What Is an “Image” and Should I Care?

When you look at me, you see God.

Did I get your attention? That’s a rather dramatic claim, isn’t it? Most people would immediately reject such an incredible statement–especially anyone who has ever met me. I can be a jerk at times, I look kinda funny, and I make a lot of mistakes. I’m sure people think about a lot of things when they look at me, but I doubt that God is one of them (unless they’re using “God” in a less-than-appropriate manner).

Yet, at the very beginning of the biblical narrative, we find just such an audacious claim: ‘God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them’ (Gen. 1.27). Many of us have, perhaps, grown so comfortable with this verse and the claims that it makes for the nature and identity of human persons that we no longer recognize the fabulous nature of this assertion. At the beginning of a work clearly committed to belief in a God who is invisible and cannot be–indeed, should not be–de...