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created in God s image in Christ. Both warrant further consideration
here. The first has special significance for human dignity as an ethical
standard, the second for human dignity as an ethical virtue.
Creation
In terms of creation, Genesis 1 (with a reaffirmation in Genesis 9) indi-
cates that the image of God attaches to that which is human as opposed
to animal or plant. As a human child was considered the tselem of a
parent (Gen. 5), and a tselem in the ancient Near East could refer to a
statue reminding people of a king s presence, human beings were cre-
ated to have a special, personal relationship with God that includes their
being God s representative in the world.43 Accordingly, the Bible speaks
of people not only as being in the image of God but also as being the
image of God. This is striking, because images of God are strictly for-
bidden in the Bible (e.g., Deuteronomy 4). Yet the consistent message
is that people are not to fashion images to make God the way they want
God to be any more than they are to try to be God themselves. They
72 CHAPTER FOUR
are to manifest God to the world in accordance with the way God has
made them and continues to direct them to be.
In sum, these passages about human beings being created in God s
image are talking about their status. But while the standard of God s
image and what it requires of human beings can always be assumed
throughout the Bible, it is not addressed in these passages nor are
the normative human characteristics or capacities that it entails. And so
scholars attempts to define humanity-as-God s-image in terms of spe-
cific God-like characteristics, such as the ability to rule, reason, or relate,
are misguided.44 They are reading into the biblical text rather than read-
ing from it. For instance, the idea that the human being is intended to
rule creation (i.e., rule it rightly, exercising faithful stewardship over
it45) is biblically sound, as the Psalmist observes to God: You made
him ruler over the works of your hands (Ps. 8:6). It is even accurate
to recognize that this ruling is closely associated with being created in
the image of God. In the very next verse, after the text records the
creation of the human being in the image of God, it reports God s
instruction to the first humans to rule over every living creature (Gen.
1:28). But this latter instruction is not part of the description of what
creation in God s image is it is a separate matter that exemplifies what
should be expected of one who is created in God s image.
We should similarly expect to find rational abilities in those created
in God s image. In fact, the particular rational and specifically spiritual
capacities found in human beings are among the most evident distin-
guishing features of human beings as opposed to animals. However, to
define the dignity of human beings created in God s image in terms of
these capacities is to take on all the problems resulting from the Kantian
approach of making human dignity ultimately dependent on particular
human characteristics. Once characteristics rather than human beings
themselves are the locus of value, the drift begins toward the commer-
cialized dehumanization of the final secularized society, Babylon, where
everything is up for sale according to the value attached to its character-
istics (whether material or nonmaterial): cargoes of cinnamon and
spice, of incense, myrrh and frankincense, of wine and olive oil, of flour
and wheat; cattle and sheep; horses and carriages; and bodies and souls
of people (Rev. 18:13).
Biotechnology and Human Dignity 73
With the biblical text and all the scientific and other descriptive tools
available to us today, we can say a great deal about who human beings
are. In anticipation of the return of Christ, the perfect image of God (2
Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:3; cf. John 14:9), we can speculate about
the ways we will find we are in the likeness of Him when we stand
before Him. But the Bible itself warns us that while we know that
when he appears, we shall be like him, the specifics of what that like-
ness will be are not now known (1 John 3:2). The implication is that
we do better to affirm what we can know that is, the fact that human
beings are the images of God than to speculate about what we cannot
know. Accordingly, although various characteristics are attributed to
human beings in the biblical text, they are never identified there as what
constitutes that image. To complicate matters further, angels appear to
have most of the capabilities (memory, will, moral and spiritual capac-
ity, etc.) that some would identify as constituting the image of God, but
they are never identified as being created in God s image. The picture
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