catapult magazine

Do we know what that means? Can we guess?

After thinking about it for a while I have come to think that being made in God’s image is at least partially due to man’s ability to create and be creatinve. But is that all?

What do you think (or believe for that matter)?

could it have something to do with doing snow angels buck naked?

1. We can probably never really know to what that means fully until we get to heaven and see God (and his image for that matter)
2. Of course we can guess.

Personally I don’t think it’s just man’s ability to be creative, though that is a major part of it, but I think free will could be included in that. I think it might have something to do with physical characteristics too. At least I like to think so, and then I feel I can rightly chastize people for making fun of the way I look. :-p Basically “God made me in his image, take it up with him.”

P.S. Has anyone ever succesfully made snow angels butt-naked? A purely innocent curiosity…really.

First of all, you shouldn’t have recognised such an asinine question/statement with a reply. (humbug!)

Don’t get me wrong I love humor, and would say I have a good sense of it, but I don’t think that was called for.

Second, free will??? Would you consider Satan’s choice to rebel against God free will? Besides the fact that free will is not exactly clear cut in my book, (as far as I know) but I won’t go into that. But Satan did choose and it has been said that ONLY humas are created in God’s image, not angels.

More thoughts.

Yeah, the question of what it means to be made in God’s image is very interesting.

(I’m trying desperately to find ways to fit Dan’s comment into this discussion, but I guess I don’t really get the point. Perhaps the comment was not really meant to contribute to the conversation at all).

I’m reading Hegel right now and am challenged by his thinking on this very issue. It’s not that he touches on it explicitly, but much of his philosophy relies on an interpretation of God as Absolute Idea, as the Logic to which all Being points. Hegel represents many philosophers who went before him, who said that being made in the image of God is being made with rational capacity, with Reason. Since Hegel’s time, however, there has been an increased stress on the creative capacity of human beings. For Nietzsche, the creative act makes human beings gods themselves. I think you’re right to feel like neither of these ideas capture the richness of the statement that we are made in the image of God.

It seems to me that we might find something like an answer to the question of “man in God’s image” if we take God at His word as “Love”. God is love. God created us out of love, through the same Word that became a fleshly sacrifice for us. Because of this act of love (act of Christ-who-is-God-who-is-Love), we are now given new life just as we were given life in The Beginning. When we love our neighbors, we love God, but not in our own power. The only way we can know how to love our neighbors is by the example of love Christ has given us. Our love for God and humankind, then, could be said to be the very image of God, who is Love.

Ah dear Sam. . . you will encounter many “asinine” questions throughout your life-time. You can either be offended by them, ignore them or have fun with them, why not have fun with them? Sorry it offended you, but I do believe that it wasn’t evil.

Grant brings up some interesting points about love, that truly is a great power to wield. Doesn’t it seem, to some extent at least, that we have the free-will to choose who and who not to give our love to? yes Satan has free will too but that doesn’t make it not a characteristic of God that he chose to give to us. Obviously my statement previously didn’t completely explain “made in His image” I merely pointed out some characteristics of God that I think he specifically chose to give to us so that we might be radically special because we are “made in His image.”

Loving is a biggie. Well done Grant.

Hi, i’m new to this, I found this to be interesting. I’m just going to get to the point, but hello first.
I first must ask, do you all think that Man is the only thing (other than God) that loves? Do animals love? (or are they a system of chemical reactions only acting out of chemical changes in their composition?) If they can love, then maybe love is not the answer to how we are made “in the image”, because I think that we are looking for how humans, differ from all other created things thus recieving the title “created in His image” [spoken in a deep voice] (this all depends upon your own idea of love: sadness, joy, pain, pleassure; do animals possess feelings) for me love is the way two or more thing interaction.

The idea of free will also brings up some hard questions, meaning, does God possess free will, thus can God choose to be different than what He is? I find that the answer would have to be no, in order for Him to be God, He must not be able to have the same concept of free will that we possess. Free will would truly mean, to turn away from Himself; if He were to have it, and that would be impossible (even for God)! The infinite can not turn away from infinity.
Maybe the answer is held within spirituality, but I guess we don’t truly know if dogs aren’t lazy but are really into meditation?

Good points. The definition of love I’m working with is closer to compassion, or act of love (the Greek “splanchnizomai” that is the embodiment of “agape”….sorry for the apparent academic snobbery, but the difference in Greek is helpful). The act of creation is an act through love (the Word). We know God through loving Christ (living like Him, in obedience to God, by loving our neighbor). He knows us through Christ (the sacrificial act of love). We love God by acting out of love and are therefore the image of love.

If we’re trying to seperate ourselves from animals, however, the problem of “free will” has to come up. I think animals probably do feel love and even act lovingly, so yeah, the question of free will has to come into play. I think of the difference between man and animals as a difference between being governed by instinct and being guided by spirits. Human beings are free, through Christ, from being governed by strict natural laws. We have regained the “free will” we lost in the Garden now that Christ has died and rose and given us the Holy Spirit. We can make our own decisions about what is true and good in this ever-changing society in Christ.

We Christian humans can live our lives according to an “ethos of compassion” instead of by any strict, fixed, “universal” laws. This is what’s being worked out in a book assembled at the Institute for Christian Studies in Toronto, called “An Ethos of Compassion and the Integrity of Creation”. This book has been helping me to think about a Christian response to a postmodern world. This very issue of what it means to be made in the image of God is essential for understanding our task as Believers in a society where theology is no longer relevant.

A question for you then: is someone that does not love, say a mass murderer, not made in the image of God, or is your idea that we are made in His image, yet fallen, thus we might not ever carry out the act of being made in His image.
Would you say that the only people that are capable of compassion or agape are Christians?
Does being made in the image of God only mean to be a Christian?
Please forgive me, but I try and oput everything in absolutes to make them clearer for myself.

i don’t think what we do, our actions, have anything to do with whether or not we’re made in God’s image. everyone was made in God’s image, even a mass murderer.

and now i’m back where we started: what does it mean to be made in God’s image? hmmm . . .

Okay. Made in God’s image. How about the idea that we are reponsive beings—responsible. I think this plays a major role in our being made in His image.