E-Book, Englisch, 272 Seiten
Jones Image of God in an Image Driven Age
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8308-9960-9
Verlag: InterVarsity Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)
E-Book, Englisch, 272 Seiten
Reihe: Wheaton Theology Conference Series
ISBN: 978-0-8308-9960-9
Verlag: InterVarsity Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)
Jeffrey W. Barbeau (PhD, Marquette University) is associate professor of theology in the Graduate School at Wheaton College. He holds graduate degrees in English literature, theology and religious studies, all of which shape his interest in the intersection of theology, literature and history. Barbeau writes and researches on British Romanticism, theology and literature, the nineteenth century, Methodist history and Wesleyan theology. He is the author or editor of multiple books on the English writer S. T. Coleridge and his family. He has coedited or contributed to books such as Spirit of God: Christian Renewal in the Community of Faith, Theology Questions Everyone Asks, The Evangelical Dictionary of Theologyand The Encyclopedia of Christian Literature. He has written articles or contributed book reviews to journals such as Books and Culture, Christian Scholar's Review and the International Journal of Systematic Theology. Barbeau is an active member and Sunday school teacher at Grace United Methodist Church in Naperville, Illinois, and lives with his wife Aimee and their children. Beth Felker Jones (PhD, Duke University) is associate professor of theology at Wheaton College and former assistant professor of Bible and Religion at Huntington University. She is the author of The Marks of His Wounds: Gender Politics and Bodily Resurrection and Practicing Christian Doctrine: An Introduction to Thinking and Living Theologically. Jones is a columnist for the Christian Century and has written articles for publications such as Duke Divinity School's Faith and Leadership and Christianity Today's Her.meneutics blog. She lives in Wheaton, Illinois, with her husband Brian, a United Methodist pastor, and their four children.
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Introduction
Beth Felker Jones and Jeffrey W. Barbeau
“Image,” so the saying goes, “is everything.” Look in any magazine, turn on the nearest television, or open an app on any smartphone: images abound. Colors, words, pictures, videos and advertisements reveal a world of intricate complexity, unveil sights from the farthest corners of the world and the outer reaches of space and give humanity shared access to what could once only be imagined. Public images are constructed through symbols of power or representations of beauty. Visual images in film or photography memorialize decisive moments in history—moments of celebration and discovery no less than those of war and famine—and shape our collective interpretation of major events. Individually, too, memories indelibly shape our sense of self in relationship with others. The mind’s eye stores images that together construct the narrative of a life: a memory of a parent, an instant of tragedy, a moment of romantic love, a mental snapshot of the newborn child.
Still, for all the ways that images help to shape our understanding of the self and the world in which we live, images often lead us astray and distort our relationships. Christians confess that humans have been created in the image of the living God, yet human beings chose to rebel against that God and so became unfaithful bearers of God’s image. In the beginning, as John Wesley reflects, “Love filled the whole expansion of [the human] soul; it possessed him without a rival. Every moment of his heart was love: it knew no other fervor.”1 But the warmth that once vitalized the whole person was cast aside. Under the condition of sin, humans are still image-bearers, but the image of God is not as it should be. It is distorted, twisted, broken. We recognize that Adam’s sin and fall has become our own: “The evil in me was foul,” Augustine declares, “but I loved it.”2
Part of the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that Jesus, who is the image of God, restores the divine image in us, partially now and fully in that day to come when “this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality” (1 Cor 15:54). Paul contrasts human beginnings with the human future, Adam with Jesus: “The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven” (1 Cor 15:47). Paul makes it clear that, just as we have shared in Adam’s fallen image, we are meant to share in all that belongs to Christ: “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven” (1 Cor 15:49). The image on the cover of this book might lead us to meditate on this seemingly unfathomable promise. The cover shows a photograph of sculptor David Hooker’s Corpus, in which he has covered a crucifix in literal dust, including the skin cells and the hair of those who “have borne the image of the man of dust.” Jesus Christ shares all that is ours, including our mortality, so that we may share all that is his.
Beginning with the conviction that the doctrine of the image of God (often written using the Latin imago Dei) offers truth and health in a culture inundated with images, we invited Christian scholars from a variety of backgrounds to speak to these questions: How, in our time and place, might our understanding of what it means to be created in the divine image be challenged or distorted? In dealing with this situation, what corrective and constructive resources are available in the Christian faith? How can the Christian doctrine of the image of God inform and strengthen Christian witness in this image-driven age?
