Jeremy Christian's Take on the "Image of God"

[swamidass (S. Joshua Swamidass)]

Thanks for starting a new thread.

@Jeremy_Christian

Whatever it is, it seems it is what distinguishes us from the animal kingdom we evolved from.

Do you know the three views on the Image of God? This article is important, and @deuteroKJ might help you out too.

@dga471

I asked John Hilber this question at the ASA workshop last July and he referred me to a paper by D. J. A. Clines as representing the dominant consensus in the field of OT studies. I haven’t had time to read it in full though.

@dga471

while old, that paper is still relevant and essentially sums up the view I hold.

It’s interesting that a 1965 paper can actually still accurately summarize the consensus of a field, especially in the humanities. Is this because the Image of God is regarded as a “solved problem” that everybody agrees upon, or there just hasn’t been much research interest in it in the last few decades?

@deuteroKJ

As I said, not everyone agrees, but it remains the majority opinion. i’m not sure how to fully answer the question(s) except to say that there’s logically a limited number of options. The evidence from cognate languages hasn’t changed much in 50 years, so there’s not much extra data to take into account (for those who even care or are aware of this angle). The biblical data itself is fairly sparse. IMO, the tricky thing is figuring out the distinction between “image of God” (which we are) and “image of Christ” (which we are growing into or progressing toward).