The Political Implications of Imago Dei

There are a number of political battles in which people throw around this idea that human beings are made in the image of God but do so in an unexamined way. Let's explore this idea some.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals^, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” (Genesis 1: 26-28)

There are numerous political debates today in which this idea of the imago Dei, that human beings bear the image of their Creator, is used to assert ideas like the individual person is the core political unit in any society, justifying the rights of the individual. Or it is used to assert the equality of all human beings. It is used in feminist arguments. The image of God comes up in debates over mass immigration. Opposition to slavery is rooted in the understanding that it is immoral for one image bearer of God to own another image bearer of God as property. It comes up in the abortion debate. We could add to this list, but you get the idea. It is useful for us, especially in today’s political context where so much is in flux, to explore this idea and think more deeply about its political implications. I have no intention here to answer every question or address every potential political use for the idea, but merely to sketch out a theological framework within which we can think more deeply about the use of the imago Dei politically.

What is interesting is that even in the Old Testament passage above, there is a foreshadowing of the Trinitarian understanding that will be revealed to us in Jesus Christ. “Let us make man in our image…” implies that our image bearing has an “us” quality as much as it has an “I” quality. All throughout the scriptures there is a definite understanding that God is not calling to himself primarily individuals, but rather a community, a people, a nation. Even when he covenants with one man, Abraham, he is promising to make out of him a people. God’s relationship with him has a telos and what God is doing in Abraham is he is revealing his purpose. A people is being made known in the miracle birth of a son to a married couple who are beyond the childbearing age.

But what about the person, the individual? Does the person get subsumed and lost in the group, such that their welfare does not matter? That is not what is being said at all. There is no ground in the Christian faith to abuse or mistreat a person because of some perceived benefit to the group or the people. At the same time, the welfare of the person is not set against the needs of the people as a whole. Our God is Trinitarian. Three-in-one. Three persons, one essence. What this means is that the person and the community are meant to be held in tension. In a Christian context, while the family remains covenantally important, community for the Christian is not primarily the family, but rather the church. Again, this does not mean that the family is subsumed into the church and subordinated to it, just that the two are held in tension. We are not primarily individuals. We are not primarily the nuclear family. Rather, we are persons-in-community and we are a family-in-community. And that community is not just any community, it is the church. Who we are as a people, even politically, is not properly realized so much in the state as it is in church. This is not the church as an institution, but rather as a people gathered by God into a unified whole in Christ’s name. Within this community, who we are as image bearers mirrors the divine nature of three-in-one the Trinity. We are persons-in-community. The image of God manifests itself in this tension, in this mystery. It manifests itself most fully when when the balance between the two is properly maintained and we do not tilt to one side or the other. The “rights” of the group do not erase the individual; nor do the “rights” of the individual set him apart from or over the community. They are held in balance.

To demonstrate this, let us look at the person more closely. In terms of normal personal development, how is it that we establish our individuality? It begins very young, the first time we tell our parents., “No!” This begins the process of establishing ourselves as other from our parents first of all, and secondarily other authority figures. Testing limits, pushing boundaries, these are all part of the process of us saying that we are not merely a clone of our parents or the community within which we are raised. But without that “other” we have no boundaries against which to push. Those of you who are Christian readers might be thinking, “Does this mean that it is necessary for us to sin, to disobey, in order for us to establish our identity?”