WHY WE FIGHT MUST ALSO INFORM HOW WE FIGHT--FOR LIFE

Some of the finest prolife apologists, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude for informing my own methods and efforts in fighting abortion, argue that Christian prolifers should not introduce their theology into the argument, but should rather argue their case for life on allegedly “neutral” evidences from science and philosophy. Hear this simple thought from the brilliant theologian and ethicist John Jefferson Davis.

"A Christian ethic of abortion must be firmly grounded in biblical principles, such as the sanctity of human life created in God's image and likeness. Principles like that supply what is noticeably lacking in secular discussions: a genuinely transcendent, rather than merely pragmatic or relative, basis for recognizing the dignity and value of human life."

John Jefferson Davis, Abortion and the Christian: What Every Believer Should Know, (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1984) p. 35.

This simple and fundamental reason for why Christians should be vanguard in the public debate on abortion is equally a starting point in the how of our methodology. I believe it was J. C. Ryle who said, “We have the truth, we needn’t be ashamed to say it.”

If the sanctity of human life is not grounded in the imago Dei, then I am ready to concede the point that human beings are not intrinsically and morally valuable. As Davis says, apart from this biblical presupposition, all the arguments for human value and dignity are reducible to pragmatics and relativism.

Marriage: The Unity Principle

Concerning marriage, it must be said that it is the one-ness or unity of the relationship that grounds its permanency, connoting an indivisible entity in the cohesion of the former two; and, this perpetuity of the unit itself is grounded in the nature of the relationship being made in the image of God, as it reflects the triune interrelationships within the Godhead, known by the archaic theological term, perichoresis.  My reasons for these convictions are reflected in what follows.  

The marriage is the primary covenantal, social unit; the married couple too is a triune God image-bearing reality.  Jesus made it clear that spiritual/covenantal relations take precedence over biological ones (Matt 12:48—50).  Marriage is just such a relationship.

This is further buttressed by the language and thrust of Gen 2:24, which Jesus (Matt 19:5 // Mk 10:7) and Paul (Eph 5:31) both cite in their teaching on the meaning of marriage.  The language of “leave” and “cleave” in these texts could not be stronger.  “Leave” is an active indicative verb, meaning to leave behind, depart from, abandon, forsake, and so on.  The object of this verb, as you know, is “his father and his mother.”  Contrariwise, the term “cleave” or “hold fast” means to glue together, to laminate, etc., thus creating a whole new unit that is stronger than its parts individually.

Furthermore, following Genesis, Jesus prefaces these remarks with “for this reason” or “therefore.”  So, the purpose or reason for man’s creation as complimentary man and woman is the marriage covenant.  And since humanity, in general, was created to reflect God’s glorious image throughout creation; and, man’s creation in two sexes is to be glued together in the marriage covenant, it is not hard to see how the marriage covenant is to be a reflection of God’s tri-unity.

The purpose of creating two sexual identities is that they leave and cleave—marriage.  The very next verse (Matt 19:6) begins with the conjunction ‘so,’ “so they are no longer two but one flesh.”  This conjunction is signaling the purpose/result of the marriage union—two distinct persons becoming one flesh, one being!   Distinct persons sharing a single being, sound familiar?  That’s right, the Trinity!  This “oneness” and the strength of this language and reasoning has only one other analogy in our experience.

The only other relationship that we can have in life that speaks with this sort of solidarity and uncompromising commitment is our union with Jesus himself.  In Lk 14:26, Jesus says that unless we are willing to completely abandon our filial relationships for his sake and the kingdom’s, we cannot be his disciples.  Our love for him will so pale all other relationships as to make them seem as hatred; so also with a man and his wife.  This is precisely why Paul could use Christ’s relationship to the Church as a corresponding analogy for covenantal marriage, and vice versa (Eph 5:22ff). 