Too often the temptation is to respond to such questions in a negative tone. There is much about the present image-driven age that concerns Christians, and it would have been too easy to spend all the words of this volume articulating what wrongs have distorted this world. We need, of course, to tell the truth about the world’s brokenness, and the essays in this volume do careful work in diagnosing our present disorder, but we are happy to report that the overall project avoids wallowing in the negative. In all cases, these essays also point to the hope and healing that are real in Jesus Christ, and they offer positive direction for witnessing to the goodness of God.
The Image of God in an Image Driven Age: Explorations in Theological Anthropology thereby offers a unified collection of essays—ecumenical in nature and catholic in spirit—exploring what it means to be truly human and created in the divine image in the world today. We have designed the volume for the use of a variety of audiences, including theologians who wish to learn from the conversation among colleagues recorded here as well as pastors and other church and parachurch workers who are interested in faithful witness. It also remains accessible for students who are learning about Christian doctrine in general and the doctrine of the human person in particular—the “theological anthropology” of the subtitle. No essay in this volume is a standard introduction to theological anthropology, but students who have a chance to read the whole will find something even more interesting: a variety of voices engaging with the heart of the Christian understanding of what it means to be human and conversing with one another and with the greater Christian tradition.
Introductions to theological anthropology usually claim that there are three primary ways in which theologians think about the image of God: image can be conceived as (1) something substantial—usually rationality—about the human being, (2) something about the function—usually as representatives of God the king—that humans are meant to fill within creation or (3) something about the way humans are mean to relate to God and one another, including the moral dimension of those relationships.3 This is a helpful teaching tool, though it can be reductive. In this volume, though, students will find theologians actually entering into this conversation. Some of the authors prefer one of these three primary views; others prefer none or some combination thereof. For example, Catherine McDowell argues for a functional understanding of the image, though one transformed deeply by thinking about kinship. Craig Blomberg provides a New Testament theology of the image that strongly favors the moral and relational. Janet Soskice critiques, but in some ways adopts, a substantive account of the image, helping us to associate the centrality of language with what it means to be human and showing that speech is also inherently relational. No artificial unanimity has been imposed on the authors or their essays. Readers will see differences and areas of overlap between these arguments and will, ideally, return to the biblical texts that all this volume’s authors are reading as they seek to better understand the doctrine of the imago Dei. Moreover, while there is much variety among these essays and difference of opinion about what constitutes the image of God in the human being, there is also a deep unity holding them together. The authors, though they come from different traditions within the body of Christ, are all committed to Scripture and to doing theology for the good of the people of God.
The Image of God in an Image Driven Age collects contributions from the twenty-fourth annual Wheaton Theology Conference, held at Wheaton College in Illinois and cosponsored by the college’s Biblical and Theological Studies Department and InterVarsity Press. The conference flourished in the college’s liberal arts context, and we were privileged to work in partnership with the Art Department. Speakers—now authors in this volume—included scholars from English and art history as well as from biblical and theological studies. Conference attendees viewed a series of six short theological films by Joonhee Park. Those films showed art faculty in the process of creating, of making images. “Marsh” focuses on painter Joel Sheesley in his careful attention to creation. “Messages,” featuring Park’s own work (though he does not appear on screen), looks at the despair that can overwhelm bearers of God’s image in a fallen world. “Sweep” centers on David Hooker’s performance art about the Underground Railroad, and “Witness” focuses on community art led by Leah Samuelson. “Passage” shows Jeremy Botts working on an art installation in and for his local church. Finally, “Stations” explores Greg Schreck’s photographs representing the global church. We hope readers will access Park’s films online and reflect on them in association with the essays here.4 Additionally, two poems were written for and read at the conference and are printed in this volume. Jill Peláez Baumgaertner writes of a child in the image of God in “Zola, Imago Dei, on Her First Birthday,” and the late Brett Foster’s “Whiteout” explores the image subject to mortality, “compromised and glorious.” In these films and poems, a theology of the image is worked out in wonderful ways as words and images unite.
The essays in The Image of God in an Image Driven Age are organized around four central themes of Christian faith and practice: canon, culture, vision and witness. In the first group of essays, the authors explore major biblical themes related to the divine image and contribute to contemporary understanding of image-bearing today. The first chapter is an Old Testament theology of the image of God. Catherine McDowell (“‘In the Image of God He Created...
