzinger and
Helmn, see Jonssori s
account on pp. 55-59.
14 Westermann's
extensive treatment of the imago Dei
text is found in part one of his three-
part commentary on the book, Genesis 1-11: A Commentary, trans. by John J. Scullion from
the 1974 German edition (Minneapolis: Augsburg,
1984), pp. 142-161.
Christian
Scholar's Review 14
of man ruling over woman and serves to enforce and
legitimate such rule by its
association of male dominance with God's
transcendence.15
Neither can theologians ignore the objections
raised by Catherine Keller,
to take another example, in her superb
interdisciplinary study, From a Bro-
ken Web, where she attempts to deconstruct the first chapter of
Genesis as a
thinly disguised--more gentlemanly--version of the Enuma Elish, the
classic
Mesopotamian
creation story, which--on her reading--served mythically to le-
gitimate patriarchy in the
Babylonian empire. Keller goes further than McFague
in exposing not only the parallels between
God-world and man-woman, but the
way in which rule involves the externalization of
the other as an object and its
ultimate demonization.16
In addition to feminist objections, however, the
Genesis mandate for human
dominion of the earth has often been linked to
the present environmental crisis.
The
literature is too large to cite exhaustively, but historians like Lynn White,
Jr.
and contemporary scientists from Ian McHarg to David Suzuki have challenged
the Western model of humanity over against the
non-human world, which they
trace back to its roots in Genesis.17
Beyond both feminist and ecological objections,
however, Old Testament
scholar Walter Brueggemann
has noted the propensity of creation theology to
serve to legitimate the status quo. In his prolific
writings on the Old Testa-
ment, in which he (unlike
many Old Testament scholars) powerfully bridges
the hermeneutical gap between ancient text and
present situation, Brueggemann
has vividly shown how easily ideologies ground the
present social order in the
order of creation, thus religiously disallowing the
possibility of change.18
In the wake of this host of warnings
concerning the oppressive consequences
of creation theology in general and the monarchial
model in particular, a legiti-
mate question arises as to whether a
"royal" reading of the imago
Dei, whatever
its exegetical basis, is tenable today.
15 Sallie McFague, Models of
God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (
tress, 1987), pp. 63-69. Also relevant is McFague's Metaphorical
Theology: Models of God in
Religious Language (Philadelphia: Fortress,
1982), chap. 5: "God the Father: Model or Idol?"
16 Catherine Keller, From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism, and
Self (
1986),
pp. 73-88.
17
1967):
1203-1207; Ian McHarg, Design with Nature (
Press,
1969), p. 26 et passim; David Suzuki, "Subdue the
Earth," Part 2 of his television
series, A Planet
for the Taking (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1985).
18For example, see Walter Brueggemann, The
Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary (Minneapolis:
Augsburg, 1984), pp. 27-28; The Prophetic
Imagination
(Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1978), pp. 39-40;
I: Structure Legitimation,"
Catholic Biblical Quarterly 47
(January 1985) 1: 28-46 (especially pp.
41-42).
I have questioned the one-sidedness of Brueggemann's
argument in "Is Creation
Theology Inherently Conservative? A Dialogue with Walter Brueggemann," Harvard
Theological Review 87 (1994) 3.
The Liberating Image? Interpreting the Imago
Dei in Context 15
It is, of course, impossible to give a
comprehensive answer to this question
in the short compass of this paper. My purpose is
less to settle the matter than to
indicate the main contours of an adequate
response, and thus to open dialogue
on the subject.
A Personal Confession
Let me begin by saying that I do not take these
contemporary objections
lightly. As one whose consciousness has been
shaped by both biblical and post-
modern sensitivity to marginalization and oppression
(even in the name of high
ideals;), I have had to re-evaluate my own use
of creation and kingdom language,
as well as its function in Scripture and the
church.