Gen. 1:26--28, Dominion and Subdue

The terms dominion and subdue are used to describe man’s divinely ordained relationship to his sphere of sovereignty, the natural order.  Neither of these terms signifies merely extraneous commands imposed on man, but rather each represents a part of the moral fabric of man’s being, as made in the image of God.  Both the dominion over and subjection of the created order to man’s lordship are, nonetheless, moral responsibilities. 

            The terms dominion (Heb. râdâh; Gk. archō) and subdue (Heb. kâbash) are, as they stand, morally neutral; conceptually, they can carry connotations which are either good or evil.  Today, in terms of conventional usage, both ideas ring of power-grabs and/or oppressive despotism.  Biblically, the terms can have this negative sense.  For instance, Torah warns the priests against this sort of rogue “dominion” (Lev 25:43, 46, 53).  And later, in the prophetic material, this type of tyrannical exercise by the priests invokes Yahweh’s wrath (e.g., Jer 5:31; Eze 34:4).  The negative aspect of dominion is the result of failing to exercise this capacity in a way that honors and reflects God’s glorious dominion over all. 

            The positive sense, which is clearly meant here in Gen 1:26—28, would mean to lay hold of creation to the glory of God, to cultivate and subdue ever-expanding territories of the earth in a way that honors God and is consistent with his “very good” design and purpose for the creation, not least man.  Originally, in God’s goodness toward his vice-regents, he gave man a “land” that would be in service to him and to his rule over it as he sought to be in service to God.  In the fall, however, man rebelled against the Yahweh’s dominion and Lordship over him, therefore, man’s judgment was to find his own domain in complete rebellion against his efforts to “subdue” and “have dominion” over it. 

            Since the fall, man would find himself in a life and death struggle in his attempt to subdue and exercise dominion.  Additionally, because every person since the fall is naturally disposed to rebellion, God’s people find themselves struggling not only with the natural order but also with other peoples and nations.  The land given to Adam anticipated the land promised to Abraham, which his offspring was to inherit.  Likewise, the thorns and thistles of the curse manifested in the wicked nations then occupying the promised land.     

            Talk of subduing the land is heard in the wandering years (Num 32:22, 29), and in some measure is accomplished as a result of the conquest under Joshua (Jos 18:1).  However, it isn’t until David that the borders of the land are secure and “all the nations” are subdued (2 Sam 8:11).  David, being a bloody man of war (1 Chron 28:3), through his warring, brought “peace on every side (of the land)” and subdued the land before Yahweh and the people (1 Chron 22:18). 

Subduing is a necessary precondition of dominion.  Subduing is cultivating through various means the creation/culture bringing it into a state of submission and of stability.  Not until this work is done can dominion be established, exercised, and maintained.  David was able to pass on the subdued land, the kingdom, to his son, Solomon.  This allowed Solomon to exercise dominion throughout and extending beyond the borders of the promised land (1 Kgs 4:24; cf. Ps 72:8). 

Psalms 72 points beyond David’s son Solomon to a greater son, who is Messiah.  Jesus is that son who is of David’s loins and exacts the obedience of the nation (Rom 1:1—5), he is the Archō (Rom 15:12).  Jesus is the One who has subdued the enemies of God and now exercises dominion over the land promised to Abraham, i.e., the whole world (Rom 4:13).

It is often thought that Jesus’ signs and wonders he worked in his earthly ministry were tokens, even proofs, of his deity.  However, these events could better be understood as Jesus fulfilling the covenant of works that the first Adam failed to do, subduing the earth (e.g., stilling the sea, feeding the four/five thousand) and exercising dominion (e.g., exorcisms).  Looking at Jesus and his wonder-working ministry is to see true humanity as it was and is supposed to be.

WORLDVIEW 101

I hope that it will become obvious by the end of this post that everyone has a worldview. If that is the case, you have one and so does every other person you come in contact with, however remote that contact may be.

