By Christian / Carmen Joy Imes
In this series, we look at thoughts from the book Being God’s Image – Why Creation still matters by Carmen Joy Imes. As there is unfortunately no German translation, we will at least deal with excerpts from her presentation in the German version of this video. This English version contains the same excerpts, but I recommend that you read the complete book.
We concluded the second part with the announcement that we are now starting work as imago Dei, the image of God.
Getting to Work
What does this mean for us humans as the image of God, as imago Dei? Let me quote a sentence from Carmen Imes‘ book:
Doing good work is one way to express our purpose.
Being God’s Image, Carmen Joy Imes
I very much hope that I have triggered all sorts of thoughts on the subject of works, faith, salvation, righteousness by works, and so on. And I would like to follow up immediately: It has nothing to do with that at all. Rather, it has to do with the fact that we, as the image of God, want to do meaningful work and that this is good for us. It is part of our destiny. Take Genesis 19:9-10, for example: farmers should not harvest everything in the field or vineyard. That part as the fruit of their labour would be enough for them. But poor people and strangers without land should also have the opportunity to harvest with their own labour and gain a sense of self-worth from it. They shouldn’t be the recipients of all the work that is looked down upon.
However, the work that God has planned for his images is not about us.
„The image of God means being placed into a particular set or relationships with God, each other, and the rest of creation, for the purpose of ruling as his royal representatives.“
Being God’s Image, Carmen Joy Imes
What are the consequences?
If I truly believe that every human being is the image of God, created to signal the presence of God to the world, this belief ought to compel me to treat my fellow humans with dignity.
Women are God’s image, sharing equal dignity and bearing equal responsibility for representing God to creation.
Being God’s Image, Carmen Joy Imes
Now we are at the point where we should address certain biases against women that some believe can be derived from the biblical account of the fall of man.
Let’s imagine the situation with Eve and the snake. If you imagine a picture, I’m pretty sure it’s structured somewhat like this:
All the pictures that Carmen Imes (and I) can remember look similar. And they are all wrong on a few points, because this is not at all what the Bible says: Nowhere does it say that Eve and the serpent stood directly under the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. According to the account in Genesis 3:3, why would Eve not simply speak of „this tree“, but of „the tree in the middle of the garden“? So it must not have been a spontaneous decision, but the serpent sowed the seed of doubt. And it worked: „When the woman saw how good it was to eat from the tree, what a feast for the eyes it was and how much insight it promised, she took some fruit and ate.“ (Genesis 3:6 NEÜ) However, there is something correctly depicted in the picture that some men prefer to suppress: According to Genesis 3:6, Adam was then present when Eve took of the fruit: „She also gave some to her husband, who was standing beside her. He also ate.“ Eve is sometimes labeled as the cause of evil. But why didn’t Adam intervene vehemently? He was right next to her when she ate the fruit. And why were they both by the tree in the middle of the garden? Perhaps he was clever and waited to see if she wouldn’t drop dead immediately. And when she didn’t … who knows.
So they both decided not to act like the image of God. And the serpent was right about one thing: „the eyes of both of them were opened wide…“ (2001 Translation) But what they recognized was only that they were naked. You can hardly recognize a knowledge of good and evil like God when Adam initiates „the blame game“: he first blames Eve as an excuse in Genesis 3:12 and then immediately blames God himself because he ultimately gave her to him.
Carmen Imes summarizes the situation as follows:
Their disobedience to divine command and failure to trust God’s good intentions immediately fracture their relationship with God, with each other, and with the world God made.
The first humans lost mutual trust, mutual respect, innocence, and intimacy with God and each other. Worst of all, they lost access to the presence of God in the garden.
Being God’s Image, Carmen Joy Imes
Was this the end of humans being the ‚image of God‘? Carmen Imes argues – as do other scholars – that the reiterated mention in Genesis 5:1-3 („in his image“) and Genesis 9:6 („For as the image of God / he made man.“, Einheitsübersetzung 2016) reiterates human status as God’s image.
Because the essence of being God’s image is a claim about our identity rather than a capability or function, we cannot lose it.
Being God’s Image, Carmen Joy Imes
And that brings us to the question of how this realization that we are ‚imago Dei‚, i.e. the image of God, should affect our behaviour and our lives. We will deal with this in the next part.
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