Author: CCW

Imago Dei!

The first chapters of Genesis are especially foundational and formative for our thinking. They belong to a long tradition of reflection about the world and about what it means to be human; questions that are always with us and which challenge our thinking about our relation to nature and to our lives with one another. As such it touches upon a common question for students, especially new students at KES: “Where do I fit in?” That in turn is part of a greater question: “What is the place of our humanity in the givenness of creation?” After all, we find ourselves in a world which exists prior to us and in institutions such as schools which have a tradition and life shaped and formed by principles which are also prior to us.

The challenge of education is learning not so much what to think as how to think. It means at the very least an exposure to principles and ideas which require reflection and thought. Teaching is not mere technique. It is really about the passing on of things which have been learned and thus making them part of ourselves in one way or another. Genesis raises some of the great questions that become the foundational basis for many subsequent quests of the mind.

It begins, as we have seen, with a principle, God. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” But what is meant by God? The philosophical and theological traditions offer a number of suggestions. Thomas Aquinas, in a kind of summary statement about ancient Greek wisdom complemented by Jewish, Christian, and Islamic understandings, simply says that “God is the beginning and end of all creatures, especially rational creatures,” referring to angels and our humanity. This alludes in some fashion to one of the great insights of the Genesis story of creation. ‘Adam, an inclusive term and not yet a personal name (and “functionally gender-indifferent” ), refers to our humanity in general which is said to be made in the image of God. “In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

At least three things are emphasized in that statement: first, our humanity comes at the end of the litany of creation which distinguishes one thing from another thing within a unity of order. But are we, as in the ancient Sumerian view, simply an after-thought of the gods and thus insignificant beings? No. Because, secondly, ‘adam as the work of the sixth day is not only connected to every other created thing but alone of the things of creation is said to be made in God’s image. What does that mean? All that we can say about God is that God the Uncreated is the creative and ordering principle who speaks things into being and sustains them in their being. This underscores the idea of the world as intelligible (without which ‘science’ would be impossible). Our humanity understood in relation to God informs our role and place in the created order. Creation is order and not chaos; something significant is being suggested about us in terms of responsibilities and care. Thirdly, we are much like everything else in the created order as ‘beings in the world’ in terms of the basic categories of male and female.

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