Consider the implications. Every personal correspondence you encounter is shaped by a worldview. Every movie, book, email, whisper, physiological or psychological diagnosis, sign, cliché, symbol, oration, polity, painting, and any other token of meaning and personality you can conjure, finds its intention obdurately stationed in some nexus of beliefs, some paradigm—someone’s or some group’s worldview.

What’s more is that all of the inbound data that you're saturated with in your experience is in turn sifted by you through the grid of your own worldview. Granting this, then, few things could be as crucial in life as understanding precisely what a worldview is and how it functions, in both its whole and its parts. Let us therefore contemplate a little of the concept’s development, various attempts of definition and the implications these have for Christians and culture. In this post, we look only at the concept’s development, and that only in part.

Conceptually speaking, the modern religio-philosophical consciousness of worldview harkens back to Immanuel Kant’s (1724—1804) work, Critique of Pure Reason. Therein, Kant coined the term, weltanschauung, which roughly means in German, one’s view of the world and things.

At the risk of getting ahead of myself, I can’t help point out the fact that two centuries prior to Kant, a Frenchman had already preempted this idea. Two of the greatest figures of the Protestant Reformation were undoubtedly Kant’s Frankish fellow, Martin Luther, and the Frenchman, John Calvin. The former was first in augmenting the breadth of biblical Christianity, but God, in his manifold grace, ordained the plumbing of the infinite depths and highest heights of biblical religion to fall on the heart and mind of the latter, John Calvin.

Calvin’s anticipation of Kant’s concept of weltanschauung was more prescriptive than descriptive, more a matter of dogma than philosophical speculation. In tight keeping with the Reformational battle cry, Sola Scriptura (i.e., ‘Scripture Alone’ has final authority over the life and practice of the Church), Calvin spoke analogously of the Scriptures as the “lenses” through which the Christian, individually and corporately, was to view the world and all of life, whether in the natural or supernatural spheres (I use this last distinction with some reluctance).

Calvin’s “lenses” motif became, for himself, the controlling axiom for the rest of his monumental work, Institutes of the Christian Religion. Consequently, due to the undaunted force of influence his systematic appraisal had over all of life, that volume shaped modern Western societies and culture. John Calvin, however consciously, set before the world a self-contained, full-orbed system, lenses if you will, for viewing all of human experience. Protestantism, and more particularly, Calvinism, pressed onto the world profound schemata of contours for understanding Creator, creation, and everything between the two.

This attention on Calvin is not to steal Kant’s thunder, however. Rather, it is to point out that an acute recognition of a thing is not the origin of the thing itself; the thunder doesn’t belong to either of these men. Neither Calvin nor Kant can claim responsibility for creating the reality of the concept of worldview any more than Aristotle can for creating logical laws. Receptive discovery and creative originality are often confused in the mind of man. Where there is mind, there is logic; so also, where there is personality, there is worldview.

The primeval quality of worldview is evident in the scantiest antiquarian glance. Whether one looks to the Pagan world, with its Democritus (c. 460 – 370 B.C.), for instance, and his totalizing atomistic schema, The Little World-System, or one looks to ancient Israel and her conceptual apparatuses, such as the tripartite prophet, priest and king, the tabernacle/temple and its cultus, and the absolute demarcations between the clean and unclean, etc., the conceptual framework of what we understand as worldview is there.

We’ve went backwards in this short survey, haven’t we? However, that’s the point. An individual’s worldview may morph and even radically shift perspectives, such as when the Holy Spirit through the gospel regenerates a person. However, the reality of worldview has not changed.

Man is incorrigibly a conceptualizing and theorizing creature, we are unique among the rest of creation. Hence, even at this point, we inevitably find ourselves knee deep in worldview-esque inquiry: What is man? And why is he that way? This is a bit premature, but unavoidable, since the reality and formation of worldview is inextricably tied to personality and the human condition, as we said.