I am highly suspicious, for example, of the triumphalist use of such lan-
guage within the growing
conservative movement in the
to some extent in
tion." This movement,
which represents the extreme right-wing of Calvinism,
not only propounds a post-millennial eschatology of
progress, but claims a royal
reading of the imago Dei as part of its program for "reconstructing"
along theocratic lines, with full implementation of
Old Testament legislation and
sanctions. A commentary on Genesis by a leading reconstructionist is thus aptly-
and ominously--entitled The Dominion Covenant. With
a combination like that I
believe the potential for oppression is obvious.19
Let me, therefore, freely admit that
creation theology and monarchial images
of God and humanity may be--and have been--used to
legitimate systems of
oppression. The trouble is that I do not believe
that either creation theology or
the metaphor of rule have exclusive rights to being
oppressively used.20
19
nomics, 1982). The two
foundational texts of Christian Reconstructiion are Rousas John
Rushdoony, Institutes
of Biblical Law (Nutley, N.J.: Craig Press, 1973) and Greg L. Banhsen,
Theonomy in Christian Ethics (Nutley, N.J.: Craig
Press, 1977).
For a brief summary of
the movement, see Rodney Clapp, The Reconstructionists
(rev. ed.;
InterVarsity
Press, 1990).
For a sustained, sympathetic critique, see the essays in William
S.
Barker and W. Robert Gofrey (eds.), Theonomy: A Reformed Critique (
Zondeivan,
1988).
20 It is well known that
Karl Barth's objection to Emil Brunner's call for a
new (non-
Thomistic) "natural theology" or
emphasis on creation order was in part fuelled by his
observation that German National Socialism appealed
to the notion of such order to
legitimate its conservative, authoritarian
ideology. Brunner himself agreed that there were
"political" consequences to a theology of creation, but
pointed out (correctly, I believe)
that these were not inherently conservative, but
could indeed be revolutionary (see Natural
Theology, trans. by Peter Fraenkel [
in the social practice of Calvinism (that branch
of Protestantism with the most explicit
theology of creation), see Nicholas Wolterstorff, Until Justice
and Peace Embrace (Grand
Rapids:: Eerdmans, 1983), chap. 1:
"World Formative Christianity."
Christian
Scholar's Review 16
I grew up in a small pietistic church with a
virtually non-existent creation
theology. The dominant theology of fall and
salvation, however, encouraged
quietistic attitudes to the world
and tended to legitimate the status quo
by
divorcing social concerns from the life of faith.
I was pushed to a more world-
transformative spirituality precisely
by a theology of creation which questioned
the identity of the present order with the way
things were creationally meant to
be. Creation thus functioned as a transcendent
ground of criticism vis a vis the
status quo. This theology, furthermore, affirmed the goodness and
integrity of the
natural order against every attempt to
manipulate it for purely human ends.21
As for the metaphor of rule, it strikes me that
this captures something
of the empirical realities of power, which humans
undoubtedly have over our
environment, and which is not an intrinsically male
trait, as Genesis 1 recognizes
("male and female he created them"). I do not believe we
can avoid the question
of power, since the dialectic of oppression and
liberation can be retranslated
as a dialectic of powerlessness and empowerment.
The question is not whether
humans have power, but how they organize and use such
power.22
Furthermore--and this may be a sensitive issue
for a male to raise--I can
testify to having experienced (justly, I
suppose) marginalization at the hands
of some feminists. I have even attended lectures
by a prominent feminist the-
ologian whose aggressive stance
and triumphalistic fervor would have put any
reconstructionist to shame.
The problem with the critique of ideology is
that it cuts both ways. Any
position can itself become ideological if it is
exempted from the possibility of
critique. Certainly, the imago Dei as rule can become an ideology. But it is not
necessarily ideological.
The Polemical Intent of
Genesis 1
On the contrary, if read contextually, vis a vis
its historical background, in
terms of its polemical intent against ancient Near
Eastern notions of humanity
and kingship, Genesis 1:26-27 turns out to be not
oppressive, but liberating and
empowering. At least, that is how the text would
have functioned for its original
hearers.
It has long been recognized that Genesis 1
likely contains a polemic against
ancient Near Eastern polytheism, replacing the
bloody battle of the gods found in
21 See Brian J. Walsh and
J. Richard Middleton, The Transforming Vision: Shaping a Christian
World View (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1984) for an attempt to articulate
a creation theology that is alternative to both
dualistic, world-avertive pietism and the
modern secular ideal of world-mastery.
22 On the subject of power
in the Scriptures, see J. P. M. Walsh, The Might from Their
Thrones: Power in the
Biblical Tradition (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1987). The connection be-
tween theology/ideology and
social power arrangements is the major focus of
K.
Gottwald's ground-breaking and massive work, The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the