So, not only does the fact that every person, including oneself, has a worldview grant this topic pride of place in our overall thinking, but that worldview, in principle, seems unavoidably essential to human personality makes our careful reflection on the issue supremely significant for Christians. This, because whatever is essential to human rationality is a consequent or attributive part of being created imago dei, being made in the image and likeness of the triune God. If then, our conceptualizing capacity is rooted in our being reflective image bearers of God, it follows that God himself has a worldview, so to speak.

Cautious delineations in the analogy must be borne in mind—variances that are qualitative and ontological in nature—that is to say, man’s and God’s worldviews cannot have one to one correspondence, due to the nature of the case; but in so far as there is correspondence, especially in and through the Person of Christ, few things are as important for Christian meditation, devotion and prayer. Thus, Augustine’s dictum, that we must strive to “think God’s thoughts after him,” has become axiomatic in discussions of worldview within the Protestant community, both past and present.

Having worked our way back to the Terminus, God’s mind, in the next post we’ll start where we began today and move from there into history future, and particularly look at how various modern thinkers have attempted to give a concise, systematic form to the concept.
If we’ve learned anything from these thoughts, it should be transparent that all that I’ve written here finds its meaning from within my worldview and all that you’ve read was taken in through the grid of yours, and at very least, that everyone has a worldview.

IMAGO DEI: Its Meaning, Implication and Application

I. THE MEANING OF BEING MADE IN GOD’S IMAGE

A. The broader meaning of being made in God’s image lies in the simple fact that man is in a creaturely sense “like” God and “represents” God. So, in some sense man is an idol made in the image of the One who made him; a favor man has been try to reverse and return of ever since. Although man’s Fall severely defaced and distorted the image he bears, the particulars of the broader category are still residual in fallen man, every fallen man.

1. The fact that we are created “like” God means that man shares certain qualities that are similar to God himself. Such qualities may be set in three classes. Man is, in a creaturely capacity, like God metaphysically, mentally and morally. First, man is similar to God metaphysically. One factor that differentiates man from the rest of the created order is that he is a spiritual being;he is made irreversibly immortal, existing somewhere, for better of worse, forever. It is also this aspect of the image that allows us to enjoy fellowship with our Creator—loving, worshiping and sharing meaningful communication with him. This also indicates that there lies within man an immaterial reality to which he is responsible for maintaining and keeping properly orientated to and in the right relationship with God.

Second, man is similar to God in his mental capacities. For millennia man has sought to understand and explain, apart from the “image” factor, his dignifying ability to reason abstractly and discursively. From Plato’s idealism to today’s New Age “cosmic god—mind” and every philosophy and religion in between, has met utter failure in their search for the why and how of human rationality. However, Christian theism is not bankrupt in offering an answer to this question. Human reasoning, both inductive and deductive, in the biblical context makes perfect sense. The triune God of the Bible reveals himself as having all knowledge (omniscience). If, then, this God creates beings in his own image, they too would have knowledge, yet in a limited capacity—true knowledge, though not exhaustive. Also, God gives his creatures a mandate to explore and subdue the rest of created order expanding and adorning it to God’s glory, thus, man would require reasoning abilities for this task. The simplicity of the Christian’s answer for knowledge and rationality in no wise voids its profundity. Our answer is perhaps simple on the face of it, but the only other options are completely irrational, even at their deepest depths!

Lastly, man is a volitional creature sharing moral qualities with God.

Superficially, many other of God’s sentient creatures seemingly reflect some measure of morality (as many naturalistic atheists would be quick to point out). However, the actions and “decisions” of the brute creatures are not innately moral, they are learned behaviors based upon a fear of negative stimulus or in hope of the positive opposite. It is not so with man. A dog on a walk with its master does not stroll past an animal shelter and mourn the dilemma that faces dog-kind. Neither will a dog bark and growl in righteous indignation at the sight of another of the same species suffering at the end of a six foot long chain, being without food, water or shelter. Injustice means nothing to the lower animals; however, it is an aching reality in the very bosom of the image bearer. The only creature who knows and innately senses right-ness and wrong-ness is man, and the only reason is that he is “like” God morally.

In summery, the meaning of our being “God-like” has subtleties far beyond what is offered here, but most if not all may fit into these three categories: metaphysical, mental and moral.

2. The weight and responsibility of being “like” God is magnified by the fact that man is also created to “represent” God. In the historical context of the ancient Near East, the worldview into which Moses wrote, the term “image” would have communicated and “expressed the ‘presence’ of an absent lord (humanly speaking) in the sphere of his own dominion.” This observation helps us to view “image” in the way in which it would have been understood in its originally intended meaning. The trans-cultural nature of this understanding of “representative image” can be seen in Jesus’ dispute with the Pharisees and Herodians over the Roman taxation of Palestinian Jews. Jesus escapes the horns of a dilemma by first pointing out the agreed upon premise: “Whose image and inscription is this?” “Caesar’s” they answered. Therefore, that which bears the Emperor’s “image” (KJV best) reflects his authority, control and presence where ever it is found in the empire (Mt 22:15—22). Jesus escapes the horns of this dilemma by arguing a fortiori, from the lesser (Caesar’s image on the denarius) to the greater (God’s image as stamped upon every human being), thus avoiding the implications of the dilemma posed to him—either the charge of blasphemy from the Jews on the one hand, or the charge sedition from the Romans on the other. Just as Caesar’s presence is represented in his “image” on every denarius, so too God is representatively present in every creature stamped with his own “image.”

Hence, given the goodness of man’s original constitution, it is as if one could have asked the Creator, “what are you like?” and God would have been able to point the inquirer to his image bearers and say, “That is what I am like, for man is the reflection and representation of myself on the earth.” In this our parents failed, as do we all; however, One did not. It is this facet of the “image bearing” that becomes the interpretive backdrop of passages that rightly say of Jesus in his humanity, he bears, perfectly and expressedly, God’s image (Col 1:15; Heb 1:3). Moreover, the same is true when Jesus tells Thomas: “If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him” (Jn 14:7). Thus, we are also able to hear the “ring of truth” in Pilate’s proclamation: “Ecce Homo!” (“Behold, THE MAN!” Jn 19:5).

Therefore, God has given to man as part of the image bearing capacity the responsibility to represent him, the Creator. As God exercises his rule and dominion over the whole of the cosmos, God gives to man, as his viceroy, the role of reflecting that ruling glory over the earth (Gen 1:28; Ps 8:5—8; 115:16).

B. The narrow meaning of being created in the image of God speaks of the image bearing qualities lost at man’s Fall. A biblical view of man and things tells us, even if only intuitively and experientially, things are now abnormal—put out of rights with how they ought to be. Although the OT makes several allusions to ways in which the image of God has been corrupted and some capacities of it even lost when man fell, it is not until God’s revelation about man progresses to Paul’s epistles do we find the specifics.

Certainly one of the most fundamental goals of God’s plan of redeeming man is that they, individually and collectively, “be conformed into the image of his (God’s) Son” (Rom 8:29). Elsewhere, Paul tells us of three qualities which fit squarely into and mirror in a particular way the three categories mentioned above: metaphysical, mental, and moral. These would consist of “true (genuine, God-like) righteousness (moral) and holiness (metaphysical)” and “knowledge (mental) after the image of its creator” (Eph 4:24 and Col 3:10 respectively).

The language Paul uses in Eph 4; “renewed” (v. 23; cf. Col 3:10), “created,” “likeness” (v.24), as well as Col 3; “image of its creator” (v. 10), all points back to man’s originally “good” created constitution of our first parents as found in Gen 1 and 2. This is further bolstered by Paul juxtaposing the “old man” (Adamic) with the “new man” (renewed in, and like Christ). This is not to say that fallen man has utter lost all residual traces of righteousness, holiness and knowledge, for God, in his common grace and by way of man remaining in his image do still posses these characteristics, more or less given the individual, in some sense. However, unregenerate man, that is, fallen man as such, never ever bears them “in truth” (Eph 4:24, NASB), which is the only way God finds them acceptable. Hence, our regeneration in Christ, through the efficacy of the Holy Spirit, and our continued renewal and progressive conformity to Christ’s image is the integral part of God’s Great Plan to bring his whole creation back into a completely restored relationship to himself. The great joy believers know experimentally now points back to a time when things were right (Gen 1 -- 2) and forward to a time when they with be put to rights again (Rev 21 -- 22).

II. IMPLICATION AND APPLICATION

One implication of these reflections on the imago Dei is the responsibility of every image bearer to “be like...represent” God the Creator perfectly. This implication has great value and application in the task of defending and sharing the faith today.

Many of our modern evangelistic efforts are foiled by the sheer fact of our cultural/temporal setting. Our society is currently in what I call the final wave of the “Christian echo.” For instance, thirty to forty years ago a Christian could use terms such as God, sin, cross and salvation when speaking to an unbeliever because of the Christian heritage they both shared by virtue of living in a wave closer to the center of the Christian echo; thus, they shared in large measure an agreed definition of these terms. Today however, the Gospel proper; preaching sin, judgment, Christ’s death and resurrection, has little life transforming effect. This is not to say that the Gospel itself has lost effectiveness and must be changed to reach our generation. God forbid! Rather, it is to say that because most unbelievers no longer share any level of biblical literacy or the slightest understanding of the “Christian story” (the biblical plot-line; major turns in redemptive history, etc) the mere terms of the Gospel miss their mark in the heart and mind of the hearers. Allowing the sinner to translate and redefine the terms on the grounds of their own understanding of their “problem(s),” without filling those terms with biblical content and presenting them in the biblical context is a sure fire way to see hands go up and get cards signed; however, as I said, few of those lives will go on to bear any sustaining fruit of true conversion.

One Christian thinker identifies the people in this generation of the Christian echo as no longer having the “plausibility structure” in their thinking in which the Gospel terms may fit. For instance, to tell average person in America today that “Jesus died for them” might generate a response like this: “Well...that sounds really nice and all, but why would he need to go and do something like that?!?” “Well,” one might reply, “because God loves you!” Yet again, as amazing as that statement is to those of us who know man’s “real problem” and precisely how intrinsically unlovable we truly are, to the unbeliever today, they view themselves as worthy objects of God’s love by virtue of being born in America or some such thing. Attempting to hang the Gospel truths on the average unbeliever’s “plausibility structure” is like trying to drive a nail in a sheered sheet of granite. I would contend that today the terms of the Gospel must be presented in conjunction with the concepts and biblical definitions of those same terms. One such way is to begin by presenting the “Christian story” in its fullness, something that will start with the “image bearing” theme, and how that image looks today; even in their own life. Not until God’s own diagnosis of the problem is made clear in the mind of unbelievers will God’s wondrous gift of his own Son—the Solution to the image bearers problem—make real sense.

It is the image bearing capacity in man that makes sin recognizable for all its vile wickedness. If then, we are Created in God’s image and as such we are, creaturely speaking, like him and are to represent him as a dependant stand in here on earth, when we sin, even the “small ones,” its is nothing less than directly maligning of God’s name, character and holiness! Every person on earth has the responsibility to represent God in this capacity, to glorify the Creator through their rightly reflecting and representing him, thus, to sin is to tell the whole world that: “THIS IS WHAT GOD IS LIKE...HE IS A LIAR; HE HAS WICKED THOUGHTS; HE LUSTS; HE HATES WITHOUT CAUSE...ETC.” Now, this is not how we normally think of sin I know; but given the “image factor” how could it be anything less?!?

Once, therefore, this concept has found its mark in the image bearer one is attempting to evangelizing, the Gospel (God’s offer of a perfect substitute for their maligning representation of him) makes PERFECT sense!